convergence

convergence / web2.0 — 1 Comment
24
Mar 10

Magical 3D Cloud Rendering Coming to a Cheap PC Near You Soon?

Otoy and Super Micro plus AMD are announcing what really seems like magic for 3D immersive online. If I got it right it means a cheap PC without a fancy graphics card will be able to stream 3D immersive content dramatically faster, better.

Mar 19, 2010According to the Otoy press release the service will improve user experience “through server-side rendering – which involves storing visually rich content in a compute cloud, compressing it, and streaming it in real-time” . This could increase capability on mobiles as well.  I can see how that might work for the visuals, but how will that impact concurrent physics activity? Is this a real uplift or another fancy/expensive way to burn up bandwidth?

And if Google’s big as a gig internet mega-speed service really can rollout what would that combination look like?

And what about the new 3D Televisions? Samsung has them and Dreamworks is already making blu-rays to play on them. Guess we will need to make and 2nd trailing camera for avatars soon to capture 3D online in real 3D.

So buckle-in for a lot of expensive equipment coming down the line and a lot of opportunities to make them do something cool enough.

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convergence / freemium / web2.0 — No Comments
26
Feb 10

CNN and Across the Websphere: Press Coverage on Heritage Key Virtual Areas

It is one of our great challenge to push virtual areas out to mainstream audiences around the world. One day virtual online will be the interface to the web–but now it needs to find a good way to add value to sites and other media (read more about dead mice and the liberation of the net here). With our new Ancient World in London series and launch of Virtual Stonehenge areas we are starting to feel a little warm from the press and blogsphere! Thanks!

Check links below or just go to our virtual, online, 3D immersive areas and make your own great discoveries now on our opensource-based, opensim grid!

Recent coverage on Heritage Key and our King Tut Virtual area on CNN iDesk –> click to watch it here . It is a nice explanation of the main idea and enthusiasm from presenters is excellent!

(there is an sorta annoying pre-roll add that you can’t skip and opens a new window if you touch it–future of monetization? Force feeding ads?)

Other recent press/blog coverage :

* BBC News: As an interactive community, Heritage Key also allows visitors to join lectures and meet with people from around the world to share and discuss their experiences.

* Easier.com: This immersive adventure is complimented with a media-rich website. So, whether you want to step back in time and see Stonehenge, watch YouTube videos on your iPhone

* Tech Radar: a mainstream application of a once niche feature that reminds us why we all thought it was such a good idea.

* Iggys Blog: Improved Avatars and Navigation

* Virtual Learning Blog: I’ll definitely be back to King Tut Virtual! I have a classroom of 2nd graders who study ancient Egypt every year. This…will be a lasting resource for the future!

* Vorticism blog: I was therefore thrilled yesterday to discover Heritage Key

* PocketLint — Sorry no Spinal Tap at Virtual Stonehenge (but that is a good idea!)

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convergence / virtual online / web2.0 — No Comments
8
Jan 10

Content Co-Creation First Program is Ancient World in London

We are pleased to advise that we have our first content co-creation and web event series signed-up and underway = Ancient World in London. It is a time-based, online/virtual/mobile/live series that will inspire people to make their own discoveries of the history that makes London one of the world’s great cities. More info here and the micro-site is here.  We think this first program will be the shape of things to come more and more for making online communities relevant and engaging. (more about the benefits for co-creation here). We think this is one way to deal with free content to users and also help getting brands above the noise on the web. In addition to monetization it will also help us generate new traffic.

cleopatra's needle 08

Our web-oriented event and content series -- the Ancient World in London -- will run for 3 months. It is an example of how online communities to use a broad mix of media and tools to create new, popular content.

The Community Challenge

I don’t expect that just because we will make more web content and tools that those efforts alone will generate meaningful community effect. We will need to meet people live and mix events and contests into the action the online content. Part of our mission with Heritage Key is to make history/archeology more accessible and allow people to participate (somehow).

Visitors will be invited to join:

  • Contest and Quests in London and in new 3d online virtual areas — and of course win cool prizes
  • Contribute articles, images, video clips (and get paid a little)
  • Attend lectures, discussions
  • Help us complete a massive listing of places, artefacts, key people, timeline events and publications
  • Share their ideas on good tours of London

Getting the balance between local London and sharing that online = globally will require attention. We are also excited about the Grand Finale event which will be live in London and webcasted/virtual simulcasted. It will be an ancient world costume party.

