Björn Jeffery

For me, this was the highlight of Pangea Day. It’s absolutely beautiful.

Just thought I’d give you a tip before the weekend. Moving Images is a conference in Malmö that takes place June the 10th. The theme for this year is storytelling and the line up is really good. Winston Binch from Crispin Porter + Bogusky is one of the speakers for instance.

We’ve have been part of the reference group for the conference which means wifi and backchannels, among other things. You should sign up straight away!

And another thing: I’m going to be in the Bay Area from the 17th to the 24th of May. I’m attending the INJO conference, but if any of you out there would like to meet up just drop me a line and we’ll work something out!

UPDATE: I put the wrong link in, changed it ten seconds later, but for some reason it never published anyway. I blame 3. This is the right link to Moving Images. Thanks for pointing it out, Jonas!

Just a quick thought and another example of The Technical Divide that we’re experiencing. Fring for iPhone was released today. I tried the service in my old Nokia E70 quite some time ago and was not impressed. Full of bugs and bad quality in general. But not any more.

It seems Fring needed the interface of the iPhone for it to click – at least for me. I’ve tried it quickly and it makes perfect sense. Chat and VOIP through wifi. Simple. But the implications of this software is everything but simple. It means that the current business model of roaming abroad for mobile phones is threatened.

The operators charge an absolute fortune for these calls (as I’m sure anyone that pays their own phone bill knows) and it’s been a nice little earner for quite some while. If your phone has the Fring software it means you can phone from the same mobile phone, but for a fraction of that price. This requires some sort of wifi nearby, but in in office environments, where a lot of these expensive calls take place, this is standard stuff.

Software challenges our current business models. Sure – there is a large barrier for people to install software in their phones and getting them to change their behaviour regarding calls. But it can be done, and the thresholds will be lowered. And when they are, roaming as we know it will die. About time too.

(Btw – I’m slightly considering starting a whole new blog that just focuses on The Technical Divide. Would that be interesting? I think Good Old Trend is in for a change soon anyway, so maybe a split would be the right way to go. Feedback plz!)

tags technorati : the technical divide, software, iphone, fring

tags bloggar.se: the technical divide, iphone, fring, mjukvara

Just thought I’d add the slides from Webbdagarna as well. No news for readers of this blog but I’ll post them for reference anyway.

| View | Upload your own

I just finished my presentation at KTH. Phew! Below are my slides, if you are interested. And thanks to everyone that commented in my last post.

| View | Upload your own

Watch the event live here:

This blog post has been brewing in my head for months, and I haven’t quite been able to pin it done completely until now. I’m holding a presentation on the subject at KTH on the 9th of April and I was hoping that your input could help me improve the idea and turn it into something really good and interesting to listen to.

In the mid-90s the Clinton Administration coined the phrase “the digital divide” as a way of describing the trouble that occurs between groups with access to computers and internet, and those that don’t. Although still a concerning issue, I think there is another interesting divide happening right now. And one that doesn’t pay attention to national boundaries.

I believe we are experiencing a technical divide. One that separates those with an understanding of software and technology from those who do not. This understanding will in many cases be the most influential factor in succeeding in business. And because of the disruption that technology causes to regular rules of business and marketing, it will come to affect considerably more people than might have been expected.

The German media mogul Hubert Burda summarized the development very well at DLD recently. He said:

“The problem with Europe is that we don’t understand that software is what is most important. People think that a website with 40 editors is better than 20 editors. And then Google comes and take over the world with an algorithm. Nobody in my business vicinity has written an interesting algorithm.”

Unfortunately, I’m pretty convinced that the rest of the world don’t understand that software is what’s most important either, apart from maybe places like Redmond, Bangalore or the Valley.

I’ll give two recent examples of this (please add more in the comments!):

1. Google Adsense
Adsense answers the question “what is the largest revolution within advertising in the last five years?”. And looking at my main clients, the media companies, which rely heavily on advertising for their income – I dare to say that not only have they failed to develop a sufficient equivalent to the technology, but most of the executives at these companies couldn’t even describe how Adsense works. And I don’t mean an accurate description of the algorithms, I’m talking about a simple walk through of how it works, and why.

Let’s go local to see how disruptive this piece of software really is. Take any local newspaper in Sweden today and imagine a board meeting a few years back. Google is on the move. I think the local execs thought something in the line of: “oh well, they won’t beat us on our own back yard at least. And if they even decide to come here, there will be loads of places that they’ll go to before our town”.

Now from a traditional point of view this is entirely correct. An American company will hardly prioritise a small Swedish town for it’s expansion. But that assumes that they have to choose and prioritise at all. Enter: software. Suddenly this foreign company offers local, contextual and result priced advertising. All over the world simultaneously. Without any sales people at all. No wonder the offer is good, and no wonder it’s difficult for the local paper to match it.

This is the disruption that software can cause. Therefore, anyone that considers themselves to be in the media business must, by default, also be in the tech business.

2. Spotify
Although not released yet, myself and many with me have been praising this Swedish startup purely from the beta test. In short, it is a streaming music service. Fair enough – there’s a few of them about. The thing about Spotify is the execution. It’s fast and it’s comprehensive. As a matter of fact, it’s faster than my iTunes which suddenly forces me to challenge the notion that is fought about daily regarding music and downloading. Why would I want to own my music, when it is perfectly satisfactory to just have access to it whenever I want?

