broadstuff

Picking up on a post by Chris Messina on Social Media "Attention Brokers" whose business model is then to push commercial messages to the aggregated audience:

Attention brokers, like Brightkite, therefore, need to remember their place in this ecosystem: they need to first be the friend to and advocate of the individual (their customer), and second, to the advertiser or brand. Companies that don’t get this prioritization right will fail (and is why, in some respects, Facebook continues to change its platform rules while drawing the ire of developers, because, in order to keep their users, they must ultimately continue to make their environment a safer and more trustworthy space).

And therein is the ultimate contradiction of Social Media Commerce - any commercial enterprise is ultimately the creature of its cash channel. Chris is sort of onto this when he writes:

Doc Searls calls this consumer-driven leverage VRM or “vender relationship management”. I’ve been a fan of the idea, but I think it falls down on the last word: management. Big companies are willing to devote thousands and millions of dollars “managing” their customers; individuals are not. But services like Brightkite and Facebook are beginning to change that by enabling us to leverage our real-time, real-world behavior as a gating apparatus, removing the “management” requirement of VRM, and allowing us to “flow with the go”.

Chris is on the button with the user not being prepared to put the time into "management", so it either has to be automated via algorithms, social filters, or massively simplified. But the main "contradiction inherent in the system" remains my top note though - Facebook and Brightkite are ultimately the creature of their cash channels, not the customer. Thus, for them to hand us the levers to their gates will be an (ultimately) impossible thing for them to do, because that chokes their revenue models off. You see, when Chris notes that:

As we invite these attention brokers into our list of recipients to whom we release increasingly contextualized and precise information about ourselves, we stand to benefit a great deal.

He is in theory correct, but in the real world such existing instruments benefit us very little - in that most loyalty cards etc give us very little benefit (as a % off) compared to the value they create. And it is hard to see what changes this dynamic today, as the relative market power of the individual (represented as the consumer NPV) has not changed. Thus when he notes that:

privacy, then, becomes a rational, economic instrument that determines whether a company gets to serve us well (based on knowing us better) or clumsily (as they make presumptions about us through circumstance rather than intentional disclosure).

He is again right, but again only in theory. The reality, as I note above, is that no one individual yet has the market power to extract anything like sufficient surplus back to themselves to make this a rational economic instrument. In order for this approach to work it needs an aggregation system which is on the user's side, and big enough to aggregate large numbers of users - and that means the aggregator ultimately must derive its funding from the user, not the commercial entity. (This, in VRMspeak is a Type 4 entity - a user agent - rather than what Brightkite and Facebook are structured as, which are Type 3 (vendor agent) systems albeit attempting to mediate a Type 4 experience).

Now, solving this problem would be extremely interesting, but it is not what Brightkite, Foursquare or Facebook are about. So who is? Well, right now there are three approached that can be used:

- Offset funded entities - something that makes its money from elsewhere, that chooses to take the user's side as an Attention Broker. Google makes money from millions of tiny Ads, an extension into Attention Broking in this scenario is not hard to imagine.

- Parallel funded entities - something that, by taking the user's side as an Attention Broker, makes its money directly. An obvious example here is something that makes money from carrying the transactions, the obvious ones being transport layer players such as Telcos or ISPs. The eBay model is another example, where the vendor "pays to play" on the platform, but here getting the balance right is a lot harder. Also credit cards could take this role, making money from a small % of financial transactions.

- Venture funded entities - use money from backers to make a market, to capitalise sustainably via one of the above methods in the longer terms. You could imagine using the asymmetric connection nature of Twitter, for example, to nail up the inbound commercial communications based on user data and permission given to the API. In simple terms I suscribe to a list called "good cheap pizza" and Twitter knows my location, so when I twt @feedmeseymour #pizza (for example) I get a bunch of twts of special offers from nearby (knows my location) good (rating 4+ from my twitterfriends), cheap (my setting), pizza (not #fried chicken).

(Update for clarity - The Twitter example serves to illustrate the probable Open endgame in my view - you don't need to be a social network, or a location based service or any "application layer" entity. All you really need is highly automated mediation at the infrastructure layer, and a flexible transport layer. )

All to play for then, as you can see - but my hypotheses tell me that its not the Brightkite's or Facebooks that are necessarily going to win this game if - assuming its game on, of course - good Type 4 systems can be built. But, as Chris notes, the vendors will spend millions and millions of dollars on "Type 3" systems, so its no slam-dunk and we could sell see a continuation of today's world.

