As I watched the film Us Now last week, I was reminded of the British football club Ebbsfleet United and the MyFootballClub story, (see a clip here) where fans ultimately had enough of being armchair critics and put their money where their heart (and often discontent) was, and actually purchased a Club.

Bringing the story to a more personal level, I have been to quite a few of my favourite athletic club, the Toronto Raptors’, games this year and I have left the Air Canada Centre more often than I would like wishing there were some recourse that I, as a fan, had to have my displeasure heard.  I am completely aware that loss is an important part of sport, but to leave a match feeling as if the players did not leave it all on the court, or that the coach drew up a bad play, is not a great feeling as a supporter.

Now I know what you’re saying – does everyone give 100% all the time? Obviously not, but in the world of elite professional athletics, my threshold for forgiveness is admittedly lowered.

If there were a more immediate, constructive, and tangible way to give timely feedback, rather than voting with my feet, I would be all for it.

Now there are great online tools, such as Protrade The Sports Stock Market, that harness the power of prediction markets by allowing for the “purchase and sale” of  athletes, in order to earn some pretty great rewards and dominate fantasy pools, but the ultimate effect of these actions on the actual team remains unclear (presumably minimal).

One potential participatory experiment could be to gauge fans’ expectations vs. actual outcomes to mine the wisdom of the fans for added insight (kudos to Alex). For example, if the Raptors were playing the Kings, I would expect a solid victory, with CB4 putting up some big numbers, along with Jose Calderon dominating the assists column.  Now if the Raps were playing the Celtics, I would hope for a victory, but rather expect a big game from Chris Bosh, Jose Calderon, Andrea Bargnani and co., but would be well-prepared to chalk one up in the L category.

If, using sliding scale, I could input my predictions, along with the 000,000s of other NBA fans, then technically, the wisdom of the crowd should be pretty good at predicting ultimate outcomes (and managing expectations), and could hopefully improve the quality of game play (and fan engagement) if predictions were able to influence (pre)game-time decisions.  I respect many coaches’ expertise, but I am also a firm believer that none of us is as smart as all of us.

I suppose some of my frustrations this year have been driven by a few of the decidedly bizarre moves undertaken by a number of teams in the NBA, in light of salary cap considerations and decreased expected future earnings owing to economic pressure on ticket sales. Some of these decisions have resulted in what analysts have called a blatant disrespect of fans.  Always entertaining Bill Simmons goes so far as saying ”I’d say the Grizzlies hurled a flaming bag of dog feces at their fans, but they don’t have any fans” in reference to a three-way trade involving Houston, Orlando and Memphis, in February. In another complementary statement, Simmons also laments that “we [team leadership] finally crossed the imaginary line between “building a good team while being fiscally responsible” and “being fiscally responsible and not giving a crap about anything else.”

If fans begin to feel bored, or worse disrespected by questionable ownership/leadership  moves, then a fear of empty seats will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In an economy where entertainment dollars are growing harder and harder to capture, particularly the big ticket item sales – season tickets and luxury boxes – perhaps mechanisms that create deeper fan engagement must be among the tools used to help keep teams afloat - give the fans a greater say.

Now most of this post has been focused on the NBA, the league I would argue is best set up to weather the storm, due to its high-level of fan interaction and loyalty, but I dread to think of the situation that is imminent for many MLB and NHL teams (a league that is having trouble securing player buy-in and excitement for the fan favourite All-Star game).

Challenges aside, let’s be idealistic for a moment – wouldn’t it be great if a pro team were willing to give fans the extent of control that the Ebbsfleet United fans have, without surrendering formal ownership rights?

Any disenchanted sports fans out there looking to join in a myfootballclub-like adventure? We’ll call it mybasketballclub just to be original.

The reason that I am writing about it here is blatant self-promotion two-fold – we are attempting to build chTONGUEeek by sticking to the principles of wikinomics, and do so at an absolute minimum of out-of-pocket expense. From what we’ve seen so far (with this project and the research), these two things often go hand in hand.

