Archive for January 2010
Open & FREE is a Business Model
I know your scratching your head wondering what I mean by this, stay with me and let me share some thoughts on the topic. We’ve been and still are under the bondage of control & protectionism, just look at the Newspaper & Music industries as an example. I’m not opposed to the creators, writers and artists from being compensated for their work, I’m suggesting that there is and will be a better ways to ensure that compensation happens.
I’m a firm believer that making content readily available and free will create new ways of monetizing, eventually most will figure out how to monetize around that content. If the music industry is smart, they will make collective agreements with those distributing music now, especially those doing it illegally by today’s laws. Pirates if you will, are not really the enemy, they are however breaking new artists all the time, the music industry benefits while the pirate(s) don’t get paid for finding them. The model is now beginning to reverse and is becoming open, the pirate will still find and break new music while everyone else benefits including the pirate. Collaboration is far better than the closed system of control we have today in the music industry. In Matt Mason’s book The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
You & I won’t tolerate gate keepers and closed systems, you can’t put content behind walls and generate new money, only in an open & free environment will you make new money. Those words are Gerd Leonhard’s , he is a media futurist and his focus is the music industry. From his book called Music 2.0 he makes an interesting statement in the segment called, Access Will Replace Ownership and the Consumer Will Drive the Business:
In three to five years, consumers will have access to “their” music anytime, anywhere, and the physical possession of it will in fact be more of a handicap, or a pastime for collectors. Music will feel (and act) more like water, and music providers will become utilities.
Keep in mind this book was written prior to 2008, it is a collection of essays previously released. I’m not an authority on the music industry, I do however preach his message and see open and free as a sound business model. His new book I have yet to read but you can get it here: Friction is Fiction: The Future of Content, Media & Business
Gary Vaynerchuk has also seen the shift long before it started, he produced 40 minute video’s on Wine Library TV and gave you the content free for 17 months before anyone really knew who he was. How do you think he is doing today, he took the family business from 3 -4 million a year to over 60 million a year doing that show. Today he has a 10 book deal due to the open & free business model, he continues to build his legacy in this new model. His goal is simple, buy the New York Jets NFL team and spend more time with his family. Gary’s message is simple, embrace who you are, your DNA, work hard, work really hard, and never give up on your passion. He doesn’t promise you you’ll make it big, nor does he claim you will be a millionaire, he does however promise, if you do what your passionate about you will win. Winning does not mean lots of money, it may however mean you will enjoy and maybe even love what you do. he preaches his message everywhere and to anyone who will listen, his book hit the New York Top Sellers List and is still available, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
There are other examples of this business model working, the true test will be if and more like when Industries see the revenue streams around what they sell, how they look for gaps, create vehicles and harness the power of their audiences.
How will you embrace this new environment of Open & Free as a business model?
If your are interested in coming to one of my Open & Free Business Model Workshops, please email me Here
The Media Has You – We Are All Sheep!
I know you sit in front of the TV shaking your head over some of what you see and hear, the media has you, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. You know something isn’t right but you can’t stop yourself from wondering what’s so terribly wrong. You know you’re being sold but you can’t help but think everything that is presented before you is a good idea and you must have it. It baffles the mind how easily lead we are as a people, how we just bite the cheese in the trap like the mouse.
We wait for and anticipate the big announcements from some of these huge companies as if they were the Messiah! Silicon Valley can’t wait to tease you with another great technology company making the leap from nobody to something larger than life. It’s everywhere, you can’t escape it, the media has us in the palm of their hands. The Media has you, we are all sheep!
The much anticipated announcement by Apple is a prime example of how the whole world stopped, stood up and paid attention to the moment Apple unvieled the iPad. And now we are inundated with reviews, critics, a bazillion blog posts about what’s good and what’s bad about the iPad. Yes, Apple has developed a new product but why are we so hooked on what happens when the rest of the world is struggling, trying to recover from earth quakes and famine. How is it that we can be distracted by something as trivial as an iPad over these other disasters? I’m already tired of hearing about Apple’s iPad, everyone is trying to break the stories.
It’s simple realy, the Media has us all, the chain around the neck being yanked when they need your attention. It’s attention space selling here on the Internet, TV and what have you. That’s the future of who we will be come, attention freaks trying to make a name for ourselves, building a brand, but we still don’t get it, we can’t keep marketing on the Internet by yelling. We pay attention to Apple because we trust their products and services, we pay attention to Microsoft because we trust their products. The challenge is that it’s not free, it’s time consuming and it distracts us from whats important, the tools are not more important than our lives.
What I’m learning from all of this is, there are fewer visionaries and leaders than there are followers, everyone wants to be out front. The 15 minutes of fame the world is selling you is misleading and unhealthy for most of us. This probably won’t change but, the visionaries will see you and take advantage of your vanity as they do today. I know I’m coming off synical, I’m just trying spread some sanity and help you stay focused on what’s truly important.
