Exhaustion

A Guardian writer is wondering if all the social networks have not worn us all out and that an exhaustion has set in similar to the post-2004 dot-com bust.

This is a nuanced but, I believe, compelling column.

Read its entirety at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/jul/26/social-networking-exhaustion-charles-arthur

Here are some interesting excerpts.

So we're back at the original questions: where are all the new social networks? I think they're gone. Done, dusted, over. I don't think anyone is going to build a social network from scratch whose only purpose is to connect people. We've got Facebook (personal), LinkedIn (business) and Twitter (SMS-length for mobile). . . .

. . . The next big sites won't be social networks. Of course they'll have social networking built into them; they'll come with an understanding of their importance, just as Facebook and Twitter know that search (an idea Google refined) and breaking news (Yahoo's remaining specialist metier) are de rigueur. Nor will they be existing sites retrofitted to do social networking, despite the efforts of Digg and Spotify.

So what will they be? No idea, I'm afraid. If I knew that, would I be here writing? Hell, no – I'd be off making elevator pitches and vacuuming up venture capital. Which brings us to business models. Facebook makes its money not just by sucking up ad impressions from the rest of the internet, using its remarkably detailed targeting ability; it also gets a cut from virtual transactions using its own virtual currency. LinkedIn, similarly, can precisely target its executive base. Twitter is different again, selling its user-generated content for big money to Google and Microsoft's Bing, as well as experimenting with direct payment for its EarlyBird sales system and "promoted tweets".

The point being that "ad-supported" isn't the only game for startup revenue. The big sites of the future won't necessarily be about ads as a way to make money, and they won't be about social networks. Now, hunker down and wait. Or get out there and build it.

Of course, I would argue that personalization of some stripe will be the next iteration. And it can be argued that personalization is a form of social media. Not necessarily. If someone chooses "friends" as there primary source of personalized content, then I suppose it is a social media. But if you choose some artificial intelligence, semantic search mechanism for your personalization, that is definitely NOT social media.

Video: YouData

Advertising can be annoying if it is always trying to sell us something we don't need or want. But what would happen if the only advertising we saw was advertising we wanted? Or even better, what would happen if advertisers paid us for our attention rather than a third party broker?
Well that model is here, practiced by YouData. And here is the video that explains the paradigm shift: youdata.com.

Not only can you watch the video, but you can then sign up and immdiately start being paid for advertisements that you say you would be interested in seeing.

(You can also put this in your browser to see the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZXiouF-Ins)

Video: Sixth Sense

Do you sometimes wish you wouldn't have to be tethered to a PC or a mobile phone or an I-Pad to see the media you want. Or do the calculations you need. Or take and crop pictures. Like magic, don't you wish you could just point your fingers at an object to get a picture? Or do the math computations on the fingers of your hand?
Sixth sense makes those wishes possible. Fundamentally sixth sense technology is pulling the virtual world out of a device (like a PC or mobile phone or I-pad) by putting it in our real, physical world.
Believeit or not, here's a video that explains sixth sense technology.

(or watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUdDhWfpqxg)

Video: LuminAR

The new lamp may become the light of the world.

Here is a video that describes a very practical new device for Personalizing MEdia, in particular, liberating the internet: the
LuminAR.

(Watch it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b45BpeVDx9w)

Every day

Part of personalizing my media is a very simple formula that is so close to Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert's that I'll just quote her from the July/August issue of WEBmd.

The question is: What is your healthy-living philosophy?

I have a list of 10 things I try to do every day, which I have found kep me happy and healthy. I can't say it's a prescription for everyone, but this is what works for my particular organism: mind, body and soul. When I take care of these things, everything else takes care of itself. Here is the list: 1. Take a walk. 2. Write something. 3. Read something. 4.Don't eat too much. 5. Spend some time in silence. 6. Stretch. 7. Send a mess of love to somebody. 8.Drink water. 9.Mess around in the garden and 10. Floss.