As of right now, the total expense incurred has been a little over $200, and outside of a few plans we have for rewarding contributors, we don’t expect this to go a penny higher for the foreseeable future. About 1/4 of this expense was unavoidable – domain name registration. The rest was for the logo design, and to get us off on the right wikinomics foot we decided to go with crowdSPRING for what eventually became this:

Regular readers may remember I wrote about my interview with the founders of crowdSPRING back in June. The idea behind the company is simple – anybody can post a description of creative project, the reward that they are offering, and the end date. Interested artists within the community then submit designs (the company guarantees a minimum of 25), and the buyer can continually provide feedback as they flow in to guide the community towards what they want, before finally selecting a winner. crowdSPRING takes care of the payments, legal issues, etc.

We decided to post our project for the minimum amount – $150 – with a one week time frame, providing a brief description and an absolutely terrible graphic representing what we were thinking. Over the course of the week we received a total of 69 submissions, with quality ranging from pretty bad to quite intriguing. In order to get the most out of the platform, we provided feedback (at minimum a rating) on every submission in timely fashion, and it was the work of Peg770 that was clearly rising to the top. We sent her a couple of personal message for some final tweaks, and in the end declared her the winner, receiving a portfolio of different logos she had created for us (you can see some of them in the box marked with the award tab). We thought it was a great experience, and absolutely brought home the power and value of crowdsourcing.

From there, we’ve built the initial site through Word Press (free), borrowed some hosting for the time being (free), and had the more skilled of us (not me) get the site designed and “live,” while we both focus on creating some hopefully entertaining content in our spare time (of which there is very little). Next steps include the launch of our initial store through CafePress (either free or $6 / month), figuring out our incentive plan for attracting a community of contributors (probably not free), and most importantly building our social media marketing strategy (free, but what will be the most time consuming). It is the latter I am most interested in, and will be reporting back time and again if something interesting comes up. In the meantime, seats are still available on Twitter and Facebook – but they are going fast .

Radiohead chose to shun the traditional camera and lights video (that’s so 2007) in favour of the Velodyne LIDAR system, which used 64 lasers, shooting 900 times per minute in a 360 degree radius to capture the data for the video, which would later be re-assembled to create the four and a half minute sequence.  The final product perfectly captures the eerie tone of the song and in the words of the video’s director, James Frost: “In a weird way, [the video] is a direct reflection of where we are in society – everything is data…Everything around us is data-driven in some shape or form and we’re so reliant on it now. Our lives are so digital, so in that way, it felt apt.”

And the video itself is not even the coolest part.  Radiohead has made available the data used to make the video (here) and is encouraging fans to download, remake and post their own version to the YouTube group, which “the band would love to see”.

Kudos to the “video’s” production team and to Radiohead’s front man, Thom Yorke, for once again pushing the envelope and as he says himself: “using technology in a way it wasn’t meant to be used.”

Check out the making of the video here.

Showtime launched the first “Fan Wikis” about a year ago, and has since added pages for each of its shows. Since that time, pages have grown from basic content such as user-created cast bios and episode guides to complete guides of, well, everything related to the show.

Tudors’ fans maintain wikis from everything from costume design to a complete list of Tudor executions. Weed’s fans meticulously study characters’ wardrobes and post where to buy the exact article of clothing online. And it’s not a rogue few participating, either. The L Word wiki boasts more than 7,000 members.

Participation is simple. All a fan must do is register with Wetpaint and then check out what tasks are listed on the wiki To-Do list.

I haven’t decided what I think is more genius: Showtime outsourcing website content development to volunteers, or enabling fans to create fan sites on the actual Showtime site, keeping precious traffic right where they want it.

Showtime’s Fan Wikis are powered by Wetpaint, which describes itself as a place where “you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich, user-generated community based around the whatever-it-is that rocks your socks off.” The company announced May 19 it had raised $25 million to “accelerate the company’s growth.” According to TechCrunch, Wetpaint has now raised more than $40 million in all. On Wednesday, Wetpaint announced that more than 1million free social Wetpaint pages had been created since July 2006.

