Björn Jeffery

The Swedish business magazine Affärsvärlden has an interview with the CEOs for Swedens largest tv-channel, TV4, and our public service alternative, SVT. Unfortunately, or surprisingly perhaps, they seem to share the same outlook on the future. I’ve translated the two quotes below:

From the interview with Jan Scherman, CEO of TV4:

Jan Scherman himself builds traditional channels with traditional TV charts in the newspapers, the opposite of what IT gurus like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Niklas Zennström predict. The trio believes that the viewers, in the future, click their way to what they want to see, when they want to see it.
– I don’t actually don’t believe that for one second. The reason being that there isn’t one example in all of world history where a new medium has entirely replaced another. The book still exists and is living well. I’m not against the development at all. But some sort of balance is needed.

From the interview with Eva Hamilton, CEO of SVT:

And that the viewers own choices would go as far as IT profiles Bill Gates and Niklas Zennström predicts, that the tv charts will disappear, she doesn’t, in agreement with Jan Scherman at TV4, agree to.
– That’s the old usual when new technology comes along. We’ve still got newspapers even if we’ve since then got radio, tv, video and now the internet.

I might be missing something here (I hope so at least), but have they both completely misunderstood what’s going on? It seems they think that TV is one thing – charted programmes that are sent through a box in people’s living rooms. And as they don’t think that will be replaced, we don’t have to worry about the new technology. A strange way of looking at it, to say the least.

The way I see it, what’s happening is a change of the distribution of the medium – not a change, or replacement, of the medium itself. It will naturally evolve in terms of length, quality and assortment – but it always has done that, so this is not news. What the new distribution will enable and enhance, is a new type of viewing behaviour. One that shouldn’t be ignored.

As I say in most of my presentations: the internet is a superior carrier of mediums, rather than just a medium among others. Newspapers, radio, TV and telephones are all better through the internet for many reasons – adding true interactivity being the major point.

The whole argument reminds of newspapers that think that they are in the newspaper business. They’re not. They’re in the news business, or even in the information providing business if you wish. TV4 and SVT are not in the TV-to-television business – they are in what we can call the TV-to-any-medium business, in lack of better phrasing.

tags bloggar.se: tv4, svt, jan scherman, eva hamilton, tv, media

Curleys 7 statements about media

Originally uploaded by goodold.

Quick note from Citygate forum. The picture shows the seven local media strategies from Rob Curley, a man the occurs time and time again in these surroundings. [see the comments for explanation concerning the following:] Apparently his former employers aren’t as convinced by his brilliance as the rest of the world is. He was always out traveling, and it’s arguable that the only brand he was building while talking about the sites was his own.

My presentation went well yesterday, and a got a lot of positive feedback. I did a short case study on how the recent troubles in Copenhagen regarding Ungdomshuset. A few examples on how it was covered in mainstream media, and a few examples on how it could have been done. I was thinking that I might put the slides online, but I’m not sure they are descriptive enough to be of any value. I’ll think about it.

tags bloggar.se: citygate, media, robcurley, konferens

Twitter is a great service. Simple to set up. Easy to use. It’s based on SMS messaging, which is dead simple. But it’s a printing press for bores who tell you they are eating lunch. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s one of the first SMS systems with an API which creative programmers can put to good use.

Mike Butcher is on point with his observation above. An SMS API is indeed good news for savvy developers with a presence focus. And if Europe had had the American system for SMS (i e e-mail to a phone number – free!), then it would have cost them considerably less as well. Perhaps that’s the price you pay for being blog flavour of the week.

But although the above is true, this is not the only interesting development with the emerging micro-blogging. Jyri Engeström, founder of the Twitter competitor Jaiku, held a good presentation on this subject at Reboot last year. The presence, both geographical and actual, enables a more precise form of interaction than before.

If I’m up in the middle of the night, sleepless, I can’t start phoning people to have a chat. They’re probably asleep, and wouldn’t appreciate my call. But if I could see who was also still up, I could phone them directly. This would put me in contact with someone that I hadn’t initially thought of calling. Thus, knowing ones presence creates new areas of interaction that previously never appeared. This needs to be watched very carefully.

