Experience shows that the first wave of Internet-enabled change was tainted by irrational exuberance. A sober analysis of today's trends reveals that this new participation is both a blessing and a curse. Mass collaboration can empower a growing cohort of connected individuals and organizations to create extraordinary wealth and reach unprecedented heights in learning and scientific discovery... (but) the new participation will also cause great upheaval, dislocation, and danger for societies, corporations, and individuals that fail to keep up with the relentless change.
- Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams, Wikinomics, page 15.
Avid blogger and frequent Wikinomics reader Venkat has developed an interesting visualization that shows how various pieces of “2.0” literature fit together to form a cohesive view of the world to come. It provides a fairly good “must read” list for enterprises, scholars, futurists, and anyone interested in new paradigms and next generation thinking. An explanation of the diagram can be found here.
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is relatively well known on the web thanks to his ever-entertaining and informative blog. Given this reputation, many people were taken by surprise when they heard Mark Cuban had banned full-time bloggers from the Dallas Mavericks lockerroom, as reported in the Dallas news. Is is true, as Deadspin quipped, that “Mark Cuban dislikes bloggers who aren’t him?”
Well, no. But we’ll get to that in a second. Read More »
PostSecret.com is a site where members obtain a form of therapy from anonymously sharing their secrets with the world. The project started with physical post cards about 4 years ago and has since made the migration to social media. There have also been a number of books and videos created as a result of the more than 180,000 secrets that have been shared.
It amazes me the creativity, honesty and emotion that individuals are willing to display anonymously via the web. The most recent compilation from PostSecret.com, A Valentine Video, can be seen below.
The key to the success of the PostSecret model is the anonymity of those who are sharing their secrets. However, when we talk about collaboration in the enterprise that same anonymity that drives creative and honest expression is shunned. The truth is that when companies implement Web 2.0 solutions they are afraid of what employees might say or do if they are not held accountable. What if someone blast the CEO in a blog post, post inappropriate content on the social network or vandalizes project information in the wiki?
These are all valid concerns, after all companies have rules and regulations that they must abide by and need to maintain a safe work environment for employees. But what about the creativity, the innovation, and the honesty that comes from the freedom to express your thoughts anonymously. In the enterprise cultural and political reasons often prevent employees from feeling comfortable to share their true opinions, but the good news is there are ways to get the best of both worlds.
Companies could try creating a forum for employees to anonymous submit thoughts and ideas being clear that all content must be work appropriate. If needed, monitor the site and allow users to flag inappropriate content (ala youtube) or if necessary monitor the submissions before they are posted (making it clear to submitters why the have been censored). If that is to radical, start by allowing employees to express themselves by ranking and rating content. The idea is to give employees a voice and the freedom to break free of the hierarchy and danger of group think. I was just talking with my colleague Alan and we discussed how an anonymous forum could be valuable tool on those occasions when everyone is thinking the plan from the top is flawed, but doesn’t feel comfortable voicing their opinion.
I think it’s something worth thinking about if you are moving the way of Web 2.0 in your organization.
Regular public transit riders are likely familiar with the lineups and too close for comfort encounters that are a part of the daily grind, but don’t worry, your commute is about to get a little brighter - literally. Up until now, tunnels between stations have been in the dark and the one of the only spaces (at least on Toronto’s TTC subway system) free of advertisements, but all this could soon change.
Winnipeg-based Sidetrack Technologies has developed the tools to produce illuminated tunnel advertisements using 360 degree LED strips that combine to create what appears to the rider’s naked eye as video (think flipbook for the 21st century). In the age of Wikinomics, when advertising dominates the public landscape and the captive audience of the TV commercial is no longer available due to downloading, Tivo etc, Sidetrack may have unearthed a goldmine by finding a way to reach one of the last truly captive audiences and the minds of millions of commuters in the world’s largest metropolises. And to think - I figured I had seen it all the last time advertising made it in to the other truly captive space in public life - the washroom.