I’d like to see how Ben Letalik would grade Showtime in his weekly Wikinomics report card. Fan wikis combined with The Tudor’s multi-platform campaign launch of Season 2 (Showtime aired the entire season premiere for free on more than 60 sites, including Netflix and MSN) are very good examples of openness and sharing.

I started watching The Tudors (and subscribed to Showtime) after watching the Season 2 premiere on Netflix for free. I fell for Showtime’s 2.0 marketing plan hook, line, and sinker. Will Showtime’s innovative strategies and social networking features help it get an edge on long-time enemy (and market leader) HBO?

An increasing number of artists are now signing recording deals with consumer product companies such as Nike, Red Bull and Procter & Gamble, who are acting as de facto record companies - finding, funding, promoting and in cases even distributing new music.  In an effort to promote various product lines, these companies have now begun to look outside of their core businesses for a new way to get their brands “out there.”

An early leader in this movement is TAG records.   Launched in April, TAG is a joint venture supported by P&G and led by hip hop mogul Jermaine Dupri, which takes its name from TAG body spray, a former Gillette brand that is entrenched in a battle against Unilever’s AXE in the highly-competitive teen market.

While collaborating with artists for short-term promotional pieces is nothing new, a number of companies are taking their relationship with artists to the next level, and early signs point to a winning relationship for both sides involved.  Dupri is very pleased with the budget provided by P&G, claiming “You can’t get this type of marketing budget. There are endorsement deals, but not like this.”  Artists appear to benefit by receiving both an up-front payment as well a royalty agreement that outpaces what is offered by the big labels.

So far, Nike-commissioned Better Than I’ve Ever Been has succeeded by bringing together hip hop royalty Kanye West, Rakim, Nas and KRS-One, earning popular acclaim and a Grammy Nomination over the past year. Some big label execs are refuting the success of this new model with the age-old “this model wouldn’t work if these artists weren’t already so popular because of our help” argument. If artists are receiving more support (promotional/marketing expertise AND money), and at the end of the day, most consumers do not you care where the music is “coming from,” is this a business model that’s here to stay or a flash in the pan fad?

The transition from being console software to desktop software brings about some advantages, support for HDTV, and support for new hardware… like the Nintendo Wiimote.

A bunch of strangers on the Internet found each other and collaborated to write new software for an old product, making the old XBOX a top-of-the-line media center, better than commercially available alternatives. The team grows, develops into a community, and the code gets ported over to new, more powerful platforms, allowing a competing Nintendo product to join the equation and make things better still. All of this is done by volunteers and released for free online. I think that’s really cool.

“First, I got a bit put off by receiving the money because to me, that kind of arbitrary hand-out of alms is a ridiculous system. Then I thought, why not see it as an opportunity and earmark the money for something creative. And since the money came from piracy, I had to use it for more piracy, right?”

So he created a new album, fully funded by the tax, by using other people’s music and putting it through some old effects boxes he acquired. In turn, the end result is what some might call a pirated mash-up album, fully funded by an anti piracy tax. I’m sure not everyone would agree with his approach, but one (or at least I) have to love the mindset he took to get there:

“To me, ‘Frauds’ is a statement. There’s so much negativity in the debate. ‘File sharing means artists can’t…’, ‘File sharing means nobody will ever…’ I think it’s the opposite, I think the beautiful aspect of the digital era is that anything recorded can be remixed, tweaked and modified.”

 NEW YORK – Comcast Corp., which is under federal investigation for blocking some file-sharing traffic, is investing in a startup that delivers high-definition video using file-sharing techniques.

Seattle-based GridNetworks on Monday said that Comcast would make an unspecified investment in the company and collaborate on developing so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing techniques that are “friendly” to Internet service providers.

The article also states that Comcast plans to stop all bandwidth shaping (usually in the form of slowing down peer to peer traffic) by the end of the year, certainly a good step if they want any of their customers to use the GridNetworks service.

