by Rob Paterson
May 11, 2011 at 10:37 am · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, Adoption, Banking, Books, Business 2.0, Mobile, Mobile Phones, Movie Making, Netflix, Platforms, TV, User Revolution, Video, Visa, Web 2.0, YouTube
Two announcements this week I think show how the 2.0 web is going to the next phase – where the “rebels” go mainstream and spell the end of the traditional services.
I wont say much more about MSFT’s purchase of Skype – other than this. It spells the end of telephony as we used to know it. Communications will inexorably shift to the mobile platforms and will make video the centre piece. The Mainstream will be Dick Tracy! And this is my point. Mobile is the new platform and video will become so ubiquitous as to replace voice. The rebels are now the players.
In commerce Visa has just thrown down the gauntlet too.
Visa has just announced that it too will make mobile its future. It will take on PayPal directly. Here are the features:
Visa expects to launch the digital wallet in the U.S. and Canada in fall 2011.
Key features of the wallet are expected to include:
- Click-to-buy: Shop conveniently and securely by simply entering an email address, alias or online ID and password, instead of a billing address, account number and expiration date. In addition, Visa is exploring dynamic authentication technologies that will bring added layers of security to online purchases.
- Cross-channel payments solution: The wallet consolidates multiple Visa and non-Visa payments accounts and can be used in mobile, eCommerce, social network and retail point-of-sale environments.
- Preference management: A menu that enables consumers to set preferences for how their wallet will work, allowing them to customize and control the features of their personal wallet from privacy settings to designating which account will be accessed based on merchant type or purchase amount.
- Merchant offers: A service that allows consumers to personalize their shopping experience by opting-in to receive money-saving discounts or promotions from participating merchants.
“The widespread adoption of Internet and mobile technology is changing the way people connect and transact across the globe, so we’re focused on delivering locally-tailored payments products and services,” said Saunders. “We are introducing new solutions for eCommerce and mobile devices that provide the same ‘Visa-quality’ experience—convenience, reliability and security—people enjoy when using their Visa cards at a retail location. In doing so, we are accelerating the global shift to digital payments by harnessing our brand, products, network and 50-plus years of payments experience.”
Mobilizing Payments in Emerging Economies
In certain emerging geographic markets with significant mobile penetration, Visa will work with financial institutions and mobile-network operators to provide consumers with a secure, reliable and globally accepted form of payment and the ability to transfer and receive funds, manage financial accounts or top-up wireless air time using their mobile handset. The wide range of features and functions being developed for the digital wallet will allow Visa to pursue a number of strategies to tailor or bundle services to local needs.
- In countries like India and Russia, where card issuance and mobile subscriptions are high, but card usage is relatively low, Visa will help drive account activation and usage by working with financial institutions and mobile operators to link existing card portfolios with mobile devices to give handsets payments functionality.
- In countries within Africa and the Middle East where mobile device usage is high and traditional electronic payments infrastructure is less developed, Visa will work with mobile network operators to link new virtual mobile prepaid Visa accounts to mobile phone numbers to enable cash-in, cash-out, personal payments and mobile payments —including bill payments and wireless airtime top-up. Visa also intends to connect existing “closed loop” mobile money services that today provide basic mobile banking and payments services to unbanked and under-banked consumers to its global, open loop network—VisaNet. The integration will open closed loop systems, and provide consumers and merchants with unprecedented scale, functionality and acceptance beyond their existing local geographic footprints.
Across all emerging geographic markets, Visa’s sophisticated payments technology and significant work in establishing global payments standards will aid in navigating the complexity of the myriad of network operators, handset models and operating systems in use globally, helping to enable millions of new and existing Visa account holders to simply use mobile technology for payments services.
Communications and Commerce now. What next? Education and Healthcare seem next.
Maybe there will have to be a Skype and PayPal in these sectors first. And when the mainstream buy in as we see above the shift will be made. Oh yes and are not books and film there too?
by Rob Paterson
October 24, 2010 at 1:38 pm · Filed under
Adoption, CPB, Change, Connected Enterprise, Content, Culture, Doc Searls, Google, HBO, KETC, Media, Netflix, PBS, Platforms, Public TV, TV, User Revolution, Video
Will newspapers all die? Maybe not. I am sure that, in some form, some Newspapers will live on. But for most of us – the Newspaper as a “Paper” for the masses is already dead. Will Paper Books die? Maybe not – I treasure my new Picture Book of my son’s wedding. There are few text filled books I will always treasure. But as a mass market object, books are already dead for many people as the sales of eBooks and Readers show.
The mass market distribution systems that supported newspapers and books will die soon as a result. For traditional papers and books only have to shrink by 15 – 25% to make the economic burden of running the presses and the system too much. Once these systems have gone they will be gone for ever. New systems are emerging.
I can already design and set my new book and have it printed and sent back to me – a market of one!