This new medium will allow Sidetrack to remotely change advertisements on any transit system in the world, based on various metrics including time of day, location and direction into or out of the city’s core. Wonder why you’re craving that Egg McMuffin this morning? Maybe it was the golden arches that followed you throughout the tunnel on your way to work…Worried about your next vacation? Just keep your eye on the plane that’s following you for the latest and greatest travel deals on your way home.
While I applaud the innovative nature of this new medium, within a couple of weeks of seeing it daily, I am pretty sure I would opt for boredom as the better alternative to bombardment, particularly in the morning.
Sidetrack technology is currently in place in the Los Angeles Metro and London’s Underground and it will soon make it’s debut in New York City’s MTA.
Aside:
Subsequent to starting this post, I was on my way home on Toronto’s TTC and I waited no less than 15 minutes in a line at 11pm to purchase a monthly transit pass on my credit card. The TTC has installed facilities where weekly or monthly passes can be purchased using a debit card at 8 of it’s 70 stations and credit at 4 such stations. I find this frustrating given that Canada is one of the world’s heaviest users of debit payment systems and yet Toronto’s transit system offers convenient payment options in just over 10% of it’s stations. There are better systems out there - see London’s Oyster card - that focus not only on rider convenience, but also system efficiency and saving customers money. Hopefully, before joining the age of Wikinomics advertising, Toronto’s TTC will catch up to the 1990s in it’s payment systems.
Thanks to our friend Bruce Stewart for pointing out this article in Slate Magazine which compares Ikea to Facebook — in that there is economic brilliance in getting your customers to do the work for you. From the article:
[The] defining idea behind Wikipedia, Facebook, and blogging platforms such as WordPress is that if you give people the right tools, they’ll use them to create wonderful things in collaboration with each other or with the organization that provides the catalyst.
Facebook, like Ikea—and like Microsoft—has mobilized an army of independent suppliers. In Facebook’s case, they are developers who produce applications that can be plugged into the Facebook platform. In all these cases, the idea is the same: If Facebook (or Ikea) can woo the customers, independent suppliers will be queuing up to help, and if the independent suppliers are queuing up, Facebook (or Ikea) should be able to woo the customers.
Plus, the author, Tim Harford, reminds us of the urban legend that 1 in 10 Europeans were conceived in an IKEA bed. That is a fun stat.
Interesting article today by Carl Bialik in the Wall St. Journal. He illustrates how time-consuming (and unhealthy) it is to participate in Coke’s new frequent-flier-like promotion. Bialik’s column, by the way, is a must-read for those interested in management science.
Amongst his complaints, the program takes too long to enter…
The process of logging into the graphics-heavy Web site and entering a single code took me 55 seconds. I found the cellphone method a bit faster, at 35 seconds. If I were unable to improve on that pace, and I used only 10-point codes from 12-packs and the speedier (but more expensive, under most cellphone plans) text-messaging option, it would take me more than 24 hours of work to win the biggest prizes. That assumes no bathroom breaks related to the 31,200 cans of Coke I would have purchased, of course.
The big prizes are out of reach…
Each 20-ounce bottle of Coke or related brands is worth three points, and each 12-pack of cans contains a code worth 10 points. The “cheapest” items in the rewards catalog include things like a Blockbuster movie rental for 36 points, or a Coca-Cola key tag with bottle opener for 53 points. Plenty of items go for 1,000 points or more — that baseball glove is 1,420 points, and a $110 Sony MP3 player requires 2,600 points, or more than 850 bottles of Coke.
But that’s nothing compared with the biggest prizes, such as a walk-on role in a television show or a family RV vacation. Those require 26,000 points. That translates into a gut-busting 8,667 bottles of Coke, or 2,600 cases.
And the codes (printed in red on a dark background) are far too complicated…
With 26 letters and 10 digits available for each character, there are 221 billion trillion possible codes. If Coke were to use up all of those codes on 20-ounce bottles, the volume of liquid within them would be about 100 times the volume of water in all the Earth’s oceans. Mr. Williamson said the codes help ensure the contest’s security and also allow Coke to track the location of purchases used in the contest.
