Any deck containing umpa lumpas is a winner in my book.
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
He did a great job with the visuals
brandingme
· 2 months ago
This is an incredible presentation. Thank you to David for making this, and to Fred for sharing.
-I like the idea that digital innovation can create its own eco-system. Perhaps Apple serves as a good example of doing this with the iPod for music and apps for the iPhone. And this is the direction I think Twitter is headed.
-The quadrant about free/paid, later/now, is great. I already pay for Netflix, and the value add is streaming. However, the selection is extremely limited. Thing is, I would certainly pay more than I do if almost everything on there was available to stream. This leads to another issue though...
-I think it is somewhat incorrect to continually portray the cost of distribution as next to nothing. Did it cost a ton of money for Ok Go to make a music video viewed over 40 million times? No. Is it really that much more costly for YouTube to serve that video one more time? No. But as sigmaalgebra noted in this thread, there are other variables at work: James Cameron's new film Avatar is rumored to have exceeded $300 million in costs. In other words, the idea that the cost of distribution is not a problem anymore doesn't work in all cases, since the *creation* of some of that same content is extremely expensive. Furthermore, even though I am all for net neutrality and desire to see and end-to-end digital world, there is the issue of the costs for updating an old infrastructure to even *handle* an entire nation watching video on demand over the internet (see Mark Cuban here: http://blogmaverick.com/2009/01/27/the-great-in... or John Malone here: http://d7.allthingsd.com/20090527/d7-interview-...). Can it be done? Sure, cable television made it work, and people paid for it. But the transition will be painful and I really don't feel like were in a place to plant a flag in the utopia of fraction-of-a-penny distribution (remember, one translation of utopia is literally "no place"). Even YouTube has hinted at the fact that analysts are wrong about guessing their costs to stream since it appears they created their own cost-effective way of streaming.
-The position that digital isn't a "thing" anymore...I find that rather presumptuous, to be perfectly blunt. At my work, my job is to help in the interactive strategies of an NYC advertising firm, and I still find myself in meetings where I have explain what a "search result" is and, in that same meeting, had only one person raise their hand when asked if they check any websites as soon as they get to the office (everyone else just read their paper…in print). Their lives were completely analogue. According to OECD, even the United States only has 21% broadband penetration. And PEW says 25% of adult Americans don't have cell phones (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/technology/23... even more, the adults I know (in the 40-50's age range) who held out but finally caved in to cell phones absolutely do not care about anything but being able to place a call. That's it. My point being, there is a whole lot of the world that is not "on" the internet. Or even mobile. And I say this because I know from personal experience I get so short-sighted working in the digital world. Now, the reason I get so worked up about this is the potential I see for marginalization. I get thrown off when I have to explain what an "impression" is to a client…I need to remember to not roll my eyes and take into consideration that there is a whole world outside of my screen (see slide 185). It is this attitude that worries me, because even in this slideshow there is an attitude of "keep your old world ideas off the internet." So as the world collides and gets smaller, how will the digital-haves treat the digital-have-nots? In our simple and seemingly harmless dialogues online, like this slideshow, we are already setting precedents; I am in no way crying racism, prejudice, etc. But I am saying that marginalization can still spring out of very subtle attitudes, and this frame of mind that the internet is a thing of the past and let's get to business with it because it's a part of everyone's daily life is a bit misguided. If that's *not* what's being communicated, I apologize, but would like clarification as to what *is* being communicated...
-Data, data, data. I loved the idea of data+meaning. Right now, website data, even from lower-tier solutions like Google Analytics, can completely change your bottom line for the good. I even read a story about a company creating metrics for in-store displays, bringing such measurement offline. Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google, says the next sexy job will be the statistician. We should be headed to a point where many, many things can be measured and quantified, which is exciting (because I love graphs, lol).
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
I've got some ideas for dealing with creation costs and will be announcing something on that front shortly. But it won't solve cameron's 300mm problem
brandingme
· 2 months ago
awesome; i can't wait to hear what you've got cooking.
ShanaC
· 2 months ago
Cameron is trying to avoid Blue screens and is using a scary amount of animation tech. I thought UP! was scary when it comes to the progression of digital animation. Most people didn't notice that the backgrounds moved in subtle color in UP! There are over 40 people alone on Up for both RenderMan and System Admin- that's before the animators. They were split into teams so they could animate the background. You can see the technological progression if you watch the original ToyStory and Up side by side.
Cameron looks like He is pushing every boundary of every chip, server, and program he can find- there will be way more than 40 people doing that sort of stuff, before the animators. He's probably going to be bringing in whatever the most current Rotoscoping technique is too- which is going to be expensive since you will be watching faces. And then rendering all this stuff, and fixing so it looks natural That's Hollywood for you.
brandingme
· 1 month ago
curiosity is killing me...when you say "dealing with creation costs," does this mean union square ventures will be joining spark capitial in investing in aviary??
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
No. But I think that was a smart move on their part
brandingme
· 1 month ago
To supplement what I wrote above (my belief that "digital isn't a 'thing' anymore" is a rather presumptuous attitude), I'd like to point out this infographic a friend sent me this morning: http://www.toby-ng.com/files/gimgs/37_100-print...
ShanaC
· 2 months ago
A) I need to sit down and read Clay Shirky.
B) This is an amazing presentation. It's on pulse about most elements of the future of the internet.
C) One of the annoying things I found, is that as soon as I found the McLuhan quote, I started to "read" the deck through the lens of McLuhan. The ideas he put forth, can be read with a slight negative tone. So can this deck.
One of the most important ideas put forth by McLuhan, which I don't think any of us fully understand, is that each form of media changes us, and extends our body more fully. In order to do this, something inside must be killed off a little. Something a little more sensory. That point about medium versus media and how they are now tied into each other, is the essential point of McLuhan. We're now living in a time were we've become that. And even if you love the bomb- it's still the bomb- it's the end of the old sense of what it means to be human and to tell a story as we know it.
