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“Amazon and Google are undermining mobile pricing, and that may hurt everyone” by Jon Fingas

Jon Fingas argues that the pricing war initiated by Google and Amazon, as regards to determining the low price at which tablets are sold,  “don’t bear their full costs”. The fact that two of the biggest players have decided to start selling tablets with no profit margin, might be a good thing in short term perspective however, it might prove detrimental for the industry in the long term, as it may derail the industry's’ focus away from providing quality devices and steer it to  selling cheap,  minimum capabilities ones.

It is generally accepted that competitive markets fail for four basic reasons; market power, incomplete information, externalities and public goods.

Inefficiency arises when a producer or a supplier of a factor input has market power and both
Google and Amazon undoubtedly have power. Currently, they are the two biggest market players after Apple, and Amazon is the biggest online retail and content provider. Both have decided on the output quantities of devices and at which marginal revenue to sell and have conceded that the marginal revenue is going to be equal to the marginal cost. Therefore they have squeezed their profit margin for these devices near zero, projecting that the high profit margins will come from selling content and services to consumers.
As a result, they succeed in making competitive products appear overpriced to the consumer, even if they are costly to produce.   Secondly, they force other producers to lower their selling price and subsequently their profit margins.  Further,  they  lead  producers in the  forced dilemma of choosing between quantity  and quality when designing and producing new devices.
Google is aiming to both make a profit and broaden the reach of its Android operating system, while Amazon is looking to restore the profit gap when customers buy movies, books and magazines from its store.

Andrew Rassweiler, an IHS senior director, said Google’s tablet is also clearly aimed at Amazon.com, which shook up the tablet market last year by offering its own version at $199. “Google’s Nexus 7 represents less of an attempt to compete with Apple Inc.’s market-leading iPad, and more of a bid to battle with Amazon’s Kindle Fire,” he said in a statement. While the two are “similar in many regards,” he added, the Nexus 7 “has superior specifications to the Kindle Fire, giving it a more attractive feature set that may make it more desirable to consumers.” Amazon and Google don’t care to monopolize the market but they do care to achieve a monopsony. Amazon and Google appear to be simultaneously trying to establish a wholesale monopsony and a retail monopoly in the e-book and content/ advertising sector. At the same time, it is important to note that Google and Amazon are in effect trying to apply a predatory pricing practice into the market of tablets and content. By selling a Nexus or a Kindle at rock bottom prices, they intend to drive competitors out of the market and/or create entry barriers to potential new competitors. What is even more important to realize/acknowledge is their attempt to establish in buyers’ mind the conviction, that well-known products such as the iPad mini are by default overpriced. If competitors, like Asus, Nook.  Samsung or Rim, or potential competitors, cannot sustain equal or lower prices without losing money, they are eventually driven out of business or discouraged from even attempting to  enter it.

In essence, Amazon and Google have chosen to  undergo short-term pain for long-term gain. Therefore, for both to succeed, they must have sufficient strength (financial reserves, guaranteed financial backing or other sources of offsetting revenue) to endure the initial lean period.   In our case,  it is really interesting to follow  Amazon’s steps,  since Google seems to have all the strength required  to endure the initial period . Since   Amazon had some rough quarters regarding revenues and profitability, this strategy may fail if competitors (like Apple or Samsung) are stronger than expected, or are driven out (like RIM, HTC or Acer)  only to be replaced by others. In either case, this will force the Amazon and Google  groups to either prolong or even abandon the price reduction policy. Their strategy may fail,  if  both Amazon and Google prove unable to sustain  the short-term losses, either because they last longer than expected or simply because they did not estimate  the loss accurately. Therefore it makes the whole situation inefficient because at the end of the day there is a short term better off for Amazon and Google, a worse off for other competitors like ASUS and RIM. In  the long Term, it  is  questionable whether Amazon can endure while practicing the predatory pricing and should be interesting to see how this would affect Apple and its ecosystem.  Tablet makers selling a complete range at that break-even level could ultimately whittle down the market to those who either produced a winning formula at the right time (Apple) or have deep enough content stores and bank accounts to willingly give up large parts of their potential hardware profit (Amazon and Google)

Consumers do not have accurate information about market prices or product quality.

