Seth Godin: Bookslayer

Seth's Blog: The Domino Project: "Digital goods and manifestos in book form make it easier to spread complex ideas. It’s long frustrated me that a blog post can reach 100 times as many people as a book, but can’t deliver the nuance a book can. The Domino Project is organized around a fundamentally different model of virality, one that allows authors to directly reach people who can use the ideas we’re writing about."

OK, so he's not really killing the book. He's reinventing it. And that's way cool.

Chris Christie, N.J. Governor, Is a YouTube Standout - NYTimes.com

My point in posting this quote isn't about Gov. Christie, but about the importance of social networking and waning importance of broadcasting.

Chris Christie, N.J. Governor, Is a YouTube Standout - NYTimes.com: "A Sean Hannity or Don Imus interview has a bigger audience, but experts say the influence of online video may be greater. People learn of the videos from trusted friends or bloggers, they can replay them endlessly, and they often forward the links to others; and they are likely to pay closer attention to something they seek out rather than something that washes over the airwaves.

Yes, Chirstie's handlers are adept at disguising professionally shot and edited videos as amateur stuff, and yes, that's a concern with regard to issues of trust and transparency in social media. But the bottom line is that the importance and effectiveness of the big media broadcasting model is in decline, will eventually reach a point of equilibrium with social media.

Books in the Cloud?

Reading E-Books Rewrite Bookselling in today’s Wall Street Journal got me thinking about how much the manner in which I consume media has changed of late.

Several months ago I cancelled all of my cable movie channels and re-activated my NetFlix account; I stream the movies more often watching via DVD.  Similarly, I also recently started using Rhapsody (love it!), a fantastic alternative to downloading and storing music -- and worrying about secure back-ups to protect my investment. I also cancelled my Sirius-XM account because my iPhone is a far more useful and flexible alternative (especially with the Rhapsody app.)

So a great deal of the media I consume lives in the Cloud, where I can access it via a variety of devices.  Is there a similar model on the horizon for the publishing industry?

While I often read newspaper and magazine articles on my iPhone, the idea of reading a book on that device never appealed to me. But the iPad offers an excellent book-reading experience, so much so that I doubt that I'll purchase another paper book (with the exception of library sales and the occasional irresistible remainder bargain.)

But rather than having to download and store digital copies of books, I'd love to see a model similar to Rhapsody or NetFlix, where I pay for 24/7, any-device access to the e-books I want to read.

Audible, the digital audiobook company, has a  sort of hybrid model. The audiobooks I've purchased are permanently stored on the site, where they can be streamed to my computer. The downside is that if I want to listen on my iPhone I have to download the file and then upload to my device. But unlike content I purchase from iTunes, if any of my Audible purchases are accidentally deleted, I can download another copy from the site. (An Audible iPhone app that allows me to stream titles in my library seems like a no-brainer, no?)

(At least as far as music is concerned, Apple's purchase of Lala may signal a move to a cloud-based model that will go head-to-head with Rhapsody. Time will tell.)

Audible also offers monthly membership deals that allow users to download a predetermined number of titles each month.

So as the new breed of ebook stores comes online, I hope someone offers a model similar to NetFlix, Rhapsody, and Audible.

 

del.icio.us Tags: audible,netflix,rhapsody,itunes,iphone,ipad,ebooks,taptilt,sideways

Technorati Tags: audible,netflix,rhapsody,itunes,iphone,ipad,ebooks,taptilt,sideways

 

Cross posted to Bob Rhubart’s Blog and Smallification

Birth of the Backchannel

Birth of the Backchannel

From Time Magazine's 10 Tech Trends for 2010:

The growth of sites like Twitter and Facebook has given rise to the idea that events have both a frontchannel (the Super Bowl, for example) and a backchannel (the live, online discussion from fans watching the game.) The next generation of Web-connected TVs and software will include ways for people to monitor and interact with the conversation happening around an event, filtering live streams in real-time to display the most relevant discussions.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1973759_1973760_1973771,00.html#ixzz0mVuh4QdK

Social Business and Next-Generation CIOs - The Impact of Technological Change - Dion Hinchcliffe's Next-Generation Enterprises

Social Business and Next-Generation CIOs - The Impact of Technological Change - Dion Hinchcliffe's Next-Generation Enterprises: "[An] increase in shadow IT and associated grassroots adoption of social technology today is being driven by closely related developments in SaaS and cloud computing. This is often forcing the social computing discussion when it might not happen on its own. While some organizations are just ignoring the issue or actively clamping down, as social computing becomes increasingly relevant to the way businesses work, it's turning into what is starting to be called social business."

Ignoring the issue? Clamping down? Oy!

Keeping it Social, part 2

More on Robin Dunbar and the "Dunbar's Number" concept referenced in the previous post:

Dunbar's number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dunbar's number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restricted rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. No precise value has been proposed for Dunbar's number, but a commonly cited approximation is 150.

Technorati Tags: social media, twitter, facebook, marketing

Keeping the Social in Social Media

When using Twitter and Facebook as marketing tools, is having any army of followers/friends the most effective strategy?  Two recent articles offer interesting insight into that question.

As reported by TimesOnline journalist Chris Gourlay:

Robin Dunbar, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, has conducted research revealing that while social networking sites allow us to maintain more relationships, the number of meaningful friendships is the same as it has been throughout history.(See:   OMG: brains can’t handle all our Facebook friends - Times Online)

Add to the mix this from Wired columnist Clive Thompson:

When you go from having a few hundred Twitter followers to ten thousand, something unexpected happens: Social networking starts to break down.

(See: In Praise of Online Obscurity)

The operative word in the phrases "Social Media," "Social Networking," and "Social Computing" is -- three guesses... -- "Social." Dictionary.com defines "social" as:

1. pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.
2. seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.

The effective use of social media is all about sustainable connection, about participating in conversations with individuals, as opposed to making speeches to crowds. That seems to be a difficult transition for many marketers.