LDS Media Talk

“The US remains the single largest Internet market in the world with 181.9 million Internet users in 2006, but China is likely to take the lead before the decade is out.” That’s the lead line from a recent eMarketer report.

Although the U.S. Internet population continues to grow, the rest of the world is growing even faster–particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. China is growing quickly as its middle class grows and home Internet access becomes widespread. India is also a country of great growth potential.

Morgan Stanley estimates that by the end of 2007 there will be over 1.3 billion Internet users worldwide.

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I just read the new Gartner report “Mobile Collaboration Will Be Driven by Consumer Technologies and Behaviors.” Smart phones already have keyboards and fully functional HTML Web browsers. The price of cell phones is dropping dramatically, while at the same time, their capabilities are increasing. The mobile phone is becoming a fully-functional computer in your hand.

But it’s more than that, because mobile devices also have a basic knowledge of their location from the network, and GPS and other location-sensing technologies will become increasingly common during the next five years. This will allow people to get location-specific information. For example, a person standing outside a restaurant can look up reviews left by previous customers commenting on the service.

Add to that our ability later this year to let Web users log in, and tie their identity to their membership record. Imagine…

• An endowed member traveling could get on his cell phone the directions to the nearest temple, a list of the session starting times, information on whether clothing rental is available, and the times the cafeteria is open.
• A nonmember (or member traveling in an unknown city) could get on his cell phone the address of the closest meetinghouse and times of the next sacrament meeting.
• A temple engineer who is having a problem with a piece of equipment could look up the maintenance manual off the Church Intranet and if that didn’t answer his question, he could take a picture of the problem with his cell phone and transmit it to an engineer at headquarters.
• A member in Japan who commutes to work two hours each way could get a podcast and listen to this week’s gospel doctrine scripture reading assignment.
• A humanitarian missionary providing emergency relief in Indonesia could share images and information with missionaries doing the same in Sri Lanka.

Just food for thought.

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Nearly 2 weeks ago, I blogged about the Uses of Broadband, and commented that now that about half of US households have broadband, the issue to think about isn’t just high-speed connection, but what value-added services the broadband connection can use to increase our quality of life.

I believe we are on the cusp of seeing a huge convergence of technology, both in the hardware (cell phones, land phones, televisions, computers, iPods, iPAQs, PalmPilots, Blackberrys, DVD players, etc.) and the means of communicating with them (wires, wireless, cable, fiber optic lines, satellite dishes, infrared, AM/FM, Blue Tooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, etc.) to provide voice conversations, movies, television programming, music, data transmission, home control and security, Internet access, access to the world’s libraries, and many things we can only dream about today.

In their new forecast report, Parks Associates calls these new capabilities “digital living services.” They state that “recent investment and developments in such services as broadband access and television, including the shift to digital and IP delivery of communications and entertainment services, have given rise to a host of new digital living products and services.” In 5 years, they expect that more than 30 million households will have a network that bridges numerous products and extends the entertainment experience to multiple rooms in the home.

Over the next 5 years, they expect the following growth:

• broadband and communications to grow from $168 billion to $229B
• PC/CE digital media platforms to grow from $23B to $34B
• Home security to grow from $8B to $10B
• On-demand entertainment to grow from $3B to $10B
• Home controls to grow from $3B to $5B

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According to a recent survey of worldwide marketers by ICOM, some traditional media choices are on the decline as a result of new media choices. For example:

• 42% of marketers say they use newspapers less.
• 20% use radio and television less.
• 18% use magazines less.

Fastest growing media?

1. Blogs, e-mails, group sites
2. Viral marketing
3. Internet
4. Commercial messages on handhelds

But don’t take survey results like this at face value. There’s more to the story than jumping to the conclusion that newspapers, radio, and TV are dying. eMarketer.com reminds us that “taking these survey results at face value is shortsighted. The idea that old media is a collection of monolithic business models doomed to death by static inaction misses the fact that these formats are changing to keep with the times. For one, all the alarmist claims that digital video recorders and video-on-demand will cause the death of TV and the loss of billions of dollars worth of advertising are just plain wrong. More people will watch more TV and video content in the future, not less. They will just be doing it in different ways via the Internet, the PC and portable devices.”

