Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Placeshifting Walmart

One of the buzzwords of late is Placeshifting.  Seems natural, as we have been bound by space and time, then we have Tivo and now we want that concept everywhere.  Timeshifting lets us turn flows into stocks, the ultimate in convenient consumption. 

Placeshifting has been used to describe turning a media center into a hub accessible anywhere.  Sony, Orb Networks or Sling Media all fit this mold and the meme accelerated at CES.  It presents an interesting quandary for vertically integrated Cable, which is granted legal monopolies according to geography and intellectual property.  The convenient consumption of Placeshifting well serves our increasingly nomadic lifestyle, if we can afford it.

As such, I have also heard the term used to describe services for global tribes, the ethnic networks that span the globe.  Even in the context of Moroccans consuming homeland media 24/7 while living on the dole in Germany, destined for cultural isolation.  Now I personally think this is a good thing, as odds are there is more cross-cultural exchange than if everyone stayed in their homeland, but regardless people and cultures will continue to be on the move.

But lets extend this concept.  Say you are a business traveller stranded in Wichita. You may be able to get your daily dose of the Daily Show, but is that enough of the creature comforts?  Nah, you head for your favorite retail brands for the convenience of consistency.  Latte at Starbucks, Lunch at McDonalds.  For now, that's not the best you can do, although you long for your trusted barista and burgers at the Peninsula Creamery. 

Seth Godin pointed out the Walmart Paradox today, in which suppliers long for choice beyond the short tail.

The answer is to tell Walmart to go away. Toy companies are beginning to discover that they can't win this game. The answer is to find a new and better and more consistently profitable way to launch the remarkable stuff.

But you are still stuck in Witchita wanting to consume something Walmart doesn't sell and with one one to trust otherwise.  So you log on and find a way to have your friends help without them threatening to timeshift you.  We are not quite there yet, but social media like blogs and social networking services will become convenient enough for this kind of Placeshifting.

Which brings me back to brands.  Leading brands don't blog, or encourage their employees to blog, as the perception is a loss of control is not worth risking convenient consistency.  But they are listening, even to posts like these.  So the big question, in my humble opinion, is what happens when brands owned by a network are worth more than the brand of a single firm?  When choice in placeshifting, for example, is as easy as choices in your own neighborhood.  Wouldn't you want your employees to be part of these conversations, just like they are when they come in your stores?

Government 2.0 Slammed

When I came back from talking about Emergent Democracy at Howard's Cooperation Studies class at Stanford, I saw a post about Government 2.0 (my first "nofollow") -- and shot this off in haste to the Extreme Democracy editors:

Seriously, there needs to be a concerted effort to slam this consumption-based model of emergent democracy.

I implore you to read the whole thing by Jon Lebkowsky at WorldChanging about William Eggers on "Government 2.0", or politics as "constituent relationship management" vs a politics of democratic deliberation.

So while nonprofits and campaign organizations are still focusing on top-down organization to raise money and build less informed support, other groups are working to build environments for a deeper kind of democracy that's based on collaboration, talking, listening, and learning, much of it mediated by social technology. I can't imagine that democratic social networks will quickly replace the consumption-based model, but we may be seeing sustainable evolution.

Mitch Ratcliffe opens his Notebook, to summarize William Eggers' Government 2.0 argument:

Citizens become customers, but customers don't get to set the rules of the market. Instead, they make the best deal they can given the offers available, and that has nothing to do with government and democracy. It's a social Darwinist environment in which the most influential participants (them that gots the money) set the rules of the game.

All I want is a government that deliberates and cooperates with me, my groups and our voices in a way that apathy is irrational.

We're Slashing Prices!

Kidding.  But we did just make Socialtext more affordable.  $10/month/user, $5 for non-profits.  Simple stuff for smart people.

Liquid Democracy

Tomorrow afternoon at Stanford I am guest lecturing cooperating at Howard Rheingold's class alongside Zack Rosen from CivicSpace on Emergent Democracy. 

Personally, I haven't found motivation and opportunity to participate since the campaign.  I have been supportive as a toolmaker, but fell out of practice six months ago.  The general lull in political activism, let alone participation, is hopefully a calm before a storm. 

The big questions now are how to keep the current administration accountable, reform the Democratic party where Dean may give us a role, drive issue and cause specific initatives -- and cause change abroad while respecting soverignty.

Andrea posed a fantastic riddle on water privatization:

What are some ways the countries like Peru, Bolivia, and others could develop alternative or hybrid solutions to this social dilemma?

If any Emergent Democracy participants have suggestions, I would love to bring them into the conversation tomorrow.

The Spy Who Monopolized Me

We've looked hard at the nature of this problem, and made a decision that this anti-spyware capability will become something that's available at no additional charge for Windows users -- both the blocking capability, and the scanning and removal capabilities -- Bill Gates at RSA.

Somehow I find this development disturbing:

• Not because of the irony of providing a solution to a problem it created
• Not because it portends another monopoly to a convicted monopolist
• Not because the spyware is spyware itself

Because under the rubric of safer computing, this is the next browser war, and a new way of filtering out competition.  Microsoft was right to realize that the insecurity of its solutions presented a significant threat to customer satisfaction and its core business (although, spyware does cripple your average user's computer by forcing clean installs and in many cases, upgrades). 

