Posted 3 years, 4 months ago mid-afternoon by oso
Arrives at LAX
Looking around the room I saw nothing but trendy pinstripe suits, Banana Republic blue shirts, and $200 haircuts. It looked like Wall Street auditioning for an Apple commercial. I was invited to the first Economics of Social Media conference (EconSM) because of a post I wrote examining how serious online media sites (like Global Voices) can ensure financial self-sufficiency after the first few years of foundation grants and corporate sponsorships. I was skeptical that I’d find an answer, but this seemed like the right place to look. But now, getting settled into my seat as the CEO’s on stage introduced the themes of the conference, I wasn’t so sure. On the second page of the conference booklet was an ad from Yahoo. It read: “socializing for money is usually frowned upon. At Yahoo!, it’s encouraged.”
The night before, I hung out with an old high school friend, D. About 13 years ago we took my parents’ car out and got in big trouble when they returned from vacation a day early, we got chased around Orange County by low-riding gangstas, we figured out how to change our report cards before our parents saw them, we’ve seen each other cry, we’ve been through it all. And those bonds of memory and time keep us together even if we don’t have much in common anymore. D is out to make money; to make money and to have a good time. Los Angeles is perfect for him. As we drove through Hollywood’s lonely weeknight streets looking for a trendy place that still serves food at 11 p.m., he listed off the 50 or so celebrities he’s hung out with since we had last caught up. I recognized a couple names.
“It’s all about who you know and how many people you can email.” He was explaining his new business: selling vendor booths at a lifestyle expo he’s organizing. “And then of course, you’ve got to get some real celebrity speakers. They call them magnet speakers, because once they’re booked, then everyone else wants to come too.”
D is a master at networking. He never forgets a name, nor a face, nor a biographical detail. In all honesty, he probably remembers more about my life than I do. And using MySpace, email, IM, and text messaging, he’s been able to build a huge mental database of the right people for all the right situations. Just in the few hours I was with him, he was able to raise $8,000 from friends to help fund a small food booth at Coachella that might make $10k in profit over a single weekend.
Session One: CEO’s Speak Up:
Rafat Ali | Barak Berkowitz | Michael Birch | Tariq Krim | Richard Rosenblatt
‘Bubble 2.0‘ everyone is calling it. The Internet bust (which, thank god, made rental prices in the Bay Area somewhat reasonable again) is fresh in everyone’s mind. The difference now, of course, is that some online websites are starting to make money: MySpace, Facebook, WordPress, MovableType, and the dozens of others that have been bought out by either Google or Yahoo. Twitter is clearly the latest success story and it will most likely be sold to some larger online company for an overvalued amount. The thinking goes, get the huge userbase first and try to figure out a way to make money off it later.
Much of the first session’s conversation focused on widgets and digital identity. Observers have noticed that internet users like to have one central place for their online profile. For the majority of people, that central place is either Facebook or MySpace. For others, like myself, it’s their personal blog. But the point is, we all want a “digital home.” Widgets than give us a way to import our other online activities (our pictures, music, movies, books) onto our main profile page. One speaker called MySpace the ‘new college dorm wall’ where we try to assert our identity with digital versions of college dorm posters.
Session Two: Social Media Meets Marketing:
Jimmy Gutterman | Simon Assaad | John Battelle | Shawn Gold | Tina Sharkey | Rishad Tobaccowala
It’s interesting that the question of ethics never entered the conference discussion. There was no question of whether viral/conversational marketing was acceptable or not, the question was how to measure it and what to pay for it. As one panelist put it, comparing viral marketing to Google Ads, “so far, no one has developed an algorithm for conversation.”
Two of the panelists seemed like more than just marketing talking heads. John Battelle, author of The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, is someone I’ve come across lots of times. Rishad Tobaccowala isn’t, but his arguments about how established corporations should embrace new media struck me as sensible.
Marketing departments of major corporations like to think that they are solely responsible for the reputation of their products. The logo they chose, the colors they used, the brilliant marketing campaign with 18-year-old models in low-riding jeans. They dictate the personality of a product, which makes consumers want to buy it.
But Tobaccowala (which, interestingly, means “tobacco seller” in Hindi) tried to reframe the conversation. “The most important part of marketing is listening to your customers.” Indeed, why do companies need to tell their customers anything? Why can’t they just listen to them? Battelle added, “no one owns a brand, but companies’ marketing departments are their ‘chief conversationalists’ – engage your supporters and answer your critics and detractors.”