If it's not a little frightening to have our senses and stories changed and reshaped, I'm not sure what is. I'm willing to face up to that fear- yet I recognize that it is frightening.
I've learned to love the bomb.
David Gillespie
· 2 months ago
Shana,
Thanks so much for your thoughts. The point on McLuhan is one I've been wrestling with for a while. I got a great comment from Rob Long on this. Rob works in Hollywood, and his perspective was that we're slowly coming full circle back to being around the campfire. Now maybe that is more semantics than reality, but I do think given the ubiquity of media, we're living in a very different world to the one McLuhan occupied. I'm not proposing moving beyond his thoughts for the sake of it (indeed I have a lot of his stuff still to work through), but I think it is an idea worth grappling with.
I'm going to be pondering your comment for the rest of the day... =]
ShanaC
· 2 months ago
Page 11 of Understanding Media (I think MIT Press) has this great quote about amputations. he's not an easy read, nor is he the most contemporary (That Title goes to lev manovich, who I have not read, though I hear good things.)
I'm having an extremely hard time coming up with "the essential booklist of media theory about the internet"
In some ways there are many parallels, in some ways, there are none. It's hugely difficult.
Oy.
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
You could write it shana. You read so much and love to write
ShanaC
· 2 months ago
I could read way more- I just notice what I read and what I see, when I try. Plus I failed at a bunch of things and had to get up and try again. Which sucked but it teaches you stuff about how to think. My parents thought this was very interesting when I was younger. They should have pushed more math on me, alas. They weren't sure what to do with me. I don't think they know yet.
You see the majority of what I think-the only way to get more, is to literally stick me in a startup, then to startup or do something, and then to retire (that's half a joke, I'm just not sure). There is definitely stuff that I am hiding *evil grin* Do you really want to read the book/work with the person/talk to a person who reads Snow Crash and wonders what the ordinary people and the everyday "seamless" institutions that appear in it?
I mean- I don't always and I am me. Sometimes, that book should not be written, because you alter the flow of what could happen. There are other ways of making that sort of revolution. Why do you think I think it so important to make a webpage of just flash advertisements that say absolutely nothing? Why do you think I think its equally important to one day join some sort of digitzl company, or even better, a start-up. And from there, build an institution of my own. The revolution is not just writing.
Your the 5th? person telling me that for some reason they see a revolutionary- write the book, build the thing, do it. It's scary. Huge pressure. I'm less frightened of this possibility because I came here by accident or fate, so I feel less alone. None of my friends that I grew up are doing anything remotely like this. I know only one or two from college: Warning to people out there- even learning about this world can be isolating. Be sure it makes you happy
In the end though: I'm much happier. I'm more myself. We'll see what happens now. Have to get this quarter done, and I'm behind on applying for a job at one of your portfolio companies due to school work. (They have an opening) Wouldn't have done that 6 months ago. Among other places.
We'll see what the non-book looks like after that.
fredwilson
· 1 month ago
You can write the book at any time. Joining a startup would be a great experience for you
ShanaC
· 1 month ago
I applied for the Zynga product manager new grad position. I sent them an abnormal cover letter that doesn't tell them that I'm wonderful. I'm just Shana. I sent them an idea for a game based off some behavior I observer elsewhere:
1)People like buying trophies when they complete a task 2) the Most sticky part of facebook is the photos 3) certain activities people want to do alone, certain activities 4) There is a mobile makret for games emerging, they need to have an entry point to it, but they don't need to be totally stuck to it in case it rapidly shifts. Photos, movies, and trophies are really good for that, since people will always have various ways of dealing with memories.
Therefore, let's play a crazy scavenger hunt game. I'd play that. In fact, I completed an item or two in the world's largest scavenger hunt. (The gematria of the phrase "Lucy in the sky with diamonds" and I dressed up as a Cowen). I might do it again this year. Let's see if they can top the list from the world's largest. And post pictures and movies. And be able to buy trophies in order to both unlock more items, be able to have larger teams, etc.
Trust me, there are enough people out there who will try. Especially if the list is kept relatively clean and fun, and there are some unattainable items, or nearly unattainable items.
Lawrence Wang
· 2 months ago
Wow, that's heavy. I haven't read McLuhan so the point you're making is new to me.
There's a line in a Wendell Berry poem, "Beware of screens". Maybe none of us fully understand McLuhan's point, but we all have some intuitive sense of it, don't we? After a long day of writing computer code, or even a few hours immersed in a movie, I always feel like I have to re-inhabit my own body and re-awaken the sense of place.
Historically, the world on the screen competes with the physical world, pulls your senses away from it, just like that slide in Gillespie's deck with all the attention arrows pointing toward the broadcaster at the center. But just as companies now have to take a smaller role as participants in a conversation, trends in mobile and "augmented reality" (I don't like that term) could teach the screen a new participatory role in the physical world.
Sure there will always be room for the immersive big-screen cinematic experience. But for the rest of the Internet, for the trading of stories on a more human scale, I'm looking forward to more integration with the real world. That "something more sensory" you mention needs to be better understood. I think it's undervalued.
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
The screen that's the hardest to avoid is the one I'm using right now. The mobile screen
awaldstein
· 2 months ago
Woke up thinking about the slide "The Market for something to believe in, is infinite."
Wanted to share the Wired Article, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business" which explains a little more of the concepts in the presentation and the term Freemium.
Thanks for sharing. It finally brings us back to both where we were and where we will be: it's media plain and simple but with multiple points of origin, delivery and exchange. Internet or otherwise. Media. Makes me think that the future will be without advertising or pr agencies, replaced with those that facilitate the brand value exchange within the "customersphere" Cheers, Ted.
joey horvitz
· 2 months ago
Great slide show! David has his thumb on the future - so much that slide 178 happened. Thanks for the post...