If you liked this post, don't forget to vote for Broadstuff for the British BIMAs 2009 Best Blog Award

So, this article on TechCrunch talking about Twitter user numbers in the US slowing down makes it onto Techmeme on Friday morning (UK time). It says:

Ever since last summer, Twitter’s growth in the U.S. has been stalling. But in October, the number of people who visited Twitter.com from the U.S. actually declined for the first time by 8 percent month-over-month. Estimates released today by comScore put Twitter’s domestic unique visitors at 19.2 million, down from 20.9 million in September.

But here is the thing - I read about it on Twitter on Tuesday for the first time I think - by today, as it gets on Techmeme, its old news. Old News! On Techmeme! Two years ago that would have been unthinkable.....

A 3 day difference in news is a huge arbitrage and valuable to someone I am sure. I was struck by what Heather Hampton of the UK Department of Health said of her experience of using Twitter to monitor scarememes about Swineflu, in that she had a good 10 days warning before a Twitter story finally broke in the Panic! Panic! mainstream media organs. So, whereas a few years ago the Dept would be caught on the back foot, they now have about a week to be prepared to counter the News Agenda. (She was speaking at Mashup Social Media 09, see our coverage here)

So for this reason I suspect Twitter - or whatever similar service succeeds it - isn't going away anytime soon. I've always seen it as an infrastructure layer, not a service layer thing and its architecture is just too darn useful to too many people.

OK, its a terrible pun, but the rest of this is funnier. Bain has written a report with a 5 point plan to recapture value in the Online Ad market, which has been falling. Mediapost notes that:

The heart of the findings are that online sales organizations have lacked the "sophistication" necessary to turn the perceptions advertisers and agencies have about the value of online advertising from an either/or proposition of "branding" vs. direct response-like "transactions" to one that is far more holistic and deals with higher order elements of branding such as "engagement."

"It's a pretty big rethink about the way [online] sales organizations work," IAB President Randall Rothenberg explained to OMD, adding that the end goal is what he described as a "triple play offering" that combines brand reach, transactions and "brand engagement."

Major obstacles that need to be overcome to achieve that, the report concludes, include:

1 - Ad formats and creative are not innovating with the medium.
2 - We are awash in undifferentiated, low-cost inventory.
3 - Metrics, metrics everywhere... but not the ones that brand marketers really need.
4 - Media companies lack ideas, strategic expertise and engage too late in the planning process.
5 - Marketers want cross-platform campaigns; instead they get a model rooted in platform-specific silos.

To which we would add a sixth - an infinitely burgeoning amount of inventory set against a fixed amount of Ad spend budget. Anyway, there is a Five Point Plan to get out the deep doo-doo:

1 - Measurement: Work with other associations to establish clear standards for measurement of brand impact and reach/frequency.

2 - Targeting: Address current scale and data limitations for targeting. Identify ways to adjust for overlapping audience in reach buys.

3 - Automated process: Help develop low-cost and/or automated buying processes for brand reach and response buys. Establish common technical standards for the industry.

4 - Online creative: Identify and communicate success factors for marketers, agencies, and publishers in executing cross-platform creative.

5 - Engaging marketers: Create ongoing forums with marketers for discussion of branding approach, limitations, and key developments.

The report, "Building Brands Online: An Interactive Advertising Action Plan," a preview of which was given Online Media Daily on Wednesday, is based on an in depth survey or 700 brand marketers, as well as anecdotal research with ad agencies and publishers. God knows how much the IAB paid for it, but this stuff is not exactly new news - all they would have needed to do is come to a few Measurementcamps and they would have found most of this out.

In fact, what fascinates me more about this is the totally different - probably 4 orders of magnitude different - price you can pay for getting the same information.

Went to the Mashup Social Media event this afternoon, what followed was a "Sorta Pecha Kucha" Session for 4 hours as the rapid-firehose presentations came thick and fast - there was a LOT of Media, the Twitterwall made it Social (after a fashion) and boy were we mashed up - it was full! I made some notes on my trusty iPhone as things kept coming, so here are the things that resonated from each talk. Apologies in advance for missing some names, things came so fast.