This is exactly what Doc Searls has been saying for years now. Fortunately, newer, younger companies are starting to get it, which eventually will force the old giants to adapt if they want to stay competitive. As Tobaccowala put it, ‘most companies don’t need marketers any more; they are already self-marketing, we just facilitate that.’
The conversation then turned to SecondLife, which all the panelists agreed is, so far, a bunch of hype. One panelist said that Second Life is usually empty except for marketers. I was immediately reminded of Jose’s post about Second Life Brazil – it seemed crowded out with advertisers before any sense of community or purpose could be established.
Social Media Meets Hollywood:
Staci K. Kramer | Ilene Chaiken | Alan Citron | Carson Daly | David Eun | George Kliavkoff
The tone for this session was immediately set. A bunch of experienced TV insiders were going to let us in on how they’re trying to integrate their programming with the Internet. Carson Daly was apparently the stock celebrity who lectured about how the Internet is the most accessible and searchable talent agency. He explained that he has booked bands to his show after just discovering them on MySpace and that encouraging viewers to get more information online doesn’t take them away from the TV set, but rather, gets them coming back. NBC ‘Chief Digital Officer’ George Kliavkoff also focused on “creating a cycle between the computer and the living room sofa.” I’m not much of a television watcher myself, but I have seen others go to the internet at commercial break to get more info about a particular episode and then come back to the TV.
All of the panelists kept lauding the fact that any Joe Schmoe can make a song or YouTube video, put it up on the Internet and get seen by someone ‘as important as Carson Daly.’ How it is so great that there is this new stepping stone between the ordinary masses and the stars of Hollywood.
Then, finally, someone asked the exact question that I was about to: “You are all talking about the internet as though it’s nothing but a big audition space to get on TV or radio. Do any of you see the Internet as its own medium which is a threat to TV and Radio?” Open Source Radio likes to call itself a “weblog with a radio show” and I really think we’re going to see well-produced programming move in that direction over the next 10 years. The internet is, frankly, much cooler than TV, radio, and print and has much more room for advancement.
My hope is that the notion of celebrity and fame will also change; that less people will do anything to be famous for 15 minutes and more people will work hard for what David Weinberger calls “being famous for 15 people.”
Social Media Meets News:
Tad Smith | Vivian Schiller | Rich Skrenta | Ken Stern | Kara Swisher
Again, with the possible exception of Topix Co-Founder Rich Skrenta, these were all media insiders discussing their experiences with the web. The ballroom was mostly empty as all the cool kids were in the parallel “Social Media Meets Music” session.
This was the most relevant session to my own work and interests, but I found little of value as most of the discussion focused on the same rehashed topics that have been talked to death over the past few years. Journalism vs. blogging, will newspapers survive, is their a place for quality content on the web, will reporters find new jobs, etc.
There were few answers and many shrugs, but Ken Stern did make the point that “it’s a good time to be in non-profit journalism, which is why everyone is discussing it as a model for journalism.” Indeed, the costs of running a media outlet are falling to very little while philanthropic and corporate sponsors are excited about the idea of innovative online journalism and all the free marketing that comes with it.
One of these days I’d like to see a conference session specifically discuss the repercussions of having media outlets funded by foundations rather than the market.
Which is to say:
There were two other sessions to close the day: “Social Media Meets Mobile Media,” which made the very obvious and apt point that the next space for social media is the cell phone, and “Social Media Meets Deals,” which set the stage for the real reason most people were at the conference – to get investing for what they believe will become the next MySpace. Unfortunately, my computer stopped working just then and I lost my notes for those two sessions.
The conference was very well produced with lots of flashy lights, tech assistants, and free stuff. There was nothing of the amateurish mistakes that characterize most blogger conferences. And that’s probably because this wasn’t a blogger’s conference. This was a place for media insiders, most of whom have taken to the net because it’s been good for their careers. Dozens of times throughout the day I heard the annoying use of ‘eyeballs’ to describe the millions of internet users just like you and me who pay for services like Flickr via subscriptions or pay for services like MySpace by creating content which then attracts advertisers.
Which brings us to an entire other level of questions. Is it OK for sites like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and WordPress.com to make lots of money for content that they didn’t produce?