The content will be hosted using our Rezzable Real-time Community Platform which is comprised mainly of Drupal and Opensim plus a bunch of code of our own. More about our tech here.

Event Partners Still Needed

We have the main sponsor in place, but still are looking for Event Partners to support events and offer relevant prizes or services to the events/content series. If you might be interested please drop us an email at info@rezzable.com. It should be a great opportunity for a range of companies that might be interested in understanding more about the social web, online video and virtual 3D online.

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convergence / web2.0 — 16 Comments
24
Oct 09

Top 10 OpenSim Issues and Performance Update

We have been running our own OpenSim-based grids now for more than a year. I thought it would be a good thing to share some latest comments on how it is going and what some of the issues are. You can visit either the Rezzable Grid or Heritage Key and see King Tut Virtual right now.

Go Check it out,  OpenSim works.

Follow the Light > London Victoria, Oct 14, 2009

OpenSim works, is getting better and will be the future of the 3D Web.

First thing to point out is that we are using OpenSim in combination with Drupal as the core user and even grid admin system.  So your own usage may not be the same if you are just working with OpenSim all by itself. We also have about 10 servers cranked-up to support all of this on a cluster sharing 50mb bandwidth.  Info on the tech layout here.

In general OpenSim has come quite a long way in the last year. There is still quite some road in front to get it to be a sort of 3D Web Server like Apache. It is very complex–maybe too much so, but nonetheless it works. And it works a lot better than it did a year ago.

The greatest strength of OpenSim is that it is opensource and has a smart enough set of committed developers beating on it.  We have been luck enough to work with a few of them and meet even a few more.  Because it is opensource we have been able to create our own integrations and services around the core.

The core dvelopers have cleared-up a lot of real problematic stuff like cross-region boarders, assets vanishing, general caching/grey-goo. You can give folders now! The regions are snappy. The build issues are still there on some level, but the workarounds are also better understood. The most painful build issues lately have been with scripting (and not overloading scripting).

The use cases that Rezzable is focused on, try to aim for the what OpenSim does right now and not steer directly into known gaps. So, again you own use cases might trigger different issues.

Below is my list of Top 10 Issues we see with OpenSim —

OpenSim Issue 1: Physics is still weak

Physics engine options are not that good right now. This causes a lot of problems and work-arounds.  Shooting, dropping, collisions and driving are basically to be avoided.  The physics engine also seems to create a lot of issues with the bounding boxes and sometimes you can’t walk through doors easily or phantom prims get solid-ish.

The obvious solution here is to find a way to plug-in better physics engines. It would seem that OpenSim will support this, but so far I have not heard of anything implemented in the last year that changes the performance.

OpenSim Issue 2: SL Hangovers

OpenSim seems (and we really try to avoid most of this stuff) to have a lot of SL-oriented functions especially around land, parcels that are more interesting to SL-copycat virtual worlds than our interest in 3D online experiences.  Net Net is the core code isn’t as performance-oriented as we would like to see it.

The biggest gap vs SL is that OpenSim does not have a commerce feature and of course no $L which is still a trusted micro-currency.

OpenSim Issue 3: Perms are Not There

We did quite a bit of work to implement a fairly basic permissions concept, mainly using Drupal roles. This works fine for Heritage Key, and we also have a separate “sub-grid” for build work. On the Rezzable grid it will require a lot more manual switch-flipping to have quasi-group/collaborative control on access and prim-perms. We have not implemented any commerce concepts (and may not either). I think the whole issue of perms/DRM needs a more complete architecture to avoid the issues beleaguering/demoralizing SL content creators.

OpenSim Issue 4: Lack of Docs

I suppose if you like to read code, you should have all you want with opensource OpenSim–but for those of you, like me, that like something with pictures and some summary, we are out of luck. It is more of a Ouija-board process with the developers to understand what it is, does, might be. And of course things are also changing as new releases flow through–but getting a roadmap certainly would require a crystal ball and some incense.

