SB: Right now there seems to be a lot of confusion between social media and the definition of community. The idea of community is right now as fairly elusive one and is being bandied about like it’s some sacrosanct term. Community built around consumption is, for me fairly transitory. It reminds of an unruly mob during the time of the Paris Commune. We’re  not going to get a whole lot of sense out of this right now.

Then there’s these dire warnings coming from people like Forrester, that brands will be excluded from consumer choice because somehow they are now being defined by communities and no longer by the brand owners themselves. I think this is both disingenuous and untrue. Forcing brands out of their hands via social media created communities is only part of the story. While even as early as 2005 Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore warned marketers, in their prescient work ‘Communities Dominate Brands‘, that if they didn’t cut loose the shackles of the traditional advertising agency and TV network model they would lose their brands. I’m seeing many of the same warnings again this year, particularly in the wake of the great financial crisis. But what real, if any, changes have we seen to this paradigm? No brands have fallen by the wayside because they didn’t have a social media strategy or because they continued advertising in traditional media.

JB: Brands may not fall by the wayside as such, but brands will become stronger because of their consumer engagement strategies. For example, the well known Dell Hell scenario certainly impacted on that organisation negatively, but by engaging with the community they came back stronger and more relevant to their client base. If they hadn’t done that who knows where that organisation would have been.

Some brands come to social media like Dell in a ‘reactive’ fashion knowing they now need to engage with consumers due to a negative event/issue. Other brands initiate the online engagement strategy ‘proactively’, understanding it will add value to their knowledge base, understanding the client better, product development and customer service.

SB: Ahonen and Moore predicted the consumer and their connected communities, would select the products and brands that are engaged in the most relevant dialogue with them. Somehow this would become the centre of a new modern and sustainable marketing model. While I think there are some massive shifts occurring,  I don’t think we’re quite there yet with this because I’m not sure anyone understands these kinds of ROIs yet.

Metrics, metrics, metrics. I can’t count so I am unable to help, but the fact is one can see where commerce is to be made, if one digs around a bit. And the big question is what is advertising and marketing in the 21st Century? When we live in a search economy, a participatory culture, where 25% of al media is made by us and there are 3.5 billion mobile phones of the planet. Networked economics?

Some called Tomi and I polemicists – I like to think we highlighted something critically important for brands, business and organisations. Remember our subtitle was, “business and marketing challenges for the 21st Century”. This went way beyond in my view the social media paradigm that so many are so now engaged in.

If you need to reach Jan Chipchase, the best, and sometimes only, way to get him is on his cellphone. The first time I spoke to him last fall, he was at home in his apartment in Tokyo. The next time, he was in Accra, the capital of Ghana, in West Africa. Several weeks after that, he was in Uzbekistan, by way of Tajikistan and China, and in short order he and his phone visited Helsinki, London and Los Angeles. If you decide not to call Jan Chipchase but rather to send e-mail, the odds are fairly good that you?ll get an ?out of office? reply redirecting you back to his cellphone, with a notation about his current time zone ? ?GMT +9? or ?GMT -8?

Writes the New York Times

We need to understand that space and time have been subverted by the digital revolution

The comedian Bill Bailey describes reading Stephen Hawkings? A Brief History of Time. In it Hawking suggests the universe could be 3 possible shapes. These are:

1). Long and thin like a piece of tagliatelle
2). Round like a marble
3). Saddle shaped

Bailey finds it hard to deal with the notion that our universe could be saddle shaped In fact he says that Hawkings should say that the universe is saddle shaped that is strapped t a giant donkey being led up and down an intergalactic beach by God.

The point is that our once familiar analogue world, which we understood no longer exists in our digital universe. As Bailey observed, in the days of Christopher Columbus it was easier to buy a ‘To the edge and back ticket.”

My point is, we don?t know what shape our new digital universe is. We have to learn to navigate and describe it. And that is exactly what Chipchase is doing..

Chipchase has worked for the Finnish cellphone company Nokia as a “human-behavior researcher.” He?s also sometimes referred to as a ?user anthropologist.? To an outsider, the job can seem decidedly oblique. His mission, broadly defined, is to peer into the lives of other people, accumulating as much knowledge as possible about human behavior so that he can feed helpful bits of information back to the company ? to the squads of designers and technologists and marketing people who may never have set foot in a Vietnamese barbershop but who would appreciate it greatly if that barber someday were to buy a Nokia.