Robin Wright

- Brand is a decision simplification, as people are basically lazy
- Brands initially started using social media defensively when they realised people were dissing them and it hit top spot on Google
- TV Ad + Website = more engagement - mouse clicking is a small behaviour change that beds in larger new behavioural style (Shades of NLP methinks?)

Robin also won the Doc Marten Shoeshine Superman Sartorial Award

Katy Lindemann

- No such thing as social media per se, all media is social to some extent
- Being social isn't just about marketing
- You can't be social outside if you are not social inside

Katy won the George Orwell Social Media Buzzword Bingo! Award hands down

Sarah Beeny - Tepilo

- Sarah has used her real life fame to drive social presence on her new online product
- Set timing to go with her TV stuff
- Helped to make real life friends in the social network
- It took 5 minutes before a photo of Sarah's "media assets" were profiled. Remarkable restraint.

Sarah wins the Edwina Fabulous Stoically Coping Under Pressure Award as she scooped up her whimpering newborn child (Beeny Baby?) mid talk and soldiered on.

Marshall Manson

- Showed how you can rejuvenate Wonderbra by getting Dita Von Teese, a woman who is famous for taking off her clothes and showing off her great - ahem "media assets" - to front it.

Wins the Whoddathunkit Award for wondering why there was huge traffic for pictures and videos of Dita in a Wonderbra

Toby Gunton

- Cute bear in viral furry animal video got 2nd most hits after Obama.

Won the Compere the Meerkat award for first Cute Furry Animals in Social Media talk of the day

Emma Cowan, recruiting for RAF

- Wanted to change the image of the RAF of "a boys club that flies planes" to tell the real story via narrative and new media.

Wins the Brave New World Order. Next project, the British Army is just an Extreme Ironing Fan Club

Round about this time, one wag tweeted:

"Old media: Stick a celeb in an ad. New media: Stick a celeb on the web. Social media: Stick a celeb on Twitter."

He won a real award, a book

Then came some demonstrations from companies

Quiet Riot

- Trying to aggregate user complaints and leverage them to complain against Evil Faceless Companies

Tempero

- Seems to be a moderation system operating across multiple media sites

Mat Morrison

- questioning whether brands can actually use social media given the aim is to sell things
- conflict between value and values,
- Entertaining example of price vs knicker elasticity (what is the price of getting lucky with your date)
- More Serious Example - Compare The Meerkat is cute but false, the reality is a Large Company wants your money.

Wins the George Bernard Shaw award for Experimental Economics(see here)

Deborah Copeland, First Direct

- Used Wordle to show comparative differences in sentiment about FD verses other banks
- Online monitoring of sentiment, displayed on website

Wins the "No Sex No Slebs No Silly Virals are needed for Social Media Success" Award.

Paul Borge - Selling Safe Sex

- People are having Unsafe Sex
- Snigger, Titter, Condoms, Willies, Piers' Morgan willy etc but For A Good Cause.

Wins the "Nudge Nudge Wink Wink" Tankard for using Viral Sex For A Good Cause.

Mark Pack - LibDems Website for MP

- lesson was to build big site from first rather than add features later
- 3/4 of people go to blog tab, not news
- 33% of videos on Google maps get a boost
- ROI not just about numbers can use qualitative data

Wins the Very Worthy, But Why Are They Only Still At 20% Support" Plaque

Nic Ray

- Idea Bounty used Crowdsourcing (we covered this over here)
- most interesting thing is that they are in the middle of a blogspat with Amelia Torode about the cynical ethics of crowdsourcing (I believe she originated Compare the Meerkat, which is of course not at all cynical )

Wins the Ek is Gatvol van Fokkin Meerkats Trophy (South African Chapter) and a complete set of Meerkat Manor DVDs.

Dan Klein, Detica

- Network analysis - Ebay data looking for sodium and potassiumnitrate found 50 people
- take every call on a mobile, crunch the maths
- look at influential people from call records
- iTunes is an 80/20 and don't buy hip hop

Wins the Tom Lehrer Award for bringing Heavy Maths to the Party.

Andrew Gerrard

- Companies are already social today
- people will use Socmed anyway
- US Air Force chart on Social media usage (see chart on top). Some companies are working out how to use it, are you?

Wins the Sensible Party Award For A Very Sensible Talk. Also wins the Zombie Twitter for his tweets carrying on whilst talking.