This move is yet another following an all to familiar pattern: companies resist the way technology is being used, then throw their hat in the ring completely ignoring the solutions that already exist, instead suggesting (what for many people is) a superfluous alternative (Napster vs. iTunes, YouTube vs. ComedyCentral Streaming, ThePirateBay vs. NetFlix).

The internet has already developed an extremely efficient way (pdf) for content to make its way into every nook and cranny using existing infrastructure. Rather than imposing new structures that require investment of time and energy by companies, why not play it hands off and instead add on a flat rate media fee to all broadband subscribers?

I recognize that this flat rate fee for content is not a new idea, but there are plenty of consumers that invest great amounts of their time and energy into disseminating content all over the internet, they organize and categorize it, and ensure its quality, and they do it all for free! Isn’t this pretty near the ideal situation? The only thing that’s missing is fair compensation.

Instead of applying band-aid solutions to healthy skin, a more practical approach would seem to be ensuring that content creators are fairly compensated. Why not put energy into systems that measure and track the content flowing through existing file sharing ecosystems, so that when a flat rate fee for content is added to everyones’  broadband, we know how best to divvy up the pie?

In his book Out of Control, Kevin Kelly puts forth one idea (among many!) that has stayed with me: when you’re dealing with complex networks, if you want them to thrive, sometimes you have to give up some control.

It would be great to see big content companies and ISPs embrace this idea, and just let their consumers take over, and do, and watch, what they love.

With the exception of solid fuel model rockets, actual rocket engines have been out of the reach (and budget) of most DIY’s. However, there’s an older rocket technology called a pulse jet engine which is making a comeback amongst do it yourselvers. It was first invented by Germany and used in their notorious V-1 rockets (buzz bombs) in WWII. One reason they’re popular today is that they can be built with no moving parts. Here’s more info on how they work.

One of the simplest possible pulse jet engines can be made out of a standard jam jar. Make magazine (if you don’t already have a subcription I highly recommend it) has a great article on how to make one of these out of easy-to-find parts. Here’s a video of the jam jar project.

Jam jars are just the beginning however. Whole communities of modern day rocketeers are converging on sites like pulse-jets.com and jetzilla.com to discuss their engines and share designs. Like anything else, some people have taken these engines to extremes. They’ve even been used in RC planes.

Some have also tried creating their own turbine jet engines – while difficult to create from scratch, an automobile turbocharger can be modified for the purpose. Others are creating rockets which use a combination of tar and oxygen for fuel. These rockets tend to be quite powerful and this video gives an example of why you need a protective barrier when fooling with this stuff:

Thankfully they decided to add a protective shield around their rocket as they continued their later experiments.

For those who’d rather avoid the danger of fire and explosions. I suggest trying a water bottle rocket instead – basically, a 2L pop bottle pumped up to 70psi+ that can go about 80-100ft in the air. Here a video of the bottle rocket in action

Setting aside the fact that I have a slightly more positive view of the long tail, it’s an interesting idea – any “creator” simply needs to find their niche that will buy any and everything that they make. It appears that 1,000 was chosen just to make the numbers simple – i.e. make the point that at $100 a pop that grosses to $100,000 a year, which most people would consider a great living.

The post then goes on to put in a number of caveats and distinctions – groups will obviously need more fans than singles, it will be different by media, etc. It’s a great post from start to finish, and what makes it even better is the two follow-ups that have recently been posted on the site: The reality of depending on true fans and The case against 1,000 true fans.

In the first, Kevin opens by noting that the “1,000 true fans” idea was basically just a hypothesis – there was no hard data/findings behind it. In turn, he started digging around to see if is hypothesis played out in the real world – and this post is primarily a thoughtful response from musician Robert Rich, who agrees with Kevin’s thesis but tosses a little more “realism” on the topic. My favorite quote:

I remember telling myself when I was about 15, “If I can move one person deeply, that’s better than entertaining thousands of people but leaving nothing meaningful behind.” That’s the long tail talking. I suppose when you multiply this idea by a thousand, you have your thesis.

