Newsday’s Ellis Hennican writes today about a notion for reviving the still-and-forever-flagging Sears: turn it into an annuity membership with which you get a lifetime string of and repair of updated TVs, lawnmowers, whatever. This is not unlike Interface Inc.’s program of leasing carpeting. In essence, this is the cable-box model the old telephone model: they own the device and rent it to us. — and that’s the problem with it, since those programs were and are ripoffs. But in this case, there’s no monopoly. So the real question is, do we trust Sears to survive.
I like this discussion of reinventing companies and industries in the digital age. Here’s my proposal for the social airline. I’ll write one soon about retail.
I was amazed that on today’s New York Times front page, I couldn’t find a mention of Hillary Clinton’s victory in Florida — not even a reefer (jargon for a promo box), not a by-the-way paragraph inserted into the Republican story, not a news peg added into a story about 527 groups advertising on behalf of Obama (a positive story for him, nonetheless, since they say he’s working hard to repudiate them while they say Clinton is not). It’s the same story online: other than a line in the chart of results, there’s a mention of Clinton’s win only below the fold (that is, the first screen), in smaller type, under the label “more politics.”
I went to the Times Square newstand to look at the Washington Post. Clinton’s victory is right at the top of the page aside McCain’s. I would call that proper news judgment.
Yes, it’s true that Clinton officially won no delegates because the Democratic Party is punishing Florida. But that, itself, is a story: There’s a huge turnout in Florida for votes that supposedly don’t count. Where’s the outrage about disenfranchising these voters; it’s an undemocratic, unDemocratic, unconstitutional, and — considering Florida’s importance in November — just plain politically dumb move by the party. But the Times relegated the story to the bottom of page A16.
If I were a communications student, I’d be doing an analysis of the Times’ coverage of Clinton. There is a pattern here.
(Disclosure: I’ve said before and will repeat that I’m planning to vote for Clinton on SuperTuesday.)
I’m at the Always-On OnMedia confab in New York (yes, another conference… life is a conference). I’ll not liveblog it; after DLD and Davos, I’m liveblogged-out. This one is focused on investment and that’s good; that is the mother’s milk of innovation. But I’m frustrated that the people on the stage — as innovative as they are — are still thinking in old media terms on the internet.
They think it’s content. “The perceived economic value of content is approaching zero,” said Drew Lipsher of Greycroft. The reason that people come on the internet is for the content, says Jim Spanfeller of Forbes.com The problem with that, I think, is that the internet is more about connections and relationships — that’s where the core value is and content is a vehicle for that. This is like measuring the value of a car based on how much we like the seat. We don’t value cars because we can sit in them but because they get us somewhere. We’re valuing and measuring the wrong things.
They think it has to be big. Eric Hippeau said that critical mass for advertisers to pay attention is growing from 1 million to 3-5 million users. Jonathan Miller is waiting for a blockbuster hit on the internet that spawns sequels and t-shirt sales. That’s still treating us like a mass. That’s still about lazy advertisers who want to buy upfront and don’t want to converse with us as individuals or at least communities. We need advertisers’ money; that will be the primary support of online media. But we need to both retrain them and give them the infrastructure and data to enable them to market smarter and create meaningful relationships — and, in the process, support small instead of big. Part of that infrastructure is technology to enable better measurement and sales. And part of it is putting together curated networks that do make buying advertising easier.
They think life is neat. We’re still hearing this red herring about advertisers not wanting to be associated with bad things online. Name a brand that has been truly ruined because a banner ad appeared on a porn site. Name one. Oh, yes, there’ve been teapot-tempests — boiled by media — about a banner that ends up on a neonazi page but, c’mon, no consumer is going to assume that the brand is Nazified. The answers to this are first to recognize that life is messy and second to use networks that curate content. The draw of being included in that network and getting its money will be the thing that keeps the content safe. But, hey, advertisers, life is not neat. Shit happens. (Oops. I said shit. I guess the ads on the right will be disappearing.)