OpenSim Issue 5: Admin Tools

We have made quite a few tools to track users, manage resources. I think we should even be able to share these (once we write-up what they do somehow).  I have seen that there are some basic tools also floating around to make some reports/alerts, but these are quite simple.  I would hope to see more user info and logging–especially relating to inventory and server memory.

OpenSim Issue 6: Voice

Vivox apparently has a OpenSim implementation. I have not seen it, but the gang at IBM seems to be messing with it. It would seem to make sense that it works. It is not free, so there is more of a cost consideration than a functional one.  We have been more focused on lectures and talk-show use cases and are using skype-to-stream solutions which works fine and also has the advantage of being broadcast to the web.

OpenSim Issue 7: Mesh Support / SL Viewer

Being able to deploy mesh assets is also a gap on the SL grid (although not on Blue Mars). Main points about this are 1) more cost-effective production for sculptural content 2) more realism for objects. I think Mesh will also need careful design and usage so as not to kill performance, not of asset serving, but of the user experience with viewing/streaming. Blue Mars looks great, but has apparently great than 1 gig client with all the meshes inside it.  The Mesh topic also hits on the Issue of OpenSim not having a native viewer. All the viewers are basically SL viewers in the first instance.  So there is a lot of overhead, random issues and workarounds to get the SL viewer to work — but our guys at Imprudence have done it for us! They rock! And even the new Imprudence code we are using on HK/Rezzable viewers works much better in the last 3-4 months.

OpenSim Issue 8: Concurrency

Concurrency on light interaction areas we think will scale out at 20-25 concurrent on a region. Now, this is a lot different than on SL for a couple of key reasons. First if you are running your own server, a region is less of a cost issue than it is on SL. So you can have more regions each with less content. I think the main focus is on server-loading then. We are running as much RAM as we can get on a machine and hope to see server concurrency at 400-500. The best news about OpenSim vs SL here is that you can have cross-region tps scripted. If you visit our King Tut Virtual you will basically visit 6 different regions on OpenSim that was just 1 in SL. So on a cost-basis OpenSim has better cost per concurrent user than SL by far (SL $300/month for 50 concurrent and OpenSim $350/month for 400+ concurrent).

OpenSim Issue 9: Scripting

We just had to unravel some scripting to get a new project to run with even a target of 10 concurrent. The good news is that the OpenSim modules allow for server-side coding instead of scripting. The bad news is that coding is more complex and of course see Issue 4 about about lack of docs. Scripting will still be very important, but I am hoping we can get a lot done in the code and create modules/integrations that way. We are making more Bots now that so far seem to work nicely. These Bots will access our CMS and have AI features for NPC interaction (= they will do smart stuff with our existing .com content).  Again, benefit here is that Bots will be also accessible from the web pages, iPhone etc.

OpenSim Issue 10: Cross-Grid Movements

Maintaining identity, roles and assets is still the biggest isssue holding back larger adoption of the OpenSim platform.  We are aware of other work and have our own initiatives in the area. I would think that within 6 months it will be a few clicks to move an avatar with inventor between grids effectively. I can see where a facebook connect will work well and I also am hopeful that DRM issues can be addressed as well.  Right now we are testing mechanisms to move avatar between our own grids (ok, that isn’t too sexy, but it proves a point).

So there it is. Stay tuned we are working on these issues as are many other OpenSim project, developers and enthusiasts. I think a year from now it will be even a bigger step forward than over the last 12 months.

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convergence / web2.0 — 2 Comments
24
Oct 09

Brands and Online Communities: Co-Content Creation = Getting to Trust

The hard question is whether or not Brands are trusted members within a community. The harder answer is generally — No! What to do to get back to Trust?

T-Rex London |Zoo

Trust Me, Only the First Bite Hurts. Many Brands have lost trust with consumers, so entering a Community is not a positive move as perceived by the members. In fact some Brands almost seem to hate or be at war with their customers. So what can a Brand do to get back to Trust? Drive CIC.

Probably every Brand manager is looking at some online social media project right now–thinkin’ omg I gotta do something.  For the ones that haven’t already made a mistake plan for social media — they should get into bed with Cali Lewis, well at least watch this interesting video interview (in a bed)  with Chris Brogan.