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
Yeah. How did he know? I didn't
David Gillespie
· 2 months ago
Call it a hunch that paid off. Believe me there are hundreds that never come to pass!
Mark Essel
· 1 month ago
I was sure a few months back twitter would get acquired for the social contextual advertising angle.
Wonder what the deal for the pipeline was?
andraz
· 2 months ago
Whoa, to the point!
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
I know
Alex Popescu
· 2 months ago
He, he... maybe 10 minutes to go through the slides, but surely a lot more to think about them!
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
Yup
samstewartnz
· 2 months ago
Hi Fred, Thanks for posting. David has done a great job on the presentation. The point that resonated with me was the now/paid quadrant. This reminded me of your Steaming Kills Piracy post and some of my recent experiences searching for content online. People are prepared to pay just remove the friction
Thanks Sam
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
yeah, i love that quadrant
i might reblog it on fredwilson.vc this morning
thanks for the reminder
Ken McArthur
· 2 months ago
David did a wonderful job on this. Must have studied Seth Godin on PowerPoint.
David Gillespie
· 2 months ago
It was actually largely down to Garr Reynold's brilliant book Presentation Zen. Well worth the price of admission, and an absolute must for anyone trying to convey information in this manner.
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
I'm getting it now. I try to do presos like that and mine suck compared to yours
David Gillespie
· 2 months ago
I won't say it's the best money you ever spent (given your line of work), but it is great. Garr also writes an excellent blog of the same name.
Mark Essel
· 1 month ago
It's possible David has the magic touch when it comes to putting words to images in a concise manner to convey a message. It's as much as an artform as it is a design skill. Short comments. Crapton of slides. Great work.
ShanaC
· 2 months ago
Where is there Seth Godin on PowerPoint??? I must find that...
Michael Nolan
· 2 months ago
Thanks for this - very timely. I was just asked by the organization I'm working with for a primer on Social Media. I tried to explain that they were missing the point. This does it better than anything else I've seen.
Fantastic.
sigmaalgebra
· 2 months ago
Big subject -- much of media, content, culture, lives, and the Internet!
The deck is talking about a kind of 'diffusion'. Hmm, could that be enhanced, maybe improved, automated? For both the social interactions, information sharing, ads, and brands?
Or, there's a lot out there, or we're drinking from a fire hose, and some 'personalized filters' might help!
The deck says that content is cheap, but making a movie tens of millions of people will enjoy is still expensive. So, not all content is cheap.
Yes, 'stories' have been important back at least to the ancient Greeks, but, sorry, old media people, information is really important, and stories are a poor form of it.
The deck omits a point: We already know what nearly all the world wants in the famous one word answer, "More". An issue is how to provide it. Or a couple with two children work at $10 an hour for 80 hours a week each and gross $80 K and spend it all. With a factor of 10 in productivity, they can have one stay home with the kids, the other cut back to 40 hours a week, gross $200 K, and spend it all. Another factor of 10, gross $2 M, nicer house and lifestyle, vacation home, private schools, savings. Etc. How to get such factors of 10? Automation based on Moore's law! How to make the machines smart enough? Hmm ...!
ShanaC
· 2 months ago
Actually- there are days where I want less. And more people.
As I said- McLuhan Makes the point of killing of the old human inside of us. The sensory.
One of the Undercurrents of the presentation and of Mcluhan is that you become the machine. The global village concept- well in real villages there is real conflict, and real money, and real stories. He's pulse on about how undeveloped this is as a medium, because we are undeveloped and uncomfortable as we transition into a society were most of what we are and what we do is that of the Automaton.
Remember that a generation or two ago: There were no computer spreadsheets. You learned to love the Bomb- but it changed you quite a bit- and you didn't even notice. This bomb is a bit bigger, because it connects you more to other people, while also potentially driving you away from them.
sigmaalgebra
· 2 months ago
I suspect that we are using 'automation' in very different ways and that that if we did use the word the same way then we would be in agreement.
I view 'automation' as machines, now including especially computers, doing work humans mostly don't want to do!
For the days when you want less automation and more of people, uh, I'd say you want more in automation so that you can forget about it and, then, have more in people!
Or, there is the old saying, "Machines should work. People should think" and we might change this to machines should work and people should enjoy life! We're not there yet!
Here's a possibly relevant example: Recently Fred mentioned 'blog stars", gave a list of a dozen or so, conjectured that there may be 1000 more, and suspected that there is no easy way to find the other 1000. Likely he accumulated the dozen or so slowly and inefficiently. So, we might want some 'automation' that could find the other 1000 quickly, efficiently.
Fred has his view of what constitutes a 'blog star', but you may have a quite different view, e.g., for some of your interests. Then, given a good list of 'blog stars' for one of your interests, you might create a blog or a Web site to convert people who like your list of blog stars into an on-line community with the shared interest. Now you have used automation to have more in people! Or the deck was big on principles and you have used automation as such a principle to get "More", more in people!
Or the deck mentioned a LOT of new media content. Hmm ...! Now, how to find stuff! Well, we'd want some 'automation'. Of course, we want the automation to serve us, not dominate us. There is a LOT of automation that serves us very well: Can think of all the computers from Akamai, DNS, firewalls, and more working for us just to view that deck and discuss it!
ShanaC
· 2 months ago
The act of doing, unmediated, no machines between us and what we do, is very satisfying. One of the best pieces I've read was the hunt of the wild boar in The Omnivore's Dilemma. He hunts- and it is a much less mediated way to each meat. It shows.
I don't want to always let a machine automate my search. It makes my life "easier" on one hand: on the other, because now the machine does it, it becomes integrated into me in a sense. I'm crippled by it, I can't live my life easily without the ability to have a machine do that search.