As most consumers are price driven , they tend to ignore the fact,   that it is difficult  for companies who lack the proper profit margins, to access  the funds  required to develop new technologies and provide the market with  innovative products. It is important to stress,  that devices sold by Google and Amazon gain their value from content which  has  to be purchased. So it is quite possible  that people who actually buy a device,  because it  is significantly  cheaper than the competitions’,   find out that either the app ecosystem is not very  safe or well developed or  worse still, that in order to have the proper experience using the inexpensive device, they have to spend more money on  different kinds  of content purchases.

In our case,  market prices do not reflect the activities of either producers or consumers.
Prices are  kept artificially low,  as the producers try to earn market share and gain revenues from content sales. This has an indirect effect on other consumption or production activities that is not reflected directly in market prices. There is an externality, because the price tablets which are sold by Amazon and Google,  do not bear the true cost of producing them or having a reasonable profit margin. The profit margin allows producers to spend funds on Research and Product development so that  they can provide consumers with well designed, well made devices able to improve and optimize the experience of consuming content or services through them. This causes an input inefficiency driving other competitors to push their profit margins lower,  to be able to sell at matching  low prices like Amazon and Google and force on them the dilemma between money, potential market share and quality.

They are basically trying to equate profit margin in the table market segment, with  sin.

Because Google and Amazon are the two biggest players in the market of tablets after Apple, it is possible that the externality will prevail throughout the industry and the price of tablets will be lower than it would be if the cost of production reflected the effluent cost. As a result, competitors who struggle to remain in the market, and which will affect the experience of users will produce too many low quality tablets. There will be output inefficiency.

Criticism

First, it is obvious that in the short term, lower prices for tablets are only beneficial to consumers. By setting the price around $200 for a pretty decent and well made tablet branded by Amazon or Google, consumers become able to access more content and to get a tablet much cheaper. The downturn is that people start to expect or demand products to be sold in such low range prices,  forcing producers to focus in providing cheap products over  quality ones.
Amazon and Google,  by applying predatory pricing practice might get an advantage in the short term,  but  at the same time are opening a Pandora’s box. Selling with no margin or at a  loss, as Amazon did with the first Kindle Fire , might be a good practice if you are a wealthy company but it can easily derail even the strongest plan if unexpected things happen, or markets start to ask for something more advanced or pricy than what producers are able to offer. Furthermore, a situation like that can easily turn against you when buyers expect to be able to buy more products without profit margin and cost. Amazon and Google might lean on content sales where they can still retain margins,  but consumers can as easily  leave them for someone who will come up  with an even more disruptive idea on how content can be sold or distributed. (similar to when Apple almost pushed  out of the content industry,  the mobile providers with the app store).

From the consumers ’ point, there is an important question to be answered: what is the right price for a tablet? Or what is a fair profit margin for producers to sell? In both cases the answer is conceptually Straightforward: the right price or the right profit margin will drive tablets’ price where all negative externalities, like R&D costs, design, market development,  are fully reflected on the tablet’s price. This point is not pegged where Apple sells its own tablets but for sure it is not the point Google and Amazon priced theirs. Finally, in the  long term, producers even the strongest ones,  will face  major  difficulties to keep the pace of innovation and technology development,  when they will struggle to find the necessary money to fund research and development.

from product oriented to customer oriented... but where the magic is?

Companies like Apple, claim that customers know nothing about the kind of products they need, therefore, their mission is to decode this unexpressed customer need,   create and  deliver a product which  customers  don't know how to ask for or even describe.  Companies like  Apple, even though  they don't admit it, run large scale market research campaigns in order to identify trends and  what people are familiar with.  They then  use this data in order to create a product which is  addressing tomorrow's needs, a product which in essence will be  able to create a market.   At least this is how it has been  up to now.

At the same time, companies such as  Google or Samsung  try to collect as much data as possible, in order to identify what users want, how they want it and when they want it.  One can say that this is like making an airplane, Boeing and  Airbus spend years with end customers in order to find out and set up the final design of a new aircraft. As a result, the create amazing products, able to serve today's needs. 

But there is a third player which takes advantage of both approaches  and this is Amazon. Amazon manages to gather a huge load of data which it then processes.   Based on this data and combining it with  its innovative skills and culture,  as a corporation, it succeeds in developing a product which  customers  didn't expect to have, but needed it for sure. 

For example Amazons'  latest  move,  to give free internet access with the product,  is something so welcomed but also so unexpected. And there is where the magic begins.  When a corporation has the ability not only to start a conversation with customers, not only to listen to what they need but also to be one step ahead of them, carefully preparing the whole customer's ecosystem for products its' going to launch.