A big move is required in this area, not just to protect the core, however.  This is a large and growing market with strategic consequence.  McAffee pioneered a business model of lower cost consumer security solutions with enterprise upsells. Microsoft will still charge for its enterprise solutions.

I don't think there is a good definition for what is spyware actually is.  One man's rouge program is another man's amusing toy.  A spyware or adware program seems to be simply a program that runs unsanctioned by the user.  With relatively secure computing, prompting a user to sanction each install is not an unbearable burden.  When insecure, its too much for one man.  Like anti-virus, sanctioning can be offloaded to a service like Microsoft's which runs on pooled definitions to enforce.  Regardless of the intent of the program or users, anti-spyware can filter out valid programs and media files. 

Especially when administered by a company with a significant stake in DRM, when it finds a legal copy of a copyrighted work, it can flag it as suspicious.  And then send the basic computer information about the user to the cloud for enforcement.  Or what happens when a promising but unsanctioned open source application starts to run tasks in the background?  Bittorrent is an extreme example in this case, but nowadays almost every client application leverages the cloud.  To be fully analogous to the browser war, the giveaway browser would also have to block unsanctioned websites.

But let's consider for a moment what happens when the PC is secured by Microsoft.  Yes, this is highly unlikely given the company' history when it comes to security, but stay with me.  With anti-virus, adware and spyware services tightly bundled with a free and security improved IE, consumer's lives will on the face of it be improved.  But as these services are filters for net activity, and will be tightly bundled with the operating system -- they raise the very same antitrust issues decoupling the browser from the OS sought to regulate. 

Further, when consumers are confident in their computing, they will share even more personal data with the new Microsoft lockbox.  Even with regulatory oversight, which is surely a function of this scenario, privacy abuse is more than possible (AT&T was a provider for the Do Not Call list, yet was one of the first to be fined for cold calling the list!).  Even further, some of the better applications on the horizon will leverage sharing of personal data, files and media.  If this is locked down, not only will innovation be stemmed, so will be the production of social goods.

I am actually less worried about these issues than I would have been if I was developing Windows applications a decade ago.  Now we have open source alternatives and the browser is a viable application platform.  But this is a scenario that, while we don't fully understand it, quite frankly makes me very insecure.

Oh, and I have to add this.  Picture how this scenario would be different if Microsoft embraced open source for anti-ware.

The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become double agents and available for our service. It is through the information brought by the double agent that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies. It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.  -- Sun Tsu

No One Gets Fired for Using RSS

A voice from up North.

Access to Inventory

Here is a very simple way to think about the value of advertising on blogs.  About.com was acquired by the NY Times for $410 million at a multiple of over 10 times About's 2004 revenues and a multiple of over 30 times EBITDA.  Several analysts say there is a dearth of ad space inventory.  But of course it's more than that.  When you own or deal with a wholesale property you can work a sponsorship deal. 

Now consider blog inventory.  Unless its part of Weblogs.inc or Corante, you can't work that deal without significant transaction costs.  Like Denton's Sony deal for $25k/month.  This points to the opportunity, not only for aggregate micro-pubs -- but for a system where publishers aggregate themselves through commoditization.  How to value this inventory is another thing, however.

The Cost of Ethics

JD Lasica has an in-depth article on shilling, influence and blog ethics at OJR.  He suggests these norms have emerged:

• Disclose, disclose, disclose. Transparency – of actions, motives and financial considerations – is the golden rule of the blogosphere.
• Follow your passions. Blog about topics you care deeply about.
• Be honest. Write what you believe.
• Trust your readers to form their own judgments and conclusions.
• Reputation is the principal currency of cyberspace. Maintain your independence and integrity – lost trust is difficult to regain.

A pretty fair account, and probably not the lowed common denominator.  In the interest of the first principle, I decided to accept George Bush's Headphones.  When they arrive, I'll let you know if they are rose or white-colored.

Seattle Bound

Heading to Seattle tonight for our first off-site retreat.  Seeing how Socialtext is distributed, I guess you could call it an on-site.  Anyway, the company that works and plays virtually is getting together in person.  Many will meet for the first time.

Why Seattle?  Two of us live there and one's girlfriend is out of town, leaving us with a house to trash.

Googlepedia is a Good Move

News flash: John Dvorak has a conspiracy column that makes no sense.  He suggests that Google's support of Wikipedia hosting will see, hear and do evil.  According to Usenet analogies, corporate incentives will drive them to neglect, or worse, block Microsoft crawlers.  This theory misses both the context of the cause and the cause that markets.

Back during the Hurricane season, a big one was coming and Jimmy Wales reached out to Socialtext to see if we could provide interim hosting.  We scrambled to see if our tiny startup could help, we would have in an instant, but it was a bigger operation than us at the time.  I asked him if I could share this private conversation now, because it helps provide a context of genuine need for a community project.  Wikimedia has one real underlying cost and risk, Google may help them address it and unleash peer production for the masses.

Why would Google support Wikipedia?  Not out of goodness of their hearts.  Wikipedia represents the best of the web and the best in all of us.  It produces social goods that any company involved in the web should be aligned with.  What's more, Wikipedia isn't a site, its a community, one with a history and a culture of openness.  Any moves a supporter of the community would make against the social contract would spark virulent reaction.  These interdependencies will keep parties in check, and the corporate world is well aware of the profit motives of social responsibility.

John is right to keep Google, or any powerful company, in check.  But this is not the storm to build against them.