One of the reasons for the brilliant execution of Spotify is technical innovation. It is possible to get high quality music through my broadband and be able to choose between thousands and thousands of tracks within seconds. As it is possible, and as it gives me such high musical satisfaction, it disrupts the regular business model that entails that music should be purchased in order to be owned and then accessed. Before this was the only way to have access to the music that you wanted to hear. Then came downloading which still was about owning the music, but not necessarily paying for it. Enter: software. Suddenly we don’t have to own the music to be able to access it.

Obvious for a lot of you out there, but still; anyone that considers themselves to be in the music business, must also be in the tech business.

The media and music industry are not isolated is this respect. They just happened, together with the film industry, to experience this technical divide before many others. I’m not saying that they are less clever, foreseeing or visionary than anyone else. But I am saying that the current divide will only increase, and that these industries need to rethink their focus dramatically in order to even stay in touch with what is going on. It’s not about sending your journalists to learn PHP – it’s about foresight and a reality check that says that no matter how little you want to be a company in the technology sector; you are. Deal with it. Understand it. And if you don’t want to develop anything yourself – you can acquire it. Open Calais from Reuters is a result of that strategy.

For me, I think banking is the next area to experience the technical divide. The major players are seeing the innovation within their field coming from tech startups – not from within the industry. And banking being a difficult area to enter as it may but I feel confident to say that there will be significant rumblings in this field within the next twelve months.

These were a few of my thoughts that I was hoping to turn into an interesting presentation. If you can add something to it I would be most grateful!

tags technorati : the technical divide, business development, software, spotify, adsense, media, newspapers

tags bloggar.se: the technical divide, teknik, affärsutveckling, media, dagstidningar, spotify, adsense

In times of absurd discussions about pirates and copyright it’s refreshing that a few labels are taking a pragmatic approach to it all. You need to read this. In Swedish, or translated into English here.

This isn’t exactly news hot off the RSS-reader, but here are three interesting things to look into.

The Bivings Report: Not every site needs to be a social network

When I hear folks talk about launching social networks I’m reminded of what people say about opening a restaurant: proceed with caution because nine out of ten fail in the first year.

For nearly all organizations, the best approach is to (1) add some light social features that encourage interaction around your content to your own site and/or (2) participate in established, external social networks. It is a lot cheaper and easier for you to go to where the people are than to try to bring them to you.

Media Post: 85% Of World’s Online Population Shopped On The Web

According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on internet shopping habits, more than 85% of the world’s online population has used the internet to make a purchase, increasing the market for online shopping by 40% in the past two years.

ReadWriteWeb: Reuters wants the world to be tagged

In the same vein, last week Reuters – an international business and financial news giant – launched an API called Open Calais. The API does a semantic markup on unstructured HTML documents – recognizing people, places, companies, and events. This technology is the next generation of the Clear Forest offering, which Reuters acquired last year.

A short interlude in Swedish since I’m commenting a Swedish article – I’ll be right back!

Flerkanalspublicering, internetstrategi, läsarmedverkan – aktuella frågor för alla medieföretag idag. Tyvärr finns det mer angelägna problem på en betydligt lägre nivå: avsaknaden av bra innehåll, och en seriös reality check om vilken roll man har i medielandskapet egentligen.

Låt mig dissekera Sydsvenskan.ses artikel från GSMA idag: ANALYS: Allt fler vill in på explosivt växande marknad

Vinjetten “analys” föranleder en att tro att något av en analytisk natur skulle presenteras i texten. Detta är tyvärr inte fallet. Istället är den späckad med (andras) spekulationer och barnsligt simpla påståenden som vem som helst skulle kunna haspla ur sig. Vad sägs om “Att många tröttnat på mobilers korta batteritid är det ingen tvekan om” eller “Höga teleräkningar vill ingen ha”?

En stor lokaltidning i Skåne behöver inte bevaka mobilmässan i Barcelona. Och väljer man att göra det ändå är den enda rimliga vinkeln att fokusera på de lokala bolagen som är där. Dessa nämns bara i en bisats i artikeln, och länken till GSMAs sajt där man kan få “mer info” är fellänkad.

Förstår man inte sin roll i medielandskapet är det lätt att fortsätta rapportera som man alltid gjort. Men numera har folk inte Sydsvenskan som sitt enda nyhetsflöde. Det märks när man är dålig. Därför är det direkt skadligt för tidningen att ta sig an att bevaka en händelse som man så uppenbart inte bemästrar. “Här är Sony Ericssons Iphone-konkurrent” heter sidoartikeln – VAR ÄR DEN? Jämför med bloggen Gizmodos rapport. Det är pressbilder, inte rocketscience. (Uppdatering: Nu har de lagt till bilder till artikeln)

Samma sak hände på Internetworld häromdagen när de publicerade en artikel om Microsoft/Yahoo som i princip sa att det skulle bli spännande att se vad som händer. Detta från ett branschmedium. Jämför med Ekonominyheternas genomgång av samma sak.

Det finns gott om begåvade röster som kommenterar världens alla händelser. Stormedia skulle må bra av att inse att de inte alltid är en av dem.

(Disclaimer (eh): Jag har jobbat på Sydsvenskan och jobbar med dem på konsultbasis genom Good Old och The Fan Club)

tags technorati : sydsvenskan newspapers media journalism

tags bloggar.se: sydsvenskan, dagstidningar, media, journalistik