Brands and the Gamification thing...

Gamification is the new black!

 

Gamification is about challenge, achievement, success, pleasure, but most importantly it’s about engagement. it is about connecting a brand with people through the thing moves the world; competition!

 

According to the ’2011 Gartner Research Report’, it is estimated that by 2015 more than 50% of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes. Wanda Meloni at M2 Research, calculates that gamification industry revenue amounted to about $100 million in 2011, but she expects it to balloon to $1.6 billion in 2015.  

 

At the most fundamental level, gamification is the use of game mechanics to drive game-like engagement and actions....in everyday life, we are often presented with activities we hate, whether it is boring chores or stressful works.

Gamification is the process of introducing game mechanics into these abhorred activities to make them more game-like (i.e. fun, rewarding, desirable, etc.), so that people would want to proactively take part in these tasks."

For the last 40 years, consumer expectations have been fundamentally altered by exposure to games. Specifically, this means that our beliefs are about; meaning and value of fun, frequency and context of rewards, and omnipresence of sociability. The simple shorthand is; feedback, friends and fun.

 

The consumer has changed, and smart businesses must adapt to survive and thrive. The use of gamification to drive social change is a big movement in culture. It’s worth remembering that in early 2010 there were no hits on the term, gamification, on Google; today there are millions.

 

Gamification is a new discipline with deep roots and extraordinary potential…

Today’s youth mandates a more engaging experience.

Gamification makes things more engaging so people will pay more attention and stay focused for a longer period of time. Seth Priebatsch agrees. “It feels like the next natural evolution of human-technological interaction… as we complete the social layer; we’ll begin construction, in earnest, on the game layer”. The five most commonly used game-mechanics are;points, badges, levels, leaderboards, challenges.  

 

According to Zickerman, “It’s easier than you think to bring the power of games to your business by adding game-mechanics to your marketing mix with these steps”:

●        Ask: What consumer behavior are you trying to drive?

●        Assign points to those behaviors.

●        Create a leaderboard to display points.

●        Develop challenges and message them.

●        Make ‘fun’ your goal!

For anyone unfamiliar with gamification, it’s the application of game-like elements, such as; challenges, points, badges and levels to business and other non-game websites.

 

An estimated 70% of the top 2,000 public companies in the world will have at least one gamified application by 2014, predicts Gartner.

 

Patrick Salyer believes there are two keys to success with gamification:

One is making sure that all gamified elements are inherently social.

That is, don’t restrict engagement to the internal site community. 

 Award points for activities that reach users’ social [networks] to bring in referral traffic.

The other is to focus on rewarding activities that create value for your businesses.

 

Companies should weigh a number of factors before deciding whether to get into the gamification game.  

Dustin DiTommaso, suggests that companies think seriously about why they’re interested in gamification and how it could help them meet their business goals.

 

Before gamifying, he says, a business should be able to answer these questions:

 ●        What is the reason for gamifying your product or service?

 ●        How does it benefit users? Will they enjoy it?

 ●        What are your business goals?

 ●        How do you get users to fulfill those business goals?

 ●        What actions do you want users to take?

Gamification, it’s really not about gaming; it’s about good old behavioral economics using game-mechanics.

 

According to John Bell; the world of ‘gamification’ is certainly buzzy if not frothy.

Many marketers are talking about it and startups are employing it, as if it were the magic sauce that could overcome anything even a bad business plan. We can easily identify these techniques throughout the history of business and marketing as tools for getting users engaged.

 

There is wisdom underneath it all and gamification, as a sometime appropriate feature to stimulate behavior change, is here to stay.  

 

This surge of game-mechanics is all over the Web and is being applied to many things including; brand advocacy, environmental, health behavior, fundraising…

 

But, how did you sell the company management on the idea of games in a very non-gaming business?

 

According to Le-Te;  “This is not about games… it’s about strategy and tools for engaging customers and reaching business goals”.

The benefit to successful gamification is that you see an uptick in:

●        Repeat visitors/

●        Unique visitors

●        membership acquisition

●        Page views per visitor

●        Time spent on site

●        Time spent per user

●        Depth of visit (which is different than just page views as this implicates an exploration further into the site’s architecture)

●        Social sharing (Likes, +1, etc.)

 

5 brands using gamification well

In the article below there are 5 amazing gamification projects listed.

http://www.simplyzesty.com/advertising-and-marketing/brands/5-brands-using-gamification-well/ 

and of course 4 successful facebook gaming contests

http://mashable.com/2011/09/11/successful-facebook-contests/ 

Therefore A brand can increase efficiency in the three areas below.