They think this is about selling. We’re still hearing about standard ad models and measurements. But someone on the panel pointed to Nike, which is moving away from CPMs and GRPs and heading to providing the infrastructure for communities to do what they want to do. Nike is turning from a manufacturer and marketer of products into a platform.
I don’t mean to say that everyone’s in the past and issue a they-don’t-get-it rant. Indeed, these people get it more than most. I’m just saying that the online life is — pardon me — differenter than we yet realize. The very model of media is only starting to come into focus. We think. We hope.
Yes, the country sure has fallen to hell since 2003 wouldn’t you say: naked people on the street, wild sex everywhere, young children sold into sexual slavery in once-quiet suburbs. Yes, we were corrupted as a country back then by the nanosecond flash of a breast and a butt.
Good God, I hate the FCC and its interference in speech and culture.
They’ve gone and done it again with a fine against ABC for a flash of T&A on NYPD Blue five years ago.
The description of the scene by the FCC is more lewd and lascivious than the scene itself; it is written as if by a dirty old man:
[A] woman wearing a robe is shown entering a bathroom, closing the door, and then briefly looking at herself in a mirror hanging above a sink. The camera then shows her crossing the room, turning on the shower, and returning to the mirror. With her back to the camera, she removes her robe, thereby revealing the side of one of her breasts and a full view of her back. The camera shot includes a full view of her buttocks and her upper legs as she leans across the sink to hang up her robe. The camera then tracks her, in profile, as she walks from the mirror back toward the shower. Only a small portion of the side of one of her breasts is visible. Her pubic area is not visible, but her buttocks are visible from the side.
The scene shifts to a shot of a young boy lying in bed, kicking back his bed covers, getting up, and then walking toward the bathroom. The camera cuts back to the woman, who is now shown standing naked in front of the shower, her back to the camera. The frame consists initially of a full shot of her naked from the back, from the top of her head to her waist; the camera then pans down to a shot of her buttocks, lingers for a moment, and then pans up her back. The camera then shifts back to a shot of the boy opening the bathroom door. As he opens the door, the woman, who is now standing in front of the mirror with her back to the door, gasps, quickly turns to face the boy, and freezes momentarily. The camera initially focuses on the woman’s face but then cuts to a shot taken from behind and through her legs, which serve to frame the boy’s face as he looks at her with a somewhat startled expression. The camera then jumps to a front view of the woman’s upper torso; a full view of her breasts is obscured, however, by a silhouette of the boy’s head and ears. After the boy backs out of the bathroom and shuts the door, the camera shows the woman facing the door, with one arm and hand covering her breasts and the other hand covering her pubic area. The scene ends with the boy’s voice, heard through the closed door, saying “sorry,” and the woman while looking embarrassed, responds, “It’s okay. No problem.”
This is the FCC’s “analysis:
As an initial matter, we find that the programming at issue is within the scope of our indecency definition because it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs – specifically an adult woman’s buttocks.” Although ABC argues, without citing any authority, that the buttocks are not a sexual organ, we reject this argument, which runs counter to both case law and common sense.
I’d say that the buttocks are not an organ. I’ll cite this definition from Oxford American: “a part of an organism that is typically self-contained and has a specific vital function, such as the heart or liver in humans.”
What’s offensive about this is the sexism of it: A woman’s butt is dirty and corrupting. A woman’s breast is obscene.
When will the women of America stand up and protest?
What is the moral difference between this and making women wear burkas?
But what’s really fun about this is that by calling the buttocks a sexual organ, as the FCC does, they are acknowledging that anal sex is sex.
The FCC says it received “a number” of complaints about this. They don’t even both saying what the number is anymore since that’s been shown (by me) to be meaningless. Though at least this time the FCC admitted that it received “letters from members of various citizen advocacy groups.” First Amendment spam, that is.
The government — no government — should be involved in restricting and regulating speech in any medium. Period.
