Despite the strong interest for the first Web Montag in Augsburg, I was the only one presenting at the event. My presentation was about social games and virtual goods. Some people from the audience asked me for the slides. So here they are:

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Thanks to all participants for your attention and your questions!

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• January 19, 2009 -- Events We Will Participate in 2009 (0)
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The biggest financial problem is that the supposedly new media economy of blogs and YouTube videos isn’t making the content creators much money. That’s because today’s digital technology has made almost all content free, thereby undermining media’s historically successful business model of selling content to consumers. [...] The greatest losers, then, in this great cultural transformation are our traditional creative class – professional musicians, journalists, film-makers, photographers and animators — who are now struggling to monetize their talent in an advertising saturated economy where all the serious cash is being channeled to technology providers like Google, YouTube and MySpace.

Yes, people are not willing to pay for content, because the content does not provide an added value to them! In the past, information was restricted. It provided a competitive advantage or it gave you social status. In the Internet age, information is available everywhere and everytime. Thus our old business models fail and companies that relied on these old business models will fail too! That’s economy. That’s evolution. Don’t blame technology for it!

I do not agree with Andrew Keen that the creative class is suffering from these changes. The opposite is true. Never in history there have been such possibilities for creative persons to show and to monetize their work without the need of large corporations. The Internet democratizes the media distribution. Thus more people will profit, but in less quantity. It’s bad for a few, but good for many.

I agree with Andrew Keen that technology providers like Google, YouTube and MySpace profit most from the new business paradigm, but only because the existing market players are not willing to invest in new market ideas. The media companies have to overcome their fear and to reconquer their markets. They know better how to serve the consumers’ needs than a technology provider like Google. They have the content that consumers are urging for, but they have to unclose their content.

So take the risks and have a good time!

Martin

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Our app is not yet finished, but we are working hard on it. Thus, any feedback is highly welcome! At the left side you see our new logo. If you like or dislike it, drop us a message! We choose a squirrel as our logo, because squirrels are the embodiment of collecting. And here is a screenshot of our application:

If you like to take a preview on our application, leave us a comment. We’ll contact you!

Until then, have a good time!

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The people were really different. We spoke to “ungeduldige Schnellklicker” (impatient clicker), celebrators and typical anti-user. Some use the social communities to stay in contact with their friends, others organize groups on the platforms, others spent not only an evening with a good glass of wine in the social communities but also socialise secretly during work and others see no sense at all in the social networks. A lot of people are socialised in more than one community and they like it to present themselves in the web. To get a quick contact to their friends is very important for them. A lot of them use instant messaging programs. However the world of the communities seems to be separated in at least two worlds. The people often divided between their friends and their co-workers. To show how pretty and popular they are, they post even half-naked party photos on their profile in the social networks of their friends. However to present themselves potential employers they use more reliable networks. The people want to individualize their profile and to keep control about it.

We really get to know a lot of different types of using the networks, but you can bring it to the fundamental points:

1. Keep it simple. If a social network wants to be successful the network has to offer simple services.

2. Mobile phone numbers and email-adresses changing more quickly than social network profiles. A lot of people are organized in social communities and they really care about at least one profile. Profiles are planned for eternity.

Goodbye and stay tuned

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• November 18, 2008 -- Xtopia 2008: SnipClip (1)
• May 5, 2008 -- Bioinformaticians are the better informaticians. (0)
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Trust the customer!

The problem always was: companies don’t trust the customers – however, the customers should trust the companies’ brands. In a transparent world where access to information is not limited by space and time this strategy can not work. The question is: where do customers get the information about a product and – more important – where do they criticize the product?

• On the companies’ websites (perfect, but not realistic)
• On their blogs (which is no problem, because blogs can be monitored and commented),
• In online forums (which to handle is somewhat more complicated)
• Or – at worst and what becomes more and more the case – in social networks via chat and instant messaging (which is a horror, because you can neither listen nor reply!)

Wikinomics

The only way out of this dilemma is to “wikinize” your business. Handle it like a Wiki. Don Tapscott calls this Wikinomics in his equally named book, to which I’m listen (as Audible audio book) at the present. Share your ideas with your customers, your partners and your suppliers, listen to them and they’ll provide you with new insights.

Self-experiment

We did that. We talked a lot about our ideas and concept with our friends, partners, colleagues, class mates and yes even with strangers. Everybody was so fascinated about the concept that they instantly helped us with further information, contacts, ideas and even with their spare free time.

Apropos: Thanks a lot, dear friends!

Blogversation

This blog is another instrument for us to talk to people. Blogs are conversational tools and our aim is it to establish a “blogversation”, a conversation via blog, with interested people all over the world. We already have a plenty of readers, but only a few commentators, yet. We hope to change that in the future. If you have any suggestion how to transform our blog from an informational tool into a conversational tool, let us know! We really appreciate that!

And have a good time!

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• December 12, 2008 -- Message of the Day: About Brands and Fans (0)
• May 2, 2008 -- “A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media” (0)
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• June 1, 2010 -- Cash = Community * Context * Content * Currency (0)
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Uncertainty and fuzziness

Uncertainty and fuzziness are not the same. Uncertainty is the consequence of a lack of knowledge. Fuzziness is inherent to the process of measurement of complex and probabilistic systems like living beings on a molecular, cellular, individual and organizational level. Measurement itself may also affect the system and so changes the measured values.