 ●        Innovation: website modernization can increase brand awareness, loyalty and customer engagement. Much more than your traditional loyalty program Microsoft, Google, Playboy, Ford and others have realized these benefits by adopting game dynamics.

 ●        Monetization: DevHub increased engagement rate of 300% and increased revenue for virtual goods grew to 30% of overall revenue within 3 months.

 ●        Productivity: Microsoft gamified software development testing to drive significant improvements and user participation. Microsoft’s Beta1 Game from the Vista release increased beta testers by 400% and their Language Quality Game for Windows 7 had users provide feedback and commentary on 500,000 screenshots.

 

The primary goal will be not only to increase customer base but also to interact more with existent email receivers, engage them more with places we share and last but not least to increase the value of each email receiver as participant in something which combines social, mobile and location.

 

Last but not least it can be the marketing and engagement tool in brands and agencies hands aiming to achieve having more loyal customers and returning audience

( http://blog.graphicmail.com/post/2011/10/09/Gamification-strategies-for-email-marketing.aspx).

 

marketing like jazz

mktnglikejazz-111211025811-phpapp01.pdf Download this file

I found this presentation made by Peter Economides. 

Peter might be the number one in the world about branding and 21st marketing. I love this presentation because I love so much jazz music and this presentation gave me to understand and feel things about marketing through music's filter and jazz's lens.

A must have presentation

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... audiences who can't or don't want to listen to what you have to say

people around us speak loud, read, share (  since Friday May 17th, a share costs 38 US dollars, if we are talking for Facebook shares...), create and are more or less active on what we call "online world".

Compared to the past couple of decades, people now have so much acess to information, news, data and case studies that if one were to describe back then an ecosystem like what we currently have, it would be treated as pure  science fiction. We are literally ,  holders and creators, listeners and participants, users and opinion makers  all at the same time. 

This drives us to start feeling, or believing that we have an opinion which  might be better than other peoples'. And because human beings love to be with winners, as we observe our opinion become part of something bigger, perhaps a small element of a  trend, we start believing that not only do we have an opinion but that this opinion is of key importance to the ecosystem.

This drives us, to become more and more fanatical regarding products we use (i.e. apple owners believe that they are  of superior callibre ), more dedicated to our habits and of course even more commited to what we can refer to as  "a hard to change habit".

 

Of course this is not bad!  Brands love people dedicated to them, firms do everything  possible to create or buy audiences who have no ears for anything else except what they address to them, and we love to be recognised as people who belong to a winning group.

Therefore it becomes a major challenge for firms or brands outside  people's comfort zone to penetrate  that field. and the ensuing question is, how can a brand  gain fanatical audiences' attention?

Like all challenging tasks, something like that  requires time, dedication, a good plan, a well executed plan and of course flexibility. An easy to adopt and adjust strategy to what people say about your effort and how they react to your actions to gain their time.

An easy  but  really short term method is to make a blast through an action which works much like  fireworks. The brand gets the attention it asks for, however it must be accompanied either by a ground activity in order to keep people's attention or more and more fireworkswill be required. This is an  acceptable practice but not a safe choice, because either the brand will quickly  fade from  people's attention, as repetition is the mother of boredom ,or the company depletes their  budget. After all, fireworks cost lots of money

So, we note that an  easy way to attract people's attention is like   fireworks!

A firework action which must be followed by an activity.

An activity with a roadmap to go, with a well designed action plan, specific steps to follow and of course really well described KPIs.

Actions and measured results will  on one hand, keep  the brand on a  safe path  and on the other ,the creative team will be able to react to any kind of audience's behaviours. It is really important for the team to understand, to  feel and  to LISTEN to what people have to say, what they share about this attempt , what they retained  and the most importantly how they feel.

People who are really dedicated to a firm, or  who are fanatical  with a brand,  will most of the time feel unsafe, or inconvinient if they try something new, something which they might resist against.  When a consumer tries a product which was not in their experience  map,   once he  dares  to do it, the consumer  expects  the brand to make him feel special, a front line runner, or  at best a member of a distinguished  team outside the mainstream. 

Having well documented KPIs set, works like a compass in muddy, shallow waters. 

KPIs give the brand all the necessary tools to adjust the campaign to what the addressed fanatic needs. The team responsible for the project should be able to hear and feel how audiences reacts to what the brand attempts.