Brogan makes the xlent point that many Brands are not trusted these days — some for obvious reasons, like banks, car companies, fast food etc. Others have a more subtle, but perhaps more strained relationship with their customers/prospects like Ryanair or mortgage lenders like Halifax where the consumer is actually an adversary.

There seem to be a lot of issues around all of this, but the fundamental point is that if you don’t trust a brand — it won’t be a positive part of an online Community. It just annoys everyone or is a blocker to getting Community Inspired Content (CIC) rolling. Brogan seems to make a living working with corporates to use social media tools in a positive way to make the personal connection between company and individual–seems like he should have an un-ended need for his services (pls get over to EasyJet Chris!).

So, back to the challenge of the Brand manager trying to figure out how best to play in the social web.  The two obvious moves have significant issues:

  • Traditional online advertising noise/interference : Buying ad programs may not get the brand above the noise–or the brand could find ads actually sitting in areas where it being attacked. Online programs also have big costs and are they really delivering the bang for the buck?
  • Building A New Community is Hard: This is a bold, most likely pointless activity for a Brand with a battered reputation.  First of all it is an expensive enough risk, and most likely the Brand does not have any skill/experience in doing this type of thing. Worst though, the Brand is exposed directly to the Community members which is in fact an off-balance situation between individuals and an impersonal corporate entity. We saw a lot all the Brands that stepped into Second Life beat a retreat when they understood that their risk/costs for engaging with individuals in a fast-moving, unpredictable community was high and in fact their reach/value was trivial.

So in the face of a bad choice and a worse choice, what should Brand managers be considering? Basically they need to navigate a course back to Trust by finding their role in driving CIC.  Short answer = Co-Content Creation programs.

Why is Co-Content Creation the Way to Go?

Co-Content Creation is new content that is produced by an online Community in concert with the community members on some level. It is of course funded by a Brand or the Community itself. I think largely it should be a mix of commissioned, curated and UGC. Importantly, co-creation should frame a useful activity where  Community members see value. Most of the new online communities (like of course our Heritage Key or Demand Media’s Livestrong.com) are further multi-channel — allowing a concept to be packaged and delivered across site as well as media/social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and of course iPhone.

The Brand can Benefit  a lot in a Co-Creation Program:

  • Unique, relevant content that the Community will appreciate and engage with. Content should also be media rich, diverse and web-dynamic.
  • Perhaps not banner level reach, but deep community penetration across web, mobile and even real-world (as most Communities have physical reach).
  • Speed to live — usually new content is already in a the community content pipeline, so it can be tuned to fit quickly. Certainly setting-up a micro-site is a few days work, no more.
  • Association with innovation if there is a relevant app to combine with.
  • Co-creation should run over a 3-6 month timeline minimum, year is better. So there is also the momentum as the content becomes richer, it will gain exposure.
  • Brand can fully leverage their own promotion, email muscle to drive their customers/prospects/stakeholders directly at an online area that will be on message, without other brand interference.  There should be some PR lift as well.
  • Zero risk — (ok a little risk) the Brand does not need to do much to make this happen — ok, pay is a good thing. But there is no management of the Community or issues with production. The Brand just needs to do what Brands should already be good at — promotion and promotion.
  • Brand can choose how to engage with Community members and use the Community as an appropriate focus, rather than have the direct exposure.

Basic Framework for Co-Creation Programs

The Program should run for minimum 3 months but 6 months or longer is best. The main idea is to get a consistent flow moving onto the site and that there are some time-definite events to catch live. Content should also be sourced from the Community as much as possible.

Basic formula (but expect many variants):

  • Frame a video series, with mix of community members and respected figures. Video is key as it will drive traffic and generate links to a lot of site content. Video should hit site 4/week or so.
  • A bulk of new, inter-linked content — so feature articles, blogs, image galleries, maps, listings. Something new on site everyday to pump the flow across web — use RSS as well
  • Interactive features — good be something simple like a quiz/game or more complex applications that engage/add value to Community. We have a virtual experience on Heritage Key as an example.
  • Contests — but these should involve content that will hit site, ie photos, blogs, group activities
  • Real-world events — again a good chance for the Brand to actually meet people and make personal connections (which also can be in virtual experiences).

