Author: elias (Page 13 of 27)

15 great people I met in America

April 14, 2009 / elias

On March 2nd, I departed Australia for a six week tour in the United States of America. I spent three days in LA, two weeks in San Francisco, a week in Austin, three days in Boston, a week in New York, a week in Miami, and a weekend in Vegas. Sadly, I’m writing this at the airport for my flight back to Sydney.

It was part vacation and part career development. The two weeks with my three best friends from Australia partying with me in New York, Miami and Vegas was an experience in itself. But that wasn’t the catalyst for this trip: I knew all these people in the industry but had never actually met them. I ended up getting a lot more than I bargained for.

Rather than self-indulgently recount my trip here and views of this amazing country, I thought I would do something more useful. Below I highlight some cool people I met, who you should aim to meet one day. Meeting quality people is not an easy thing – I’ve now got 15 you can hunt down and stalk.

There are certainly a lot more people I want to mention, but for the sake of your attention span and my limited battery at the airport, here are a few. They are in my eyes, all people to watch – some are just starting out, other’s are well established. But either way, there was something that made me click when I spoke to these people.

Best workaholic: Brady Brim DeForest

The workaholic tag is not something I drop on someone lightly because I am one of the biggest workaholics I know. But Brady redefines the word, and the fact he limits his sleep to only a few hours to get it all done, is proof. I’ve been working with Brady for a year on various things, but only met him for the first time now.

Looking at all the projects he is involved with gives you an understanding why he’s so impressive. Things as diverse as owning an art gallery, being a judge for the Oscars, lobbying for sustainable food practices, and have founded multiple efforts in technology that have made him wealthy in all senses of the word. For example, Kodak has an ad boasting that they were a sponsor of the Streamy’s on Times Square – a thing Brady started this year. He is 25, and he has more experience than people twice his age.

Biggest change agent: David Recordon

I’ve come across Dave a lot because things I work on in the DataPortabiliy Project overlaps with what he does. We had never actually interacted, but we knew each other existed from afar. But what blew me away was actually meeting him and getting an insight into his personality.

Dave is influencing the future of the web more than anyone else on this list…and yet he is only 23. I feel inspired to know that people are creating a better future that you don’t even know about; are passionate – and for the right reasons. I know enough about Dave because of his open source reputation in the industry: but I only recently found out about his attitude. Which is why he is on this list.

Biggest wise guy: Steve Greenberg

Steve has become one of my mentors in life, where we have spent hours arguing about things, and him telling me how I need to evolve with my future. He’s the main reason I did this trip, but the ironic thing is that we had never met up until now. I don’t need to talk up Steve – the fact I regard him a mentor to influence me, should communicate more than you need to know.

Most successful person I knew but didn’t know that I got to know: Naval Ravikant

Quite randomly, I ended up meeting and getting drunk with Naval, having some of the best food in San Francisco (thanks mate!). The funny thing is, I had no idea who he was (I thought he was just a friend of Steve’s), but after I checked him up, I realised I had spent an evening with one of the bigger people in the industry.

For example, in Australian tech circles, Venturehacks is considered one of the top blogs for entrepreneurs to track. I knew Venturehacks. But I didn’t know Naval was the person behind it!

He has started 15 companies before (and is he still only in his thirties). And I’m not talking about some little venture that put’s up a pretty website and that’s it – but the kind that make the headlines in technology. Like Epinions – one of the hottest company acquisitions in recent years. He has phenomenal investments in companies like Twitter and Vast – the former considered the hottest company in the industry and the latter what I think is the hottest company in the industry (but that nobody realises yet…sorry, can’t say why I think that).

Best thinker: Jonathan Vanasco

Jonathan is an entrepreneur from New York that I’ve talked with before and finally met recently for the first time. The guy is whip-smart, done a lot, and level headed. I learned more from an evening with Jonathan than I did in a semester at university. He’s probably spending a bit too much time on lawsuits with Google, but seriously, is a brilliant mind. Nothing more needs to be said.