A campaign, a product launch, an icon making process should be something really dynamic having stable and strong reference points and the ability to change on audience requests and needs. And here is where the magic happens. The audience no matter how fanatical, if the brand reacts and meets  their needs and requests it transforms them into a community.

And although it is  really easy to buy an audience  you can't buy a community. You have to build it.  Once the brand succeeds  to have its community built,  then it can start talking about its fanatic audience, an  amazingly responsive and dedicated audience  which can unfortunately be  easily  lost.   In order to retain the fanatical product following  you must  keep providing and feeding the audience's needs for safety, innovation and the most importantly  their need to feel unique and exceptional.

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I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

Leonardo da Vinci

customer care or operations?

 brands or firms which specialize in offering services to end users, proudly boast  that they run big "customer care" departments.

Unfortunately what they fail to grasp, is the huge difference that lies between the way  a firm/brand claims to "care" about the client and the way it actually handles  the client when an unfortunate situation arises.

To run customers' logistics, to provide the service and of course to be there when things go wrong,  seems and actually is -most of the time- the easiest thing in the world. But when things fail to  run according to  plan, then the difference between simply managing the situation as opposed to  caring about the customer and accomodating to his  semingly insignificant needs,  is what makes for  excellent customer service.

Customers in our era , want to be made to feel special, particularly since  they have the option to choose among many brands offering  similar service.  To get connected and  stay loyal to a brand becomes the real   issue . The way a brand treats the  people who have chosen to purchase their services when things go wrong is the deciding factor to brand loyalty.

For a brand, things should be centered around  "how can people  be made to feel trust and secure about my service" . To convey through concrete actions to clients that they are important and appreciated by the firm  as opposed to  being treated  as unimportant individuals  who gave  their  money in exchange for a completely unpersonalized service.

The more humanized and personalized the customer support  is, the more it will be   trusted by clients and the more clients  it will attract. 

Nowadays people have less time than before to do things properly.   Therefore what they need to feel is  that even though it is  easy for a company to cheat  them, the brand they trust will always appreciate and go the extra mile for  them.

50h

50h…
Frankfurt, Germany here; Lying on a couch in biz lounge at the airport after an almost 13h flight and had the most amazing 36 hours of my life in San Fran. Now I am waiting for the plane to Athens, Greece where a big for me “thing “ needs to close and reverse counting for something new is about to start.

Got invited to travel a few thousand miles to meet people working in Valley and talk with them about how and if and maybe when to do things together. The challenge started weeks ago with some phone calls, followed by a trip to London and - so far – (I hope this is just one stage in the beginning chapter) it is now within the long and really demanding spiritual and physical jump to San Fran.

As I watch the planes come and go, I try to bring clarity and syntax to my brain. All these feelings, talks, memories, and experiences I went through. It was cool to see the people leading front end teams; Even better to talk to you, like you are the most important person in the world. For a European , even though I have spent the best five years of my life in CA, to be with people in so senior positions and feel so good with them it’s not that customary.
50h later since the trip has started I feel for sure wiser and richer as person, as evangelist, as a media strategist. I don’t know if I am going to get the job or not, but for sure I know that I have learnt so many things these 50h that the long trip has lasted.

I have been taught two things: To be original, to be yourself. Try to find positive sides on each moment of your life. There are no mistakes, only good life’s lessons. Don’t try to explain too much but have for sure a good short explanation for everything. You will need it. The most important thing is to show that you have gained something out of each moment you have gone through. I so much enjoyed having a “normal” dinner with people full of dreams, passion and determination to make these dreams and plans come true, to be part of the changes, to ride the stream.
Something last but not least, you need a coach, a mentor to do things. Thanks to mine, I felt I was so many steps ahead on each case. Even when things started to be rough and tough I knew how to ride the talk, drive it to paths I was better and more confident. There are people out there, coaches and mentors who know something more, having the gift to share with you life’s and career’s experience. And mine was always a side walker to me.