Steven makes a very persuasive argument that we shouldn’t be uploading our text, photos, music, and other creative works to for-profit websites because we’re making them money off our work. But then, don’t those companies deserve to make some profit for the time they’ve put into developing websites and tools and for paying the hosting and bandwidth fees? And what about for users who don’t want to take the time to learn how to build their own website or who don’t have the money to pay the $10 a month that most hosting services charge? Don’t these websites make self-publishing easier and more accessible to more people?
A criticism can also be made of Global Voices. Much of the value of the website comes from the unpaid bloggers we quote and translate and the daily contributions from our volunteer authors. While we’ve been wanting to pay those contributing authors for some time now, the money hasn’t yet come from sponsors to make that a reality.
What we’re starting to see now is a middle tier of websites pop up, giving users more control over how they want to publish their text, music, photos, and video. For example, a freelance documentary filmmaker could publish her film on YouTube for free and get lots of exposure, but not make any money. Or she could create her own website, stream the video so that it’s not pirated and run ads to make a profit. Or, as a middle ground, she could use a service like Revver to publish and host her documentary for free and share profits. Of course, she has less control about how the video is displayed and she makes less of a percentage on the ad revenue, but the benefits might outweigh those factors.
Beyond Broadcast
To borrow a phrase, we are way ‘beyond broadcast.’ Now anyone can make compelling content – be it text, photography, music, audio, or video – and distribute it in various ways. TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers still have the largest audiences, but the internet, mp3 players, cell phones, and outdoor multimedia displays are gaining leverage as the endpoints of content creation. The people who are making the money are the ones who are situating themselves between the content creators and the content consumers, or, as they see it, between the fingers on a keyboard and the eyes on a screen.
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Tried to leave an audio comment but Software Update was eating up my bandwidth. Please elaborate on what you mean by “free stuff”.
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Remember how I was telling you that I needed to find the right bag to hold both my camera and laptop? No longer.
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I usually cringe when I see a post with “Social Media” in the title, but this was great.
- The monetization of
socialauthentic media is the digital equivalent of media consolidation. Yahoogle (Goohoo?) don’t deny it – “Um, yeah… we’re kinda just all about the money.” Online media is still the domain of those who would build the web and its media structure vertically instead of horizontally.Walk into a cafe with free wifi, or look at a random cross-section of members on Flickr or Youtube, or even
youran average Twitter buddy list. Odds are, you’ll find upper-middle-class whites making up the lion’s share of all these groups – a continuation of the class and economic segregation (not just in the US) that dates back well past either of our memories. Sure, you’ll find the occasional powerful photo from a Peruvian photo journalist or a quick videophone post of riots in Kampala, but they’re the exception to the rule – and they’ve been around in National Geographic for much longer.- Global Voices transcends much of this, IMNSHO, by its very raison d’être. But for all intents and purposes (and this is not a reflection on the authors themselves nor on Global Voices, but on the realities of such massive online media projects), the editors still fit nicely into that aformentioned pie chart, representing upper-middle-class population in their respective countries. This persistent social stratification is probably one of the most pressing – and disturbing – problems I’ve seen carried over to online media. Real True Verdadero Authentic Media is unedited, unfiltered, raw and messy… it’s not always something that people want to read, and it isn’t necessarily the best way to go about attracting sponsors and grants. The Holy Grail is always to get ‘boots on the ground’ providing outreach, advocacy, media and technology literacy and training, as well as building partnerships and coalitions in order to reach the broadest media producer base possible. All that, of course, takes money… but 100$ can stretch much further in Managua or Hanoi than most people seem to think. And Fidel Castro did something similar, on a very large scale, and with volunteers – 45 years ago.
- A digital home (your blog, etc), like a real home, is only worth the time you spend in it. If you spend all your time crashing at your friend’s pad with his big HDTV and free beer (Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, etc.), your own home starts to look a little unappealing. Before you know it, you move in with your buddy – along with about 8 million other friends. Personally, I’ve grown
reluctantunwilling to outsource my digital identity to Yahoo and Google. This past week I’ve eaten my own dog food and closed nearly all of my “Web Two-Point-Oh” accounts – flickr, twitter, myspace, facebook – the whole lot. Though I now feel incredibly liberated about the whole deal, I’m the first to admit that it’s a very disorienting / unsettling feeling initially… scary, even, since my lifeblood is the web, and I make a living off of providing web services and ’selling’ my digital identity. All the traffic, crosslinks, search hits, and crossposting changes will definitely be noticeable. You could say I’ll be “staying at my digital home” more often – all the more reason to deck it out with that new HDTV and minibar.- Second Life is owned and managed by Linden Labs – a company. Ergo, Second Life is not a community, but a customer base, rendering it useless to me. The irony of this trend of privatization of communities leaves me numb; the fact that no one seems to care leaves me fuming.
