For some strange reason, when I am on my iPod touch device, and view a certain music video on YouTube, it is not the same version that I get on my PC. Somewhat oddly, it’s a superior version to its PC counterpart. I am not sure what that means, but it means something. More on that in a bit.
The other day, I was talking with Alex Mostoufi, my friend and business partner at Snapp Networks (my social networking platform company), and he made an interesting point. He equated the changes going on in the technology/media industries right now with a world war brewing.
Namely, that strong industry forces are colliding, seriously disrupting multiple sectors of the market, creating new alignments, breaking old ones, and generally messing up any sense of stasis.
Once upon a time, the media, mobile, pc and internet industries had clear industry demarcation points with independent ecosystems, separate economic models and from a modality perspective, different audiences and audience engagement models.
Then something happened. Formerly impenetrable walls came crashing down. Economic models were redefined. Audience definitions and dimensions were recast. Lots of casualties and collateral damage ensued.
One only has to look at the newspaper and music industries to understand the power of creative destruction at work here. How do you explain to the layman what Craigslist has meant to the newspaper business? It’s the equivalent of what the giant astral impact event was to the dinosaur.
With that as a backdrop, here is a riddle. Why is it that only Apple and Google seem to have figured out how to traverse the entire online universe – i.e., media, mobile, pc and the internet - ‘build a winning hand’ and then play that hand accordingly?
Answer: Everyone else seems to be dealing in the realm of chicken parts whereas these two are dealing fundamentally from the concept of a living, breathing chicken.
But, I would assert that it does not have to be that way. One can map out in a pretty logical fashion well-formed platform constructs down to the level of presentation formats, audience engagement parameters, content distribution policies, and advertising methods, ad units and analytics – and equally important, how to manage them.
At least that was the intent of my post, ‘Best Practices: How to Build an Audience’ in shining a light on the 'WHAT' and 'WHY' of Google, YouTube, Apple (iPod), eBay and Amazon.
And to be clear, the stakes are high. Consider the words of Research In Motion's co-chief executive, Jim Balsillie:
Echoing Vodafone Group chief executive Arun Sarin's words from an earlier keynote, Balsillie said carriers have come to a fork in the road that will see them either become pipes or platforms. They must therefore provide a managed service to users, seamlessly integrating Web services and desktop applications onto handsets. "This is not a concept. This is a reality," he said.
That, my friends, is the fork in the road. To be a (silo’d) pipe or to build a platform and become a service provider. To have a real strategy and then figure out tactically speaking, if the plan is to buy, build, license or to sit on the sidelines (until some pre-ordained moment). Or do nothing and let gravity take its course.
Which brings me back to the song, ‘Voices,’ by Russ Ballard, the aforementioned video with superior quality on my iPod touch to on my PC (actually, a MacBook Pro).
I find Ballard’s lyrics pretty resonant, poetic and philosophical and it's a great video:
In my head the voice is waiting, waiting for me to set it free. I locked it inside my imagination, but I'm the one who's got the combination.
A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to have a daily picture in my head of the Golden Gate Bridge and just continue to make San Francisco my home for the long haul.
Sometimes, that is all of the clarity that it takes to 'become' by becoming.
Check out the video if you are willing to invest five minutes in entertaining and energizing thoughts. It’s a decent snapshot of the future of media, pc, mobile and the internet.
An old piece of media (the song is over a decade old), finding new life online via pc and mobile device, driving a real transaction (I bought the song on iTunes via the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store).