It's a different form of thinking we give up. We lose older forms of senses and thinking. Even Plato brings up up this argument, when he talks about how bad writing is in the Phaedrus.
The bomb changes us. You can't become Homer now, because Homeric poetry requires you to memorize a basic form via sound and modify by sound. We write. Same goes with the Internet.
There is a small part of me that's uncomfortable. I read Jessica's piece, and I was brought up in a place that still maintains a lot of older value systems. You don't realize it until it is gone- automating everything is weird, because it gets rid of some of pleasure of sensing through old methods. There are certain values., certain methods, certain ways of acting that are different without those automations because they haven't changed your essential humanity. I'm sad to see it go, and I wish I could find ways to morph the two together- instead of crystallizing them as something ancient.
When the bomb goes off- you are the machine.
sigmaalgebra
· 2 months ago
You know what you want and don't want. Good. I hope to get you more of what you do want and less of what you don't want.
But, how to do that? If it was easy, then it would have been done already! So, bear with me! Or, as we have heard before:
"If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you." Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans.
Here are some approaches I am not proposing: (1) Just go back to 1900, 1800, etc. (2) Just disconnect from the Internet and go back to, say, 1990. (3) Just throw away personal computers and go back to, say, 1980. (4) Spend more time on computers and move to having our hands rarely far from a keyboard and wearing special video glasses 24 x 7. (5) Just have a fairy godmother provide glass slippers and a prince in a palace.
On (5), don't get me wrong: I'm not against it; I just have some questions about 'feasibility', that is, I don't yet know how to do all of it! And I'm not against Disney's Cinderella! She was a DREAM, a GREAT reason to write another 1000 lines of code, get rich, built the palace, see what Corning could do about some glass slippers, take a Gulfstream to 'La Traviata' at La Scala! For the fairy godmother part, maybe after the 'singularity' -- after my current project, maybe I'll work on that!
One of the things you don't want is more computer usage. Okay. Order received loud and clear.
Here's what I do propose: Better computer based tools that, net, get you "more" of what you do want and less of what you don't. Yes, the fairy godmother solution would be still better.
For example, you want more in people. Okay, coming right up:
As in the deck, there are lots of circles and lines among them. Heavily the circles are people or their communications or interests. So, to connect with the people, you could chase through the lines yourself, maybe one line at a time, via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, Technorati, Google, e-mail, notifications from Disqus, etc. Here you are chasing through the lines of over 1 billion people, over 100 million blogs, many tens of millions of Web sites, etc. manually and, really, quite inefficiently. So, are drinking from a fire hose a lot of stuff that doesn't taste very good. That's some low grade, inefficient automation dominating your life, something you don't like. Sure, could just give up the computer and move to, say, Italy and meet people once a week at the local open air farmer's market. But, with a better tool, let it do all that line chasing, get what you want better and sooner, say, identify a group that would like to go together to Italy and its open air farmer's markets, have more in time and resources to do that, and, net, turn off the computer and go!
Do you feel less capable because a computer chased those lines faster than a human could? You shouldn't: It's just using a tool, and humans have been good tool users and builders for tens of thousands of years. Uh, for that hunting, with a gun or a bow and arrow, those are also tools, and it took a while for humans to develop those! Otherwise maybe just chase after the animal for a few days until wear it out!
The deck praised principles. Here's one: Automate only what you don't want to do and have that automation give you more in time and resources to do what YOU do want to do. There should be a large net gain for you. Again, for the fairy godmother approach, I have a lot of work to do on that yet!
The desirable automation is not intrusive, doesn't dominate us, but liberates us and gives us more of what we do want.
ShanaC
· 2 months ago
No- I want to have computers in my life. They have hugely shaped me, and parts of my identity, in ways that are unfathomable to even me. That story isn't done.
That doesn't mean I don't understand that I'm lacking the ability to see, if I look closely, that there aren't some uncomfortable negative effects.
It's extremely hard to explain online. The best example I ever saw was this comic book:
There is a discussion in it about an Orthodox Jewish conception of the Sabbath, and how the main character therefore go troll hunting, or discuss it, and why she chooses not to (She says 10?). If it weren't for computes, I would not have the comic book, On the other hand there are much less people who are willing to do what the comic book character does- because it requires absence from labor -that includes computers. It's difficult to take a break to force yourself to be involved on that high a scale with a much older style of cultural connections by breaking off in time for a moment from the newer methods.
Thanks for provocative thoughts and visual strategies. (Haven't seen a "deck dialogue" before, like when you included/commented on some of the "convergence"slides.)
Will chew on your notion "the market for something to believe in is infinite".
Vladimir Vukicevic
· 2 months ago
Nice presentation - it summarizes what most don't know that they know.
reecepacheco
· 2 months ago
Great slideshow. I love the reminders of how young the internet is, and how fast it's grown relative to every other medium. It's such an important factor to remember, especially if you have any sort of eye on the future of business on the web.
Jeremy Campbell
· 2 months ago
Fremium combines these two things; build an audience with Free, use it to develop a premium product for Paid. I really enjoy that concept, but wonder why the big social networks don't use that strategy.
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
They do
Buying ads on facebook is the way businesses pay
Jeremy Campbell
· 2 months ago
I'm surprised they don't charge large brands for Facebook pages, or offer premium paid features for the users. I guess the Facebook's and Twitter's still need to find their own unique "AdSense and AdWords" type of breakthrough.
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
Facebook's self serve ad platform is doing really well. It is integrated into fan pages (not sure that's the right name)
Twitter will head down this path at some point I imagine
brandingme
· 2 months ago
but it would seem there's a potentially bigger upside for *not* offering paid services to large brands; meaning, if you offer the same capabilities to everyone for free, then veritably anyone can play. that means the larger companies can spend thousands of dollars on ads and/or page promotion, while at the same time letting the small garage band in albuquerque, new mexico, spend a couple hundred dollars on advertising their upcoming show. and it looks like this helped facebook become cash flow positive quicker than expected.
one advantage facebook offers larger brands/clients is full-on banner advertising, rather than just little text ads on the side. by working through microsoft, if you buy enough impressions you can place skyscrapers on the right hand side (which i am very jealous of...).
markslater
· 2 months ago
here is my take on this (and god knows its easier for me to sit here and be negative in a commenting tool than it was for David to create this - so hats of for the presentation)
i just dont get this.