- You said:
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That’s true, but it seems that the panel you wrote that about sees the Internet as somewhere with much more room for advertisement, instead.
- Thanks, but my arguments aren’t nearly persuasive enough.
Do companies deserve making profit? Of course, perhaps, and no way – depending on who you ask. Lots of profit, some profit, and no profit, none and all of the above. These companies were built on open-source tools. Where would Google be without Linux? It wouldn’t exist. Apache? MySQL? PHP? Twitter without Rails? These tools were all developed outside of the boundaries of the market, and that’s what makes them so special. These ginormous companies take more from (and owe more to) the open source community in a day than they’ve given back over their lifetimes – a few ‘crumbs gathered under thy table’ notwithstanding. Like you pointed out, our challenge now is to build tools that are Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger than what they’ve already got there. Or cheaper and easier to use, whatever. The idea is to fight laziness and apathy and get people involved in building their own digital homes and identities.
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Like Jules mentioned a couple months ago, conferences like this usually get held up by the fact that they 1.) try to establish insider jargon and 2.) spend hours arguing over exact definitions. That was also true of this conference. Almost every panel came back to the question of “what is social media.”
I agree with you that the term is kinda annoying. I’d probably try to define it myself as any “one to many” form of communication, be it posting a photo on Flickr, a message on Twitter, or a blog posting. But then, like you point out, all media are “one to many” and the fact that more people are involved in producing it shouldn’t necessarily relegate it to another genre.
I agree with you completely about the ideal of creating our own, independent media outlets with agreed-upon standards so that they can interact with the same nifty social features offered by web 2.0 companies. But the fact is, that’s hard to do. And when I go to your site I see links to your content on YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv, Flickr, delicious, and Technorati. (not to mention the eight bookmarking services each post links to). But I don’t see anything linking to your FOAF profile or your XFN data. We’re a long way off from the horizontal web my friend and unless those those tools are just as easy to use as the services provided by Yahoogle, I don’t think it will happen.
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Thank you for reporting on this.
As a content creator (video shorts, photography), I’ve made the decision to go for audience by using open licenses on YouTube and Flickr. My purpose in making art isn’t about making money (and usually when it is, it seems to lose its core). Part of it is that the effort it would take to market my own work can’t return any profit (lets take that as a reflection on the art market, not that my stuff sucks).
I think it’s completely reasonable that companies make money for providing services free to users. To have real control over ones personal site, you have recurring payments for domain and hosting. And I don’t generate enough traffic to recoup those costs in sensibly placed google ads. You, on the other hand, probably could.
The interesting part to me is the journalistic side. News makers know they need to get “2.0″ but know one seems to have a proven “how to” list for them, so they’re all taking stabs at it. It seems like news organizations need to figure out how to open the doors to the public, letting them produce/report stories and pay them for it, like freelancing. It would be great to see the huge corporations get that amateurish quality that community stations have, because broadcast audiences like seeing ‘real’ people.
What will this blog look like in 10 years?
In 10 years, will non-trained people be performing journalistic acts with their [ insert name of future personal media device that can broadcast via broadband ] on the side of the road as the first person on-scene of an accident? TV stations would love that footage. Where will those clips go? Will a site collect them and license them? Will the company that manages the [ insert name of device ] create personalized uploads pages and host all the media?
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That’s true – but note that a) the links don’t actually point anywhere offsite; they were simply aggregated feeds coming from those services and b) none of them have been updated in quite a while.
It’s relevant to mention here that they are relics from an idea I had wherein I would use all these other services (‘digital neighbours’) to link back / fork to to my own personal site (‘digital home’). All of my flickr posts had a link back to my blog or local photo gallery to “read more”, etc.