I guess I would substitue "search" for "stretch" and leave out "floss."

Ah-ha moment

Eduguide has a wonderful definition of an ah-ha moment.
"Experiencing an 'Ah-ha' moment can be unique and special for each individual. It's a point in time when one realizes something for the first time. Perhaps solving a personal problem or finding the answer to something that has been very troubling.

"When an 'Ah-ha' moment occurs, it is usually accompanied with satisfaction, joy, or a sense of accomplishment. Look for those special moments; they are wonderful and will be remembered for a long time.

"When an 'Ah-ha' moment happens, you will know that something special is about to happen for you."

(You can check this out yourself at http://www.eduguide.org/Parents-Library/An-Ah-ha-Moment-Turning-Points-in-Learning-127.aspx.)

That's why when people ask me to describe Presonalize Media I say it is media that create ah-ha moments. That's what all media strives to do, but media is more likely if to succeed if guided by personal input.

Conversely as more and more people understand what Personalize Media is all about, hopefully I will collect ah-ha moments from more and more people.

This was MY first ah-ha moment: When I was 19 I began to plan to drop my college deferment after receiving a Draft Number of 15, which meant I would surely be drafted to the Vietnam War the minute I graduated in 1973. However, I read an article that Thanksgiving in the New York Times that said there would be no more soldiers called up that fall, so I immediately dropped the deferment, passed my physical and waited. Sure enough no one was called up that fall of 1970, and by Jan. 1 1971, my name was at the bottom of the list and I was never drafted. Reading that article in the New York Times was my ah-ha moment. And it changed my life, I'm sure.

Community choice

When it comes to Personalize Media, there may be nothing better than community bloggers.

There have been some wonderful experiments by media companies in the U.S., connecting readers to local bloggers, or using an old term, user generated content.

One example that may lead the pack, is the Denver Post’s Your Hub that first established 19 community websites soliciting and receiving nearly 90 percent of its content from local bloggers and local people and local companies in an around Denver.

Then the Post spun off weekly, zoned, print sections using that material and five years later the “experiment” is profitable and sustainable and valuable and valued by the communities it serves.

Most recently The Sacramento Bee established Sacramento Connect. (Visit /www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/comments/20100720_with_sacramento_connect_the_bee_taps_the_power_of_partnerships)

Growing virally, the network of local bloggers seems to be adding some valuable content to the newspaper’s daily report.

As far as readers go, many people would like to hone their daily information diet to include local content. Bloggers, especially when made available through a well-known, trusted brand like the local newspaper, can offer those special reports.

Maybe now

Ever since I first logged on to a computer, I’ve been learning what's available and what I like and don't like on the web. And yet I’m STILL spending most of my time today searching, searching, searching.

After all the time I’ve spent on the web, why doesn’t the web understand me better. Who took the ME out of Media?

How come on the web so many sites organize things according to what they think I would want? And then guess when I would want it. And How. And for what reason.

Let’s say you’re a guy who follows artificial intelligence and global politics and modern architecture and the American West. And your Blackberry.

Or you’re a gal who follows book publishing and gardening and calorie watching and family and Dobermans and the American South. And your Mac Pro.

How does one site reconcile all this?

And let’s say tomorrow you’re that same guy who suddenly discovers AroundtheWorldNews from Syntops. And you want to add that to your new I-Pad but not to your website.

Or you’re that woman who suddenly discovers Shopping.com. And you want that delivered your Mac every morning, but not to you mobile phone.

Ever since the web came along 15 years ago, people have been entertained, and frustrated.

Why do I have to keep sitting in front of a computer or staring at a mobile phone? Why can’t MEdia be everywhere. At least everywhere I am. On my shower curtain. On the ceiling in my room. On the tablecloth at the dining table. On the wall in my office.