Identity and community

A Mississippi bowling alley, he will say, is a social hub, a place rife with nuggets of information about how people communicate. ( here 2 ) A photograph of the contents of a woman?s handbag is more than that; it?s a window on her identity, what she considers essential, the weight she is willing to bear. The prostitute ads in the Brazilian phone booth? Those are just names, probably fake names, coupled with real cellphone numbers ? lending to Chipchase?s theory that in an increasingly transitory world, the cellphone is becoming the one fixed piece of our identity.

Start with a laugh and work backwards
Bil Bailey is a comedian and he is asked how he comes up with his jokes. Bill says

I start with a laugh and works backwards. What do I need to do to create that about of laughter!! What is the higher order currency we are creating for our endusers?

If that is lost in translation, this means, what is the greatest customer experience you can create and do that in such a way that they want to come back and do it gain and again and again?

And this is what Chipchase is looking for

This sort of on-the-ground intelligence-gathering is central to what?s known as human-centered design, a business-world niche that has become especially important to ultracompetitive high-tech companies trying to figure out how to write software, design laptops or build cellphones that people find useful and unintimidating and will thus spend money on. Several companies, including Intel, Motorola and Microsoft, employ trained anthropologists to study potential customers, while Nokia?s researchers, including Chipchase, more often have degrees in design. Rather than sending someone like Chipchase to Vietnam or India as an emissary for the company ? loaded with products and pitch lines, as a marketer might be ? the idea is to reverse it, to have Chipchase, a patently good listener, act as an emissary for people like the barber or the shoe-shop owner?s wife, enlightening the company through written reports and PowerPoint presentations on how they live and what they?re likely to need from a cellphone, allowing that to inform its design.

However it still took a PC company to turn out one of the most disruptive pieces of handset design and wake up the entire industry. And of course that company was Apple. In How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong Is the complete antithesis of Chips work and process. Wired explains….

But by deliberately flouting the Google mantra (don’t do evil – sic), Apple has thrived. When Jobs retook the helm in 1997, the company was struggling to survive. Today it has a market cap of $105 billion, placing it ahead of Dell and behind Intel. Its iPod commands 70 percent of the MP3 player market. Four billion songs have been purchased from iTunes. The iPhone is reshaping the entire wireless industry. Even the underdog Mac operating system has begun to nibble into Windows’ once-unassailable dominance; last year, its share of the US market topped 6 percent, more than double its portion in 2003.

It’s hard to see how any of this would have happened had Jobs hewed to the standard touchy-feely philosophies of Silicon Valley. Apple creates must-have products the old-fashioned way: by locking the doors and sweating and bleeding until something emerges perfectly formed. It’s hard to see the Mac OS and the iPhone coming out of the same design-by-committee process that produced Microsoft Vista or Dell’s Pocket DJ music player. Likewise, had Apple opened its iTunes-iPod juggernaut to outside developers, the company would have risked turning its uniquely integrated service into a hodgepodge of independent applications ? kind of like the rest of the Internet, come to think of it.

And now observers, academics, and even some other companies are taking notes. Because while Apple’s tactics may seem like Industrial Revolution relics, they’ve helped the company position itself ahead of its competitors and at the forefront of the tech industry. Sometimes, evil works.

It’s an interesting dilemma – an open and consultative approach to learning and design or one that is more, shall we say – insular. Yet I believe its not one nor the other. Personally coming from a design background – one can identify with a singular vision, and an uncompromising approach to design. Marc Newson is another good example of visionary design brought to the public fore by an individual. SMLXL‘s work with Masterfoods and The Coca Cola Company was delivered by having a very singular idea of making breakthrough products and the brands that wrapped themselves around those propositions. This was the first asymetric designed botle in the entire history of the CocaCola Company. Everyone said including the leading lights in R&D said it could not be done. I begged to differ as I argued it was a fundamental part of the experience and the communication. Had we left it to committee we would have ended up with something a little more prosaic.

An Apple vs. a Nokia approach are a different form of leadership and investigation into technology, products and how that benefits society.

My one beef perhaps is with the Nokia N80. A great little device, which has one flaw – its rubbish at taking pictures in poor and ambient lighting. This is because as I understand it, the Nokia designers wanted a certain kind of design effect which superceded certain issues around optimal photographic performance. Now that is unforgivable. This issue came up whilst I was in Japan recently.

