Interactive TV Reinvents Itself - Nov. 20 iBreakfast

Welcome to the world of the SuperDVR - getting the show you want when you want it. It is really the convergence of IPTV, what speaker Shelly Palmer elaborates in his book TV Disrupted (version 2 is coming out shortly) in what he calls the migration from Network TV to Networked TV.

Mark Risis, TiVo; Alan Body iBreakfast; Shelly Palmer, Advanced Media; Gary Lauder, Lauder Partners

In its simplest form it just means that any video anywhere – whether Network TV, Cable, Pay-per-View or any YouTube or Internet Video can be retrieved and called up on your TV. This is where the giant screen TVs and those increasingly elaborate set-top boxes will really earn their keep.

Moreover, as you see this evolve, the convergence with mobile both as a kind of smart clicker (that’s where Bluetooth really kicks in) and as a remote viewing device for what you have overcaptured. There is also an emerging video conversation that young people are already engaged in over the internet, is as we can see from TiVo, moving on to interactive TV.
This is where TiVo is getting interesting.

For all the early hype, there is really only one company that has brought us a successful form of iTV and that is TiVo – wich is really just a vision of making a TV work like a VCR thanks to some cool software and a big hard drive. So their next steps into the future are compelling – now they are offering a convergence with broadband so you can start doing what kids everywhere are doing, looking at YouTube videos, but on your giant TV instead of a laptop. To pay for it, and all the commercial zapping that takes place with commercial TV, they are getting advertisers to offer special TiVo friendly versions of their ads that send out a banner message as they are being skimmed.

This in turn is another new frontier of the TV experience, enabling viewers to get a video shorthand of all the material they are now amassing……and this, along iwht the mobile component will be the topics we revisit when we do iTV Reinvented Part II.

VC Outlook

Alan Meckler led this iBreakfast that examined the investor outlook in a new era of financial failures. In a strange way, the last bubble and the virtual closing of the tech IPO market has insulated many investors from the fallout. They just weren't part of the public markets. On the other hand, the general climate is bad and that will tend to lower valuations dramatically. Lean and mean is the watchword and major investors like Sequioa are sending out the word to cut back - or else.

iPhone vs. Android

The iPhone still has a lot more going for it than Google's Android, but the market is excited about a viable competitor that has the ability to improve dramatically and open up the smart phone to widespread development.

Click for more on the comparison and a report on the iPhone vs Android iBreakfast.

Web 2.0 Best Practices Conference Report

Implementation of Web 2.0 concepts at companies in all sectors of the business world, was the theme of this event. Mobile became an important part of the discussion with the features of Android being compared to iPhone.

For more details visit:

Dorian Benkoil's Report

General Report

Greg Verdino's Report

Monetizing Social Networks - iBreakfast Video Report

Report from our April iBreakfast

SPEAKERS:

David Birnbaum, Takkle
Michael Lazerow, BuddyMedia
Steve Ennen, Neighborhood America

Monetizing Social Networks was a revealing event where companies shared their secrets for extracting revenue from his key Web 2.0 phenomenon. The basic challenge is that the trusted social environment of these networks makes it hard to pay of referrals or otherwise tap the interactivity of the medium.

However, since the involvement factor is exactly what makes these networks so compelling that is where these there companies have developed solutions. (As an example of this involvement factor we showed how under 30's were willing to make complete fools of themselves taking on a Zulu dancer where a generation before them would have been content simply to watch.)

The favored solution is a high involvement contest or ratings game. The extent and variations are all over the place but they call come down to this key Web 2.0 idea we call "Collaboratition" driving people to work for you by creating a competitive environment. The main thing here is that people are encouraged to spread the work and grow the campaign virally.
Brands are typically using them to expand involvement with their products and the system, according to Lazerow is forming into the next ad unit.

WIKINOMICS REPORT

March 19 - iBreakfast

Katarina Skoberne, OpenAd.net
Nic Perkin, The Receivables Exchange
Jessica Morris, OurStage.com

The March iBreakfast was notable for showing how to put the world to work for you by tapping into idea marketplaces. This is not about Wiki software per se but about extracting value from the universe simply by putting it to work for you. We call it Collaboratition – motivating people to work together or against each other for a common purpose.