NOTE: Whoops, I take it back. Please read update at bottom
Ginko Financial just hit its first 100 million in deposits. While the money is in Second Life’s digital currency (Linden $), at today’s exchange rates those deposits are worth $372,500 in real USD currency. While $300k is chump change for any real bank, it’s a surprisingly large amount to put into an entity that includes the following warning on every page of their site, “Ginko Financial and its affiliated businesses are not registered in any way with any governmental organization. Not warrented[sic], guarenteed[sic], or insured.”
The fact that even a modest number of people have chosen Ginko Financial’s buyer-beware virtual bank over a government-insured physical insitution is incredibly interesting. Something unusual is afoot here. Banks might take interest in this development, not because of the miniscule $ amount, but because this unusual home-grown bank illuminates entirely new markets and service possibilities.
UPDATE: Looks like I should’ve read this article by Reuters Second Life first. Sounds like Ginko Financial could be just a Ponzi scheme (a charge denied by the owner). Certainly, claims of 44% annual interest, and the owner being unwilling to disclose his real name, should arouse more than casual suspicion. If this is just another pyramid scheme, the inevitable collapse won’t bode well for future financial experiments in Second Life. Disappointing to say the least. Hopefully banks will NOT pay attention to this particular example/system, but I’d still like to see more exploration of financial service possibilities in SL.
…that discusses whether the trend towards releasing single songs rather than albums will manifest itself in the publishing industry. After all, why buy an entire book if you are interested only in one chapter? Personally, as an avid non-fiction reader, I’ve found that many times I would have preferred a 30 page version of a 200 page book. With fiction, it become a bit trickier. An author (as artist) may resent having his or her work not being presented in its pure form just as AC/DC and Led Zepplin have resisted iTunes because they want their music enjoyed only in the context of the entire album. But perhaps, a reader is only interested in combat scenes, love scenes or the passages where Holmes explains his conclusions to Watson.
Sounds odd? With the power of the long tail, we might be suprised with how people consume content given options and flexibility.
Here is an article written by Ian Harvey which appears in today’s Globe & Mail. It features interviews from various members of the Toronto tech community, myself included.
Many of the predictions are repeats from previous years — location-based services, VoIP, deploying technology to chase the sun, etc.
David Jacobson makes a good point about how firms like Google and Spotrunner are continuing to challenge the printed press.
Some good talk about the future of storage — when will hard drives be completely replaced by portable thumb drives or flash memory cards? On that note… here is my new favorite device; a USB thumb drive made out of wood. Good fashion mashup of sleek laptops and rustic nature.
This reminds me of something a presenter brought up at a conference we ran back in October. One of the presenters was explaining how in North America a successful business deal is defined by winning at your competitions expense. The problem with this mentality is that business is not a one shot deal, it’s a repetitive game, and you need to work with not against those in your business web.
In other cultures a business deal is only successful if both parties are happy. He went on to tell of instances where he witnessed companies go as far as to compensate their business partners if a deal turned out lopsided. The idea that collaborating, or as Russ put it ‘sharing’, can make you more succesful is a dramatic shift for modern business culture and leading companies such as Boeing, BMW and P&G starting to put these concepts to the test.
I’m so impressed with how fast Tom Peters has got all over wikinomics. I met him years ago when we were doing a talk on the same podium. It was a big crowd — 2.000 in a theatre and another 80,000 live broadcast to theatres across the US and Canada. He spoke right after me and was very complimentary of what I had said — and it really struck me at the time that this is a man so confident in his own ideas and shoes that he is able to objectively assess other’s work and support his colleagues as he feels they warrant it. In the sometimes dog-eat-dog works of management consulting gurus his views of colleagues is very refreshing. And for that matter I’m a huge fan of his work and have been for many years.
Nintendo’s legal issues in regards to the Wii controller continue to mount, as law firm Green Welling announced it will be pursuing a class action lawsuit against them in regards to the defective straps. This suit comes just days after Nintendo announced they would voluntary exchange the straps for tougher ones that are about twice as thick if people wanted them. They also appealed to, well, common sense by telling players they “should not let go of the Wii remote itself” and prehaps “take a moment to dry their hands” if they get sweaty. You know, like what you’d do if you were waving anything else around the house like a tennis racket, bat or sword. Maybe if Nintendo agreed to add “beta” to the name of their innovative new product we could put an end to all this legal nonsense?