Over 2 years ago (roughly) a seminal paper and series of positioning blogs were put out by a certain umair Haque on his bubblegeneration blog (the same Umair that it takes 230 pages to mention) both setting out the governing tennets of this preso
- the macrolapyse of existing media business and - the juxstaposition of both attention as an increasingly scarce commodity and branding as a tool for the future.
and then analytically predicted what we are now seeing as happening. To readers like myself of this back then - it was ground breaking to say the least - if i recall - Fred was a huge fan, and probably allowed this positioning to form or authenticate his investment thesis - and acted on it - look at the portfolio - its chock full of stuff that is precisely in the same flow of the river that Umair paddled in - and way beyond this presentation. (not being a fanboy here - just impressed that he took advantage of this macrolapyse)
So why is it that we are now getting the precise thoughts re-gurgitated and pined upon? With all due respect to david and a great presentation - those who think this is groundbreaking stuff should really do themselves a favor and go and read what i believe to be the architect of this area of structured thinking.
its nothing to do with status - and i totally agree with David on this one - its everything to do with action or intent.
Fred - you got mentioned ahead of Umair! love it.
fredwilson
· 2 months ago
The reason I like david's prsentation so mich is that he explains all of this stuff in a way that's much easier to grok
Umair was right but he's hard to understand at times
This presentation is simple
David Gillespie
· 2 months ago
Mark, thanks for taking the time to read and respond, I appreciate it. It should go without saying I really enjoy Umair and think he has a fascinating perspective on things. I also agree with Fred in that he goes over a lot of people's heads. The intent (...if you will...) was to share a lot of things I was thinking about in a way that made the ideas accessible to everyone, not just those of us who read what Umair has to say.
To put it another away, being heard is not enough. You must also be understood.
One other thing: I wouldn't put any stock in where people show up in the deck, unless everyone is to be considered second best to an upside down digital clock =]
markslater
· 2 months ago
well when you put it like that david i see your point - and you most certainly made it more 'understandable' and enjoyable. The one theme i did not see you touch on which i think about alot is the notion of atomization of data. Free the data and bring it down to microchunk (that could be a fred phrase) is a cornerstone concept in the flattening of these silos.
again thanks for the preso - apologies if i was a bit harsh but i did not know how this was being positioned.
anyway Umairs of down some tangent of 'awsomeness' recently - talk about cryptic.
Jim Spanfeller
· 2 months ago
Very interesting indeed...lots to think on and sift through...I do think there was a bit of left turn towards the middle and rather large leap of faith. The notion that big audiences will not aggregate around content (most likely professionally created content) strikes me as wrong...not sure this was a total precept of the argument but I drew this conclusion given the notion that "interruption marketing" was at an end. Or stated another way, the idea of aggregating big groups of eyeballs around self defining content pools and then sharing those eyeballs with marketers looking to create demand in a product or service has a long runway ahead of it still.
Not to suggest that many of the core ideas here do not carry water. They clearly do. And yes it strikes me that mainstream marketers approach to so called "social media" has been way wrong.
But at the end of the day, while Apple does get "it", they still most definately practice interruption marketing...and do a rather good job of it. And clearly it does indeed work for them. Of course, word of mouth and community support are a big part of their success too.
In any event, thanks Fred and thanks David. Some really interesting stuff here.
Mark Essel
· 2 months ago
Yeah Shana, write us a modern media transformative perception book. I'll certainly read it!
I'm tight on time to read all the other great stuff you and others reference, so at least it's one way I can at least taste some challenging ideas.
johnfurst
· 1 month ago
Was definitely worth my time. Thanks for pointing it out to.
All Comments
-I like the idea that digital innovation can create its own eco-system. Perhaps Apple serves as a good example of doing this with the iPod for music and apps for the iPhone. And this is the direction I think Twitter is headed.
-The quadrant about free/paid, later/now, is great. I already pay for Netflix, and the value add is streaming. However, the selection is extremely limited. Thing is, I would certainly pay more than I do if almost everything on there was available to stream. This leads to another issue though...
-I think it is somewhat incorrect to continually portray the cost of distribution as next to nothing. Did it cost a ton of money for Ok Go to make a music video viewed over 40 million times? No. Is it really that much more costly for YouTube to serve that video one more time? No. But as sigmaalgebra noted in this thread, there are other variables at work: James Cameron's new film Avatar is rumored to have exceeded $300 million in costs. In other words, the idea that the cost of distribution is not a problem anymore doesn't work in all cases, since the *creation* of some of that same content is extremely expensive. Furthermore, even though I am all for net neutrality and desire to see and end-to-end digital world, there is the issue of the costs for updating an old infrastructure to even *handle* an entire nation watching video on demand over the internet (see Mark Cuban here: http://blogmaverick.com/2009/01/27/the-great-in... or John Malone here: http://d7.allthingsd.com/20090527/d7-interview-...). Can it be done? Sure, cable television made it work, and people paid for it. But the transition will be painful and I really don't feel like were in a place to plant a flag in the utopia of fraction-of-a-penny distribution (remember, one translation of utopia is literally "no place"). Even YouTube has hinted at the fact that analysts are wrong about guessing their costs to stream since it appears they created their own cost-effective way of streaming.