The most interesting quote in relation to the hypothesis:

Thanks to the internet, I am making more money now, selling directly to 1000 True Fans, than I was during the days on Hearts of Space selling 20,000 – 50,000 copies. But had I not benefitted from the immense promotional effort that it took for HOS to sell those albums, I probably wouldn’t be surviving today as a full time artist.

In truth, I could have copied about 7 or 8 different quotes above from Rich – his thoughts are well worth the read for anyone interested in this subject. Search for “Catch 22″ in the text to find a very interesting paragraph on the “True Fans Trap.”

The second post is the case against true fans – and here Kevin notes that while the hypothesis sounds good, and is similar to what people like Brian Austin Whitney postulated a few years back, he can’t find much evidence of anyone actually supporting themselves with 1,ooo (or 5,000, to match Whitney) true fans. In turn, he concludes:

What my research tells me: there are very few artists making their entire living selling directly to True Fans. The few that are, are selling high-priced goods, like paintings, rather than low-priced goods like CDs. But there are many that partially fund their livelihood with direct True Fans.

He then goes on to discuss a challenge from Jaron Lanier, a musician doing research in a similar space. What they are looking for is a new musician (i.e. not one leveraging popularity developed in the “old” model) that’s making a decent living (more or less sufficient to raise a child) from sources friendly to a world of open, massive, unregulated file sharing (thinks concerts, ad sales, merchandise – any thing that doesn’t rely on “old, declining media.” So far, they haven’t found anyone yet – if you know of one drop them a note.

It’s quite an interesting discussion, and one that I hope KK continues on his ever thought provoking blog. Do wikinomics readers have any thoughts on the 1,000 true fans debate, or perhaps the very notion that the long tail is something that creators must try to “escape”?

Toronto is a particularly high-selling market for both athletics (featuring a lacklustre at best hockey team (let the backlash begin) that still manages to sell out in minutes year after year, and a newly-founded MLS soccer team that also sold out record time) and live music (with top performers like Bon Jovi adding second, third and even fourth shows due to overwhelming demand). So, when one of the most-highly anticipated tours of the summer was announced earlier this year, it was a no-brainer that Radiohead tickets would be a hot item that would sell out in minutes flat.

As a serious Radiohead fan, I must admit that I checked the fansite fanatically leading up to the ticket release date and also that I was anxiously awaiting the public onsale of tickets through Ticketmaster. I did, fortunately, manage to somehow secure tickets through Ticketmaster, but my fortunes were much to contrary of countless others who were unable to beat the rush. Now in a perfect world, this would signify that true fans were able to get the tickets they so badly wanted to see one of their favourites perform live, but from what I can tell, this was clearly not the case. Within seconds, tickets appeared on ebay, craigslist and concerningly on Ticketmaster’s “partner” site, Ticketsnow.com, all at prices that inflated face value by two and even four times face value.

Now the business side of me says great – let the free market reign, but the fan side of me says this is terribly wrong and is thinking of a way to do something about it.

Regardless of my feelings, though, I have found the community-driven backlash to the ticket scandal very intriguing. User-generated craigslist seemed to be one of the most popular destinations for Radiohead resellers (read: scalpers 2.0), and within a few days, something very interesting started to take place on the site. Along with the countless posts offering sob stories of how “they can no longer make the show” or “their girlfriend backed out and they now must sell the tickets” to the best offer started to appear a bit of backlash from angry fans who had devised their own plan to combat the resellers. Many posters flagged tickets for removal from craigslist, but among the most interesting reactions was a post by an upset fan who had emailed many of the resellers feigning interest in their tickets, all the while gathering the resellers’ email addresses, only to list them in a post of their own and calling for fans to sign up the featured email addresses to every spam account imaginable, thereby hijacking and essentially rendering useless the resellers’ preferred account.

Other reactions have included rants about the ethics (or lack thereof) possessed by the resellers, but all this makes me wonder – after complaining for many years about the monopolistic practices of the leading ticket seller, had I better be more careful what I wish for? What’s better, the near monopoly, or the free market in which it is now possible to get tickets after they are “sold out”, so long as I am financially capable?

Any strong fan or “reseller” opinions out there?