Probably in the first wave of serious Co-Creation it will be fairly expensive proposition, but not expensive for a major Brand.  I can already see how this could be rolled-out on a micro-level (probably so does Google somehow ;0 ).

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convergence / web2.0 — 4 Comments
20
Oct 09

Community Inspired Content (CIC) : Better than UGC?

The problem with UGC (User Generated Content) is, as anyone dealing with UGC already knows, err..well, all those Users really. They make a lot of noise—some is interesting, but most is noise. UGC can fill your site with a lot of content, but how much of it is 1) relevant 2) monetizable?

Example: UGC problems at YouTube. While they are serving 1.2 billion streams per day how much of it is worth watching or not infringing?  YouTube has a commercial partner program to try to sift out the good from the bad and reward stuff that adds value. It is hard to imagine just how many take-down notices they process each day? Millions? When YouTube kills an account for breaking the community standards,  there is a flare of angst against them.

crazy bubble thing at royal academy London

CIC = Community Inspired Content . How to get some of that?

UGC is random (which is most interesting) and repetitive, dumb and/or unrelated (which is not at all interesting).  UGC is also full of problems like spam, hate, porno  and copyright infringement. In fact, I think the days of UGC as an objective are over as Media Convergence heats up.

We did a lot of work in the Second Life virtual world environment where we created and ran in-world brands, sold digital goods and hosted more than 2.5million avatar visits (our Greenies Home is still there).  SL claimed to be a online environment created by its users. This was a powerful concept. Some people came and made their own stuff, their house, art, avatar clothes but also made a lot of useless crap (UGG = user generated garbage). Not fun junk, but broken, incomplete, uninspired and boring digital leftovers.

Yet, as SL was also a microcosm for the larger online dynamic—we noticed something else more interesting than the obvious UGC headache. We began to understand that some people really cared quite a lot about their status in an online Community.

Identity, role, assets and recognition have significant value in the online realm. I think the virtual world crucible accelerates this as you come into real-time contact with people, make friends and perhaps engage in some activities that enhance (or destroy) your online identity. (If you are a noob—get an alt if you are going to do something out-of-character.). Your online trail is easy to catch and easy to follow in most cases. So actually rather than seeing people hide behind their online identity, we began to understand how important that identity is as a part of your real self. Hence, how other people respect you and understand you within a Community is very important.

People who care about being in a Community then will make a special effort to contribute to it and even regulate it.  This is both content creation on one side and moderation on the other. This is the virtous circle—but it isn’t without effort and attention.

I seem to think of it as Community Inspired Content (CIC). CIC is not random, it is complimentary to the Community. People add comments to express something that displays their online persona so they are in fact sharing something of at least marginally value—and on occasion some serious insight. CIC also implies some respect for other members where UGC is more often about screaming really loud. Is CIC the mature version of UGC then?

Net net = CIC is more valuable on-site and should be scalable. If it is relevant, it should also be better to monetize.

My point is this really, if you want to get CIC you need to run your site very differently than if you only want UGC (with a little moderation on the side). UGC works well enough in the traditional make–>push content creation model. Either your commissioned staff “make–>push” content or you get the users to “make–>push” content from their side.  It is one-way with a little feedback in the comments.

CIC I want some on my site!

So how to get CIC rolling then? Well, we are trying to figure that out right now as you can see over at Heritage Key with some of the lessons we picked-up at Rezzable.com. There seem to be some basic drivers worth noting now though.

5 Top CIC Drivers

  • Content-oriented site. CIC is around specific content—ie cool motorcycles, exotic travel. Some domain where people want to learn, interact and share their experiences. Something to do is essential. Check Livestrong.com
  • Quality core. Quality inspires more quality. So you need some commissioned core content that raises the bar. You can pay the Community members btw, which might be a good game plan—if you can get the monetization flowing to keep the cash flowing. But be careful, most people don’t really do it for the money, so the ones that do will also leave when the money is better elsewhere.
  • Star Power. Find some well-known, outspoken people from the domain and get their presence into the mix. Also though, video killed the radio star—so beware false idols and find ways to popularize your native Community members. The biggest stars of Media Convergence have not been discovered yet.
  • Fun Events. You can focus people on something time-based where they can make an impact or just share the experience. Events also deliver the most important online element – meeting new people. A good event will mix a lot of people together if done properly.
  • Reward the right UGC. It could be as simple as sending a note or giving some site points. You could do a lot more—like send members on exotic trips or send them real gifts. Online in the age of google has become impersonal—change that and drive CIC.