Best ‘holy-crap-dude-I didn’t-realise-you-had-achieved-that-much-in-your-life’: Steve Repetti

Steve’s another guy I’ve worked with a lot in the last year, but had never met or actually knew that well. We caught up in between my hangovers in Miami, and I honestly was floored by what he has done and is doing. He’s successfully started and run companies – validated by the wealth he now has. He’s worked in a variety of roles, including being CTO of listed companies to running virtual corporations.

Understanding his history, how he recreated his life, and how he thinks about the future with his company is why I’ve added him here. The guy is brilliant. And I can’t believe after knowing him for so long, I only realised that once we had a beer. Hold on – no that sounds right – beer is the solution to everything.

Best drunk conversation: Gabe Rivera

Speaking of beer, I challenged Gabe to drinking with Aussies at SXSW, but we never ended up meeting. And then we ended up getting both invited to an Aussie party in San Francisco, which he dropped by to follow up on my challenge. We had a great chat, and I got some really good insight into things by Gabe. And it might have been just one drunk conversation over a few hours, but it was enough to make me realise how he thinks and what he’s passionate about.

Ok, so what? Well Gabe was recognised by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential people on the WebBest sober conversation: Devin Holloway

Devin is someone I would regularly talk to on the phone about…the future. I know, it sounds a bit random, but we did and holy crap we came up with some cool ideas. We came across each other a year ago, found we had similar thoughts about things, and we’ve since kept in touch because we challenge each other and think about things.

And yes, we finally met! With a background in sales, Devin is another guy in his 20s that’s getting broad experience and will be the type of guy that people wonder how do successful executives like that get made.

Best lunch conversation: Bill Washburn

I randomly sat next to Bill at a lunch, and had an amazing chat about the industry. He’s had a very distinguished background in technology both in education and private practice, and he oozed with wisdom about things. He gave me perspective on things that I’ve spent months trying to work out!

Yes, there is a trend here: I’ve listed people who I consider highly intelligent, motivated, and experienced. There is actually another dozen people I want to include, but it’s time we end the procession of males and now highlight women who are under-recognised.

The women
A disappointing thing is that a lot of the celebrated women in the industry are the equivalent of celebrity bimbos – they are celebrated more for their social media status and MySpace pose avatars than any contributions that drive the industry. I want to see less talk about "where are the women" and more talk about "look what these women did".

So I am going to do better. The below women are attractive enough to beat any social media bimbo celebrated in the industry. But they also have brains. And I got to know them well enough, that I think other people should know them as well. There needs to be more role models, mentoring, and promoting of women in tech – start with the women below if you’re looking for some.

My new big sister: Daniela Barbosa

This is a picture of Daniela when she was a child star in Portugal. Hidden in a box in her house. Whoops…

I first met Daniela through the APML workgroup, and have worked very closely with her on the DataPortability Project. So it’s not fair to say I only just met her, but I stayed with her and her dude of a husband for a while, enough to make me realise a more complete side to her.

Daniela is a genuine leader in the industry, with a prominent role in a large enterprise (not so much in title, but internal influence which is very evident) and an advocate for some of the main trends coming to light (like the attention economy and the data web). As a trained librarian, this whole information sector thing is fitting with her like a glove. She knows her stuff, knows a lot of people – and better yet, is making a massive contribution to the industry in a way that is yet to be recognised.

Most likely to beat someone up: Mary Trigiani

Mary is a marketing strategist I worked with a year ago and finally met recently for the first time. I am sure I will get in trouble for giving her a title like the above, but that’s what I love about Mary for real – she doesn’t put up with crap.

Mary get’s marketing, has raw experience from the trenches, and pushes ahead without the bullshit. Manage to stay out of her way when mad, and you’ll definitely learn a few things from her.

Best thank-god-we-did-coffee person: Kaliya Hamlin

I’ve known Kaliya for over a year, and we haven’t exactly had the most positive relationship. All our interactions seemed to be arguments, and we never really got off onto the best foot.