So Apple and Marc Newson give us their unadulterated vision of design. Its uncompromising and its all very very beautiful – Me I worship at the alter of Apple – Nokia well as The New York Times explains…

…the possibilities afforded by a proliferation of cellphones are potentially revolutionary. Today, there are more than 3.3 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide, which means that there are at least three billion people who don?t own cellphones, the bulk of them to be found in Africa and Asia. Even the smallest improvements in efficiency, amplified across those additional three billion people, could reshape the global economy in ways that we are just beginning to understand.

And that is also a very worthy cause and one I also subscribe to. Equally both Newson and Apple appeal not to Nokia’s vision of connecting everyone, or indeed, to better enable people to connect. Scale in terms of Newson and Apple are debatable here. Because It will be a while before we get iPhones being the mainstay of Africa or even people driving around in 021C Cars.

And “The mobile phone is the cheapest object of personal aspiration.”

A long long time I can still remember how the music used to make me smile and I if I had my chance that I could make those people dance and maybe they’d be happy for a while.

Sang Don McLean in American Pie

Indeed and I can remember having my first TV commercial played on TV. How C??l was that? And of course I fell out of love with traditional advertising, its siloed, monolithic approach to communication frustrated me. Yet and yet I believed in the power of communication. That interest has expanded beyond whether traditional advertising works or not – in fact we have a theory and approach to that based on all our research called Engagement Marketing and a book as well.

I asked the girl who sang the blues and asked her for some happy news but she just turned and walked away

sang Don McLean and many did.

It was fascinating then to receive via multiple sources the Forrester report on the Connected Agency.

The authors write

Today’s agencies fail to help marketers engage with consumers, who, as a result, are becoming less brand-loyal and more trusting of each other. To turn the tide, marketers will move to the Connected Agency ? one that shifts: from making messages to nurturing consumer connections; from delivering push to creating pull interactions; and from orchestrating campaigns to facilitating conversations. Over the next five years, traditional agencies will make this shift; they will start by connecting with consumer communities and will eventually become an integral part of them.

It’s why we wrote communities Dominate Brands and why I set up SMLXL – I think looking back everyone agrees we were a bit before our time.

A great deal of the preface of the report is dealt in CDB and on the SMLXL blog. But I like the authors approach

Media Can?t Deliver A Captive Audience Anymore

Consumers have three more reasons to dislike advertising: irrelevance, interruption, and clutter. These come from marketers building media plans on a platform of legacy thinking: Buy exposure to reach as many eyeballs as possible; place your message in a spot where it can?t be missed; and repeat the same message as often as possible. Today?s marketers deal with a media landscape where:

Consumers prefer pull to push and Fragmentation drives complexity whilst Engagement remains theoretical, while reach and frequency reign. Hmm interesting the last point.

As the Ex Coke Steve Heyer CEO said in 2004 ? I am describing a process that is transformational.

Theoretical? – Engagement is not possible whilst the old way of counting the audience remains in place – is the point. Just read Amanda Lotz Believe me I have tried (

This is the battle royal of; effectiveness vs. Efficiency, or recounting the audience.

And the report say a new de?nition of ?mass media? is emerging. yes its called hyper-local or super-global or mass niche communities of interest.

We do know that – or we should know that – or we should be actively engaged with that truth.

And then Operational Processes Can?t Cope well we/SMLXL did say that back in 2004

This is not about Schadenfreude, but it is about; when you don’t look hard enough, when you don’t ask the right questions at the right time – what happens then to peoples lives, their jobs, their families etc.? Is this part of the bigger cycle of technological revolutions.? Lives are lost forever as they are cast aside and into the wake of the progress. Some resist, some leave and many stay behind

We are about to ask the advertising industry to go from GCSE standard to PHD overnight!

What is going to happen to the people that can’t make the grade?

Yet what I see is that the advertising industry is about to get its moment of punctuated equilibrium the with the consequent results.

Back to the report…

Senior marketers have turned to agencies for help but have found that most don?t have the proper skills or structure to assist. In a Q4 2006 Forrester survey, marketers gave their collective agencies a Net Promoter score of minus 21%, meaning that agencies are currently creating many more
detractors than promoters.12 So why do agencies continue to thrive? As one advertising director at a
high-tech ?rm told us, ?They?re a necessary evil.? The problem? Agencies are organized around skills.

