Björn Jeffery

Tonight I’ll be discussing how the youth of today will affect the workplace of tomorrow. You get the picture. The debate is hosted by SNS and starts 18.00 at Malmö Högskola. Swing by if you want to have a chat about that, or anything else for that matter.

The latest buzz in amongst the Swedish internet enthusiasts is the Read/Write Web lists of national web apps. There have been a few complaints (here and here for instance) about Sweden being a disgrace as we apparently haven’t thought of enough stuff ourselves. Apart from that not being true, it also raises the issue of cloning vs innovation.

In my opinion, the critical point is the execution of the idea – not the idea itself. At least when it comes to comparing “top sites” of any sort. There were plenty of video options before YouTube, there were social networks before MySpace and so forth. The interesting point is not that their idea was fresh out of the box, but that they tweaked so successfully into becoming a success. Take a look at Startup Reviews study on MySpace for a few good pointers on why it exploded, and others didn’t.

There are many factors that decide the success of a website. Firstly, it is a matter of expectation and measurement of course. Are we looking at revenue streams? Unique visitors? Potential? Reach in the target group? And what was the purpose of the site? Not all sites aim to become the largest player in the field. Depending on what perspective to use, all the apps on the list would rate differently.

So even though it’s a really good idea for a series (I wish I thought of it first!), it’s not a good foundation to start ranting over Sweden being a useless country when it comes to web success.

tags bloggar.se: web2.0, kloner, myspace, youtube + Ping Intressant.se

Just a few newsworthy links from the blogs I went through today. Not all new, but still worth a look.

Revenue sharing entering the video market for real – it’s been there before, but this seems a bit more serious.

Another brand in Second Life – Nissan this time. But everytime it happens the site gains in credibility.

Newspapers are doing badly as usual – apart from The Financial Times.
Vox launches for all of us – and I think they are on point with the structure. Going from hiding everything about yourself to publishing everything about yourself online, the obvious step is to publish some stuff to some chosen people.

It’s always interesting when Sequoia hands out cash – this time it’s to a celeb blog with 20 million monthly page views.

Help with medicine research – by simply leaving your computer on, SETI-style.

Google acquires Jotspot – nuff said!

Interview with a hyperlocal blogger – from this blog. There’s a lot to hyperlocal.

I know there are a million other examples of this, but it’s always more fun when it happens to you personally. Yesterday, Rolling Stone magazine used Discobelle.net (a blog that I contribute to) as the source for their piece of news. Read the original post here.

tags bloggar.se: rolling stone magazine, bloggar

Just a short note: tomorrow (tuesday) Fredrik and I will be holding a lecture for the journalist students at JMG in Gothenburg. If you’re attending and thinking of taking the afternoon off – think again 😉 We’re going to talk about social media and how journalism comes in to play in this new media climate.

And if you can’t be there, I recommend that you try to catch the movie Babel instead. It has nothing to do with what we’re talking about, but it’s a beautiful and moving film that shouldn’t be missed.

tags bloggar.se: jmg, journalisthögskolan, föredrag

During my brief stay in London a few weeks ago, one of the sites I noticed was CarbonNeutral.com. It got me thinking, and it woke the slumbering environmentalist inside of me at the same time. My new plan is to make my company, Good Old, carbon neutral as soon as possible. I’ve signed up for a first meeting on how to do it as well, I’ll keep you posted along the way.

Apart from being a sound thing for mother nature, environmental consciousness is a major emerging trend. I have previously stated that I think that there will be an increasing consumption of services and disposable items, and also a decrease of regular items. I also believe that the classic western over-consumption is on it’s way out, and being replaced by more conscious choices. Slowly, but surely.

It follows that when you purchase fewer things, it matters more what those things actually are. The story behind the product, and the choices connected to it will create a new value in itself. This, in a way, is a new form of luxury. The luxury being the knowledge behind the choice, rather than just buying the most expensive item. (I discussed a similar issue with Kristina Dryza over dinner at Yauatcha in Soho. Kristina will be releasing a report on New Luxury over at Construct London soon, so keep your eyes open for that.) I believe that the environmental factor will be one of the most prominent in this new luxury. And perhaps I should add that I don’t mean “luxury” in the sense that it is something that we don’t need – I mean that making these choices will have a luxurious feel to them, thus making them more desirable on a regular basis.