A November 2006 study by the American Advertising Federation found that U.S. advertising executives are highly interested in integrating online media with traditional media.

A colleague of mine who is an experienced public relations man agrees with this analysis: “The writer is spot on. New media is forcing old media to change and develop a different kind of style and relationship with their audiences. Old media will be around for a long time, but it’s certainly starting to look and feel different, even in our day-to-day working relationships with them. A fascinating time to be in the business.”

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Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and may others are beginning to go mobile. According to the “Mobile Social Communities” report from ABI Research, many social communities are now based on the mobile phone and other portable wireless devices in addition to computers. In a world that must constantly be in touch, you’re no longer tied to your computer; you can network over the phone 24×7.

Worldwide, there are almost 50 million members of “mobile social communities,” and projections say there will be 174 million in 5 years.

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Broadband is no longer about the size of your pipe, but how you use it.

Now that about half of US households have broadband, the issue to think about isn’t just high-speed connection, but what value-added services can use the broadband connection to increase our quality of life. I’m talking about things like voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), Internet protocol TV (IPTV), and paid audio and video content.

In-Stat reports that more than 9 million US households have 1+ active VoIP users, and 49% of them have no land phone line. I want to get rid of my home land line as soon as I can convince my wife that her cell phone can work just fine at home. (All my kids have their own cell phones and they never use–or answer–the land phone.) I’d also like to get rid of my work land line as soon as our IT department finds a cost-effective way to jettison our land phones and issue VoIP cell phones to all employees; about half already have work cell phones.

On the hardware side: I want to reduce the number of gadgets I use (personal cell phone, work cell phone, home land phone, work land phone, work computer, home computer, iPAQ, etc.) and get better productivity in the process.

On the content side: I want to reduce the number of e-mail accounts, phone numbers, bank account numbers, utility bills, consumer credit accounts, and merge them all into one.

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Kevin Maney writes an article in today’s USA Today about new media and user-generated content. He talks about major events in 2006 around user-generated content, then wisely comments that the “flavor of the week” usually doesn’t change the world radically. (Remember how artificial intelligence, interactive TV, portals, community sites, and social networking were going to change the world overnight?)

They do tend to change our worlds over time, but the change is more evolutionary.

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Those of us who focus our attention to the Internet shouldn’t forget the value of traditional media. Lexis-Nexis reports that during major national events, consumers turn first to TV, radio, and print. According to their study, half of the respondents said they would use network TV during a news event and 42% would turn on the radio. One-quarter would visit a Web site and 6% would visit some form of online user-generated content such as a blog or chat group.

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Two great magazines I read:

1. Internet Retailer. Although I’m not involved in retailing per se, it’s all about matching the needs of users with what you have to offer.

2. eContent available in print (free) and on the Web (subscription).

eWeek and Business 2.0 are also good for keeping up on technology in general.

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South Korea now has ONE MILLION mobile TV subscribers. On average, South Korean mobile TV subscribers watch about one hour of TV programming per day on their phones.

Japan entered the commercial mobile TV arena in March 2006.

China plans plans to have a robust mobile TV infrastructure in place for the Beijing Olympics.

The rub: all three countries are pursuing separate technical standards for mobile TV.

In-Stat figures there will be 100 million global mobile TV subscribers by 2010.

Read more at eMarketer.

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“The content of the Internet, and who is creating it, is changing.” That’s the lead sentence from today’s eMarketer story.

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, user-generated content sites comprise five out of the top 10 fastest-growing Web brands. “User-generated content sites” include sites for photo sharing, video sharing, blogging, personal Web sites, Wikipedia (5 billion page views monthly), and even Mormon Wikipedia. This is increasing evidence that users expect to contribute content to sites as they consume content, both increasing the value of the site and drawing more participants. Most of these increases are due to viral (word-of-mouth) marketing.