-The position that digital isn't a "thing" anymore...I find that rather presumptuous, to be perfectly blunt. At my work, my job is to help in the interactive strategies of an NYC advertising firm, and I still find myself in meetings where I have explain what a "search result" is and, in that same meeting, had only one person raise their hand when asked if they check any websites as soon as they get to the office (everyone else just read their paper…in print). Their lives were completely analogue. According to OECD, even the United States only has 21% broadband penetration. And PEW says 25% of adult Americans don't have cell phones (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/technology/23... even more, the adults I know (in the 40-50's age range) who held out but finally caved in to cell phones absolutely do not care about anything but being able to place a call. That's it. My point being, there is a whole lot of the world that is not "on" the internet. Or even mobile. And I say this because I know from personal experience I get so short-sighted working in the digital world.
Now, the reason I get so worked up about this is the potential I see for marginalization. I get thrown off when I have to explain what an "impression" is to a client…I need to remember to not roll my eyes and take into consideration that there is a whole world outside of my screen (see slide 185). It is this attitude that worries me, because even in this slideshow there is an attitude of "keep your old world ideas off the internet." So as the world collides and gets smaller, how will the digital-haves treat the digital-have-nots? In our simple and seemingly harmless dialogues online, like this slideshow, we are already setting precedents; I am in no way crying racism, prejudice, etc. But I am saying that marginalization can still spring out of very subtle attitudes, and this frame of mind that the internet is a thing of the past and let's get to business with it because it's a part of everyone's daily life is a bit misguided. If that's *not* what's being communicated, I apologize, but would like clarification as to what *is* being communicated...
-Data, data, data. I loved the idea of data+meaning. Right now, website data, even from lower-tier solutions like Google Analytics, can completely change your bottom line for the good. I even read a story about a company creating metrics for in-store displays, bringing such measurement offline. Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google, says the next sexy job will be the statistician. We should be headed to a point where many, many things can be measured and quantified, which is exciting (because I love graphs, lol).
Cameron looks like He is pushing every boundary of every chip, server, and program he can find- there will be way more than 40 people doing that sort of stuff, before the animators. He's probably going to be bringing in whatever the most current Rotoscoping technique is too- which is going to be expensive since you will be watching faces. And then rendering all this stuff, and fixing so it looks natural That's Hollywood for you.
I need to sit down and read Clay Shirky.
B) This is an amazing presentation. It's on pulse about most elements of the future of the internet.
C) One of the annoying things I found, is that as soon as I found the McLuhan quote, I started to "read" the deck through the lens of McLuhan. The ideas he put forth, can be read with a slight negative tone. So can this deck.
One of the most important ideas put forth by McLuhan, which I don't think any of us fully understand, is that each form of media changes us, and extends our body more fully. In order to do this, something inside must be killed off a little. Something a little more sensory. That point about medium versus media and how they are now tied into each other, is the essential point of McLuhan. We're now living in a time were we've become that. And even if you love the bomb- it's still the bomb- it's the end of the old sense of what it means to be human and to tell a story as we know it.
If it's not a little frightening to have our senses and stories changed and reshaped, I'm not sure what is. I'm willing to face up to that fear- yet I recognize that it is frightening.
I've learned to love the bomb.
Thanks so much for your thoughts. The point on McLuhan is one I've been wrestling with for a while. I got a great comment from Rob Long on this. Rob works in Hollywood, and his perspective was that we're slowly coming full circle back to being around the campfire. Now maybe that is more semantics than reality, but I do think given the ubiquity of media, we're living in a very different world to the one McLuhan occupied. I'm not proposing moving beyond his thoughts for the sake of it (indeed I have a lot of his stuff still to work through), but I think it is an idea worth grappling with.
I'm going to be pondering your comment for the rest of the day... =]
I'm having an extremely hard time coming up with "the essential booklist of media theory about the internet"
In some ways there are many parallels, in some ways, there are none. It's hugely difficult.
Oy.
You see the majority of what I think-the only way to get more, is to literally stick me in a startup, then to startup or do something, and then to retire (that's half a joke, I'm just not sure). There is definitely stuff that I am hiding *evil grin* Do you really want to read the book/work with the person/talk to a person who reads Snow Crash and wonders what the ordinary people and the everyday "seamless" institutions that appear in it?
I mean- I don't always and I am me. Sometimes, that book should not be written, because you alter the flow of what could happen. There are other ways of making that sort of revolution. Why do you think I think it so important to make a webpage of just flash advertisements that say absolutely nothing? Why do you think I think its equally important to one day join some sort of digitzl company, or even better, a start-up. And from there, build an institution of my own. The revolution is not just writing.
Your the 5th? person telling me that for some reason they see a revolutionary- write the book, build the thing, do it. It's scary. Huge pressure. I'm less frightened of this possibility because I came here by accident or fate, so I feel less alone. None of my friends that I grew up are doing anything remotely like this. I know only one or two from college: Warning to people out there- even learning about this world can be isolating. Be sure it makes you happy
In the end though: I'm much happier. I'm more myself. We'll see what happens now. Have to get this quarter done, and I'm behind on applying for a job at one of your portfolio companies due to school work. (They have an opening) Wouldn't have done that 6 months ago. Among other places.
We'll see what the non-book looks like after that.
1)People like buying trophies when they complete a task
2) the Most sticky part of facebook is the photos
3) certain activities people want to do alone, certain activities
4) There is a mobile makret for games emerging, they need to have an entry point to it, but they don't need to be totally stuck to it in case it rapidly shifts. Photos, movies, and trophies are really good for that, since people will always have various ways of dealing with memories.
Therefore, let's play a crazy scavenger hunt game. I'd play that. In fact, I completed an item or two in the world's largest scavenger hunt. (The gematria of the phrase "Lucy in the sky with diamonds" and I dressed up as a Cowen). I might do it again this year. Let's see if they can top the list from the world's largest. And post pictures and movies. And be able to buy trophies in order to both unlock more items, be able to have larger teams, etc.