Unpredictable and unreliable

The social behaviour of human beings is also unpredictable. People don’t behave deterministic. If you ask someone what his favourite song is, the person will reply depending on the mood, on who else is listening and on the way you ask. People aren’t that simple. You may ask: do you like this or that feature of a social online services? But do not expect a reliable answer. Many people e.g. avoid to say that they do social online networking for dating.

Everything is Miscellaneous

As David Weinberger puts it (in his equally named book): Everything is Miscellaneous. Modern software has to deal with complexity, with uncertainty and with human failure. Bioinformaticians did this for a long time period. The (genomic or proteomic) data is highly chaotic and in most cases contains many faults. So Bioinformatics relies heavily on statistics – in fact Bioinformatics is (in my definition) computer-aided applied statistics on biological data. They developed algorithms and more important patterns how to write programs that can produce reliable results from noisy data in huge quantity.

Everything is connected

Here is another reason, why bioinformaticians are valuable for social network providers: bioinformaticians love networks, i.e. paper networks retrieved from text mining, metabolic networks or protein-protein interaction networks. Biochemical networks are not that different from social networks. Both are scale-free networks, i.e. have similar structures (e.g. hubs) and evolve similarly (by preferential attachment).

Stay tuned

If you are interested in these topics (network, text and data mining), stay tuned. I will recommend some books about Bioinformatics or Data Mining in general on this blog in short. Here is my first recommendation: if you build a social online service hire at least one Bioinformatician for your team.

And have a good time!

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• April 11, 2008 -- Linked (1)
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Emancipation and Enlightenment

If you don’t agree with something, you have three choices:

1. to subordinate
2. to refuse
3. to emancipate

Emancipation means taking control over what you don’t like and changing it. On a political level: you do not like the current political system? You may advocate anarchy – that’s total refusal. As history showed, anarchy is contradictory to the human nature (need for safety) and does not get a broad acceptance. What in most cases happened: people took self-control over the political system. Here is my favourite quote (by Immanuel Kant):

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from self imposed immaturity for which he himself was responsible. Immaturity and dependence are the inability to use one’s own intellect without the direction of another. One is responsible for this immaturity and dependence, if its cause is not a lack of intelligence, but a lack of determination and courage to think without the direction of another. Sapere aude! Dare to know! is therefore the slogan of the Enlightenment.

Media Emancipation

Similar mechanisms can be observed in case of the female emancipation or media emancipation. Women reacted on two kinds to the repression: they denied everything feminine or they claimed for a self-determined life. The latter strategy succeeded. Same is true for media: some people refuse TV, Internet etc. But in this way they never learn to handle the media in an appropriate manner – they do not gain media skills. People who grow up with TV, Internet & Co. have much more self-confident way to handle the media. They understand how the media works, how to use it for their goals and when to trust it.

Brand Hijacking

Back to my initial story: most subcultures refuse every brand, because it is mainstream. However, in doing so, they create new brands. So they don’t succeed with their strategy. The majority of young people is much smarter. They are emancipated. They do not only mix brands and styles (building fashion, video or music mash-ups), they create brands on their own (user-created brands) and also redefine existing brands (Red Bull is an example for this phenomenon) – this is called brand hijacking.

User-created Brands

So the next emancipation will be brand emancipation: people take control over brands. As a company leader don’t be afraid of this. It is a chance to build strong and influential brands. Let your customers decide what the image of your product is. Take the chance and have a good time!

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Content is nothing

Take computer games for example. No one would pay for a single background music title in a computer game. The audio file is what media companies call an asset, an important element in their database or program, but it is still just an asset. Media files are valuable for the producer, but not for the customer. For the customer they are just one element in a game.

Context is everything

The game, i.e. the context, is essential. The context gives function to the asset. The asset alone has no function. The function of a background music title is to support the mood in a game and the objective of the game is to capture the attention of the player, to entertain him. Media assets should be just a means to the end, and not the end.

Have a good time!

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From mainstream to “nostream”

This leads to mainstream. Everybody wants to be “in” (the club). But place is limited and so not everyone gets in. Now, also people who didn’t want to visit the club are interested in the club, because it is somewhat special: it is exclusive. However, as more and more un-VIPs enter the stage the VIPs and trendsetter (= early adopter) move on to the next new club. And with a little latency also the other people stay away from the club.

Continuous reinvention

The number of visitors therefore decreases. To avoid this phenomena clubs do what they have to to do: reinvent themselves continuously. They add new event formats to their program, they play new music.

From clubs to networks

Social networks behave similar and challenge the same problems: a decrease in visitors after a period of rapid growth. Take MySpace for example:

MySpace saw its U.S. audience fall from nearly 72 million visitors in October, 2007, to just shy of 69 million in December. The number of minutes users spend on the site also has decreased, dropping about 24% in December from the prior year, to 179 minutes per visitor per month, according to comScore.

Yesterday, Jochen Krisch made a similar statement at the Facebook workshop: successful social commerce will be like pubs. They are entertaining, they are social and they are alive! You meet your friends there, but also new people. The “branding” stays the same, but they play new music. From time to time they change the interior.

Conservative and innovative

Social networks like clubs or pubs have to find the right balance between innovation and conservation. They have continuously to attract new people with new features, because a certain amount of people continuously leave the networks. But they have to conserve their identity, otherwise the core users will leave. Tuff work ;)

Good luck and have a good time!

related posts

• January 27, 2009 -- Social Gaming & Virtual Goods (2)
• November 18, 2008 -- Xtopia 2008: SnipClip (1)
• July 8, 2008 -- Interviewing social network users (2)
• May 5, 2008 -- Bioinformaticians are the better informaticians. (0)
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