The Work Web Vs. The Play Web

He managed to alienate most of the IT community in his first major book "Does IT Matter?" He was mostly right, and that hurts industry when they have to face a truth. Now he's comparing the "electrification" of the US (and subsequently the world as he seems to neglect this thing called the "WORLD Wide Web", but I digress...he makes some salient points, mainly that the Web is (or pretty much has) become another utility, the Information Utility.

One area I've been thinking about, even prior to this book coming out, is how we divide our time, and what this means for the 90-Second Economy. Time, like information, is becoming increasingly valuable. With more products and an increasing amount of complexity to living, we need to better manage information just to live reasonably sane lives. It doesn't help that corporations and arguably news media, have created a greater sense of "urgency" in their messages. This is another topic.

If ones considers a taxonomy of time-resource allocation and applies a similar taxonomy to the Web, I think we're going to end up with two primary phylum's for the Web; Work and Play. Essentially, this is how we live our lives; what we do for a living and what we do to play (which includes family and special interests or hobbies.)

As we shift the burden of processing and storage over to larger companies that provide the central office/storage equipment and applications, we will increasingly do more work inside the browser. Knowledge workers will operate inside the browser.

So how will that affect how we "play" online? already we can do limited image editing (moving and still) inside the browser, and text of course, is easy. Sound is progressing as well. I think it will be 5-7 years before we can do anything more sophisticated, especially highly processor intensive activities like film-editing at broadcast quality.

But my thought is that eventually, this Web thing will become more utilitarian. The Romance of the Web will fade ( a challenge with mobile connected devices is batteries, which puts dampers on processing capacity) and the excitement and buzz that comes from a new app like Facebook will fade. It's a tough place for serious developers and companies - the innovation expectation, from the public and VC's will be tremendous.

As we become more guarded for our "attention" it will take much more "wow" to get enough of a market to give you a level of attention that equals profits, and I mean Economic Profit, not Shareholder Value. Right now, most Web 2.0 firms can be happy with 200K+ users paying a few bucks a month or driving ad sales, but over the longer term, this model may provide only a modest income. Not the kind of returns a VC wants.

And if we use the Web a lot at work, will we really want to play on the Web during our off-hours? Perhaps the evolution of the TV will change this? I don't quite know how, but the way we play on the Web will change. Devices will change, perhaps we will carry two types of mobile device - one for work and one for play?

Are you at "play" as you read this? Or at work? Or is it play at work?

Chumby for the Attention Economy

Another device in the Attention Economy fray - the Chumby. Could it be the "pet rock" of the new millenium? It's another Internet appliance in a long line of failed Internet appliances like the MSN Internet Companion, the Netpliance i-Opener (now relegated to the Web Failures Hall) etc. I recall working on an appliance in 2000 with Intel; it never made it to market.

The Chumby is all about the connected world, and goes to support the rising theory of the Web being the newest utility alongside water and electricity. If the Web is truly becoming our "information utility", then the Chumby is simply an appliance to deliver more information.

But where does it sit in terms of practical use? It is built on an open source framework, and it operates more as a Widget appliance, enabling developers to create widgets for it. The widgets push what I call RapidInfo to you such as weather, sports updates, traffic etc., and Long Form Info, such as movies and Podcasts as well. You can connect your iPod.

As a testament to the 90-Second Economy (copyright to me, thanks), you can add Twitter and Facebook or MySpace updates. Great. Funwall posts and Friend requests at 3AM. I can get the same (but choose not to) on my Crackberry or iPod Touch. While I think the Chumby is more a curiosity at this stage, it is another device closer to showing how we are going to be dealing with information in the coming years. It's just packaged in a more "toss around the house" kind of way.

To me it's a rather unessential piece of plastic that no doubt will be of more interest to Tweens and the under 30 generation...or those with a need for constant info feeds or what I term "Validation Desirants" whom constantly need validation they exist by heavy participation in social media and friend circles. The Chumby also tries to take a spot in a persons "resource allocation" space for their attention. Certainly it becomes yet another push channel for marketers to content with. Segmentation of users for this product, should it become popular, will not be viable for at least another 12-24 months.