Giles Rhys Jones, Ogilvy

- Discipline head
- Digital heart
- Muscles are multiple channels

Wins the Feat of Clay Award for using complex diagrams to describe quite simple things. 4 o'Clock Stubble was Mentioned in Despatches

Giles Palmer

- Buzz monitoring non trivial
- Sentiment Analysis on multiple axes can cause conflicting data readouts
- Crowdsourcing - machines not too clever esp with complex pages eg forums so needs mech Turk to handle hardest N% - works best for small volumes

Wins the Coals to Newcastle Award for talking Buzz Monitoring. Brave Man!

Heather Hampton Swine Flu DOH/COI

- Panic! headlines in the media
- 24 April launch media
- Monitored YouTube Twitter Blogs and other Social media
- use free tools
- social media picks up Memes early, one can prepare to counteract before it hits MSM
- Social media reflects a picture closer to real public mood

Wins the Rudyard Kipling Keeping Your Head On Award . Also broke the hearts of every Buzz Monitoring company in the room with the word "Free"

Jonathan Akwue

Some bits of Govmmt quite advanced eg:
- No 10 downing St really advanced usage on Twitter for example
- NHS direct use pinging with relevant data at specific time

Wins the Alastair Campbell Put Your Best Foot Forward Award. We are all waiting for teh Govmnts other shoe to drop

Andrew Grill

- If you complain on a Call Centre ACD no one hears, but on Twitter it's a different story - leverage
- Its marketeers that tweet while ops staff are the ones being tweeted to. Can the talkers learn to listen?

Wins the Oasis Award for most Tweets on the Twitterwall on the day. Also wins a kiss from Dame Edna for Best Australian Presentation

.

Chris Thorpe

- Real time world driven by smartphone
- Every citizen becomes a data monitoring device
- The world could be a better place through social media.
- Zombieconomy and Ads will kill it as a beneficial service
- Calling for a happy smiley Real Time Web where everybody loves each other, with no horrible commercial people spoiling it

Wins the Thomas More Award for Most Uplifting Speech. Also Wins the Pangloss Award for Unceasing Optimism in the Face of Harsh Experience.

And as for the Organisers, we award them the Ethelred the Unready Award for not checking out the video display in the room first

As for this blog post - well, you decide on what Award you'd give it in the Comments - and vote for us at the BIMAS too

I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the Financial Times FT:Innovate Conference over the last 2 days. Given the work we did for NESTA on the impact of Innovation in hard times (the Depression) where some astounding companies (e.g HP, Texas Istruments) were founded, I thought it would be fascinating to see where the state of (mainly Corporate) Innovation was today. I would like to say that after 2 days of listening to some entertaining talks, some good case studies, some interesting panel discussions and two tutorial sessions that Innovation is alive and well in the Corporate world.

Except I can't.

What I heard over 2 days had some great highlights of Innovative Thinking, and I will go into them further down the page, but I am worried that far too much of what was presented as "Innovation" was, in my days as a Lean Operations Improvement / Turnaround guy, called something completely different. We called much of the stuff presented over the last two days "Quality Assurance", or "Lean Ops" or "Continuous Improvement" or Kaizen if the kool aid was bought from source . (Not putting words into her mouth, but some of the sharp comments from session chair Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital gave me the impression she had similar thoughts). Lest we forget, Joseph Schumpeter defined economic innovation in The Theory of Economic Development as:

1. The introduction of a new good — that is one with which consumers are not yet familiar — or of a new quality of a good.
2. The introduction of a new method of production, which need by no means be founded upon a discovery scientifically new, and can also exist in a new way of handling a commodity commercially.
3. The opening of a new market, that is a market into which the particular branch of manufacture of the country in question has not previously entered, whether or not this market has existed before.
4. The conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials or half-manufactured goods, again irrespective of whether this source already exists or whether it has first to be created.
5. The carrying out of the new organization of any industry, like the creation of a monopoly position (for example through trustification) or the breaking up of a monopoly position

Twiddling around with what already exists is not called Innovation, its called Optimisation. But you can understand how it evolves in CorporateLand:

- Corporate Bigwig decides that "we gotta do this Innovation thing, just look at what real Innovative Guys are doing"
- Appoints a Czar of Innovation in a staff role. Czar of Innovation enthusiastically starts off with radical, change the needle things but has no staff or money to execute
- The Big Divisional Barons ignore Innovation Czar, subvert projects, deny funding etc etc because things ain't broke, why fix em, don't rock my boat etc etc
- CEO is now onto Next Shiny Thing and wants to know what Czar is doing to justify existence, wants to see (unforthcoming) evidence of Great Innovation Leap Forward
- Czar realises that to keep job and get next one, best plan is to help Big Divisional Barons on the day to day so diverts most of his/her meagre resources to Kaizen stuff, gets hearty approbation of the Big Dogs

One of the key reasons for this, according to our emerging research, is that traditional company accounting systems and market measures structurally underprice the amount of innovation spend required just to keep existing products and services going, especially in fast moving industries. In other words the cost of NOT innovating is massively underestimated. This is typically due to innovation coming from all over the organisation, squirrelled away in all sorts of budgets and even done without budgets - also, a lot of the informal information and knowledge networks in companies are not easily measurable so are not measured. This was brought home to me in one of the roundtable group sessions, where we had three (three!) McKinsey guys round the table with a pack they had done, and one of the charts showed no correlation between R&D spend and company benefit (in terms of stock valuation). "Oh yeah", sez I "where is this data from?" From a selection of large corporates over 30 years, they say. "OK", sez I, "that implies if you spend 0% on R&D there is no differentiation then?". Smooth move on to next slide at that point....... (This is emerging as An Issue - its is so easy to cull R&D etc in the short term, but our research shows that it has longer term competitive implications. The problem is the management who enact the cull are seldom around when the chickens some home. Also, if our initial research hypothesis that many major, mature industry sectors are sitting on innovation laurels won in the 60's and 70's proves correct, the McKinsey analysis may well be true for many sectors)

Anyway, onto the Good. To me, these below were the presentations that showed what Innovation could and should be (I missed the EMI one which was a real humdinger too, I am told)

Willie Harcourt-Cooze

Willie wowed the audience because of his style, enthusiasm and sartorial oddness - he wore jeans! (I was quite surprised that at an Innovation Conference the only colour was Suit Grey, and the only choice was pinstripes or not - yours truly in Biz Cas felt decidedly under-dressed). Willie fell in love with a farm in South America that had its highlands "in the clouds", found out he was in a high quality cacao growing area, and moved on to making chocolate. He found it was very hard to get small scale chocolate making equipment, and harder still to get publicity - he was told he "couldn't be put on reality TV entrepreneurial shows as he was not famous". This guy has had to innovate from Day One as he had very little funding. Some interesting thoughts:

- Willie reckons when a Market (like chocolate) is dominated by a few v big players gives major opportunity for small niche players. R
- Re bootstrapping - no matter how much money you get you will spend, but you don't want to lose equity so balance what you will take and you don't like to take too much debt
- You just have to be damn persistent, everyone will laugh at your idea until it succeeds

Beth Comstock, SVP Innovation and CMO, GE

Followers of this blog will know that we follow Hulu, and before she became Innovation Czar Beth was heavily involved in setting that up. And Hulu is Real Innovation, so Beth starts with Cred. Beth's views:

- Business Model innovation is as important as Technical innovation (see Chesbrough point below too).
- There is major benefit from Reverse Innovation - ie see what innovation emerges in tweaking things for local conditions, and then export that out of the environment
- Key is filtering (too many ideas) and trying to understand where the real value lies, also what is the desired outcome and innovate back from it
- Focus more on innovation in big systems (Given my above Czar process model, I wish Beth had had more time to go into how they strong armed the company to do Hulu, I'll bet there were several "over my dead body" cries from Big Dogs in that)
- Often problem is people fund too many things too far, and not well enough for any one to succeed
- They have about 100 projects in "THe FUnnel" at any one time, 50 - 75% success rate of the 100, but Beth notes - "don't forget the 1000's we killed"
- Adjacencies in new innovation is a natural act, but you need a few big swings too
- Big challenge in a 130 year old technology Company is the wish to build in too many bells and whistles - its easier to complicate than simplify, and need to get user experience feedback early
- Use independents to set up scorecards etc, but evaluate internally

Re Hulu specifically, Beth noted the following:

- Hulu was born out of seeing others do it, not an internal thing (ie no doubt suggestion boxesw ould have come up with it, but validation was the market doing it).
- They decided to go for an aggregation strategy bigger than any one provider
- They set it up separately to ensure innovation, and from some of her comments they had to be very forceful internally to ensure independence
- This also diffuses risk
- In parallel with Hulu they are also experimenting with many other ideas and business models on their own and with other partners

Brian Dunn, CEO Bestbuy

The Best Buy CEO told of how his company was embracing new social media channels, much of which readers of this blog will already understand - but it was when he was talking about ROI that my ears pricked up. He noted:

"I dunno how to monetise it, but that's where our customers are spending a lot of time so we will talk - and listen - to them."