* * *

Other things on the agenda for today:
* Finish my slides for tomorrows (short) presentation at Citygate Forum
* Another meeting about Second Life – a lot of them lately
* Read key parts of State of the News Media 2007
* Go through Angalossys biz plan with Michelle
* Get well. I’m so sick of all this coughing.

tags bloggar.se: twitter, jaiku, presence, mikrobloggande, angalossy, citygate

Back in Malmö after two days at Webbdagarna, with quite a few meetings on the side. Not quite as many as I had hoped as I became ill and had to take it easy. I’ll have to get well at the weekend.

Webbdagarna didn’t teach me much as far as knowledge about the internet goes. Fully understandable, as it wasn’t aimed for people like me (and that’s why the Reboot comparison was a bit unfair perhaps).

This being said, I didn’t leave without learning anything. I got a major reality check concerning what level of knowledge mainstream marketers in Sweden have about the internet. It’s low; oh, so low.

I had a similar experience when held a presentation at Citygate Forum 2004 (if you’re a good Googler you’ll find a clip of it with me wearing an absolutely hideous sports jacket!). I spoke about Lawrence.com and key points in creating successful youth oriented web sites. No one knew of it. Richard Gatarski spoke about blogs. No one at heard of that either, more or less.

Everywhere I go I hear the same story: “I have a real job, when am I supposed to have time to catch up on what’s happening on the internet?”. My answer to this is: the internet is your job, like it or not. There’s no job on earth that won’t, or can’t, be affected by the internet in some way.

There’s a lot of work to be done, fellow missionaries.

tags bloggar.se: webbdagarna, konferenser

The difference between Webbdagarna and Reboot:

I just got invited to participate at the Innovation Journalism conference at Stanford University. As part of the Swedish delegation. Yay, thanks Thomas! I’m childishly happy about the whole affair. Reboot last year was one of last years best two days, and I’m hoping this might be equally inspiring. In a more media related way perhaps, which suits me just fine.

This week I’ll be in Stockholm Wednesday and Thursday. If you want to meet up, let me know!

tags bloggar.se: stanford, konferenser, reboot

* Victor has written about his first OSM experiences over in our Good Old Office blog – good stuff! It’s working really well, I’ll add a link as soon as the first part is done.

* Likemind tomorrow, both in Malmö, Stockholm and Copenhagen.

* My keynote at Webbdagarna got cancelled as new sponsors entered the project. I understand that these conferences are commercial and need to cash in when they can, but it’s a difficult balance between the amount of bought presentations and the ones purely aimed for the audience. The moment the conference programme looks like 25 sales pitches, you’re in trouble. This is not the case this time, but still. Just sayin’. I’m going to be part of a panel discussion with former minister of infrastructure Ulrica Messing instead, which should be fun.

* I’m joining the newly started Swedish web network iFramkant as well. Looking forward to being a part of it.

tags bloggar.se: open street map, iframkant, likemind

Don’t miss out on the latest issue of David Report that focuses on the future of luxury. I have written a column about my views on the matter, as their “private eye in Malmö”. Very fancy!

tags bloggar.se: david report, lyx

It seems like everyday is workshop day lately, and those that aren´t go towards preparing presentations. Not a lot of blogging either, but last week wasn’t very newsworthy anyway.

Plans for this week at Good Old:

* Victor, our intern, is helping us make the first OpenStreetMap of Malmö. I’ll keep you posted on the progress there. We’ve got a few cool ideas concerning mapping and our neighbourhood.

* Likemind Malmö at Solde Kaffebar this Friday, 9 am. Be there! Also, on the other side of Øresund, it’s the première of Likemind Copenhagen hosted by Casper.

* Good Old will also be hosting the first Geek Meet Malmö. Not entirely sure what date yet, but pretty soon I hope.

* Two presentations as well, one at Sydsvenskan and one at Studentlitteratur.

tags bloggar.se: openstreetmap, malmö, likemind, geekmeet

User-generated haven MySpace recently made the bold move to stop Widgets from running on user pages. Users were adding widgets to their gaudy pages to play songs, videos, the weather. A few weeks ago, MySpace decided to block all widgets that weren’t MySpace widgets – maybe as a step towards commercializing the content on the user generated pages.

(PSFK)

Feeding the MySpace beast obviously doesn’t apply any more. I can understand that MySpace don’t like the leeching, but their success had never become as great if it wasn’t for all the add-ons.

I think it’s a mistake to throw them out. Users both know and like Slide.com and Photobucket – making them switch to MySpace clone services won’t be an obvious step for everyone. Providing an arena for users to create and interact is great, but don’t dictate how they should be doing it.

tags bloggar.se: myspace, widgets, slide.com, photobucket