Unbundled

How the breaking apart of traditional, rigid structures is creating a personalized, on-demand future and changing the everyday interactions of people, politics, and profit.

About this post

This post is based on a theory and a book outline I’ve been chipping away at since 2010. Since I’m probably going to be too busy to ever finish the full thing, I figured I would massively truncate and post it here so that it’s finally out in the world in some form. In the six years I’ve been thinking about this subject, it’s only become clearer with the advent of the on-demand economy, 3D printing etc. Please excuse the length!

Introduction

In Silicon Valley we’ve used the term “Unbundling” to describe the phenomena of mobile apps breaking apart into multiple separate apps, each essentially providing more focused, single purpose features. Think of the Facebook app being separated into Facebook + Messenger.

I believe this Unbundling phenomena is happening almost universally across all aspects of life. It’s a meta-trend that has been happening for decades (or more) and will continue for decades to come. It’s a common process affecting many of the things happening in the world today. In fact most of the major disruptions we see (loss of traditional jobs, failing record companies, terrorism, divorce rates, the rise of fringe/underdog political candidates etc) are all, in at least some way, connected to this fundamental transition.

See the full post on Medium

Getting Attention by Yelling Really Loud

Have you ever wondered why TV commercials sound louder than the TV shows they interrupt?

There's an interest piece about the Volume of TV Ads that explains how and why it works. It's part of a new law being proposed to add consistency to the 'perceived volume' of shows, their ads and between ads.

Under the proposed rule, broadcasters will be told that "A consistent subjective loudness must be maintained between individual advertisements and between the advertisements and programme and other junction material."

It is interesting that the Media 1.0 people believe that shouting loudly at the audience produces the best result. 1.0 thinking at its best.

As I have written somewhere else:

"Advertising was fun, for you, for a while. You made us sit there for 5 minutes at a time watching people jam messages down our throat. Most of them didn't even apply to us. We don't care about that sale or those shoes. We care about our own personal and individual interests. Interests that are both specific and diverse.

If you have a message to tell us, make it compelling. If you have something to say, make it worth listening to. If you have something to sell, make it worth buying. If you have something worth knowing, we will hear about it without you yelling about it. We have friends, social networks, personal profiles and search engines which will tell us what we need to know when we need to know it - our schedule - not yours.

If you want to reach us, come and find us. Talk to us, have a conversation with us. Ask us questions. Listen to our answers. Act on our answers. Empower us to share your message. Because the only person who can tell your message, is us."

What is Media 2.0?

There have been some great questions about Media 2.0 over the last few days so I thought I would join the discussion.

First: What is the best name for the changing media landscape?

Some call it Social Media, others (including me) call it Media 2.0. Jeremiah Owyang asks the question today on his blog "Hate the term Social Media? Help come up with a better term".

Well I think we already have a better term - Media 2.0.

Jeremiah says he hates the 2.0 thing. Well I say too bad. It's great! Why is it great? Because the change in media is not just about social. If it's about one thing then it's about Personal.

It just so happens that we are each (personally) social beings and therefore a symptom of more personal media is social features.

But personal manifests itself in other ways including:

• More personal choice (more niche content providers including/especially participant created content)
• More personalization (in the form of recommendations and attention based filters)
• More personal transparent (public is the new private)
• More personal presentation (choose your browser, aggregator, device, color)
• More personal scheduling (choose the time and date of the content - time-shifted/on-demand content).
• More personal connections - SOCIAL
  

But there are other aspects of the changing media landscape. Convergence, DRM (that's not very social!), Identity etc. So that's why I call it Media 2.0. It's a major new version of a very old idea. Personal human connection.

In the comments of the post he writes:

Chris, I’m not a fan of “2.0″ anything. What’s happening is the natural evolution of the web, it’s nothing really new is it?

This is why I like the term “Social Media”

Important: Social Media is about People.

I responded:

Social is a symptom of Personal - but whatever your definition - to try to foreshadow the destination/goal before we get there only limits the discussion/possibilities.

2.0 gives people freedom to decide what the next generation will look like while still giving them a buzzword to rally around.

The community and the market will decide what the 2.0 means - and I think you will find that ’social’ is only part of that outcome.

Second: Read/Write Web has an article about the mainstream media using more and more Web 2.0 technologies.

That's because they are becoming Media 2.0 - like the rest of us.

I am a bit disappointed they didn't make the link and mention the Media 2.0 Workgroup's launch at the same time.

Third: There has been an overwhelming response to the Media 2.0 workgroup.

So we have had to stop taking email nominations and changed it over to a wiki. The Wiki also has a page about the workgroup's goals and selection criteria. Nominate your favorite voices.

Also, while the people listed on the page are great voices to help spotlight the discussion, we will start to find ways to bring everyone into the conversation in more democratic ways... stay tuned.

For now I'll give you a hint and say start tagging your content Media 2.0 ;)

More soon...

Google vs The World

There is a post on Read/WriteWeb about 'The race to beat google'.

Alex and Richard compare the Google Competitors based on their points of differentiation and come to the fairly obvious conclusion that:

So overall, even though there is a lot of activity in the space, it seems like Google will remain the search king for the foreseeable future. Various approaches will have different degrees of success in seizing bits of the market, but to make a serious dent will require time, flawless execution, big marketing dollars and, of course, a better technology. This is not a trivial combination of things.

Alex goes on to say:

...another promising contender (mentioned by Emre) is personalized search. With this technology, search results are going to be organized not by PageRank but by your personal interests. It is likely that a combination of a vertical search and personalized search is going to deliver fundamentally better results than Google, so that might have a chance. However, as we pointed out with the other technologies. Google is not going to sleep through this.

A commenter called Eric, however, hits the nail on the head:

The only way Google is going to be beaten is when the next great paradigm shift in computing comes along. IBM wasn't beaten by another hardware vendor, it was beaten by Microsoft's operating system. Microsoft wasn't beaten by a another
operating system, it's being beaten by the web. It follows then that Google isn't going to be beaten by another search product, it will be beaten by something else.

It stands to reason that if any of these other things prove viable, Google will incorporate it into their own product. Just like Microsoft never plays the innovator with Windows - when you're the leader, you just have to be "good enough" and copy the best ideas from competitors.

The question we should be asking is: what's the next paradigm going to be?

So maybe this is not about beating Google at search, but rather going beyond 'search' and towards a new paradigm that is more useful.

Im surprised that both Alex and Richard did not mention Touchstone or APML in the article when referring to Personalization of results by comparing them against your interests.

I think, however, the next frontier for search specifically is not finding better pages, but better structured data in the form of microformats or other forms of structured data from inside pages (like Blue Organizer, Edgeio, Vast). Again, surprised that Alex didn't mention Blue Organizer or the other - considering he owns it. Maybe he did not want to show bias.

Also, going beyond multiple results at all to return the actual answer. Very much like AskX - now THAT's innovation.