The world is changing faster than we can possible imagine, we can’t keep up, some of us sheep will slaughtered in the progress and some of us will become famous sheep. The world of free content, freedom of speach, the freedom to be who we are not will transform business, transform the way we do business and how we continue to function in a connected world. We must move into a place where we are not trapped by the media and big business, we must begin to believe in the impossible, what we can not see yet. Look past the iPad, look past Social Media, look past how to make money blogging, stop and look at how we are moving to an unlimited world.
We must become truly revolutionary, revolution is adopting new behaviour. The things we focus on today must change that behaviour, we must break away from old thinking, we must break away from media as we know it or we will continue to be sheep lead astray. Those who figure out that paying with attention is the new advertising will find themselves out in front of the masses. It’s advertising not @vertising!
The Cloud is where the money is, free content is the new content model, we have to figure out how to monetize around it no matter what the media tells you. Break from old methodology, learn to unlearn, look at new trends that are hard to adopt, look at Social Networking, Content Services, Communication, Money and eLearning. But look with fresh eyes and new thinking. Think about who controls what, who the gate keepers are and which ones we have to remove in the world of free. We are entiring into a world where we all will be mobile, everything will be in handheld devices and everything is and will be on the Cloud.
We are constantly being sold down the river, told a story, distracted by what’s important in life, media must change and you must help re-shape it, re-write the books on copyright to usage rights, develop new ways to monetize around your brand, product or service. What will the world look like when more than 6% of the worlds population is on the Internet, what happens when countries like China breakout from behind the wall? The winds of change are blowing, are you building a shelter or a windmill?
Media comes to us in many forms, it’s the music industry, it’s newspapers, it’s books, it’s radio, it’s television and now it’s blogs & people. In the end, nothing happens without people, the power is shifting back to the people, the problem is also with the people, how we think and how we act. The new media will be built on trust, are we trustworthy? The Media’s would have you think you are not smart enough to figure out what they are doing, they talk to you and expect you to follow like sheep. That’s because they are in a state of protectionism, so beware.
The Media has you, we are all sheep!
The Power of FREE
The Internet is filled with places to get free information, free software, free content, it’s all there for the taking. We can click and get whatever we want right? The Internet is a giant copy machine, we copy everything, imagine what would happen if you took the copy function away, you would lose the the listening function. What would happen then, revolt, maybe the hackers would be the politicians? Pirates would rule the Internet world, how would you stop them or should I say us?
Personally, I think most content should and will end up being free on the Internet, we will figure out how to monetize around that free content, we have no choice, it’s going to happen. There will be wars over intellectual rights, copyrights and royalty fights before it’s all said and done. Access will come before ownership. When we see a threat, we default to protectionism, we should be asking the question, how do we go from copyright to usage rights?
There is so much confusion as to where Social Media is taking us, it’s really reshaping Media to where the new sell is the conversation, the non tangible things matter now more than ever, this is a drastic disruption to old thinking. Why is Social Media so powerful, it’s FREE! You can join any number of Social Networks at no cost, build a following, a brand, and hopefully trust. The best thing is to sell something different like, convenience, experience and trust, generate demand, create new innovation and maybe even add value to the orginal.
Most Blogs provide free content, some have communities attached to them where you pay a small fee to be part of, they add value to a need, that’s one way of monetizing around your content. If you are going to be in this space, you have to decide if you’re going to compete.
Linus Torvalds released Linux back in 1991, Slackware was the first distro to be released, it’s a free operating system that has spawned a number companies that have figured out how to monetize something around the Open Source code. Open is good, it stirs the creative juices, it brings about innovation, and takes creativity far beyond any closed system has ever dreamed of going.
The power of free is far reaching, provides a platform to build something far greater than any one person, we must collaborate to build anything of true value in this attention space. Do you think FaceBook won’t make money from the free to join social network? Where you can be connected to thousands of people, business contacts, business owners at no charge. They will, and it will be astounding how much that will be.
Think of all the things you can get it for free, then think of all the content you can’t get for free, what’s important to you in this circle, that’s what you will pay for. But I can promise you this, if you can get for free, you will, even if it means you have to hunt for it. If you create content of any kind, offer it for free, you will harness the power of your audience. You can’t put content behind walls and generate new money, only in the open can you generate new money, and only then you will see the power of free.
Attention Bloggers & Marketers
The Internets future is of great interest to me, I study some of the worlds smartest technology people because they see things differently than the rest of us. The Futurists are an interesting lot, they even cause me to chuckle now and then, but we need them because it forces us to look outside the box. I share and talk about the possibilities technology can bring, I care very much how it impacts society and our economy’s, plus I love looking into the future.