So we met for the first time and the whiteboard got a fresh wipe. Kaliya is quite simply brilliant and we had some great chats. The best way I can categorise her is as a community organiser – she’s prevalent with things in the identity world as well as women in tech. She knows a lot of things, people and is doing awesome stuff that will be transforming the industry.

Having described three prominent women that already have a reputation (the above), I am now going to highlight three without one (or still developing). I am willing to put money on them that they will a Big Deal in the next decade, and the only thing stopping them is them not realising their potential.

Most likely to shake things up: Alisa Leonard-Hansen

Alisa is an analyst and strategist that has somehow found herself working in marketing. And now, she’s determined to shake thing up – give her some time, and you’ll see how.

Another New Yorker, she understands upcoming trends better than most people. But I think what really slammed the door in making me realise she was the real deal, was the fact she knew about the origins of Hypertext. She has even read the Memex – the 1940s book that influenced people to create the technologies behind the Web. Now that I’ve revealed that to the world, I’m going to have to drop that as one my tests to sus out people – but no one has ever passed that test before. Look out for her – this chick is smart.

Best uncut diamond: Wicky Mendoza

Wicky on the far left (me on the far right) + other quality friends we made at the conference whilst drunk as skunks
I was at a party at SXSW alone because the people I was meeting there didn’t end up making it. Wicky approached me out of the blue, and started talking to me. And as we talked and talked, she blew me away with what she’s done and the way she thinks. When people talk about uncut diamonds waiting to be discovered, Wicky should be the dictionary definition of that.

I don’t feel like I can share why I think Wicky has brilliant potential, as it’s not something easily communicated, especially when it’s someone still breaking their teeth in the industry. I suppose when I judge people (yep, all of you), there are certain personality traits I look out for, and she met those.

Someone needs to pull her out of Dallas and put her in the front and centre of a business, so she can grow as your business grows. You’ll thank me for it, trust me.

Best user of the English language: Sarah Townsend

Sarah on the left, yours truly on the right
So if talking to people for over a year without having met them is weird, then how I know Sarah is even better. I met her at SXSW, in a conversation with two friends of hers about their blogs. Nice chat but I didn’t say much – I walked away in my drunken slumber, and that was that.

Not quite. A photo was taken of us during our chat which I stumbled on a week later. I said hi nice to meet you and before I knew it something like over 100 emails over the next week, some longer than this post, were exchanged between us.

So unlike the others, I didn’t sit down and have a real-world one-on-one conversation which gave me an insight into her, but I’ve learned enough to realise she’s got a lot potential. But again, it’s not up to me to determine whether she will reach that – just like Alisa and Wicky, as much as I can identify ability, it’s going to be up to her to realise it.

Ok, so my battery is about to die. I’ve made a commitment to myself to always talk-up good people I come across in life, purely for selfish reasons: it means other people can also become better people making my life more enjoyable! I haven’t exactly got much to gain from writing this as I already have relationships with the above and in selecting some people and not others probably does me more harm than good (blame the battery). But for those of you loyal enough to read my ramblings – hopefully you will try to connect with them because they are people worth connecting with.

The Australian cancer that will kill the Internet

March 23, 2009 / elias

There is a cancer growing in our society. This problem may seem small, isolated and insignificant, but left unchecked, could grow to affect everyone in the world. Because when a small nation validates a disastrous idea, it gives the larger countries evidence to pursue it – and like domino’s, we all fall.

Logging into a Bogota internet cafe last year as I was backpacking around South America, I nearly choked. Australia’s new government had slightly tweaked their election commitment: they no longer wanted to help parents filter the Internet to prevent their children from stumbling on child porn (children don’t watch child porn, and lets not forget the fact that child pornographers have a sophisticated offline network that bypasses technology), but now the government was going to mandate a “clean” feed on everybody. Mandatory censorship on the Internet is not a future I want. It made my blood boil.