The increased focus on environmental issues is obvious. From Al Gore´s An Inconvenient Truth, to the world´s first sustainable dance club, to the aforementioned CarbonNeutral.com. Websites like Worldchanging, Eco.PSFK and Treehugger cover these issues on a regular basis.

As with the explosion of blogs, there is a threshold that must be passed before things will start to happen. For the blogs, it was a mere technical issue. As soon as it became a two-click thing to start a blog, people did. The need for self expression was already there and waiting.

Similarly, the want and need for eco-conscious choices is here. What we need is something that lowers the threshold for people´s day to day choices and consumption. From my point of view, the critical question here isn’t technical but a matter of time. I’m looking into ways of shortening the amount of time needed to make an environmentally correct choice right now. Any ideas would be much appreciated of course.

(Thanks to Olof and Martin for inspiration)

tags bloggar.se: klimatneutral, identitet, miljö, konsumtion

New Media Days, day 2. I think the entire DR (Danish Radio and Television) is here, a lot of Danish people in general, but hardly any Swedes? Look at this list of participants to get a feel for it. So much for Øresund.

The general feel of yesterday was that it was good, but not spectacular. Presentations are a good way of getting a general feel for something quickly, but in all honesty nothing that I saw yesterday rocked my world. Unfortunately, I might add. And Johan Boserup, representing OMD Europe, gave the most backwards view of the internet that I’ve heard in a long time. My Danish wasn’t good enough to stand up and let him have it, and somehow I hope that I missunderstood something… There were quotes like “the internet is just a channel like all the others”, “tv viewing hasn’t gone down”, “blogs and social networks will only ever get 5% of the advertising”. I didn’t know whether laugh or cry.

And by the way – Technorati! Thanks for nothing! The whole point of this live web is to listen isn’t it? If that’s the case, you aren’t listening very well to this blog. Only one out of four All posts with the nmd06 tag have turned up on the site.

Update: Seems to be working now. Praying to the Technorati gods was a good call.

tags bloggar.se: nmd06, new media days

Chris Kimber and Ayesha Mohideen held a great presentation about the concept “My BBC Radio”. They took up a lot of ideas, although most of them didn’t seem to have been done yet. So don’t use the points below as an example of the BBC being great (there are other arguments that proves that). I made a few notes that I thought I’d share with you. A bit chopped up I’m afraid, but it will have to do for now.

Chris and Ayesha listed six key points:

Access – anytime, anywhere, anyhow.
* Seven day archive with all the programmes.
* Broadcast through streaming, downloads, podcasts or other.
* BBC bought a tab in MSN Messenger enabling them to listen to radion through that.
* They are looking into putting radio into videogames. An interesting example was showed of an example of a car game playing 1Xtra on the car stereo. Interesting!
* In the UK today you can get mobile phones with DAB-chips in them (through Virgin).

Discovery – content that’s prominent, finable and navigable.
* Lifting out programmes out of the radio station, and sorted them into genres instead. The programmes are linked together and thus making them discoverable. In general they were just looking to find more ways of people finding content.
* Segmenting content to enable more specific finds. At the end of this year there will be a trial of technique called Listen & Label which is listeners that create tags on these segments.
* Musicubes – web-widgets with music streams for use in communities.
* Search through DAB EPG

Enhancement – textual, audial, visual
* Enhancing not only the sound quality, but also work with visual branding, adding information on the music piece, perhaps picture or some trivia.
* Many devices that you use listening to a radio, also have a screen. Not that people watch all the time, but when they do it can enhance the experience.
* An example would be filming a radio recording and adding it as extra material to the radio show.

Extension – beyond the listening experience
* BBC starting page with recommendations and a community feel.
* Permanent link to every radio show to make them bloggable.
* Possibilty to rate every track, buy it, send it to a friend, tag it and use social recommendation.

