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Just after the deal between Google and YouTube I wrote a short entry on why noone is discussing Google:s very impressive strategy to become the number one player on the whole internet market. It really surprises me is that the same people who blamed Microsoft now seemed completely blinded by the “vision” of Google. Wasn’t this exactly the same scenario Microsoft had to face when they had the same positioning on the PC market? Interesting enough I today read another entry on the same subject which you find here.

Considering Google:s strategy, I think their mission statement soon can be changed to “Google’s mission is to organize, own, and use in whatever way Google see fit the world’s information and make it universally accessible, useful and in as profitable way as possible.” Okay I put this intentionally on the extreme side. However Google has now grown up from this young fresh teenager rebel and now found out they want their own house, and they want it big, they want it all. They seem not to realize that however.

The word ‘own’ is here very interesting as they tend to disrespect copyrights if it doesn’t fit into their strategy. Their moves give a sense that they would like to put all intellectual property right issues as “Google concludes that the copyrights legislation should be interpreted as…” It gives a sense of arrogance which I don’t really see fit nor can understand. From a business perspective, I can understand it. Otherwise it just feels as they are behaving like an obnoxious teenager. Maybe they should listen to the Nobel Prize winner in Peace from the Supreme Court of Iran, who said something like: “You should obey the laws as long as they are there. You can question them and participate in the process to change them, but you should obey them. It is one of the prerequisites of democracy.”

Copyright issues are hard and delicate, but we still should discuss them in a democratic way!

Personally I don’t want company to make legislation decisions as they certainly shouldn’t. I think Google is pushing it in some aspects. For instance their decisions about China really don’t help them.

Doesn’t that feel and look like the same behavior everyone accused Microsoft about before? I definitely think so. Are they evil? Definitely not. They are as evil as Microsoft were or seemed like before they hired Rob Scoble. They are not angels, nor were Microsoft. On the other hand neither Google nor Microsoft is purely evil. Anyone who has thought so is just fooling themselves. In a way I think Google have too much money, too much success. Google has had a party for so long now that I think they have forgotten where they came from. They have lost touch with reality. They will stay big, but they need to realize that they are a big, huge company as so should everyone else.

I think the most important part is really that more people realize that they are a huge company and acting as such. They are not the cool little startup anymore. They are a huge player at the arena. Maybe they are starting to get too big…

Nicholas Carr is writing about the ethics of blogging in a way I haven’t thought of that much before. I think his post is excellent, and brings up some issues which need to be discussed in the blogosphere. I have for a long time been firm on stating that we need “some” structure and praxis in the blogosphere, and I have discussed similar issues when talking about The Future of the New Improved Media.

The post at RoughType you will find here:
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/10/a_glass_house.php

I read some recent blog post on the Google-YouTube acquisition. Look at the chart at http://googlelogs.blogspot.com.

One question immediately pops up. Didn’t the first step get taken to a total monopoly of the user-contributed media market for video? If so, is that good or bad? Personally I am skeptical. We will see. Obviously and without any doubt, the next thriller and power struggle will be between MySpace and GooTube. I’ll guess I have to get some popcorn for that thriller.

The owner structure behind media companies in the US have been discussed for quite some time now and many people (including) me have argued that the user-contributed media is the way to go. It still is. However, this acquisition calls for a discussion about the ownership structures behind this today established arena of the internet. Does the anti-trust case ring a bell here?

Do we really want to have the famous flash movie EPIC 2014 realised?

I don’t!

Note: Bruno Giussanni offers an excellent post on the whole scenery of the aquisition even before it was revealed. You can find his post here.

I guess it is a great thing…

I spoke to a friend Thursday when the rumor just started. We concluded that the acquisition is all about getting the biggest chunk of the market, or to some extent the whole market. I do not think it has anything to do with what YouTube is actually doing. This is purely a corporate strategy from Google to secure its position as the number one player on the user-contributed video market. I haven’t seen any arguments so far that that market is worth that kind of money, but then again no one has really shown me the numbers.

Is the market that big? I have no idea. I doubt it, at least as of today’s form. It is big in the sense that everyone is talking about it, so the acquisition is probably correct from short-term perspective.

User-contributed media is the flavor of this year. I admit I am doing my fair share of it in my work on inthefieldONLINE.net and Ajgar.com. But what is it all about really? Think of it as the IT software business reality show. It is purely based on the entertainment value. Will it change? I think so. It has to. I do not think it is sane to continue down the track, especially as this kind of media is moving towards news. Today’s form of user contributed media contains a lot of child deceases which needs to be cured in order for it to be really useful for media companies. Reputation systems, copyrights and costs are all topics that are too quickly discarded. We will see more and more substantial content, and the same development as the blogosphere went through, the total sphere of user-contributed media will have to go through. This especially requires new business models as such SixApart changed the business model of blogging. i have previously written a lot of entries on the topic:

• The Future of the New Improved Media
• Comments on the Future of Citizen Media
• Credibility and copyrights in the New Improved Media

Back to YouTube. Is YouTube today worth $1.6 billion? Maybe, maybe not. I think the question is as simple as that. You need to look at the bigger picture, but also have a more conceptual discussion of where we are heading with this whole sphere. YouTube are worth $1.6 billion for Google and almost that to Yahoo in their positioning game here in the valley. More importantly, it is a sign that Google is turning into the same strategy as Microsoft have been accused of.