A necessary evil – and what skills I ask?

Well its like this

While the market fragments around channels and skills, the connection between the vocal consumer and consumer-centered marketer gets ?lled with static from multiple agencies ?ghting for attention. Who will help marketers tune in to the consumer signal? Agencies that listen to what consumers
say and that can translate that into action for advertisers. Forrester calls such a player a Connected
Agency, de?ned as:

An agency with a deep understanding of consumer communities, helping brands create and nurture
connections, deliver targeted, on-demand messages, and network for talent and insights. The Connected Agency will remold all its competencies to engage with distinctly and tightly targeted consumer groups, each driven by a common objective, interest, or passion. We?ve called these groups consumer communities. The more entwined and de?ned each community, the better.

Back in 2003 I never saw it like that – I just saw that there was already enough evidence to challenge the orthodoxies of Marketing Communication in all its varied forms.

I hope many will read this report and reflect on what the next five years will hold for them, as I would suggest, the decisions they make today will fundamentally affect their futures.

But its a big effort, Unlearning, coupled with learning, new organisational structures, new competencies and capability realised – geek meets creative. I loved it when it happened to me on and on and on, and, NO siloes – no above and below.

What I have witnessed from the UK until now is a somewhat blas? approach based upon a set of laurels earnt many years ago and that is why I am proud to be part of the iMedia conference on looking at the new world of advetrising and marketing in St Albans on the 9-10-11 March 2008 as its Chairman over 3 days that I am very much looking forward to.

I was once told by the MD/CEO of a big communication company in the UK, that, I was a Pioneer and that, pioneers tended to get shot – well I hope that that certain gentleman has bought his ticket – because our once familiar analogue world is fast disappearing, and, we need to navigate together our digital universe. All the key people from the UK advertising will be at this event and I think it will be the very first time that an entire industry is focused on its own survival.

Therefore we have to ask ourselves: Does the advertising industry want to go the same way as the music industry? What is advertising in the 21st Century? How do we migrate from a model of interruption to engagement? What are the skill sets and organizational capability required? What is creativity? How does one reach and deliver the right audience and count that audience? Change the way you count and you change the flow of advertising ???. How does the agency of the 21st Century derive its revenues and profits? What are the role of brands? And, why are we so obsessed with silos of specialisation?

I am deeply encouraged that the UK advertising industry is prepared to collaborate together, sharing in dialogue and debate how they might evolve to survive.

I sincerely hope that we will have 2 days of great debate, insight and learning and that this will help the advertising industry form a world view of what we urgently need to do to adapt and survive. As Darwin said, “Its not the strongest or most intelligent that survive but those most adaptive to change.”

We have many examples on our blog. Tim Harrap a regular reader of CDB sent me this note via email today

Speaking to one of our IT guys just now about your blog….

What do students think today, How do they see their education system?

He mentioned to me about the use of Moonedit by students in the States. Wikipedia entry This is device allows the students to type a transcript, edit it, google facts and publish a document by the end of the lecture. Phew! Perhaps you don’t need 26 hours in a day……..

I was speaking in Malmo yesterday, and its clear to me that we have as I have pointed out before a entire generation that will work, act, engage in ways previously thought not possible.

Our observation is that those of Gen C – will naturally take this collaborative philosophy and approach into their working environment. It will transform businesses, business culture, business models and how businesses operate. And we see collaborative engagement in many industries.

Social networks are now seen as central to the way in which young adults toggle between business and leisure.

Gen C Teachers will take this learning into schools and apply it, though I am sure there will be resistance. But that is normal. The Telegraph companies did everyting in their power to stop Alexander Graham-Bell with his mad cap telephone idea. The telegraph companies were even lobbying government to legislate against the introduction of the telephone.

This is the Community Generation that Tomi and I write about in the book. This is the Wealth of Networks and the economics of Group forming Network theory which outperform traditional economic and media theories.

Thank you Tim for the hat tip.

Lilly makes an interesting observation in his Guardian article

At Oxford, speaker after speaker including Michiel Bakker of Viacom, Ed Richards of Ofcom and Jon Gisby from Yahoo gave numerous reasons why media policy should move beyond broadcast, not because TV is dead – or dying – but because other media are in rude health. In China, said Gisby, the kind of media consumption behaviours we in the west routinely and lazily associate with young people – downloading, social networks, video on demand – are on their way to becoming normal modes for everyone of every age, often alongside television. This may be because – in the absence of anything much to compare them to – people really like the control they give. What does this tell us about the implicit bias in the way we often look at different media here?