This ties in with conversations I’ve been listening to on ‘revolutionary theory’ – I used to think that we could appropriate / utilize the existing web infrastructure (even if it is corporate-controlled) to achieve our goals (in this case, horizontal distribution of software and hardware information resources) instead of ignoring them and/or tearing them down. Lately, I’ve been leaning towards the latter. That’s why I ditched them, and why those links on my site will soon disappear.
Hmm… and I thought I was the pessimist here.
Yeah, you’re right – we are a long way, and it will be hard to do. But was anything ever worth doing quick and easy?
I agree. That’s why I’m so encouraged by projects and ideas like Open Usability, Open Source Web Design, Open Access to digital scholarly resources (in my mind, one of the most critical debates for the future of the entire human race), and emerging open hardware projects like the Open Source Car or OS Hardware. The driving force behind open source software (to which we owe the Internet as we know it today) is starting to be applied to domains like interface usability, graphic design, and hardware. All this should help in the push to make our own “horizontal web” tools to rival Yagle.
Nathan,
So you ‘create content’? You’re not a producer, or a photographer? When someone asks Quentin Tarantino or Justin Timberlake what they do, do they respond, “I create content”? No, they are ‘directors’ and ‘musicians’.
Yahoo and Google want you to feel like a “content creator”, but the truth is you’re much, much more than that. Don’t sell yourself short.
I can understand that the purpose of real art is never to make money. But if someone somehow has access to the net, I’d wager that they can afford the 5 bucks a month for hosting and 10 bucks a month for a domain name.
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Sorry, that should ready ‘10 bucks a year’.
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Interesting post and discussion. I find myself on the far end of the digital home, a digital homebody. I’d rather not have to deal with all the crap around hosting my own site, but I want all my junk in one location. Some of that is ease of use. But ultimately, I don’t really trust a company to manage my content, even though they would probably do a much better job of it.
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David,
great, informative post. audio comment didnt work for me either.
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To extrapolate on my concerns with other folks hosting my junk – I wouldn’t want Microsoft managing my photos & pushing new user agreements, but thats exactly what might happen – if I had my stuff on flickr. Even if I trust a company for the short term, they can be bought out, change their policies, or simply go under.
I’m at risk of that for my hosting, and have been bitten before, but it has been a fairly seamless transition from backups to new host when that happens.
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Steven,
Like I said, I agree with you completely and for the next couple years I’ll be doing all I can to spread the use of open source tools for content creation and production. However, while GIMP, Audacity, and Jahshaka are great, they’re not installed in most internet cafes around the world. I’d like to see open source programmers start moving to the web and thinking offering online image, audio, and video production tools.
ChrisN,
Can you imagine how pissed off the old school del.icio.us and Flickr users are going to be if those sites become Microsoft owned?
Ndesanjo,
Thanks for stopping by. I’m attaching an audio comment to this to see if it works. Sometimes the uploading goes really slow for me too.
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Steven,
I only said “content creator” because it was a shorter way to say photographer, filmmaker, writer, artist, etc. But I see what you’re saying, nonetheless. Feature film (Tarantino) and music (Timberlake) are solidly established and extremely commercial formats today, so it makes me ask, “What kind of online “content” (meaning interactive slideshows, podcasts, Flash animation, etc) will establish itself as commercially viable?”
ChrisN,
I agree 100% with you in philosophy, but am willing to compromise for the time being. Maybe I’m a sellout
but Flickr has facilitated a lot of rewarding sharing (lots of comments, encouraging interactions, networking, etc). I use Creative Commons licenses for everything, and it’s allowed my stuff to travel. Today, I took a couple minutes to count up all the different venues that have opened just from Flickr:
I’ve been published on CNET.co.uk, an online publication at MIT, a student magazine in Sweden, a travel book, an exhibition in Spain, another in New Zealand, a German magazine, four requests to NowPublic.com, two independant documentary films, a non-profit magazine in Washington, a corporate office in Tijuana, and a community publication in New Jersey. My only financial gain was $150 from the corporate office in Tijuana. I got a request from Travel Girl Magazine (commercial publication that didn’t fit my CC license) but they weren’t willing to pay so I said “no.”
Oso,
At the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute arts department, there was talk about migrating away from Final Cut, Protools, etc and to only teach using open source programs. I don’t know how much progress they’ve made in the past few years, but it seemed like an honorable goal. Someone needs to fund a non-profit think tank to solve all these problems
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