Harrah’s entertainment is reportedly close to accepting a $16.7 billion buyout from two private equity-firms.
Much of Harrah’s success (it has outperformed its competitors consistently over the past ten years), is due to its adept use of business intelligence.
Harrah’s competes by deploying technology and the new business intelligence in an industry that traditionally depends on instinct. Competing casinos rely on the perceptiveness (and whims) of pit bosses to grant customer premiums (such as hotel rooms, show tickets, gaming chips). Harrah’s loyalty program is based on decision science. Even the hiring of Loveman, an academic without any gaming industry experience, differs from the typical “work your way from the bottom” Las Vegas career path.
Harrah’s executives felt that return on investments in lavish entertainment palaces would dwindle when the next batch of hotels opened. Rather than splashy entertainment centers, Harrah’s focused on a streamlined, standardized operation designed to create outstanding customer service across a wide geographic area.
Harrah’s Total Rewards is similar to a frequent flyer program. Guests collect points on smart cards. Data on game play, win/loss rates, hours of play, and the like are combined with demographic information to provide a detailed profile of each guest’s activities and preferences. In 2000, Harrah’s estimated that 26% of players provided 82% of its revenues; with the average player spending about $2,000 annually, typically in multiple locations Gary Loveman comments (in Fast Company), “Some people like to demean us by saying we’re the Wal-Mart of gaming. I love that. If I can be the Wal-Mart of gaming, I will feel that I’ve done extremely well for my shareholders.”
According to the India Times, the Indian government is putting the final touches on a proposal that will force ISPs (internet service providers) to block VoIP services such as Net2Phone, Vonage, Dialpad, Impetus, Novanet, Euros, Skype and Yahoo.
Sources in India cite the loss of tax revenues and “security concerns” as key reasons for government legislation. Licensed telecommunications companies currently pay a 12% service tax and share a further 6% of their revenue with the government. Unregulated foreign service providers like Skype, by contrast, account for some 30 million minutes of Internet telephony per month but pay nothing to the government.
Will the government crackdown on VoIP services help build a more healthy and dynamic economy in India? It’s hard to see how it can. At best, the use of free Internet telephony services will just go further underground. At worst, commerce overall could suffer as the government focuses on telephony taxes as a revenue source while the cost of communications goes down around the world.
With the recent acquisition of You Tube by online giant Google, the question on many of people’s minds is – what exactly did Google get? At first glance, purchasing a money-loosing video-sharing site does not make much sense. The company is estimated to be hemorrhaging about $500 000 a month and its revenue prospects are iffy. Granted, YouTube is hastily experimenting with various advertising-based business models that could enable it to cash-in on its surging popularity. But will any of it pan out?
Some of the ideas floated so far include placing ads before a clip, “branded channels” and “participatory ads” where users can create, rate, and swap the ads they like. Putting ads before video clips would no doubt annoy users. It would also raise serious questions if YouTube didn’t first find a way to split its ad revenue with the community (i.e., the content providers).
What’s worse, Google’s already steep exposure to copyright lawsuits is rocketing off the charts. Most of the 200 or so video sites on the Web today fly under the radar of the Hollywood content police — their revenues are simply too small to justify a lawsuit. Cash rich Google may not be so lucky. So, it’s no surprise that Google set aside $200 million as a contingency.
Some people called Google crazy. But that theory doesn’t hold water—just look at the financials. You Tube was purchased for 3.66 million Google shares. Between the first rumors of the deal and the closing date one week later, Google gained over $2 billion in market capitalization. Since then, Google gained a further $25 billion. In a way, Google got You Tube for free.
You Tube is now signing major content deals, which would not only bring in revenue, it could put Google at the center of a vast new hub of content creation and dissemination. And that, no doubt, is exactly why Google bought YouTube.
The Dumbest Generation? Have your say. I must first acknowledge my personal bias on this topic...
As a member of the Net Generation research team at nGenera (and a member of said generation myself), I am a firm believer in the tremendous accomplishments and potential of the Net Generation (those born between 1977 and 1997). So, I must say that when I [...]
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