Real Innovation, no?

Henry Chesbrough

Henry wrote the book on Open Innovation (literally), and summarised some of its thinking here (there is a lot more in he book). In short, much corporate innovation is based on a "Closed" innovation funnel, they do this because they don't know what will work. To reduce costs the funnel has "stage gate" reviews to winnow projects, but often its far too early to tell. The next evolution is to allow projects to go on for longer but kill them early if no traction ("killing puppies"). But the overall problem says Chesbrough is that the issue is structural - one way in and one way out (product launch). Some companies then increase the exit routes, eg "strategic" projects or spinning off projects. The problem is there are too many false positives (stuff that should never be funded) and false negative (stuff that should not have been killed) this way. His insights:

- the Funnel is actually a business model funnel too, many projects are killed not because they won't work, but because they won't work with acceptable models to the company (cf what Beth said)
- He researched the Funnel in detail in one client (Xerox PARC), and found that quite a few "false negatives" started to be worked on outside the company - most failed too but 10 of 35 worked with different businessz models, and their total value exceeded Xerox value over a 20 year period.
- Also The Funnel is aimed at the current Market, not at emerging or other potential markets

In other words, it is imperative to look at licencing and spinoffs of stuff that won't fit the company business model (this fits with another of our emerging research tenets - Nearly no Innovation is Useless) and to open up the innovation process - other people's stuff coming in, continual leakages out The Funnel. For examples, he quoted

- Phlips opening up Eimdhoven labs in 2003, went from 1500 Philips employees to c 5,000+ from a host of companies, forming an Innovation Ecosystem
- BP entering into biofuels - couldn't do all in house as a new field moves too fast, so created an energy bioscience institute with bunch of Unis and of $50m, $35m is open (non exclusive royalty free licences)
- Procter & Gamble - uses tech scouts and acquired technology via venture fund and M&A as well as in-house

Where things got stickier is in how IPR and patents work in this world, and his thinking has evolved fro the book. He is now proposing, for Copenhagen, that the Planet Change requires an Open model which he calls the Green Exchange - He is suggesting open patents (the CC Science Commons) where everyone contributes patents but put in different of conditions depending on how core they are to contributors (eg a competitor can't use this). Interesting idea, we will see.....it still sounded like a fertile ground for big arguments if anyone succeeded wildly.

In summary, an interesting conference, with many diamonds in the rough and some interesting conversations. I haven't captured all the gems, mine the Twitterstream - thin as it is (and there's a signal for you) - for others; but there remains an uncomfortable impression that too many companies have renamed incremental "Doing Things Right" work as Innovation, rather than using Innovation as a way to "Do The Right Things". Perhaps its due to the current tough times, but I think it could be because its so easy to slip into comfortable ways. Hopefully we can shake them all awake when we release our "Radical Innovation" research soon.

(Addendum re Radical Innovation note above - over the last few months I've been working with a few other Innovation thinkers and practitioners on the issues with linear corporate innovation in the non linear worlds new technology is driving, and what can be done about it. Watch this space )

Neville Hobson posted this link on Twitter - "5 Reasons to leave XP for Windows 7". Here, in riposte, are 5 reasons not to get off your *rse just yet:

1. XP does the job. It ain't broke, and you know how to use it.
2. You've already paid for it, its fully amortised
3. You just know that Windows 7 will release Service Packs 1 and 2 in the next few months, why be part of the free test cycle?
4. It will come bundled cheaper in the next tin you buy
5. Your next computer may have to be a Mac 'cos you need to get Final Cut Pro for all that video coming down the pike

In fact, the article predicts users will want to switch "within 2 years" rather than right away, and I'd agree with that. Windows 7 will drive the next generation of hardware. My policy is always to switch after SP2 or similar is released (let them be the guinea pigs is the refrain of the Late Early Adopter). This sage advice appears to be what many other people have concluded too

(Update - for those of you faux-geeks who use Macs, this is a Proper Debate for Real Operating Systems that have actual Numbers in their releases, not silly animal names )

Try an experiment the next time you go to a church in Europe (or any of the main combatant nations in the First World War) and look at the In Memoriam sections for World War 1 vs World War 2. What strikes you is the huge number who died in the First vs the Second World War, for no other reason than the generals thought it was very smart to send young men walking through mud into the face of barbed wire and machine guns time and time again to make a few yards ground, to be lost when the other guys did the same.

