Mining Internet content with algorithms that look at mood and feelings, as well as statements.

P2P Not to Blame for Content Industry Failures Says EU.

The report finds, in a surprising contradiction to what industry executives have been spouting for ages, consumers’ behavior has nothing to do with the peer-to-peer technology (P2P) that has given rise to all-you-can-eat systems for free downloads of copyrighted content. In fact, many people claim that they wouldn’t pay for online content even if all other free options were taken away. This finding has dramatic implications for the future of business, and not just in the entertainment industry, either. If people won’t pay for content, how will companies survive?

the EU study reports on the state of the online entertainment industry, revealing factoids like “less than 5% of Europeans have paid for online content in the last three months” and in the youngest age group “this figure is twice as high.” In other words, willingness to pay is an issue that’s only getting worse with each new generation of users, so something needs to be done…and done quick.

Being reissued for 10th anniversary.

Strategies
1. Move tech to invisibility
2. If its not animated, animate it. (add a chip to it.)
3. If its not connected, connect it.
4. Distribute knowledge — parts need to be aware of what the system knows.
5. If you are not in real time, you’re dead
6. Count on more being different — The game in the network economy will be to find the overlooked small and figure out the best way to have them embrace the swarm.
7. Create feedback loops
8. Protect long incuabations — Latecomers have to follow Drucker’s Rule–they must be ten times better than what they hope to displace
9. It’s a hits game for everyone — A few high-scoring hits have to pay for all the many flops
10. Check for exteranlities
11. Coordinate smaller webs. Three thousand members in one network are far more powerful than one thousand members in three networks

Today’s ratings are only the raw material for what’s to come. Rearden Commerce’s Web-based personal assistant already helps employees in corporations like ConAgra make travel plans, by quizzing them about their age, income, job, family situation, lifestyle, and preferences like favorite types of restaurants. (JPMorgan Chase will roll out a Rearden-based travel adviser to its credit-card customers later this year.) The next step, says Rearden CEO Patrick Grady, is to pull in ratings from all over the Web and mash them up with anonymous information from Rearden users. Then, if a beef-loving cat-litter salesman is traveling to Dallas, the system can recommend a top-rated steak house where other cat-litter reps have had luck taking pet-shop owners to close deals.

via The Rating Game – The Atlantic (July/August 2009).

via Digital Nomads Ditch Cubicles for Shared Spaces, Choosing Their Co-Workers – washingtonpost.com.

Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business model, and strategic innovation.

Prior to Havas, Umair founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that helped shape the strategies of investors, entrepreneurs, and blue chip companies across media and consumer industries. Bubblegeneration’s work has been recognized by publications like Wired, The Red Herring, Business 2.0, and BusinessWeek, and in Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, to which Umair was a contributor.

He says, ”

What do the “M”s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It’s a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth “M”s.

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday’s way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who’s Gen M? Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from.

Gen M isn’t just kind of awesome — it’s vitally necessary. If you think the “M”s sound idealistic, think again.

The great crisis isn’t going away, changing, or “morphing.” It’s the same old crisis — and it’s growing.

You’ve failed to recognize it for what it really is. It is, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, in our institutions: the rules by which our economy is organized.”