It was to be a filtration regime, that the government would censor whatever they thought was deemed censorable. An unaccountable, shady regime using the high moral ground of claiming to look after children, but in subsequent examinations, has proven to be just the start. A recent leak has shown that there has been considerable scope creep. Pornography, gambling, abortion websites – all the good stuff in life that make conservative Christian’s pray for a flood and famine to clean society up – would be part of this black list, despite being perfectly legal for adults. The question isn’t why is the government banning porn and the like; it’s where will the line be drawn and who determines that? We are seeing a moral crusade, cloaking a very real civil rights issue.

I wrote an email to every senator of the Australia government several months back, speaking on behalf of the Silicon Beach Australia community (which will give you all the background you need). Fortunately it worked – I not only educated, but I was acknowledged from two important senators that the current administration needed to pass the legislation. It was a temporary win, and thankfully since then the Australian mainstream media have taken an absolutely beating on the government. But very rarely does this get international attention.

More recent announcements suggest the legislation is dead in the water. But let’s not get complacent – we are only as safe as the next election, where the numbers in the Senate shift. This has been an issue for several years being pushed by the parties to win the growing Christian conservative vote. This dangerous policy hasn’t died – it’s just undergoing an evolution.

Why the rest of the world should care…and be scared
One thing that I’ve learned from this experience, is that the Australian government will cling onto the flimsiest of evidence and pathetic moral rhetoric, to position their case. Distorted perspectives, exaggerated linkages – it almost makes me laugh and then cry to see how desperate the government is to sell its case, by citing overseas efforts in an inaccurate way, in order to build their case. It is a propaganda war based on lies that we are getting sick of .

If an economically insignificant – but credible nation – like Australia introduces this filteration regime, it means it’s a global precedent. We don’t want a precedent. All it takes is one solid example, and governments around the world can jump out of hiding on this sensitive electoral issue.

The Internet needs to be open, free, and available. It’s going to be the infrastructure of our society that will allow new opportunities for the development of the human race. So when a government starts flirting with the idea of internet censorship – don’t get complacent. Every piece of legislation passed, is a step closer to a control regime we don’t need.

We need to make this issue political suicide around the world. Our public pressure needs to get to the point, where no politician in their right mind, will try to implement this policy. I’m not asking you to suddenly become an activist, but just understand – there is no room for leeway in this. This issue has been under-reported by the media across the world – let’s kill this cancer once and for all. Because unless we exterminate this fake moral crusade, this cancer is going to slowly grow in the background – only for us to realise it’s all over when it’s too late.

It’s not often I will breakout in anger over this, but I think about it everyday (like how my Twitter avatar is in constant protest). No need to chain yourself to a tree – but let’s start making this the bigger deal that it really is.

Downloadsquad.com interview

March 18, 2009 / elias

The bulk of the panels at SXSW have been on the whole ordinary. Rather than pulling interesting people around a topic to project new ideas about the future – the panels seemed to have a different formula. One that is “how can I promote my company/personal brand the best, under the guise of an interesting topic filled with buzz words that will suck the audience in”. There are outliers of course, but that’s how I feel most of them have been.

It’s wrong for me to be judgmental of the entire conference, but I have to contrast that with the bloggers room. I’m a new face to the industry, especially the US world where I know few people. But sitting down working on my things (outside of the bubble that is SXSW), I randomly meet people who introduce me to other people. Interesting conversations, interesting people, and you never know who you will bump into.

Like Grant Robertson who interviewed me for one of the most trafficked websites around! (number 23 blog in the world.) Check out what I say, explaining what the DataPortability Project is, and what we’ve been doing since last years SXSW. I wish I said more informative stuff (ie, this is not self-promotion, if I think I did lame!) – but just goes to show where the real value out of a conference like this is: the centralisation of so many people that think alike, interested in each other, thinking about the future.

Best error message ever (for Data Portability in action)

March 16, 2009 / elias

As we were preparing for the upgrade of DataPortability Project’s website, we realised we needed to close off some of our legacy mailing lists…but we didn’t want to lose the hundreds of people already on these mailing lists. So we decide to export the emails and paste them into the new Google group as subscribers.

I then got this error message.