Trust me, there are enough people out there who will try. Especially if the list is kept relatively clean and fun, and there are some unattainable items, or nearly unattainable items.
There's a line in a Wendell Berry poem, "Beware of screens". Maybe none of us fully understand McLuhan's point, but we all have some intuitive sense of it, don't we? After a long day of writing computer code, or even a few hours immersed in a movie, I always feel like I have to re-inhabit my own body and re-awaken the sense of place.
Historically, the world on the screen competes with the physical world, pulls your senses away from it, just like that slide in Gillespie's deck with all the attention arrows pointing toward the broadcaster at the center. But just as companies now have to take a smaller role as participants in a conversation, trends in mobile and "augmented reality" (I don't like that term) could teach the screen a new participatory role in the physical world.
Sure there will always be room for the immersive big-screen cinematic experience. But for the rest of the Internet, for the trading of stories on a more human scale, I'm looking forward to more integration with the real world. That "something more sensory" you mention needs to be better understood. I think it's undervalued.
Found this really interesting.
Wanted to share the Wired Article, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business" which explains a little more of the concepts in the presentation and the term Freemium.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/...
Thanks for sharing. It finally brings us back to both where we were and where we will be: it's media plain and simple but with multiple points of origin, delivery and exchange. Internet or otherwise. Media. Makes me think that the future will be without advertising or pr agencies, replaced with those that facilitate the brand value exchange within the "customersphere" Cheers, Ted.
Wonder what the deal for the pipeline was?
Thanks for posting. David has done a great job on the presentation. The point that resonated with me was the now/paid quadrant. This reminded me of your Steaming Kills Piracy post and some of my recent experiences searching for content online. People are prepared to pay just remove the friction
Thanks
Sam
i might reblog it on fredwilson.vc this morning
thanks for the reminder
Short comments.
Crapton of slides.
Great work.
Fantastic.
The deck is talking about a kind of 'diffusion'. Hmm, could that be enhanced, maybe improved, automated? For both the social interactions, information sharing, ads, and brands?
Or, there's a lot out there, or we're drinking from a fire hose, and some 'personalized filters' might help!
The deck says that content is cheap, but making a movie tens of millions of people will enjoy is still expensive. So, not all content is cheap.
Yes, 'stories' have been important back at least to the ancient Greeks, but, sorry, old media people, information is really important, and stories are a poor form of it.
The deck omits a point: We already know what nearly all the world wants in the famous one word answer, "More". An issue is how to provide it. Or a couple with two children work at $10 an hour for 80 hours a week each and gross $80 K and spend it all. With a factor of 10 in productivity, they can have one stay home with the kids, the other cut back to 40 hours a week, gross $200 K, and spend it all. Another factor of 10, gross $2 M, nicer house and lifestyle, vacation home, private schools, savings. Etc. How to get such factors of 10? Automation based on Moore's law! How to make the machines smart enough? Hmm ...!
As I said- McLuhan Makes the point of killing of the old human inside of us. The sensory.
One of the Undercurrents of the presentation and of Mcluhan is that you become the machine. The global village concept- well in real villages there is real conflict, and real money, and real stories. He's pulse on about how undeveloped this is as a medium, because we are undeveloped and uncomfortable as we transition into a society were most of what we are and what we do is that of the Automaton.
Remember that a generation or two ago: There were no computer spreadsheets. You learned to love the Bomb- but it changed you quite a bit- and you didn't even notice. This bomb is a bit bigger, because it connects you more to other people, while also potentially driving you away from them.
I view 'automation' as machines, now including especially computers, doing work humans mostly don't want to do!
For the days when you want less automation and more of people, uh, I'd say you want more in automation so that you can forget about it and, then, have more in people!
Or, there is the old saying, "Machines should work. People should think" and we might change this to machines should work and people should enjoy life! We're not there yet!
Here's a possibly relevant example: Recently Fred mentioned 'blog stars", gave a list of a dozen or so, conjectured that there may be 1000 more, and suspected that there is no easy way to find the other 1000. Likely he accumulated the dozen or so slowly and inefficiently. So, we might want some 'automation' that could find the other 1000 quickly, efficiently.
Fred has his view of what constitutes a 'blog star', but you may have a quite different view, e.g., for some of your interests. Then, given a good list of 'blog stars' for one of your interests, you might create a blog or a Web site to convert people who like your list of blog stars into an on-line community with the shared interest. Now you have used automation to have more in people! Or the deck was big on principles and you have used automation as such a principle to get "More", more in people!
Or the deck mentioned a LOT of new media content. Hmm ...! Now, how to find stuff! Well, we'd want some 'automation'. Of course, we want the automation to serve us, not dominate us. There is a LOT of automation that serves us very well: Can think of all the computers from Akamai, DNS, firewalls, and more working for us just to view that deck and discuss it!
I don't want to always let a machine automate my search. It makes my life "easier" on one hand: on the other, because now the machine does it, it becomes integrated into me in a sense. I'm crippled by it, I can't live my life easily without the ability to have a machine do that search.
It's a different form of thinking we give up. We lose older forms of senses and thinking. Even Plato brings up up this argument, when he talks about how bad writing is in the Phaedrus.
The bomb changes us. You can't become Homer now, because Homeric poetry requires you to memorize a basic form via sound and modify by sound. We write. Same goes with the Internet.
There is a small part of me that's uncomfortable. I read Jessica's piece, and I was brought up in a place that still maintains a lot of older value systems. You don't realize it until it is gone- automating everything is weird, because it gets rid of some of pleasure of sensing through old methods. There are certain values., certain methods, certain ways of acting that are different without those automations because they haven't changed your essential humanity. I'm sad to see it go, and I wish I could find ways to morph the two together- instead of crystallizing them as something ancient.
When the bomb goes off- you are the machine.