Almost 20h ago waiting airplane to Europe I caught me asking myself why should I go back? If there is any place in the world capable to make you feel the rush to be creative, to give you orgasms for doing the things you love and want, then, that place of inspiration is CA. There is no right or wrong answer here but only a proper promise to myself. I will be back for sure…


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Getting cloudy.... set up what media production is

People love Sun... of course, when we are talking about weather, but at the same time, wired and people love having everything no matter the timing, then there is nothing better than clouds.
The last days and having a series of meetings about how media can face even better what is going on around, always talking about trends and technologies, needs and demands, media people start realizing that the meaning of term “media production” gets a new frame. For years there was the “legendary” flow. The content creator should follow and respect a flow; where to find things, how to use them, how to spread them, to edit them. In our days everything we need exists in a cloud, everything is easy to get it “on the fly” cut it, edit it, use it, spread it without waste of time. You feed different channels just with one click without thinking how or why or when or if you can do it, you are able to do it.
Media get “scary” that they can’t control the flow, the media production flow. But they can use the cloud. They can be even more creative, freer to do things, to provide content.
People are on the move, you don’t have to be extensive on what you write, share but you can be up to the point. Needs, our needs get more and more various, more different…
Everything drives media to be cloudy, they have the resources, the content, the raw or edited content to give media consumers what they need on the time they need it. Nobody needs a flow anymore. What we need is just the cloud.
Using cloud content pools, media providers and media consumers can only gain because everything gets and get created on demand, on media consumers’ requirements. The result; more targeted content, more revenues to come, the more channels providers use to spread it, especially the mobile ones, the more people follow them, attend them.

The Rebirth of News (May 14th 2009 From The Economist print edition)

I found this article really interesting and I would like to share it with you
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The internet is killing newspapers and giving birth to a new sort of news business


THE race is crowded, but San Francisco stands a fair chance of becoming the first major American city without a daily newspaper. The San Francisco Chronicle, founded in 1865, is trimming its already pared-down staff in an attempt to avoid closure. And if it does disappear? “People under 30 won’t even notice,” says Gavin Newsom, the city’s mayor.

Most industries are suffering at present, but few are doing as badly as the news business. Things are worst in America, where many papers used to enjoy comfortable local monopolies, but in Britain around 70 local papers have shut down since the beginning of 2008. Among the survivors, advertising is dwindling, editorial is thinning and journalists are being laid off.
The crisis is most advanced in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but it is happening all over the rich world: the impact of the internet, exacerbated by the advertising slump, is killing the daily newspaper.

Does that matter? Technological change has destroyed all sorts of once-popular products, from the handloom to the Walkman, and the world has mostly been better for it. But news is not just a product: the press is the fourth estate, a pillar of the polity. Journalists investigate and criticise governments, thus helping voters decide whether to keep them or sack them. Autocracies can function perfectly well without news, but democracies cannot. Will the death of the daily newspaper—the main source of information for most educated people for at least the past century, the scourge of corrupt politicians, the conscience of nations—damage democracy?

A newspaper is a package of content—politics, sport, share prices, weather and so forth—which exists to attract eyeballs to advertisements. Unfortunately for newspapers, the internet is better at delivering some of that than paper is. It is easier to search through job and property listings on the web, so classified advertising and its associated revenue is migrating onto the internet. Some content, too, works better on the internet—news and share prices can be more frequently updated, weather can be more geographically specific—so readers are migrating too. The package is thus being picked apart.
The newspaper’s decline is both cause and effect of the worrying finding by the Pew Centre that the number of Americans aged 18-24 who got any news at all the previous day has dropped from 34% to 25% over the past ten years. But that figure may be less troubling than it looks. Because newspapers pack together all sorts of different content, many of those who claimed in the past to have seen some news probably did so for a few seconds before turning the page to the sports scores. Acquaintance as shallow as that with the news is probably no great loss to society; Pew surveys of general knowledge suggest that young people are about as well (or badly) informed as they used to be.

And the newspaper companies’ tribulations do not necessarily presage the demise of the news business, for they stem in part from the tumultuous and expensive transition from paper to electronic distribution. News organisations are currently bearing two sets of costs—those of printing and distributing their product for the old world, and providing digital versions for the new—even though they have yet to find a business model that works online.
Up to now, most have been offering their content free online, but that is unsustainable, because there isn’t enough advertising revenue online to pay for it. So either the amount of news produced must shrink, or readers must pay more. Some publications, such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, which has more than 1m online subscribers and has just promised to develop a new system of micropayments for articles, already charge for content. Others will follow: Rupert Murdoch, the Journal’s owner, has said he expects his other titles to start charging too. With news available free on Google and Yahoo!, readers may, of course, not be prepared to pay even for deeper or more specialized stuff; but since they do in the paper world, where free-sheets and paid-for publications coexist, there seems no reason why they wouldn’t online.