Here’s my Guardian column about the DLD08 conference and the social theme I heard through it. The lede:
We natter on these days about how people are becoming social online. But we have always been social; the internet merely provides more ways for us to connect with each other. What’s truly new is the opportunity for companies, especially media companies, to be social. I spent much of last week in the company of a social corporation: Burda, the German media giant (where I have consulted). In Munich, New York, and Davos, its chairman, Hubert Burda, throws parties where he delights in bringing together the most interesting, creative crowds. I’ve seen his company benefit from bringing in new experience, talent, ideas, and relationships.
Last week was Burda’s biggest party, the Digital Life Design conference in Munich, with 1,000 media people trying to figure out their future. And the theme I heard strung through much of their discussion was about how to rethink media in social terms.
And here’s David Kirkpatrick’s column in Fortune on the same event.
23andMe, the DNA company, offered free tests to 1,000 of the Davosati, unlocking our DNA for each of us, telling us about certain genetic propensities, identifying our heritage, and opening up a new social network of the gene.
We went to a booth in the fancy party hotel and spit — and spit and spit and spit some more — into a plastic tube and created a web account. Investor Esther Dyson even brought a few kits with her to the fancy final-night dinner party and had moguls salivating. In a few weeks, I’ll have my report back. This one is on the house for Davos participants. Otherwise, it costs $1,000.
I’ll confess that it is a little freaky. I’m unlocking secrets that have been with me since birth and my family since Adam. In there could be my fate, God forbid, if I have a propensity toward one disease or another. There goes a bit of free will out the window. On the other hand, if I can avoid disease because I am informed, I’ve just gained more power.
I also am dying to get the report on my ancestry. It is filled with mystery because my family tree grew on the rocky slopes of Appalachia. That is, we’re hillbillies. My grandfather’s father is unknown — we think his name was (and thus mine should be) Reilly (or is that Riley?), but we’re not sure. So for all I know, I’m Irish. My wife looked at pictures of my grandmother on the other side and insists she looks black. So maybe I’m African. We all want to know our roots. I was jealous of my wife’s ability to track her family to Germany and for us to meet them. I’ll never be invited to the Reilly family reunion.
It’s just information, my DNA. That was the point made by Craig Venter and Richard Dawkins at the DLD conference in Munich last week. Venter pretty has pretty much proven that he could take my DNA and put it in you and suddenly you’d be blogging and talking fast. We are merely vessels — media — for the data in our DNA.
Does this give me fantasies of cloning myself? No. There are enough of me. And if another of me turned out to be wildly successful, I’d feel like such a failure.
It’s hard to imagine that I’ll end up joining some social network around my genes, but I won’t rule it out, especially if there turns out to be a problem. As I’ve recounted here, by revealing my heart condition (atrial fibrillation; in control; thanks for asking), I’ve gained support and information from the experience of others. It even helped that Tony Blair had the same condition treated, because the media covered it and linked to yet more resources.
I’m sure doctors are hating this. At the Davos session I moderated on stimulation (no, not that kind), I sat next to two doctors who hated their patients coming in with information on the internet. They complained that some had misinformation and some were suffering from online-induced hypochondria. I argued back that their response should be to point their patients to good and reliable information resources online. I said that they, like media, should act as curators.
So unlocking our DNA may well link us to communities of information that can be helpful.
Finally, I wonder whether there’s information in aggregate that will come out of this new industry. Can we discover more linkages between disease and genes because there is now more data that we provide in return? In other words, maybe the lung blowouts that I share with my father (and Patty Hearst, by the way — another celebrity disease connection) can be attached to a gene if enough of us report the condition and turn out to have common elements in our DNA.
And with this free offer from 23andMe at Davos, perhaps the company will be able to find out just how weak the gene pool of the rich and powerful really is.
I continue to wonder whether off-the-record can work anymore.