Note the huge growth rates in the following sites from July 2005 to July 2006: ImageShack 233%, Heavy.com video site 213%, Flickr image site 201%, Artist Direct music site 185%, MySpace 183%, and Wikipedia 181%.

So, how do we capitalize on this trend in a way that provides good content about the Church on the Web?

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In Web 1.0, standards allowed information to describe how it could be presented, exchanged, and repurposed. This created a world of shared information. However, as the Web grows in size and scope, it becomes harder to find what we want, to identify like-minded people and communities, and to have applications work together smoothly.

Web 2.0 will become more useful by creating a meaningful semantic Web. Researchers are working on the standards, taxonomies, and other ontologies needed to create a semantic Web. These standards will enable information to describe its own origin, scope, purpose, and even meaning. This will create a world of more intelligent services and content, both for human-machine interchange and machine-machine synchronization.

The semantic Web will add meaning to our current simplistic matching of mere strings of characters against buckets of words. This is a complex issue, because meaning is organic, determined by use, and a moving and context-dependent target.

The current debate: should meaning on the Web be (1) evolutionary, driven organically through the bottom-up human assignment of tags or (2) does it need to be carefully crafted and managed by a higher authority, using structured representations with defined semantics? Evolutionally (bottom-up) tagging is helpful with shared, formalized vocabularies (top-down) for interoperability and machine support.

Interesting sites: Flickr.com, del.icio.us, Upcoming.org

There are at least two semantic Webs:
1. A Web of data (exposed databases of data). Tagging may not be helpful here.
2. Enrichment of the human-readable Web. Tags will be a powerful way to improve meaning.

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The Worldwide Web was invented in 1989. In barely a decade, it had reinvented centuries old businesses, inspired the creation of new ones, and penetrated our homes to become an integrated part of our lives. It has revolutionized the way we work, live, learn, and communicate. Yet, the Web is still in its infancy, and is already being transformed by a new generation of entrepreneurs with new technologies and fresh ideas.

This blog contains some of my notes from the 15th International World Wide Web Conference in Scotland (May 22-26, 2006).

In the near future, Web 2.0 will evolve to the following:

• The Web will become a platform.
• The Web will harness collective intelligence—not just the data in a system, but also the input from the users, including demographics, buying habits, etc.
• End of the software release cycle. No need to download software (in releases); it is used from the servers over the Web.
• Richer user experiences.

Sites such as MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook demonstrate a remarkable shift in how people seek entertainment, collaborate, and communicate. One big change from first-generation Web sites is that users contribute content to the sites as they consume content, increasing the value of the site and drawing more participants.

Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0:

• The trend toward Widespread broadband connectivity. (Although this is a trend, today half the users of Church Web sites in the USA access by high speed and the other half by dial-up. Outside the USA, high-speed users are more like 1-25%.)
• Open standards will make connectivity between services more reliable and simpler to build.
• Lightweight development environments will make development easier and less expensive. Movement from complex languages like J2EE and .NET to easier environments such as AJAX, HTML, CSS, RSS, and blogs. Businesses and users demand simpler tools and lower costs.
• Lower investment costs. Open standards and lightweight development environments mean lower costs.
• Wider innovation opportunities. The lower-skill requirements and reduced costs open the door to innovation as more people can be involved. This puts development and publishing in the hands of lower-skilled people.
• Change in emphasis. Web 1.0 focused on research and academics. Web 2.0 will continue to focus on business and improving quality of life.
• Better browsers. Support for new formats, such as RSS, and faster graphics processors will enrich the user experience.
• Device proliferation. Convergence of the capabilities of mobile phones and PDAs.
• Greater awareness of challenges. Realization of the need for redundancy and resilience.
• Lessons from history. The maturity of the developing commercial Web has refined content and services.

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