Maybe now it can. Plan to attend the Personalize Media Conference. Visit http://www.personalizenews.com

The promise

Personalization. It's what the web has always promised. Back in the stone age, when there was only the little Mac and the big DOS IBM, we began to think about personalizing our experience, even if it was only a chat group . . . or user group as we called ourselves then.

And every year the reality gets bigger. Now we’ve got Faebook and Twitter and Stumbleupon and you name it. We even have a term for that kind of personalization: social media.

But personalization has many new forms.

Now you can personalize your newspaper. There are two German companies that mix and match newspaper pages. Their software could be applied to magazines and books.

So imagine a professor choosing excerpts from multiple books to make his own creation. And his students picking their individual covers.

You can personalize your advertising with PrecisionAds. Let’s say you are a jeweler and want to reach only those people within 5 miles of your storefront who are over 50 and make more than $100,000 a year. Easy with PrecisionAds.

You can personalize your mobile phone. Let’s say you see an article in a newspaper or magazine and you want to read that story later. If it has the Primiro logo you can text the story to your phone.

You can personalize your website. ICurrent.com asks you your preferences to begin with and then watches you use the site to determine what future stories to give you.

You can personalize what comes out of your home printer, if it’s an internet ready Hewlett Packard device. Just touch the screen and print your Fandango tickets or your Mapquest directions.

In fact, you can personalize any printing. CGX Publishing, a global company, is testing all the new, web-fed variable data printers to get the best one to be able to personalize books and magazines and newspapers and brochures and event programs.

Imagine if you showed up at the theater and the program had your name and the location of your seat on the cover.

Or you ordered your tickets for a blacktie fundraiser online and the program you get when you arrived has your name, the sponsor of the table where you are sitting and the amount of your donation. And the names of the other people at the table – and what they do.

Personalization. You can’t get enough.

The four c's

The internet should be more a part of our physical world.

In other words, there is no reason why digits can't be liberated from computers. Why can't I see information from the virtual world projected into my walk-around world. That's the spirit of sixth sense technology that is very much a part of the Personalize MEdia movement.

We don't want to be the slaves of computers. We want to be the partners of computers and invite them into the physical world we still spend the majority of our time in.

On top of that, we want the reception of all that metadata to be on our terms: when we want it.

Maybe I want the Boston Red Sox box scores on my shower curtain, but I want the world the Afghanistan war headlines on the wall of my room. And may be I want my emails beside my plate at the breakfast table.

Maybe I want my calendar/schedule on the refrigerator door.

And we want to choose that content carefully. Maybe only one special curated story about the latest cancer research news every day -- on my ceiling above my bed.

Choice of stories; choice of advertising; choice of platform; choice of time of delivery. (People say they worry about living in a bubble; but one of our daily choices could be "mainstream" news.)

Choice, choice, choice, choice. The four c's.

The new T.E

There may be a new Thomas Edison, and he's a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab who has invented something called the LuminAR.

This robotic camera, light bulb, internet computer can screw into your table lamp and project the virtual image of a computer screen on any surface to which you can interact with touch screen accuracy.

This is another version of sixth sense technology -- pushing the virtual world into the real world and making our real world more interesting.

Watch: http://labcast.media.mit.edu/?p=129

Embed virtuality or improve data?

I wonder if there are not two divergent approaches to the future of the internet.

There's the sixth sense approach, which says the world for the last 15 years has been creating a virtual reality that reflects physical reality, and needs to reverse and begin to build a physical reality that reflects the virtual world.

Here is a youtube video on that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUdDhWfpqxg

And the semantical approach that believes the problem is data itself. We move data beautifully, but the data is so poor the results are underwhelming. We need to take data to the level of information and even eventually knowledge and, don't feint, perhaps, vision. Here is a great youtube explanation of that point of view.

http://www.iiea.com/events/semantic-web-from-web-20-to-web-30?gclid=CPmny9_E8qICFSA5gwodhlE9kw

Why not solve for both?