If ever there was a starker example of why one shouldn't listen to one's betters, this was it. Poor men die in rich men's wars, they say - and this was the worst. At the time there was the most astonishing amount of pro-war jingoism being whipped up, and in most European countries anyone who argued it was a bad idea was branded a coward or worse.

So, roll forward nearly 100 years - and a question for all you Noo Meedja-ites out there. If they had Twitter or something like it in 1914, do you think it would have:

(i) Exacerbated the jingoism, with howling lynchmobs shouting at those arguing against it
(ii) Ameliorated the jingoism, with people popping up with coloured avatars in protest
(iii) Had no effect, it was merely a system that reflected the larger public mood and the governments' wanted their war anyway

If, like me, you suspect it was more probably (i) shaded with (iii) (assuming that Twitter1914 was as unmediated as today), that may give some pause for thought this Armistice Day. When all around are losing their heads, and you may lose yours if you oppose them, what do you do?

Interesting Economist debate on Cloud computing suggests that, unlike the hype would like you to believe, Cloud Computing is not a slam dunk sure fire success story. One of the reader comments on the debate was excellent, and could have been written by us. So we did the next best thing and copied it word for word:

2YaQs38hgm wrote:

Dear Sir,

I have been reading a great deal recently about the newest “big idea” in computing, “Cloud Computing.” I just realized that I am an expert in cloud computing having entered into the computer industry as a Cloud Computing Specialist some 30 years ago. Way back then (I believe it is now referred to as the Paleo-PC Period) computers cost millions of dollars (that was a lot of money in those days), they were housed in glass enclosed altars where the air was specially treated, the software to run these computers was expensive to build and maintain and rife with flaws (much like today) and there were only a very few of us demi-gods with the requisite skills and magic spells to make them work at all (we wore blue, knee length smocks, were feared and worshipped and called geeks behind our backs, can you imagine). The unwashed masses (some of us geeks called them, “L-Users”) were always bothering us with their endless requests for more functionality, faster response, and complaints about things like accuracy (hence, the term, “Garbage in, garbage out”) and reliability (“we are down for systems testing. How did you do your job before we got here? Well, then go do it that way until we are back up”). Those were the good old days. No one cared about security very much and certainly not privacy at all. We called it “Time-Sharing” and there was an entire industry built up around it. And then it all went away. I wonder if anyone else wonders why it all changed and an entire industry disappeared? And what that might mean for this latest incarnation, now called cloud computing. Well probably not but I thought I would muse a bit about it anyway.

Besides the fact that cloud computing, excuse me, time-sharing, was all we had there were obvious advantages to sharing expensive resources among many L-Users. However as the cost of hardware went down, the power of computers went up, and the distance (physical and relationship) between L-Users and demi-gods caused mistrust and dissatisfaction the rationale for cloud computing diminished. So once again as a factor of being old I get to see another cycle repeat. So what advice does a former demi-god Cloud Computing Specialist have to offer? Well first thing is that nothing, I repeat, nothing fundamental magically changes by virtue of where you do your computing. It is still about the basics. Do you know your requirements? Does the system or application meet those requirements? Does the computing enhance productivity, satisfy the identified needs of the user, and do it in a manner that meets the need for security, privacy, and transparency? Then the question must be asked. Are you really saving money? Are the staff, computers, and facilities that are being replaced in the cloud really going away or are they merely being repurposed? If they are I think we will know by the howl that will go up as jobs and contracts are lost around the country. Next, we must ask, what are we doing in the cloud to make sure that the distance between users and Cloud Computing Managers does not turn back the clock to the bad old days of blue-smocked demi-gods deciding what the L-Users should get. Customer service must be elevated and understanding and responding efficiently to changing user requirements made a priority. Care must also be exercised in the enthusiasm to move to this “new” way of computing to guard against “cherry-picking,” that is, the inevitable tendency to move the newer applications into the cloud but leave behind the older, stove-pipe applications on their non-cloud based legacy computers. Besides the cost implications, the risk is that further fragmentation of data will make transparency even more difficult to achieve. The obvious issues around security, redundancy and resilience of these cloud computing facilities have been identified and are already being widely discussed but I have missed it if there has been a public discussion about the network infrastructure required to support the cloud. The assumptions around reliability, sustainability, and capacity that appear to exist about this network infrastructure need to be identified and challenged.