This is truly a revolutionary concept even though it has been talked about for a long time. What is clear now is that all the tools and public sentiment is in place for those who can think outside of conventional parameters to harness. This point is so important because it also explains why your next competitor is not likely to be your current one – since they are probably as captive as you are to conventional wisdom.

We looked at 3 companies using some form of Collab – in music, advertising and monetizing receivables.

OpenAd.net is a really good example of all of the above because it is a great way for marketers and advertisers to reach out to the world creative community for ideas. They pay OpenAd a fee of several thousand dollars and then put out a brief to their community of 10.000+ creatives worldwide and offer a prize – typically between $500 and $2000 – for a fleshed-out campaign idea. The concepts pour in. The most famous being one set up by Bono to retire 3rd World Debt. But many Fortune 500 companies like Gillette participate too.

And where does this groundbreaking company, now with offices in the US hail from? Slovenia.
Next, we looked at The Receivables Exchange, which monetizes the short term loan you give to customers when you allow them terms of 30 – 90 days. From their perspective this is a free loan which, worldwide is worth around $2.3 trillion. Now that’s a nice number!
This is often called factoring and normally, companies call their bank or a factoring company and get the best deal they can which is typically around 15-25% in annualized interest. By creating an open exchange, suddenly you have made your business opportunity available to the world and your interest comes down dramatically. Investors tend to get a very good return for their risk too.

Finally, there is OurStage.com, a music judging and promotion site which covers just about every genre from rap to world music as well video. It is open to all comers and has a monthly contest for around $500 in prizes in each category. The dynamics are very interesting. Aside from raising $13 million, the site has grown quickly and attracts 1.2 million monthly uniques.
Visitors are asked to judge two songs whenever they log on and here’s the secret – it is a “thin slicing” approach - you only have to listen to the first 15 seconds to judge. Naturally, that favors songs with the hooks up front, but even so, by aggregating the scores on these microjudgements, they come up with a good index of what is hot. Any musician, amateur or pro can submit and there is no fee. The site makes money through ads, selling songs and sending out the cream of the crop to record co.’s and concert organizers.

The eye-opening part is how they grew – by the musicians themselves, of course. That’s because today, every busker worth their salt has an email list and their own little marketing machine called: “emails to fans.” It can be postcards toom but you can’t beat the price of emails

So the lessons learned are: figure out who can be motivated to help you (especially ones who can multiply your message), how to reach them and how to execute with a great site. This is a key point because so much of this intangible that the IP rights are a critical issue.

The metaphor we chose to set this show in motion are UFOs and the Web, partly because, like the value concepts of Wikinomics, they have a way of popping out of nowhere and people seem hellbent on uploading these videos by boatload onto YouTube. The motivator appears to be the ubiquity of camcorders and a desire to let the world know you’re not crazy. Or is it too much Photoshop? Either way, the world works for you – you just need to figure out how to tap into it.

Other Blogs about this iBreakfast:
Why the Big 4 Labels are Dead by Ray Beckerman

Attention Surplus & The Fastest Monetized Music Site - Ever

If the record business needs a lesson in how to make money, then the former Governer of New York has one for them.

Think about it - within 48 hours of the public discovering that Ashley Dupre, the high priced call girl who took him down, was a budding singer with two moderately good hip hop songs on the 'Net, she sold something like 200,000 downloads.

This is truly a first. Hookers didn't used to sing. And if they did, they almost certainly didn't have a record contract.

Now you don't need a label and a scandal is worth more than a record deal.

The moral of the story is this is: this truly an attention economy and you have to be ready at any given time with monetizable product. We, of course, prefer you stick to more distinguished efforts but the principle is there.

More importantly, it explains why someone like Edgar Bronfman was willing to put up $2 billion for Warner Music. The record business may be dying, he said in a Daily Deal conference, but not the music business. So when an Asian star has a hit, his company has 400 SKU’s from ringtones to keychains, to sell.

The question for everyone out there is:

1. What do you have to sell at your moment of attention?

2. How do you get that moment of attention (without quite that moral turpitude?)

To be discussed at our Wikinomics iBreakfast on Wednesday, and many more to come........