The has to be one of the best error messages I have ever seen. Yes I’m happy that I could port the data from a legacy system/group to a new one, using an open standard (CSV). Yes, I was impressed that the Google Groups team supports this functionality (who I am told is just one Google engineer and are completely understaffed). But what blew me away was the fact Google was able to recognise how to treat these emails.

These particular people have opted to not allow someone to reuse their e-mail, other than the intended purpose for which they submitted it (which was to be subscribed to this legacy Group). Google recognised that and told me I wasn’t allowed to do it as part of my batch add.

That’s Google respecting their users, while making life a hell of a lot easier for me as an administrator of these mailing lists.

I’m happy to be helped out like that, because I don’t want to step on any toes. And these people are happy, because they have control of the way their data is used. That’s what I call “Awesome”.

The music industry and a glimpse into its future

March 15, 2009 / elias

Before I share this insight, I want to explain how I met the guy which just validates the uniqueness of SXSW. Otherwise, skip to the subheading below the first image to get to the meat of this post.

At 6pm, I went to my first social event at SXSW, and walked around a pub (“divebar” in America – I’m learning!). I was alone, didn’t know anyone, and so sat down on a couch near the pool tables sipping my beer.

Some dude was sitting there, and we got into conversation. We had absolutely nothing in common – he was a project manager from Virginia, and I was an accountant from Sydney. The conversation was strained, and was injected with occasional remarks where this fairly camp guy was trying to find out if I was gay. When it was clear I wasn’t, he got up to get another drink, and that’s when the man of the hour sat down.

Again – I introduce myself. I’m the accountant from Sydney, but this guy was a product manager at a music company. After realising that he effectively drives strategy in one of the world’s biggest music companies, I couldn’t help myself and started prodding him with questions about the new music model.

And so that’s my story. I randomly came across one of the more influential people in the music industry. I also finally found someone that thinks about the same problems I do, which is how to monetise content. And after I revealed later on I was the vice-chair of the DataPortability Project, I floored him and so ensued hours of conversation where I got to test some of my unpublished thoughts about business models.

The fact this conference is the intersection between interactive, music, and film – is the reason why we know each other and could challenge each other on ideas. Austin is for this week a city with the worlds best minds in New Media. SXSW – we are both thanking you for creating this relationship!

So now to the insight I got, which was before I corrupted his views with what I think!

A view where the music industry is going
The record label model is actually going to work (as I was told). What’s happening is a change, and the crisis the industry has faced is actually a good thing, because its forced them to rethink and renegotiate their value proposition.

Record labels have realised that the value they provide to artists is that of a talent management agency. In fact, an almost complete parallel can be made with the venture capital industry. A new internet startup, like a new musician, is fresh and not able realise their potential. Venture Capitalists discover this talent, and invest in them for a future return. The VC’s will give them money and access to their exclusive networks – and the startup in return, gets to grow in ways they never thought possible.

The record label is now evolving into a similar model. Overnight, they can make a new star by giving them exposure to foreign markets, the capital they need to record music and distribute it to the masses, and all the other costs that are needed to become a big star. In return, rather than deriving 90% of their revenue from CD sales as record labels used to, they instead ask to get a 50% stake in the artist.

I raised this is effectively like slave labour, but when you think about it, a five year contract is completely reasonable given the amount of investment the label puts in. The labels are finding they can generate a lot of money on the merchandise and live concerts sales, as opposed to just the distribution sales. By taking a more diversified revenue mix, and taking more of a partnership approach to an artists career, what we are seeing is a more robust music model.

Will that mean music can now be free? Well this company makes several billion dollars a year on music sales still, of which 75% are due to CD sales (and just the fact they make 25% in digital amazes me in itself). If music going free is the trend, my friend doesn’t see it happening for at least another decade.

And by that time, they’ll be ok. It appears the music industry is experimenting with a new approach to monetising artists based on the “experience” and is more about creating a connection with their fans. It’s still early days, but after our very long chat, I’ve now come to realise the record label isn’t dead – it’s just evolving. And they are well onto that path of a future model that works in this new world.