It may just be cute enough to get a spot on the coffee table or kitchen counter. Jury is out still for me, but something tells me this device might just make it, even if no one is quite sure what the value proposition is. This makes it rather a curiosity for the 90-second economy.

The Failure of 1 to 1 Marketing in the 90-Second Economy

Finally. The Enterprise was going to implement a massive software and hardware solution, gear up the database and feed the machines massive amounts of data. Then suddenly they would be forging instant deep relationships with customers. That 20% that drives 80% of the revenues would become inextricably bound to their products.

But then there was the Field Sales Team, The Call Centre, The Customer Service Team, Purchasing Department. Then the ERP needed to be included and upgraded. More desktop apps for IT to implement, then training...and then employee turnover. But marketing barreled ahead. The Executive remained poised, the Board ready for the reports.

In broader terms, perhaps the 1 to 1 concept has helped. But I use the word "broader" with intent. For the key failure of 1 to 1 is the concept of the corporation, the business. Can a "corporation" which is made up of many individuals that must work together to produce, sell and deliver a product be considered "one"? And can all of those people ever hope to really come close to "one" person?

The "one" person is buying a product, but what is the nature of the product? Buying a product as an individual means you are taking time to assess, then purchase, use and evaluate the product. In each of these steps a person is determinig the amount of "time" they will allocate. All this varies by product. Shampoo for instance, has a shorter attention span than a laptop. I use my MacBook every single day, sometimes for hours, sometimes for a few minutes. 12 years of using a Mac and I still love working on it. I've gone through a lot of shampoo, I'll go through a lot more, but I allocate little time to that product, and I switch brands constantly. Just because. And I'm a male. I digress.

This is the 90-second economy. In that sense, it's all about the initial impact a company makes on an individual, then the subsequent amount of time I am willing to associate with that product. A company employing 1 to 1 strategies will engage with someone dependent upon the amount of "attention" the buyer/user feels is valuable to associate with the product or service. The concept of 1 to 1 marketing fails to take the concept of "time" and "attention" into account. In addition, "many" can't really have an effective relationship with one.

All 1 to 1 marketing has done is to enable the development of intelligent databases that can move a customer file across multiple departments to ideally allow for better management of a customer account. Some have done that well, others not so much. But this is hardly "1 to 1" it is "many to 1".

How The Web Affects Our Future Relationships

For those of us above 35 years of age (sadly that includes me by a hair...or less) we can look back at the early days of the Web and Boom 1.0 and recall how it enabled us to connect with so many of our old school friends and find past professional associates and well, start new conversations. It was the basis of a still, if not more so relevant book, the Clue Train Manifesto. It was exciting to reconnect. Perhaps one of the first to truly become a mainstay was Classmates.com by reconnecting schools. I think Classmates is somewhat irrelevant now what with MySpace and facebook, both of which are free, and easier to use.

My point, before I digress, is that with the 35+ generation, we enjoyed "reconnecting" and starting whole new conversations and finding all new connections. Suddenly, a new world of possibilities opened up to us. Still now, 11 years after Boom 1.0 was kicking into high-gear and Web 1.0 was barely 2-way, the majority of people online have secondary educations and are older in a higher income bracket. Yet youth are online more and more.

I think of my 17 yr old daughter and how will they be dealing with the Web when they get into their 30's? It won't be novel anymore. It will be more pervasive, and likely much more integrated to our daily lives. How we will process and use information will have changed.

I believe that for the most part, the Web and the "concept" of what the Web "is" to society, is still a novelty. In 10 more years, it will no longer be a novelty, it will be part of our society in work and home life.

This also means that whatever our kids do today, will be around in years to come. But how will that impact the relationships they form in school? Most of us in the past who are over 35, lost touch with a lot of high-school and university friends. Life happened. We moved around, started a family and traveled. Then suddenly we could reconnect and well, it was just way cool.

So what's going to be so cool for the next generation? How will staying in touch impact the way relationships are formed and evolve? Will people stay friends longer? Will it impact the way jobs are found and held? The relationships we have with our work experiences and the people we connect with at various stages in our life will fundamentally change. But how?

Time to think about that one for a while.

How Will We Be Paid For Our Attention?