At a closed Davos session, I witnessed a bizarre anti-American meltdown by a government official. It went on for sometime before I finally had it and called this person on it, saying that the rant was anti-American and that I was offended. I’m not telling you anything more — including what else I said — so as not to identify the official because the session was off the record, as I was firmly reminded by a WEF person and as the moderator reminded the room five seconds after the event (which is to say that they knew this was newsworthy). The rule is clear and I’m respecting it.
But the next day, the official’s outburst was the topic du jour among all the dozens of people at the meeting and they talked about it with more people. And all those people are powerful: journalists, media executives, business titans, government officials. So the off-the-record rule is no shield for a brain fart. The people who witnessed it could and very well may affect that official’s career.
The argument for making things off-the-record is that participants will feel freer to talk and to be candid. And that seems to make sense. But at a place like Davos, you’re still talking among people who can affect policy, business, brand, media, and careers. And they talk. Just because it’s not in the press or on blogs doesn’t mean such a lapse won’t have an impact.
Now add to this the live nature of media today. Someone could have broadcast that moment live or Twittered it as it happened. No one in that room did or likely would because we all want to be invited back to Davos. Yes, that motivates me to follow the rule. But at any other event that is supposed to be off the record, there is surely someone in the room who won’t care. And once it’s out online, it’s out.
All this is further confused because my own policy is that I am generally on the record — my life is an open blog — unless I label something, which I try to do to be clear and which usually involves someone else’s information or privacy I want to respect. This had an impact on a session I moderated, which fell under the off-the-record cloak. But I said I was on the record and at least one other person piped in and said she is always on as well. Then someone who didn’t pipe up got quoted on a blog (no big deal, by the way). So it’s hard to know who and what are off-the-record nowadays without a scorecard.
Life is simply becoming more public. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
* People were constantly asking each other what the mood of Davos was this year, as if it were the pulse of the world. I liked the Piano Bar index: It was said to be less crowded this year than in the past. Uh-oh, downturn. I’d characterize the mood as wishfully optimistic — they all wished to be optimistic.
* Good Tony Blair line: “In today’s world, left and right can be less important than open and closed.”
* The YouTube Davos Conversation Page alcove turned into the Web 2.0 newsroom. Big media were outside in a tent — a “semipermanent structure,” they call it — sitting at crowded tables. The bloggers and vloggers hung out by YouTube. This also meant that they were on the floor, in the thick of the action, and picked up more stories.
* People-watching is half the fun. One night, I managed to weasel my way into a reception thrown by Kleiner, Perkins for Al Gore and Bono. George Soros was hanging out in the corner. I met Elllie Wiesel on the line for the metal detector. Ran into David Cameron and shot the video below. I was at two dinners with Emma Thompson and sat across the table from Howard Stringer and Jeff Zucker. That’s how nutty this place is.
* Best purchase I made was crampons for the heels of my shoes so I wouldn’t fall and break my ass on the steep climb to my hotel. I’m clumsy and it’s icy everywher, which is a perfect combination for personal disaster. Except I managed to spike my own pants. That’s just how clumsy I am.
* Every man at Davos was breathless at the beauty of Jordan’s Queen Rania. During one session, I looked up at her gigantic image on the screen behind her and was also dazzled by the countless diamonds on her big and beautiful earrings. I turned to a master of the one-liner behind me and said I wondered what they were worth. His response: “She’s worth it.”
* Davos versus other conferences: Better food, worse schwag. All I came away with was a U23D hat from Bono’s movie (which was promoted masterfully by Hollywood guy Sandy Climan and frequently by Al Gore), a Turkish tie (I didn’t know they liked ties), a YouTube kit hat (purposefully dorky), and a Google scarf (which you’d know only because it’s so damned red — there’s Google’s subtlety for you).
* I was enthralled watching Israeli investor Yossi Vardi at DLD and Davos. He’s a power behind technology, business, and politics (which means international politics) at Davos. He brings his companies along like ducks behind him and generously introduces him to everyone he can; I enjoyed meeting them all. He pulls together an annual breakfast for Shimon Peres, where we heard leaders from Jordan and Palestine and America talk about their common ground and common projects. Everyone knows Yossi. I talked with him about his investment philosophy and hope to talk with him again and write about it.