So I can’t see why broadcast shapes the way we live. To me it sounds rather weak and Big Brother is an aberration, and perhaps is more a comment on society than good broadcasting.

In fact Lilly is working towards something very different in his article and that is the concept of the PSP championed by Ed Richards at OfCom

To me this is all about changing the nature of the media – broadcast plays a role but not as we once knew it.

For example

New forms of drama in which the audience participate in the unfolding narrative have enormous potential for the PSP believes Andrew Chitty, of Illumina Digital. As well as building on the best of television’s heritage they will also draw inspiration from contemporary theatre, performance and networked gaming.

Or citizen engagement

Facts are not always absolutes, but often the accepted accounts and explanations that follow from stimulating debates. If a central proposition of the PSP is to proactively enable citizens to better understand their physical, social and political environment, it must do this by supporting and stimulating debate across a whole range of issues. ‘Investigation’ is a useful metaphor for how the PSP should approach factual content because it is an active process bringing together social interaction, play, experience, experiment and opinion.

Open Democracy

And the role our cultural institutions play in this new networked world must also be addressed

The Disruptive Decade (1995-2005): the impact on museums

A cultural shift is underway – with a growth in cultural production accompanied by a growth in cultural choice. The trajectory of this cultural shift can be mapped through the example of museums and galleries. Museums have evolved dramatically over the last decade. Where once they were focused on objects in their collection, their attention has now turned to the audiences they serve. Where once they were preoccupied with constructing cannons and disseminating facts, they are now as interested in stimulating cultural exchange and debate. Over the last 10 years, museums have become more democratic and more popular. Two key factors have influenced this transformation: the emergence of disruptive technologies to support increased audiences and greater choice, and a political agenda centered on access. The average time spent online and the number of visits to cultural organisations’ websites is growing, just as traditional broadcasting and newspaper audiences continue to fragment and decline. The most popular UK online arts site is a museum site, Tate, now attracting one million unique visitors a month and a 63% increase in visitors in 2005.

Lilly also asks the question

The ideas about the PSP which will be published this Wednesday by Ofcom are intended to raise debate by acknowledging that the public service landscape already contains both television and so-called “new media”. Ofcom is already reviewing areas like C4, news provision and children’s TV and the PSP work is designed mainly to stimulate debate. How might long-standing public service values such as promoting innovation, diversity and plurality play out in the new, participative landscape? Or might they not? As choice, participation and control are becoming more central to many people’s engagement with media, might we be putting a valuable part of our media economy and our culture at risk if we don’t ask these questions?

So Lilly is in fact assuaging the fears of the UK broadcast industry, but really is outlining the radical agenda for media revolution in this country.

OFCOM and the PSP

A new approach to public service content in the digital media age

British television is at a tipping point. Every night, our screens are filled with programmes that represent two conflicting traditions. On the one hand, we see examples of the great television culture Britain has created over the past 50 years. Use the remote and you get the new trash which threatens to spread throughout the networks. There are still many great programmes to watch, and much creativity on display, but unless something changes, our culture and civilisation are about to be seriously impoverished.

But it gets worse

Within the next two months, the trends look like being emphatically confirmed. Two of the pillars of what made British television great – the BBC and ITV – are to be knocked sideways, one by the government and the other by the market. Gordon Brown and the Treasury, indulged by a weakened Prime Minister, are determined to shrink the BBC. Over the next four years, they propose the licence fee would go up by 1 per cent less than inflation – nearly 3 per cent a year less than the BBC wants, with even bigger cuts planned beyond. By 2013, the BBC would be up to a quarter smaller than it is today.