Participation – before, during and after broadcast
* More about individuals sharing, than the community part
* Every programmes page has aggregated comments, ratings, tags
* BBC launched blogs written by presenters. This is running today.
* Sent audio and video through Second Life in order to get the BBC content and brand out in the spaces where people interact.

Creation – making music, radio and applications
* How to we tap in to the peoples creativity and use it?
* “Making tracks” – a programme for listeners to make music. The winner won a recording by an orchestra.
* Odeo – making podcasts. BBC wants to use this idea to record rants/voice/quetions online for radio shows.
* BBC uses Flickr groups for BBC events
* People make their own BBC mac-widgets

tags bloggar.se: NMD06, bbc, radio

Cliff Webb from Narrowstep held an interesting presentation. Narrowstep does IP-TV, or rather “TV over the internet” as they chose to call it. Apparently clients and customers tend do go for the more descriptive than technological approach.

According to Webb, enabling a complete freedom of choice is the most important factor for the success on IP-TV. The second factor for success was engaging niche communites. As more and more people are part of a community of some sort – both online and offline – this enables the long tail on an international level.

Webb mentioned a few examples: itvlocal.tv – the British television network ITV are launching nine special channels, apart from the four regular channels that they have. With the new channels, they work hyperlocally (see my post on Rob Curley for more on hyperlocal). They have classifieds, dating, property, live cameras (showing a miserable day in Brighton at the time) – all with a hyperlocal perspective.

This also opens up new ways of advertising – people can make their own tv advertisments and then you can upload it to ITV. It then runs on the website. This costs them about 25 pounds for 30 days. Even the Brighton surf shop does it! The formula that seems to work best is one 30 second ad, every 5 minutes. The viewers then know that there’s only going to be one ad, and because of that they keep watching.

One more example. Cycling.tv has made half a million euros in premium memberships – this year alone. They have about 30-50 000 viewers and have sold ten ad packages á 25 000 euros so far. Seemed to be very successful. And how do they know what cycling to send out? They ask their community of course. That’s how you get loyal viewers.

tags bloggar.se: NMD06, narrowstep, ip-tv, cycling.tv, itvlocal

Doc Searls put on a good show as aspected. A few new things, and a few things that I had heard before. Below is a mix of quotes and my own thoughts and interpretations of what he said. I’m not trying to rip him off, I just couldn’t catch enough quotes in real time. As it happened, the internet didn’t work(!!!) so live-blogging wasn’t really an option.

The first thing that made me think was the statement that the “Internet isn’t a medium – it’s a place. It’s a place you go to, not through.” When I have presentations myself I tend to say that the internet is a superior medium, and a carrier of medium rather than being one itself. Searls took is taking it one step further here, and I think it’s on point. Time to update my slides perhaps, but I’m giving this a think first.

He brought up the same comparision as at Reboot – a good one, so that’s fine. Static web vs the Live web. The static web crawls the web and indexes whatever it finds, looking through billions of sites. The live web on the other hand (Technorati for instance) listens to millions.

The live web responds to the signs of life – when things actually are happening. Seals also pointed out that the Live web organizes chronologically – the first real organisation of the web so far.

* * *

Then perhaps the most interesting point: VRM. The new CRM.

VRM stands for vendor relationship management. It’s going to give the people formerly known as consumers – now customers, co-creators, people, humans – the possibility to have more power in the relationship between him/herself and the companies. CRM carry all the responsibility for the relationship – if it was truely a relationship both sides should have a part of it.

“VRM will obsolete most advertising”, Doc said. The customer will let the companies know, when they need things. Connected it to the phone and finding a hotel i a new city is a piece of cake. This also means that cell phones will become open platforms – they will have to be to keep up. Look at the open source development on PCs.

* * *

“We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings – and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it” – Cluetrain manifesto

* * *

And then some guy finished of with asking a stupid question involving Web 2.0 being dead and bla bla bla bla. People trying to chase the next thing tend to not notice what’s going on under their own noses. I can’t be bothered to comment on that tedious issue more than that actually.

tags bloggar.se: nmd06, vrm, crm, doc searlds, relationship marketing