Impromptu video on DataPortability.Org

March 12, 2009 / elias

Daniela Barbosa and I caught up with David and Kaliya. After we finished coffee, David decided to spring a video on us for the Social Web TV!

If you are wondering on what we are doing with the DataPortability Project, then here’s your update.

Social melebrities and the externality of arrogance

February 21, 2009 / elias

The biggest impact the web and the Internet has had on society can be described using one word: "social". Social computing, social networking, social software, social media – the list goes on. The ability for humans to connect sounds simple, but it’s literally shaking up entire industries. With the rise of mass collaboration however, there has been the creation of a new class of denizen.

Social melebrities
Social media is a broad-based buzz word now becoming mainstream, to describe technologies that enables many-to-many communication between humans. A defining characteristic of social media is that it’s a public discussion. It’s like having a conversation with someone around a water cooler and the people sitting nearby join in on the conversation. Although the message is directed to one specific entity, that same message can be seen by people not originally intended to get the message.

Enter the social melebrity: a social media celebrity. They are people aware of how others can see their message, and consequently, modify their behaviour accordingly.

The problem with social melebrities. As someone becomes more engaged in "social media", a natural fact that emerges is that you become better known. People will subscribe to your content and communications, which in turn creates this sense of self-importance. It implies if people are watching you then therefore you are influential.

An externality of this process however is arrogance. It feeds into the day-to-day language of people, and creates unhealthy behaviours. Like the obsession of people getting more followers on a site like Twitter, is really a symptom of someone chasing for influence to feed their insecurity that they somehow matter.

Extending Twitter as the casestudy,
– most people that follow you are spam and inactive accounts. That growing number of followers doesn’t mean anything. That’s not influence.
– Most people that use Twitter have a job. That means, they cannot physically track every Tweet and at the same time be productive. In other words, if they are people that are doing amazing things in this world, they haven’t got time to track everything you say all the time. That’s not influence.

Remind yourself that you’re unique – just like everyone else. Once you delve into this world, just assume you are going to get a lot more exposure of your personal brand. Good on you if you do – but remember, it doesn’t matter. Real influence comes from the types of people that follow you, not from the amount of people that follow you (and following can vary in itself depending how how engaged they are in you). There’s no easy metric to determine "real" influence or reach, but there’s a lesson in that nevertheless: drop the arrogance. You might be famous now – but so is everyone else.

Data portability allows mashup for Australian bush fire crisis

February 8, 2009 / elias

Last night in Australia, one of the states developed a series of bush fires that have ravaged communities – survivors describe it as “raining fire” that came out of no where. As I write this, up to 76 people have been killed.

The sky is said by Dave Hollis to look how it is in the movie ‘Independence Day’

An important lesson has come out out of this. First, the good stuff.

Googler Pamela Fox has created an invaluable tool to display the bush fires in real time. Using Google technologies like App engine and the Maps API (which she is the support engineer for), she’s been able to create a mashup that helps the public.

She can do so because the Victorian Fire department supports the open standard RSS. There are fires in my state of New South Wales as well, but like other Fire Department’s in Australia, t~~here is no RSS feed to pull the data from (which is why you won’t see any data on the map from there)~~ It appears states like NSW do support RSS for updates, but it would be more useful if there was some consistency – refer to discussion below about the standards.

For further information, you can read the Google blog post.

While the Fire Department’s RSS allows the portability of the data, it doesn’t have geocodes or a clear licence for use. That may not sound like a big deal, but the ability to contextualise a piece of information in this case matters a hell of a lot.

As a workaround, Pamela sent addresses through the Google geocoder to develop a database of addresses with latitude and longtitude.

GeoRSS and KML
In the geo standards world, two dominant standards exist that enable the portability of data. One is an extension to RSS (GeoRSS) that allows you to extend an RSS feed to show geodata. The other in Keyhole Markup Language, which was a standard developed by Google. GeoRSS is simply modifying RSS feeds to be more useful, while KML is more like how HTML is.