I wonder if the Blair's Government ever forgave the beeb for its reporting over the Iraq war? The Hutton report, was well… errrr a bit skewed.
Still is does seem a bit over the top to bring all out market forces to bear on UK TV ? when there still is a chance to preserve something unique. I agree with Hutton…
Lets face it, we would not the innovation within broadcasting without the BBC, as their need to survive are different to reporting to shareholders that they can all affors a new yacht this year. Sorry to be so cynical.
ITV and Channel 4 are struggling, we even get a company (NTL) that filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy , and having just got out of jail mentioning that it might be interested in buying ITV.
ITV is a victim sadly of arrogance and hubris – once boating that ITV was a licence to print money

ITV has been struggling ever since its cosy monopoly was broken by Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB in the Nineties. Viewers and advertisers have deserted in droves for the internet and pay-TV. How to reverse, or at least arrest, ITV's decline has long perplexed management at the company, which became a single entity following the merger of Granada and Carlton in 2004.

Apparently ITV leaked the news of a merger to the press to help its share price.
Hutton says

In any case, the argument goes, the doom-mongers are old fogeys looking back to a golden age that never was. Television is now better, not worse; it has just become more democratic.

And this is the point ? do we bend right over for the capitalist market? Yes revenues have got to come from somewhere – and Tomi and I have blogged about that theme and some, and write about it in our book.
We have have a theory called the 4C's… if anyone is interested
So bruiser Brown – dont destroy our culture, and I am a bit pissed that companies, and marketing institutions have not responded to the obvious changes that have been going on for some time.
Heed these words

Digitalisation does not mean that only commercial television and the market rule. Rather, we have to think differently about how to maintain their same constructive tension with the notion of public-service broadcasting and have the confidence and conviction to do it. And that begins with Brown's decision on the licence fee.

One or two related blogs Why use your TV to watch repetitive drivel when you can plug your PlayStation into it instead || The end of the affair || Coming to a computer near you: television || ITV shares lose more ground || Does King Canute have a long tail? || Media Old World – Media New World || Nielsen study highlights growing power of online communities || Dumb and Dumber || Run don't walk! || From Mass media to Social Media || News to mobile video || Connectivity, Culture, Community and Commerce. why it's all happening on the web || The end of TV as we know it. Social networking comes to television || When push comes to pull. The new economy & culture of networking technology
Powerful comment from Will Hutton… British TV must be saved for the nation

British television is at a tipping point. Every night, our screens are filled with programmes that represent two conflicting traditions. On the one hand, we see examples of the great television culture Britain has created over the past 50 years. Use the remote and you get the new trash which threatens to spread throughout the networks. There are still many great programmes to watch, and much creativity on display, but unless something changes, our culture and civilisation are about to be seriously impoverished.

But it gets worse

Within the next two months, the trends look like being emphatically confirmed. Two of the pillars of what made British television great – the BBC and ITV – are to be knocked sideways, one by the government and the other by the market. Gordon Brown and the Treasury, indulged by a weakened Prime Minister, are determined to shrink the BBC. Over the next four years, they propose the licence fee would go up by 1 per cent less than inflation – nearly 3 per cent a year less than the BBC wants, with even bigger cuts planned beyond. By 2013, the BBC would be up to a quarter smaller than it is today.

I wonder if the Blair's Government ever forgave the beeb for its reporting over the Iraq war? The Hutton report, was well… errrr a bit skewed.
Still is does seem a bit over the top to bring all out market forces to bear on UK TV ? when there still is a chance to preserve something unique. I agree with Hutton…
Lets face it, we would not the innovation within broadcasting without the BBC, as their need to survive are different to reporting to shareholders that they can all affors a new yacht this year. Sorry to be so cynical.
ITV and Channel 4 are struggling, we even get a company (NTL) that filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy , and having just got out of jail mentioning that it might be interested in buying ITV.
ITV is a victim sadly of arrogance and hubris – once boating that ITV was a licence to print money

ITV has been struggling ever since its cosy monopoly was broken by Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB in the Nineties. Viewers and advertisers have deserted in droves for the internet and pay-TV. How to reverse, or at least arrest, ITV's decline has long perplexed management at the company, which became a single entity following the merger of Granada and Carlton in 2004.

Apparently ITV leaked the news of a merger to the press to help its share price.
Hutton says

In any case, the argument goes, the doom-mongers are old fogeys looking back to a golden age that never was. Television is now better, not worse; it has just become more democratic.

And this is the point ? do we bend right over for the capitalist market? Yes revenues have got to come from somewhere – and Tomi and I have blogged about that theme and some, and write about it in our book.
We have have a theory called the 4C's… if anyone is interested
So bruiser Brown – dont destroy our culture, and I am a bit pissed that companies, and marketing institutions have not responded to the obvious changes that have been going on for some time.
Heed these words

Digitalisation does not mean that only commercial television and the market rule. Rather, we have to think differently about how to maintain their same constructive tension with the notion of public-service broadcasting and have the confidence and conviction to do it. And that begins with Brown's decision on the licence fee.