The other big issue for CIC is can big brands even begin to be a home for it? Do the people that run a CIC site actually need to be very visible/active on it? Ultimately the web while making somethings scalable, still might be bound by the limits of what people can do—actually that doesn’t seem like too bad a thing!

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convergence / web2.0 — 2 Comments
14
Oct 09

From Old to Newest Media in the Time of Convergence

One of the biggest distinctions between the future of what users will want to do on the internet from what they did or in fact are doing now, is the difference between being passive viewers and active participants. Old Media doesn’t get this important orientation on how it needs to treat its audience. Imagine a bar where you could only talk to the bartender? It is like the mentality of the Economist to set a paywall for their content and beg for their “loyal” customers to pay. The “make–>push” content model is not going to thrive in the Time of Convergence (which is almost really here this now btw).

In my little sketch above I am trying to tease out some of the key issues facing online media organizations. Our approach of course, as you can see in Heritage Key ( I hope), is from the almost-off-the-chart right position of newest media. We are trying to figure out how to mix the content-focus with social tools with the interactive tools in the most unique way.

I can break-down some of our ideas as follows in terms of the content that we make and people consume:

  • News — breaking items, needs to be fast on the site and some value add to reacting to web flares, creating news content is a big plus
  • Articles — this is the focus of the commission effort to effectively surround useful topics with a series of articles, interviews, video pieces. You would expect to gain some lift on google/SEO as you create content against sets of keyword objectives.
  • Media — images, video, galleries, maps that are either unique or curated. Presentation and navigation are critical. We use Solr now to add discovery aspects to site search.
  • Interactive — answer the challenge of what to do on the site. So we have some quizzes, but really the big attraction for Heritage Key is the Virual Experience (GoVirtual).  While enabling comments on a site is not always so easy, it is hard to consider that basic feature as very interactive these days.
  • Directory — collects, curate, manage relevant data that is needed by the community. Add community/social filtering to expose data back to site visitors (i.e. popular, rated recently, new)
  • UGC — shift now is to manage the flow of user generated content and raise relevance and quality. YouTube is struggling as an example to separate out the noise/infringing content from the serious/regular content creators. My sense is that the site owners need to direct/drive UGC a lot more. It will be the role in fact of the site to help people do more than they can otherwise do themselves = a better package, more traffic, more distribution, more promotion as much as a better concept.

These are the components, the challenge is to get the mix right and scale the production costs against the overall revenue potential of the site/brand.

As we continue to rollout our vision on this in Heritage Key, it is clear why Old Media doesn’t get Convergence and why even New Media players will have challenges making the next transition. Organizations work better on push. You can plan, manage push in a much more predictable manner. Where the site needs to marshall the community, well, it is a lot more difficult and outcomes less certain. Video killed the radio star. The requirements for success in the future will be no less dramatic. The “push” stars won’t “pull” communities.

One way to mitigate some of the risk is to get the hardcore users into the alpha/beta testing areas. It is important to engage people that will be the evangelists or even find solutions with you. But you will need to expose the ongoing work–which is a minimum is uncomfortable. With large deployed online brands it may require new branding and even new sites as testbeds/community crucibles.

Another point in comparing the players that is worth making is about the cost of content creation. The Old Media players have very high costs, often with long cycle times from idea to publish. Production costs must go down. Newest media content production is low and will get lower. The quality is perhaps not the same, but as we already see with blogs and tweets the immediacy is must greater.

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convergence — No Comments
12
Oct 09

EA Announces eBook Product for Nintendo

In line with my notes about Media Convergence it is a good proof point to see that EA is launching FLIPS, an eBook product with content from Penguin and others on Nintendo DS. According to their release: “FLIPS has been designed to give children of all ages a fun new way to read their favorite books. EA has worked with some of the UK’s leading publishers of children’s books and magazines.” It makes a lot of sense for the game makers to attack and partner their way into the eBook market.