Mobile devices (Blackberry, OQO and iPhone, iPod Touch) and laptops everywhere. Apple TV and home media servers, WiFi Hot Spots, home WiFi, mobile satellite radio and satellite radio at home. Satellite radio and GPS in our cars or on your hip. Even a Blackberry with GPS, music and video capability. I'm trying to figure out where exactly the iPod Touch fits in with the whole thing, but it's there and I have one. Although my 30Gb third gen iPod is now the family music library.

This is the attention economy. These devices are just indicators of how fragmented media has become. And how fragmented it will continue to be. Add in well over 7,000 Web 2.0 applications and counting, DVR's and changes in television viewing habits and that most connected people have at least 2 email accounts. It's a mess.

Seems few corporations can get the eyeballs of the masses, and if you can, you've really got a money maker and a mass market.

Given that demands ever growing on our time, it really shows that our attention may really be becoming more of a currency than cash. Marketers still look too much to obtain the "mass market", but that doesn't work anymore. The Attention Economy means going to segmented markets. Marketing in those channels that reach your segment brings greater economic success I think. I'm wondering how our "attention" as a resource, with more and more content and channels, will become more of a "value item" to marketers in the future.

How will companies pay me for my time resource, to get my attention? How will that turn business models on their head?

Economic of Movie Downloads: A Shift

Last year when Shrek 3 was released for sale 3 million copies sold in the first three days. That's 11 pertabytes of data. Consumers complain still of download times, broken downloads and final quality of image. Some PC's and Macs have had trouble opening movies downloaded via BitTorrent, which became legit recently. In some cases this is DRM issues and in others poor download quality. Even Apple has had download issues.

I don't think the Web can handle this traffic. In fact, I think we've hit an issue with the Web and how that relates to some of the things we want to do. Physics and the cost of storage and the cost of network upgrades and maintenance start to figure in, though I haven't really done the math. For movies to be regularly downloadable on a viable economic scale, a number of peices of the puzzle have to be maintained.

NetFlix has done reasonably well, but the common complaint seems to be around never being able to actually get to your wish list of movies or that it just takes so long that your secondary list becomes the primary movie list. Now we have Blu-Ray and people investing in fortunes for HD TV's.

Here's an interesting company that I think may succeed: PortoMedia. Why? At first glance it may seem a transitional medium, perhaps a 2-5 year lifespan. I don't think so, at least not until technology can increase the transmission rate and quality of media and ensure consistent quality standards across multiple devices.

PortoMedia uses a proprietary Flash drive (this may be a weak link in the chain, and is the risk factor) that you can slap a movie into in 6-60 seconds. You then connect the drive to your iPod, PC, Mac or even TV. And the movie expires when it's supposed to and you can't copy it.

I believe it has legs in consumer terms since it is reusable, lasts over multiple uses and fits in with standard consumer patterns anyway. Granted, building out a network of kiosks is a challenge, scalability being at issue, and the issue of gaining consumer comfort. May work better when I can plug my MP3 device right into it. But it has legs.

It may be many years yet until we can see even fatter broadband pipes into our homes. There are limits. And if fatter broadband can't be delivered wirelessly, then we again face the "last 100 feet" issue that Cable and DSL have barely solved today. Broadband DSL and Cable have been available for 10 years and are only just now becoming pervasive, and then there's processor issues...anyway, I think ProtoMedia has something special.

Now for competition...or will it be an Oligopoly?

Radar to Friends

I've posted a number of times regarding how "images" are taking an increased role in how we communicate. The ages old statement that "a picture is worth a thousand words" as tired as it is, just keeps getting reinforced. And with Radar this hits home even harder.

It's simple really. Just take a picture with your mobile device and email it or send it to your Radar account...all the people on your list will instantly receive that image. They can then comment on it. As it's your peer network receiving the image, you know they'll see it and comment. You've got their attention and this is likely a 90-second event in ones day (receive, view, comment.)

Yet another communication tool pushing for our attention and closing the loop on how we communicate. Once video clips or audio or a mix of audio, video, still images comes together, this will become an even more powerful tool.

As collaboration abilities increase and we incorporate the blend of audio, text and image into our messages, then we'll see some even more fundamental changes in how we work and play. That's my next blog.