Since Cloud Computing was begat from SaaS which was begat from Grid which was begat from ASP which was... (you get the picture - as one wag suggested yesterday, to get Cloud Computing you take away the picture of the mainframe and put in a cloud, and replace the word "Terminal" with "PC" and you're done) we strongly suspect that this time round is not yet its time and it will finally be down in a future iteration, with another name. Fortunately, our mystery author thought of that too.....

So while this new, old way of computing (or is it old, new way) is worked out, I am trying to get out ahead of the next big idea. Ghost computing.

Ghost Computing then......well, I don't know. Ghost is good, but - hmmm, how does "Virtual" sound? Whats that you say - its been done too? Dang!

Anyway, good old 2YaQs38hgm - really knows how to turn a phrase

In eWeek:

Ahh, I love my modern digital lifestyle, especially when it comes to being out, whether traveling or just moving around the city. It's great that I can walk around with a music collection that dwarfs my old college record collection, that I can have several books in my pocket ready to read whenever I want and that I can snap a picture or video of anything I see.

So what am I doing? Am I walking around with an MP3 player, an ebook reader, a digital camera and a digital camcorder?

Nope, just one device, my Blackberry smartphone, which lets me listen to music, read books, take pictures and video and, oh yeah, make calls, play games, manage contacts, etc.

Or an iPhone, or any other of the emerging smartphones, really. And not just these devices - don'tknow about you, but I used my laptop a lot less once I had a 3G iPhone.

What's very interesting is that for the longest time (ie in the Days Before iPhone) the view was that consumers didn't want one device as a phone/music player/pocket calculator/etc whereas the above implies they do now. In fact there is a counter trend towards very simple phones, but if you look at where the money is - and where people with the money are going - it's towards the smartphone.

And if you take it to its logical extension as an augmented reality, multimedia playing, health monitoring, life managing device, M2M interface, and book - and then hit it with 5 cycles of Moore's Law (1/32 of size and price for same power) and make it wearable.......... well, check out the TED video above for where this can all go.

Pity for Planet Mobile that it took a hardware company to show us the way....

So, today we get the "leaked" first cut edition of Rdio's screens on ReadWriteWeb:

We've been lucky enough to get our hands on leaked screenshots from one version of Rdio, the forthcoming music app from Skype, KaZaA and Joost creators Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. Zennstrom and Friis were the original financiers behind peer-to-peer file sharing site KaZaA, but Rdio won't be following a free-for-all sharing model. Instead, Rdio will be a subscription music site similar to Spotify.

And, surprise surprise, it is being beta tested by a small and select coterie of alpha-users:

Currently being tested by a very small number of people, Rdio is an on-demand streaming service where users pay per month for unlimited music and connect to share playlists and music reviews. The company plans on creating an additional revenue stream via 99 cent song downloads and $10 album downloads.

Same old same old PR hype approach, but what I find really, really interesting is why these guys - who are very smart fellows - are going into music now. Its massively competitive, other players exist with assets across the value chain (Apple for example) and by all accounts there is very little money in the game in these days.

Its also not clear to me that recruiting an all-star cast from the VoIP world for the new startup is the right plan - that's what they essentially did for Joost, and it flopped, and in my view one key reason was because the people at Joost - though very competent - did not really come out of the "DNA" of the emerging WebTV world.

Yes, KazaA was bred in the music world, but that was early 'Noughties and its a very different game now. After a good shot with KazaA and a home run with Skype, the boyz can absorb a few also rans very easily, but if Rdio flops as well will it be one too far?

Ah, the Serial Innovator's Dilemma.....

Anyway, that's the downside risk. The upside is that the online music industry, like social networking, is still in very early days and is iterating massively - new service darlings seem to emerge every 2 years or so (anyone remember when Last.fm was No. 1?) so a new, well founded (and no doubt funded) entrant has as good a chance as any (and better than many)

And on past history they will no doubt attract lots of desperate (perish the thought it may be dumb) investor money, which may be the whole point after all