Better mobile devices may encourage them to do so. Apple’s iPhone is the first reader-friendly mobile phone, and the latest update to its software, due shortly, will enable news providers that currently give away content on the iPhone to start charging for it. Amazon has just unveiled a new, larger version of the Kindle, its e-book reader, better suited to displaying newspapers. Similar devices are available from other firms, with many more on the way. Better technology coupled with new payment systems will not solve the acute problems faced by newspapers today, but should eventually provide new models to enable news to flourish in the digital age.
And already, there are signs that it will (see article). New sources of news are proliferating online. Many, it is true, are unreliable. Most are badly funded. Some are the rantings of deranged extremists. But some—like Muckety, an American site which enriches news stories with interactive maps of the protagonists’ networks of influence, and NightJack, the revealing and depressing blog of an anonymous British policeman, which won the Orwell prize last month—enhance society’s understanding of itself, and could not have existed in the old world.

But the only certainty about the future of news is that it will be different from the past. It will no longer be dominated by a few big titles whose front pages determine the story of the day. Public opinion will, rather, be shaped by thousands of different voices, with as many different focuses and points of view. As a result, people will have less in common to chat about around the water-cooler. Those who are not interested in political or economic news will be less likely to come across it; but those who are will be better equipped to hold their rulers to account. Which is, after all, what society needs news for.

The Volvo Ocean Race - The Big Picture - Boston.com

The Volvo Ocean Race - The Big Picture - Boston.com

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Mini Cooper S

love that car...

Organization 2.0 ....

Today was a big day for me; the day I had my first session as LSE tutor.
It was the first out of 13 sessions about "How Social Media Can drive modern Business Development". The audience was 36 people, young, ambitious, hungry, aggressive young people ready to take from, to kill me with their questions and of course to act and interact with me.
To get and gain knowledge is a really alive game, role game for me; to drive a class is such a huge challenge, like driving a air carrier through a coral zone; no damages are allowed, no misleads, no mistakes.
The route is demanding, the crew is the best but only in best confident hands.
The first lesson was about Social Media and our senses, about the anatomy of an Organization in our 2.0 times.

A modern organization nowadays can be easily compared to a body where:


Skeleton

In order for an organization to function, it needs a skeleton consisting of automated real-time processes. Operative technologies are designed to run certain tasks or parts of business processes to remove friction from organizational functions. The results can be seen in systems like shared calendars, ERPs, bug repositories, CRMs and other operative systems designed for managing certain business processes.

Senses

Nowadays an organization needs to work outside-in rather than inside-out to align the business with markets. You need a way to sense what’s going on outside of your immediate vicinity. As an organization your ability to turn information and weak signals into actionable knowledge is directly proportional to the ability of your employees to make sense what’s going on.
Various tools provide a place for reflection in and on action. You need some kind of tools to draw ideas into your organization from the fringes.
Tools like blogs, microblogs, presence tools, social bookmarking etc. provide new ways to create meaningful stories that are relevant to your organization.

Nervous system

Now that you have something to sense about, you also need to get the signals flowing inside your organization. You need digital tools that connect various resources, services and information together and enable personalization on individual basis. RSS feeds, various search functions and interfaces like APIs provide means for turning on the nervous system of your organization. Each department, individual, project etc. needs to have some access point for others to tap into.

Brain

Now that you have a fully functioning network signaling ideas from the trenches, you need a way to sort out the meaningful stuff, remix various resources and crystallize new ideas. Tools like wikis, tagging, data mining, qualitative analysis etc. provide a rich collective breeding ground for a fully working organizational brain.
It should be based on an associative network structure, rather than a hierarchical tree structure. Just like the human brain, your organization has information that is evolving all the time. Ideas are connecting and blending with new information, the network structure gets denser in certain parts over time and weakens in others.
Your organizational memory is the primary place for synthesizing reflections.

Blood system

A fully working body is useless without a life force.
That’s why you need to get the blood flowing and making sure that your organization is not getting any heart attacks or blood clots. This is obviously based on human interaction and making sure that the conversation is flowing all the time in various different ways. You can optimize the interaction flow by utilizing social networking tools and real-time communications.
This includes semi-syn chronic (e.g. chat) and syn chronic communication tools (e.g. instant messaging and virtual conferencing).
You can use social network analysis tools to discover and fix architectural problems in your human network.