Definitely, the game will be about Facebook. What a ridiculous acquisition price will we see then… The stakes just got bigger… maybe David Hornik will be right after all - The Bubble 2.0 is coming. The acquisition prices are not really sane anymore.

I now hope that the fortune wheel of the valley doesn’t start to spin too fast…

Note: The Swedish company bubblare.se is an excellent example of how to still compete in this saturated market with a focus in the business. They apparently have some statistics showing they are really a good competitor on the market in Sweden. It is also an example of the importance of language modulisation in the local market. Even in big market such as Japan language plays an essential role. I spoke to a Japanese friend the other day, who told me that Japanese kids generally cannot read English well so they prefer Japanese sites. Give them web/mobile search in their native language as well as the interface. This is especially important for user-contributed media sites. How good will they be able to do if they can’t search for the content nor understand how to submit? Even better is that you can do this via cellphones now as of NeoKeys. I met them a few weeks ago and they really have a cool product. It is really cool and the right as well as the necessary way for the future.

I have been discussing cellphone approaches in lately and wrote a short entry on it. This is only an approach how to deal with cellphones and the web, and the strategy needs to be defined out of each unique situation, each country and each project. Using the approach to define it is however a good start. Mobile strategies for especially content providers must also be dynamic, change over time and have a short response time to changes in the market.

Considering cellphone interaction with the web via a cellphone interface is an essential and necessary part of any media venture inside the emerging markets, especially in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Besides the technology issues defined below there is an essential need to take the human needs and abilities into consideration.

Technology
In principle interaction via cellphones to the web is simple. Think of the phone as a thin client on a network, but in this case a cellular network. Keep that thought in your head during the presentation below.

The possible cellphone application is then constrain by:

• The available connectivity which is often constrained to lower generation networks, especially in emerging markets,
• Restricted interactability is a fact due to small keyboards,
• The small screens constrains the amount of representable data, and
• the lack of operating system standards complicates development of general cellphone clients.

The connectivity is best faced by making the data model low-bandwidth intense. The restricted interactability is faced by making the application such that the user can predefine actions on the server, as well as having a set of default actions. Thereby the number of necessary “commands” by the user is minimized, and could in some cases be eliminated. By presenting an abstract or light version of the content on the cell phone and combine that with an easy access to the full version in the corresponding web application, the issue with small screens is addressed. Such an approach will also benefit the educational part of any project as you drive the users towards the PC-platform. Ultimately this will also improve the available bandwidth using the “supply and demand” strategy. Making sure the mobile strategy supports already in the handset built-in technology, you ensure independence of operating systems on the handset.

Network generation agnostic solutions such as SMS and almost agnostic such as EMS, MMS and WAP are choices which fulfill all the above requirements, if combined with some careful thought about what data makes sense to present on the cellular platform. The method has been successfully proven on inthefieldONLINE.net, which illustrates the proper interaction model.

If you need to present more data on the handset side, WAP is the right choice, even though the user can get a bit confused about the pricing associated even though often much lower than for SMS/MMS. For submission of data, SMS and/or MMS are still in many cases a better choice as the user is more comfortable. Another complexity you are facing with WAP is access speeds usually still are fairly low, and WML, i.e. “mobile HTML”, is interpreted/rendered differently on different cellphones.

To strengthen the user experience for those with better handsets you should compliment this solution with a client, which then could be defined for the most commonly used in the region of interest. An alternative is to establish a partnership to a handset provider, which are dominant in the region of interest.

A great part of the cellphones is of course the mobility, and thus the location of the user when interacting with the web becomes very interesting. Today the availability of location increases, and thus using that data as a part of the interaction becomes interesting. The main issues are here

• Privacy – Violating the privacy? In some applications you really do not want to reveal where you are. In some applications you really do not want to reveal where you are. This is usually solved by enabling the user to choose if he/she wants to be tracked.
• Billing – who pays for what?
• Availability – Which networks support it?

All these issues will be sorted out over time, but in the cases where GIS data is available it should be used.

Importantly is that if you use as much built-in technology as possible you ensure the broadest possible market as well as increase the adoption rate. As ordinary cell phones will suffice, there is no need to buy high end and expensive cell phones. In the case of social ventures this simplifies the management of the strategy on the long term as there is less need for complex partnership models with handset manufacturers.

Billing model
The simplicity on the technology side should be matched by the simplicity in the business model to secure a satisfactory adoption rate. In regions such as India, Africa and the Middle East, people are more comfortable to pay their cell phone operator rather than to pay an “additional” bill to a third party. A strategic partnership to the cell phone operator or similar moves the complexity away from the user, and you gain control over the money flux. You are interfacing the billing from the user, and takes on some of the complexity. You as a “information service provider” deal with the payments as everything is done neatly through already established channels which the cell phone network providers already have. Still you will be able to track all the different market data you will need.

Alliances with cell phone providers gain access to GIS data and thereby map up submission according to location. The data can be filtered on location, and then using tools such as Google Map, Google Earth, Yahoo Maps, Microsoft Live Local and/or MapQuest presented to the user in an appealing way. From a marketing perspective understanding on what regions are particular active is gained and marketing efforts as well as billing structure can be focused.