If the CFA and any other websites had supported them either of these standards, it would have made life a lot more easier. Pamela has access to Google resources to translate the information into a geocode and even she had trouble. (Geocoding the location data was the most time-consuming of the map-making process.)

The lessons
1) If you output data, output it in some standard structured format (like RSS, KML, etc).
2) If you want that data to be useful for visualisation, include both time and geographic (latitude/longitude information). Otherwise you’re hindering the public’s ability to use it.
3) Let the public use your data. The Google team spent some time to ensure they were not violating anything by using this data. Websites should be clearer about their rights of usage to enable mashers to work without fear
4) Extend the standards. It would have helped a lot of the CFA site extended their RSS with some custom elements (in their own namespace), for the structured data about the fires. Like for example <cfa:State>Get the hell out of here</cfa>.
5) Having all the Fire Department’s using the same standards would have make a world of difference – build the mashup using one method and it can be immediately useful for future uses.

Pamela tells me that this is the fifth natural disaster she’s dealt with. Every time there’s been an issue of where to get the data and how to syndicate it. Data portability matters most for natural disasters- people don’t have time to deal with scraping HTML (didn’t we learn this with Katrina?).

Let’s be prepared for the next time an unpredictable crisis like this occurs.

Semanticising Twitter for a revenue model

January 31, 2009 / elias

It was interesting to read the 11 business models for Twitter. Here’s one that I rarely see ever get mentioned: semantic conversations.

The assumptions.
Before I jump into it, some context as to why I think this is a solid approach.

– advertising sucks in the traditional sense. Showing ad’s blindly, is like throwing pamphlets over the Amazon hoping that your target market catches some of them. Or another example: if you’re looking for some relief, do you walk down the main street of your city with your pants down yelling out "I want sexy time"? Sure, some people will approach you – but it certainly is not the most efficient way.

– search advertising is the window into the future of advertising. The reason why Google does so well is because when a user searches they are flagging their intent. No more blind guessing – now it’s just a matter of accurately matching that intent to something. To extend the analogy using sex, this is like going to a single swingers party – you know everyone there is hungry, so to speak.

– Word of mouth marketing beats any other form. Imagine you’re at a nightclub with your best friend. A model stops in front of the two of you – looks at your friend – and asks what cologne he’s wearing. He replies, she smiles – and then walks off giving him a wink.
You tell your little brother the next day about the incident who’s just run out of cologne. Next thing you know, he’s at the department store calling you and asking what’s that cologne’s name. Unlikely story? Have a think about the last time you bought something – we tend to rely on people we trust to guide our decisions.

– Affiliate marketing is one of the most successful ways of making money on the web. My friends at Tjoos.com, help people find coupons – and they make a stupid amount of money because of affiliate deals. Affiliate marketing is rooted in a traditional concept for selling – there are suppliers like a manufacturer, and there are the retailers who onsell the supply like we see with clothing shops. With affiliate marketing, you act as a store pushing a product – and you get a cut of the final transaction if successful.

– On Twitter people talk and share The use cases of Twitter are a different topic in itself, but let’s think of one of the most common: people share links with other people. As a case in point, monitor this search query I just constructed. Within minutes, you will see hundreds of new results returned. That’s a lot of links been shared.

Semantic conversations explained
Let’s say I just suggested that people read the book "Growth Fetish". People that follow me know me well enough to look into it as a legit thing. Perhaps some even trust my judgement to blindly buy the book (like I do with some people I know).

Now imagine, if instead of just saying the name of the book or pointing to the authors website – I had an easy way to embed Amazon affiliates. When people read I liked a book or a product, and they see a link – two things happen: they likely will follow the link to see what the fuss is about, and after reading up they will potentially make a purchase depending on how impressed or how much they trust me. Because the link tracks that I was the person recommending it, it connects the sale of that product by that person to me. And they don’t need to make the purchase right there – it can happen up to 45 days later and I still get recognised for it (as is the case with most affiliate programs).