Muscles

One thing that was left out is muscles. Muscles in an organization is money. Small companies may have small muscles and be very agile and fast moving.
Large enterprises have huge muscles but are slow and cumbersome. Another analogy that works here could be fuel for the body, like food or water.

getting wired is freedom!

It’s impressive to observe how things change the last few weeks.
It’s completely interesting to know that everything goes fast; everything goes transparent because there is someone pushes to that direction, everything changes because it can.

What we live is, what means interaction on internet, what means social media, what means spreading information changes and takes a road which is out of classic rules. People and organizations had the control over news lose it now; politicians don’t know anymore what to do and how to do it about controlling things, new information channels get public, people share knowledge, images, video and everything goes faster, easier, safer, freer.

People have to get wired if they want to be free; to do things without reporting to someone had the control.
Freedom is to get everything, to choose what you like to know, to follow people who have something to say, it means something and is important to you, to be followed by people you are interested in.
The most amazing in the whole story is that we have the right to choose anymore; to choose how to be expressed and how to express ourselves. We don’t need approvals; we don’t need someone’s kick to do something, to step forward.

It’s great that everyone has a brand, we are no longer anybody, not a mess but we have a brand to work on it, to promote it. People judge us for what we have to say, what we can share, the most important is to share, not to keep things under protection.
Closed areas, teams, places, ideas, locked ideas, locked packages just die, shared things, creatively shared things get alive, get stronger. Things which get wired get global.
My opinion, your opinion isn’t any longer just an ocean’s drop but something valuable, something which pushes things forward.

Our days get creative because they push us to be creative, productive. What we can what we are able to share, willing to share, want to give, spread out there, doesn’t have to be perfect, doesn’t have to be artistic.
Sharing and spreading is the perfection. People who share things gain respect, people who give without threatening with punishments or rapping for using something, gain respect, step forward.

The most important is to give, to make things get wired, to travel fast, everywhere, without restrictions but with creativity.
It’s in our hands how to manage our personal brand, how to build the brand make us known out there.

/ga

what 26,000 photos can do... an amazing film....

This pixilation (stop-motion animation using real people) was made in 2006 for Screen South as part of the UK Film Council's Digital Shorts scheme. As much as possible, it was made 'in camera' without digital superimposure, using thousands of printed materials.
/g



Ten Thousand Pictures of You from Robin King on Vimeo.

apple notebook without keyboard

I am simply impressed by that! what is to come? can't wait to find out
/g


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

happy 2009...

a new year has arrived...
may the best be in front of us!!!
may we be smarter, brighter, having more interesting things to say, to share!
/ga

Xmas mood...

Xmas...


/ga

Social Media in my Life....

Living with New Media and being part of Social Media I can only say that I am so impressed by the way that influences my life; our lives. As I have read somewhere we are in times where internet is like TV in our day and twitter and other Social Media are the internet. What a change, there is internet where we can find everything and of course watch things and there are social media and new media make us feel again wired, connected and plugged to very raw sources of information.

/ga

living with social Media...

The last days I get and I read more and more articles about how Social Media get in our lives, agencies want to know more about them, people get more and more fascinated to know, to read, to understand what Social Media are. Everyone wants to find out how to make things work for him, how to make money, how to turn streams to right direction.

At the same time most of brands try to get on Social Media train, to find out why they do need them, why they have to use them, what they are going to get, to gain. Brands come face to face with tools like Twitter, meanings like microblogging; they hear success stories and they try to jump on right ship just on the right moment!

As Rohit Bhargava writes on his article about "5 stages of Twitter Acceptance" brands go through a 5 stages to accept that Twitter is here to use it, to accept it, to find out how they can make it work in right direction.

Yet many of the people who declare themselves "converted" and have opened Twitter accounts aren't getting the best benefit. Until recently, I was one of them. I started thinking about this after getting some feedback to my recent blog survey that people were not finding my Twitter feed (@rohitbhargava) very useful or interesting. Until that point, I had been using it as a place to write all the things that I didn't consider important enough to blog about. I hadn't yet accepted it's true influence. So now I'm trying to revise the way that I use the tool. I retweet other's posts more often. I share links to things that I didn't write, but found interesting. I have been experimenting with playful posts like a "word of the day" feature. All this is to try and find a better rhythm so that I am approaching what I would call a Level 5 stage of acceptance with Twitter. Here's a graphic I created to describe how I see those stages:




So after the steps above New Media and Social Media seems to be more than necessary to everyone of us!

/ga