So I ask you Bloggers & Marketer’s, have you stopped to consider what and how the new economy is going to work, what it might look like, and how it will impact how you Blog and Market? Do you know what the New Economy is? There is and will be a New Economy, it will be The Data Economy, the New Content Economy. We will connect data to data, line to line, not web-page to web-page, this economy will set the table for a revolutionary way of doing business on the Internet. Google is ensuring this will happen, everything will be mobile and on the cloud.
We are entering a time where Command & Control will become Coordinate & Cultivate, where domination is out – and Collaboration is in. Where the current economic egoism no longer works, because now we are all connected, it breeds mediocrity. Mediocrity is what we have / had under the control model. We need to build an Ecosystem, where we freely, openly share & collaborate, with the right blend of sharing rather than piracy. Collaboration is and will be required to build in this new economy.
An entirely new way of thinking comes from being connected, Trust is the Key, Trust is the new currency. This trust will be developed over time, it will make or break organizations and indivduals with large followings and high levels of influence, but this trust won’t come easy. Advertising in the connected world has to be radically different, otherwise it will keep declining. We can no longer market on the Internet by yelling. Marketing needs to hit the RESET button and figure out how to function in the new economy.
Content today is copied, you download a PDF, an MP3 and what have you, it’s a copy. The Internet is a giant copy machine, if you disconnect the copy function, you disconnect the listening function. The fight to keep control of copies is a losing battle on this network, but how do we get the money from a network that can copy everything for free? We need to sell things that can’t be copied, the conversation is the sell. We need to sell things around the content, the packaging, the experience. Money is moving from the selling of copies, to selling the experience. After all, your Brand will be judged by that experience, if it’s bad, you will be out of business sooner than later. You can see the landscape is changing, the end of control is taking shape everywhere.
Social Media is a very human driven practice, it can’t be done with a single person, it just doesn’t scale well that way. Gary Vaynerchuk has shown us how hard it is to keep up and stay on top of all that is data, he won’t be able to sustain the demand on his time and become ineffective.
It’s important to state that Social Media is not about technology, it’s about a culture change, a paradigm shift, we have to get better at believing in the impossible.
We need to think about how we Blog & Market, re-write the books on how it’s done, because what we are doing is a diminishing return. What kind of experience do people have when they come to your Blog, and what kind of emotions are engaged when they see and hear your marketing messages? The power is now in the hands of the people formerly known as consumers, how will you engage them?
You’ve heard this message before a million times, you probably preached it over and over, but the real question is, are you one of the change agents helping shape this new economy? Have you studied what’s to come, do you know and see the indicators? The New Economy views content first as a service, then an experience – and only then (maybe) a product.
I know my voice gets lost in the noise, that’s OK. I know the Internet is a big place, and a very large network that dissects, crosses over and loops back, and some how we are supposed to find what we are looking for. Companies like Google are trying to filter the content and help us all get exactly what we want. But that my friends, is whole nother story. Filtering and curation are the keys to the next phase, and eventually we’ll find ourselves dealing with smart noise.
Are you paying attention, what do you see?
How I Watched Apple's BIG Announcement
The Internet world new this day was coming, Apple was going to make this huge announcement that was going to revolutionize how we use the Internet. Everyone who is anyone in the technology sector has been talking about this for weeks, and the day has come and it will soon be gone. You will read thousands upon thousands of new articles, Blog Posts and Video’s on this new thing called the iPad. It’s priced at $499.00 USD, screen size is 9.7″ and so on, if you have an iPhone you probably won’t want one of this slick machines. In fact, it looks just like a biggie sized iPhone!
Leo LaPorte said that he has never seen so many people at an Apple Announcement, everyone was there were his words. That’s not entirely true because I wasn’t there! I was there via the Internet and I thought I would share with you how these events will be attended in the future.
I sat here in my home office, openned my browser (FireFox), brought up Leo laporte’s Live.Twit.tv and watched Leo’s version of the event via his show. I also had FriendFeed open and watched Robert Scoble’s Stream, plus, Robert did a live UStream.tv stream at the same time! I got everything I need by following the #iPad & #AppleLive HASH on Twitter as well, I am fully informed.
I expect in the future this is how many people will attend Conferences and major announcements, why pay for parking, hotel and so on when you can get LIVE coverage via the NET? I recognize it’s not the same thing as being there, but it’s far more cost effective. I am however, very disappointed that the broadcast of the event by Apple or lack of one was so poor in quality. They have more cash than Microsoft does, they can afford to stream this better, or maybe the CLOUD can’t handle the load? What will happen when more than 10% of the world gets online for FREE?
How did you watch the Apple Event?