Implementation
It’s going to take a bit of thinking on how to implement this easily. For example, it needs to be drop dead easy for people to find the correct link and embed it. Twitter should tweak its system so that it recognises true hyperlinks that have words aliased, rather than just raw addresses. A way of guessing what the person is promoting and matching it to a Amazon code would be ideal (ie, “findbook:growth fetish” will have Twitter make a suggestion to link it to).

It would have to be a revenue share program, meaning Twitter and the user get a cut. That’s a good thing, because everyone’s interests are aligned. But it also means it needs to be thought out as it’s an art to get the right progressive scale between motivating and killing.

Good luck Twitter: I’m counting on you and Facebook to work out a monetisation model, as you will drive the next wave of growth which builds the industry (like Google did post the dotcom years).

The change brought by the Internet is a correction

January 26, 2009 / elias

I was sitting at a restaurant with Mick Liubinskas of Pollenizer the other week, who I regard as one of the best minds in the Australian tech scene. Mick in a previous life used to run marketing at Kazaa, which was the music-industry’s anti-Christ during the early 2000s. Kazaa was one of the higher profile peer-to-peer technologies that made the distribution of music so widespread on the Internet.

I said to Mick how one of the things that plagues my thinking is trying to work out the future business models for content. Naturally, we ended up talking about the music industry and he explained to me the concept of Soft DRM which he thought was one avenue for the future but which the record labels rejected at the time.

DRM or Digital Rights Management is the attempt by companies to control the distribution of digital content. Hard DRM places control over access, copying and distribution – while soft DRM does not prohibit unauthorised actions but merely monitors a user‚Äôs interaction with the content.

The basic difference, is that Hard DRM protects copyrights by preventing unauthorised actions before the fact, while Soft DRM protects copyrights by giving copyright owners information about infringing uses after the fact.

As I questioned Mick on this, he compared it to us sitting in that restaurant. What’s stopping either of us from getting up and not paying the bill? The restaurant let’s us sit, serves us food – and only at the end do we pay for the service.

Hard DRM is not congruent with our society
Part of the music industry’s problem is that they’ve focused too much on Hard DRM. And that’s wrong. They could get away with it in the past because that’s how the world worked with controlled distribution lines, but now that world no longer exists with the uncontrollable Internet.

In a restaurant, like any other service industry, the risk that you don’t get paid is real but not big enough to prevent it from operating. Our social conventions are what make us pay that bill, even though we have the ability to avoid it.

To insist on the Hard DRM approach, is going against how the rest of the western world works. Our society is philosophically based on the principle of innocent until proven guilty. Likewise, you pay after a service has been rendered – and you pay for something that has unique value (only scarcity is rewarded). What existed with the media world was unique over any other industry, but unique purely due to technological limitations, not because it was genuinely better.

The record companies (not the artists) are hurting
Artists practically sell their soul to get a record deal, and make little money from the actual albums themselves. This change for music is really a threat to the century-old record company model, of which the Internet has broken their distribution power and their marketing ability is now dwarfed by the potential of social media.

Instead of reinventing themselves, they wasted time by persisting with an old model that worked in the industrial age. They should have been reflecting on what value people will pay for, and working out the things that are better than free. Unfortunately, the entire content business – movies, television, radio, magazines, newspapers, books and the rest – have made similar mistakes.

The Internet is transforming our world and every object in our lives one day will be connected. In some ways, the great change brought about by the Internet is actually a step back to how things used to be (like it is for music where the record model was an anomaly in our history). Even the concept of a “nation state” is a 20th century experiment pushed after the first world war, where for our entire history prior to that, our world was governed by independent cities or empires that governed multiple ethnic nations – the Internet is breaking down the nation-state concept and good riddance because its complicated our lives.

We need to clear the white board and start fresh. The Internet is only going to get more entrenched in our world, so we must re-engineer our views of the world to embrace it. With content, distribution was one of the biggest barriers to those industries to get into, and now it has been obliterated. Business models can no longer rely on that.

We should not let the old world drive our strategies for business because the dynamics have changed completely. If you are looking to defend yourself against an oncoming army – stop polishing the sword and start looking for the bullets to put in the machine gun.

About