It looks like it is more than just for reading and they suggest there will be quizes and games. So really what EA is doing is to use the publishers back-catalog and their platforms relationships to claw their way into education market.

One of the most interesting aspects is how kids already associate gaming with being active — not passive readers. So it is obvious that the content creation challenge will be for a gaming business to deliver quality without trivializing it just to make it snappy. Can the gaming companies really deliver on that challenge? For me it seems unlikely as they have more expertise in shooting/violence than education. So probably this first step is about enabling the channel and then the gaming distributors will be looking for new content that is more on target with eLearning and have stronger web user experience integration.

Things to watch –> Xmas sales for Amazon Kindle, Microsoft Xbox Portable

It still seems that the eBook market is way early. There are some devices, but the compelling reason has not gotten beyond the book reading techno-geeks yet. The eBook market just isn’t that big yet (see AAP stats). Consider how enormous iPhone apps vs Kindle reading/flip products. Let’s also watch the new eBook readers, some of which will be in color and have sexier screens. Will the Xmas run-up push more users over the fence? I would rather have a better iPhone or a flash-memory video camera than some dorky book reader. Microsoft also potentially will have some big impact in this space as they are most likley to link the device to the content to the web. So you could have some continuity of experience/content management from MSN to Xbox=Home to Mobile. But also like many things with MSFT it seems more like potential to follow hard and long than lead.

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convergence — 4 Comments
8
Oct 09

Media Convergence = Browser on TV

I think about the future of media, technology so much that I worry that I think the present is the past. But check a LED tv playing a Blu-ray disc and immediately you will see that the future is now here (and can be delivered to your home by Amazon).

People who wax eloquently about how nice it is to open a book and feel the pages, see the great images in them of course still have a great point, but they should also consider how hard it is to get a Wii controller out of the hand of a 6-year old (or forty+-year old).

Media Convergence, what is it all about? Well, in a simple way it is the endgame where you can finally browse the web on your tv. It is, however,  a lot wider than just your living room as you can consume digital media on the go as well. You can download an eBook to an inexpensive reader and subscribe to podcasts on your iPhone.  LED televisions, which might catalyse Convergence to the next phase, are awesome and not so expensive even. These slim, low-energy devices blast intense digital data at you and in their afterglow, you will understand that the digital future will be arriving at your home real soon.

What is exciting about this Convergence though is not just the really cool ways in which we can access media or how stunning the quality is–it is the shift from audiences being passive watchers of broadcasts, printed materials to the active mode of pulling what you want, when you want it, how you want it. Further the social web puts you into the mix and let’s you participate and (typically) enjoy the interaction a lot more.

It is really this fundamental change in consumer behaviour that will be impossible for “old media” to deal with.  The audience needs to become the community. The content creators are not commodities but the leading voices and micro-stars that engage and drive the energy. The web generation is consuming online data voraciously. It is active, it is multi-threaded, it is cross-platform — and they are the stars of their own shows.

Online advertising is already pushing beyond both print and television. What is going on in the Book Publishing Industry? Of course a lot of the latest data coming from print, media and book publishing industries is depressed due to the overall global economic crisis. But nonetheless, if you take a look at the stats from the AAP about US book sales in July 09 book sales you can see some interesting trends.  Sales for eBooks are $16.2mm and growing rapidly–but trivial in the mix of the $25 Billion industry.  New hardcover and paperbook sales were holding their own during the summer time, but taking a beating compared to last year. Mass market titles are potentially no-man’s land down 15% compared to last July and down 5.3% for 2009 trend–probably this area is under the most direct pressure from online.

Book publishers should also be very concerned about their Educational books — where they enjoy some big margins, but also face major issues with costs for students as well as a whole new way of studying.  Higher education titles had $941mm sales out of a total of  $1.54 billion which is more than 60% of the total pie. What will the new media landscape do to the textbook market? Is the combined force of economic pressure and the newest way of digital media consumption a cocktail that shakes the publishing industry into a froth in 2010? Net net, Book Publishers are fighting online for shrinking piece of a shrinking pie.

We are thinking a lot now on how to create the new wave of content and brand experiences that will thrive when it is really out with the old and in with the newest in 2010. Our first pass on all this is Heritage Key. Check it out and let us know if we got it right or not!

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