* Speaking of Yossi, there’s one leftover note from DLD in Munich that I didn’t have time to write about before I left: Yossi brought his friend, Israeli orchestral conductor Itay Talgam, to talk with the DLD crowd about management. It was magnificent. He showed us video of conductors Richard Mutti and Erich Kleiber, contrasting their styles and showing us how they inspired or limited creativity. Mutti is strict. Kleiber inspired and enjoys and gives his performers the room to create. I can’t do it justice in a blog post but if you have a convention or big business meeting, get this man there. Clay Shirky said afterwards that Talgam made him rethink some of the ways he teaches; me, too.
* Marcel Reichert of Burda and I talked about magazines’ position in the new media world before he went on a panel and we agreed that they have a strength because there is already a community around them that is waiting to be connected. Marcel came up with a word to describe this that I love: They are “precommunities.” Communities waiting to be enabled.
Here’s my answer to the Davos question. In a word: transparency.
The question was: What one thing do you think that companies, countries, or individual must do to make the world a better place in 2008. A few hundred left responses before Davos. More than a hundred responded at Davos. Altogether, these videos have been watched more than 350,000 times.
Yes, the question and many of the answers are save, even rather insipid. But this was a symbolic act that had an impact at Davos. This is what I wanted to do last year when the Davos Conversation was started (disclosure: I worked on that). I wanted to bring the faces and voices and views of the world into Davos and have the powerful there respond. And so it’s a start.
Google cofounder Sergey Brin is asked what Google can do to help voting. His answer: YouTube.
Rick Warren, pastor at a megachurch and author of megabooks, uses his moment to promote “the faith sector” to equal status to the public and private sectors of society. “The Christian church is bigger than China. It’s bigger than India. It’s bigger than China and India together,” he brags.
Bono tells people not to let politicians slip on the Millennium Goals:
Yo Yo Ma tells us to work hard and be loving:
Hamid Karzai just tells us to be nice:
Here’s my video of Henry Kissinger:
Here’s the summary of the outsiders’ comments shown to the opening of Davos:
The other day, I live-blogged the Google Foundation conversation about its work in energy and other areas. What fascinated me was seeing a world as run by engineers. YouTube put up the full video:
Last night, I got to go to a cultural dinner with a dozen artists scattered around the room: pick your person, pick your medium. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma was at the table behind; Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, writer and director of the wonderful film The Life of Others to the left; theatrical artist Peter Sellaras to the rear; musician Peter Gabriel limping (on a broken foot) from over there.
I grabbed a chair at novelist Paulo Coelho’s table because I’d heard some of his story of interacting with his community of readers at DLD and wanted to hear more (and I’ll call him to write a longer post soon). I was having a ball but then the dinner shifted to presentations from the artists, starting with Catterina Fake, who showed how she enables art from everyone on Flickr. Some of the talks were good, some weren’t.
What really struck me was the contrast between conversation and performance. Of course, we value performance from artists. But given the opportunity to converse — on a blog or at a dinner — we have a richly different experience: probing, questioning, responding, learning. Is conversation art? Well, of course it can be. I don’t mean to say one is better than the other, but once the artist stands before an audience, it can become an act of showing off. It becomes, almost by definition, self-conscious.
Now clearly, artists can’t afford constant conversation. But note that more and more, artists are using their art to promote their appearances — note Madonna’s new representation deal that puts concerts first and Peter Gabriel’s argument that pirated CDs are marketing for concerts. It’s not just a matter of economics — the record business falling apart — but also of a new relationship between artists and fans, who seek more of a personal touch, more of a relationship. Coehlo, in return, also seeks a relationship. That is why he blogs.
In an era when media, including art, are becoming dominated by the internet, we need to recognize the impact of the idea that the internet is less about content and more about relationships. Is art at its heart content or a relationship, a conversation?