But, how to do that? If it was easy, then it would have been done already! So, bear with me! Or, as we have heard before:
"If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better, and to please you." Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans.
Here are some approaches I am not proposing: (1) Just go back to 1900, 1800, etc. (2) Just disconnect from the Internet and go back to, say, 1990. (3) Just throw away personal computers and go back to, say, 1980. (4) Spend more time on computers and move to having our hands rarely far from a keyboard and wearing special video glasses 24 x 7. (5) Just have a fairy godmother provide glass slippers and a prince in a palace.
On (5), don't get me wrong: I'm not against it; I just have some questions about 'feasibility', that is, I don't yet know how to do all of it! And I'm not against Disney's Cinderella! She was a DREAM, a GREAT reason to write another 1000 lines of code, get rich, built the palace, see what Corning could do about some glass slippers, take a Gulfstream to 'La Traviata' at La Scala! For the fairy godmother part, maybe after the 'singularity' -- after my current project, maybe I'll work on that!
One of the things you don't want is more computer usage. Okay. Order received loud and clear.
Here's what I do propose: Better computer based tools that, net, get you "more" of what you do want and less of what you don't. Yes, the fairy godmother solution would be still better.
For example, you want more in people. Okay, coming right up:
As in the deck, there are lots of circles and lines among them. Heavily the circles are people or their communications or interests. So, to connect with the people, you could chase through the lines yourself, maybe one line at a time, via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, Technorati, Google, e-mail, notifications from Disqus, etc. Here you are chasing through the lines of over 1 billion people, over 100 million blogs, many tens of millions of Web sites, etc. manually and, really, quite inefficiently. So, are drinking from a fire hose a lot of stuff that doesn't taste very good. That's some low grade, inefficient automation dominating your life, something you don't like. Sure, could just give up the computer and move to, say, Italy and meet people once a week at the local open air farmer's market. But, with a better tool, let it do all that line chasing, get what you want better and sooner, say, identify a group that would like to go together to Italy and its open air farmer's markets, have more in time and resources to do that, and, net, turn off the computer and go!
Do you feel less capable because a computer chased those lines faster than a human could? You shouldn't: It's just using a tool, and humans have been good tool users and builders for tens of thousands of years. Uh, for that hunting, with a gun or a bow and arrow, those are also tools, and it took a while for humans to develop those! Otherwise maybe just chase after the animal for a few days until wear it out!
The deck praised principles. Here's one: Automate only what you don't want to do and have that automation give you more in time and resources to do what YOU do want to do. There should be a large net gain for you. Again, for the fairy godmother approach, I have a lot of work to do on that yet!
The desirable automation is not intrusive, doesn't dominate us, but liberates us and gives us more of what we do want.
That doesn't mean I don't understand that I'm lacking the ability to see, if I look closely, that there aren't some uncomfortable negative effects.
It's extremely hard to explain online. The best example I ever saw was this comic book:
http://www.hereville.com/category/comics/how-mi...
There is a discussion in it about an Orthodox Jewish conception of the Sabbath, and how the main character therefore go troll hunting, or discuss it, and why she chooses not to (She says 10?). If it weren't for computes, I would not have the comic book, On the other hand there are much less people who are willing to do what the comic book character does- because it requires absence from labor -that includes computers. It's difficult to take a break to force yourself to be involved on that high a scale with a much older style of cultural connections by breaking off in time for a moment from the newer methods.
Lots to ponder.
Will chew on your notion "the market for something to believe in is infinite".
Buying ads on facebook is the way businesses pay
Twitter will head down this path at some point I imagine
one advantage facebook offers larger brands/clients is full-on banner advertising, rather than just little text ads on the side. by working through microsoft, if you buy enough impressions you can place skyscrapers on the right hand side (which i am very jealous of...).
i just dont get this.
Over 2 years ago (roughly) a seminal paper and series of positioning blogs were put out by a certain umair Haque on his bubblegeneration blog (the same Umair that it takes 230 pages to mention) both setting out the governing tennets of this preso
- the macrolapyse of existing media business and
- the juxstaposition of both attention as an increasingly scarce commodity and branding as a tool for the future.
and then analytically predicted what we are now seeing as happening. To readers like myself of this back then - it was ground breaking to say the least - if i recall - Fred was a huge fan, and probably allowed this positioning to form or authenticate his investment thesis - and acted on it - look at the portfolio - its chock full of stuff that is precisely in the same flow of the river that Umair paddled in - and way beyond this presentation. (not being a fanboy here - just impressed that he took advantage of this macrolapyse)
So why is it that we are now getting the precise thoughts re-gurgitated and pined upon?
With all due respect to david and a great presentation - those who think this is groundbreaking stuff should really do themselves a favor and go and read what i believe to be the architect of this area of structured thinking.
go here and begin in 2004
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/
its nothing to do with status - and i totally agree with David on this one - its everything to do with action or intent.
Fred - you got mentioned ahead of Umair! love it.
Umair was right but he's hard to understand at times
This presentation is simple
To put it another away, being heard is not enough. You must also be understood.
One other thing: I wouldn't put any stock in where people show up in the deck, unless everyone is to be considered second best to an upside down digital clock =]
again thanks for the preso - apologies if i was a bit harsh but i did not know how this was being positioned.
anyway Umairs of down some tangent of 'awsomeness' recently - talk about cryptic.
Not to suggest that many of the core ideas here do not carry water. They clearly do. And yes it strikes me that mainstream marketers approach to so called "social media" has been way wrong.
But at the end of the day, while Apple does get "it", they still most definately practice interruption marketing...and do a rather good job of it. And clearly it does indeed work for them. Of course, word of mouth and community support are a big part of their success too.
In any event, thanks Fred and thanks David. Some really interesting stuff here.
I'm tight on time to read all the other great stuff you and others reference, so at least it's one way I can at least taste some challenging ideas.
Thanks for pointing it out to.