One or two related blogs Why use your TV to watch repetitive drivel when you can plug your PlayStation into it instead || The end of the affair || Coming to a computer near you: television || ITV shares lose more ground || Does King Canute have a long tail? || Media Old World – Media New World || Nielsen study highlights growing power of online communities || Dumb and Dumber || Run don't walk! || From Mass media to Social Media || News to mobile video || Connectivity, Culture, Community and Commerce. why it's all happening on the web || The end of TV as we know it. Social networking comes to television || When push comes to pull. The new economy & culture of networking technology

Because most travel guidebooks are out of date before they hit the bookstore shelves, TripAdvisor.com of Needham, Mass., has started a guidebook-like service that will be written and edited anonymously by the Web site’s own users.

TripAdvisor Inside is an attempt to do for travel writing what Wikipedia has done for encyclopedias, harness the power of the Internet and its users to generate useful information.

One key difference is that TripAdvisor is trying to commercialize the Wikipedia approach, blending the content generated by its users with ads and revenue-generating text links.

And

The service began last week with some fairly basic submissions by travelers selected by TripAdvisor. The focus of the service initially is travel to Britain and California, but TripAdvisor chief executive Steve Kaufer said the emphasis will broaden over the next few weeks to include suggestions from anyone on virtually any travel destination.

Trip Advisor says, Unbiased reviews of hotels, resorts and vacations, get the truth and go.

You can even post pictures on the site.

your call

A little light relief, in between thinking about peer production, network theory etc.,

In a connected world, communities hold great power, and not just via hyperlink analysis on the Web. The groundbreaking book “Communities Dominate Brands” provides a truly realistic glimpse into the way communities have affected the way we market. Communities have huge pulling power on brands and at search engines. Tapping into those communities using multichannel programs and radically rethinking old-style advertising techniques is the future of marketing.

Thank you for the thumbs up

Via ClickZ

and thanks to Jackie Danicki for the hat tip

via Books shop
Date: 2005-09-20
Title: Brilliant
This book is brilliant…I read it cover to cover in 6 hours. A must read for all those interested in integrated messaging and new media.
Mark Barounos
President of Marketing and Sales

Date: 2005-06-21
Title: If you haven’t read this yet what a treat you have in store!
An excellent insight into what enpowered communities will want to do. For people who are interested in the rapidly growing opportunities of the mobile connected youth there are some brilliant inspirational ideas leaked.

What is the value of a blog? who is the writer? why have they felt compelled to write?

Well in this case it’s because you will find nothing that has a better finger on the pulse of newly emerging connected communities – communities that have the power to ruin your brand or promote your competitors.

Date: 2005-05-06
Title: Brilliant, deep book makes you think
This book impresses on every page with statistics, quotes, evidence and logic. The book proceeds logically from one concept to another. It forces the reader to re-examine assumptions, and constantly presents impressive examples from all around the world. The concepts are real, the trends sustainable and therefore their conclusions are indisputable.

The book is loaded with insightful examples and revealing case studies. The brand names and companies are all household names but the reader will be surprised how many unrelated industries are now involved with communities, from Adidas to Red Bull. Many times you have to put the book down to fully grasp the extent of their meaning.

There are chapters on blogging, on virtual worlds/videogaming and on cellphone based Generation-C. These are used as the three primary areas where digital communities already exist. The book then shows how just about every industry from TV and the internet to locksmiths and aerospace are feeling the impacts of communities.

The early part of the book discusses familiar themes of disruptive technologies, convergence and fragmentation. These are amplified with alarming facts, stats and examples. The second half of the book takes the reader deep into the near future, showing what changes are already happening to society. The book makes a compelling case as it so broadly provides examples from countries such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, England, Finland, Holland etc, in addition to USA and Canada.

The book concludes with the earth-shattering impacts to all of business, that brand dominance is now being superceded by community power. But where most books might end at introducing a revolutionary new problem or issue, this book goes on with another chapter to explain how that problem can be solved.

A remarkable book, thoroughly captivating, immensely insightful. I recommend it to anyone in business or technology.