This is a new system quite separate from the old book distribution and publishing system. New “newspapers” such as Politico and Huffington are here. Some old ones such as the Guardian are moving to the new space. Twitter and Facebook fill in more news for me. My new “news paper” will be edited largely by me for me!
The same process is now going to affect TV. Most of the old infrastructure will die. New structure will emerge quickly. Some old structure will hybridize. The power will shift from them to me!
I have just enjoyed an Apple TV for a week with Netflix. Now watching content via the web is easy. But the big attraction is not just that getting content online is easy. What I had not known about was how powerful the impact would be of how my habits of watching affects how Netflix adjusts its offering to me. In only a week, it has used its algorithm to begin to offer me content that I might never have noticed that I will almost certainly enjoy. What it is doing is “meaning making” of the almost infinite pool of content that is out there. This has put me in charge – I am now my own programmer. I am my own network CEO. I choose the time and I choose the content knowing that I will enjoy it. I also lose all the rubbish and all the ads.
I am constructing my own TV Network! This is the revolution that extends way beyond the web access issues. The web enables this personal customization for TV as wit will for books and news.
I am happy to pay a subscription for this. I don’t demand that this be free because it is great value for me. I will never go back to appointment TV – no matter who puts it on – a network, a cable company or public TV.
My bet is that within a year, the death of Appointment TV will be sure and a new system will be visible. Look at how TechCrunch see this right now!
- Google
unveiled its Google TV platform less than 3 weeks ago. You can’t ignore Google. Hey, they just built a car that drives itself. But Thursday, in a battle that will likely become more frequent between old media and new, ABC, CBS and NBC blocked their programs fromGoogle TV. MTV, Fox and HBO are still available, but that could change. Still, one TechCrunch post declared “I’ve seen the future and it begins on my sofa with Google TV.”
- Steve Jobs bragged this week that Apple has already sold 250,000 new Apple TVs. The first Apple TV shipped in 2007. It had its fans but didn’t take off like the iPod or iPhone. The second generation of Apple TV’s launched just last month. MG Siegler really likes the device, but admitted it’s not yet the killer device in the living room. To get there, he said, would require tv network subscription packages.
- “Watch Instantly” is booming at Netflix. A shocking statistic came out this week. 20% of Internet traffic during peak times in the U.S. is coming from Netflix.
For more on Netflix’s plans, see Sarah Lacy’s interview with CEO Reed Hastings.
- Hulu Plus will be coming to the Roku box in the fall.
For some, the Roku box may be the first step towards eliminating cable.
- Boxee announced the new Boxee Box will ship next month, both if you pre-ordered fromAmazon or want to buy one in stores.
- Flurry reported Apple’s iOS Apps are responsible for the recent downward trend in TV ratings. The actual cause may be a bit broader.
- A TechCrunch post Friday suggested the future of TV is HTML5.
At the moment much power remains with the old powers. Netflix and Google are enduring tough negotiations with the producers of content. But why wouldn’t they take up this mantle of being the producer? Why can’t they do an HBO? Certainly today if I was a maker of documentary who cannot get space on conventional TV, I would approach Netflix and Google. Just as cable supplanted the networks, so those who provide access via the web will supplant cable and networks.
So what then for Public TV and the local Public TV stations?
If you are a producer it seems straightforward to me – you too have to approach those who shape access to the web – or add a service to the web yourself!
But that leaves the local TV stations on the beach! It does but like a local book shop, the audience is going somewhere else for the mass content.
So what to do?
Here is Doc Searls’ advice in a recent interview with me at KETC:
I think that an answer is to build the “Local Cloud” – Host the new Forum or Agora or Market. Be the host of the new/old marketplace for sharing through video.
There is not yet a really well functioning local cloud yet for video. This is a huge hole, waiting to be filled. Look at all those who are learning to use video. They are driving to HQ video. Look at the new screens that offer up a much better experience.
Take a look at your new 1080p HD TV screen. You know what the best-looking source is for that? Your new 1080p camcorder. That’s because all the TV stations, and all the cable and satellite services, compress their video, often to the point where grass fields look plaid and detail is just wiggly lines. Camcorders compress video too, but not as much.
My point here is that more and more individuals and small groups are going to be in better and better positions to produce their own video, and won’t be satisfied seeing it compressed to ugliness on YouTube. They’ll want to produce their own movies, their own documentaries, their own creative work, outside the industrial system that YouTube comprises.
If they want to mash this video up, edit it, do CGI, do the kind of rendering that serious video requires, they won’t have the means at home. And it’s often too hard to do it out in some remote cloud provided by the likes of Amazon (which doesn’t even provide that yet — at least not exactly). They’ll need low-latency fat connections to back-end servers and rendering farms.
Thus we have a big opportunity for KETC and other public TV institutions, to ally with local telco and cable companies, which in most cases have the space, the conditioned power, and the direct connections to the Net’s backbone.
How much time before the Tipping Point? My feeling is 2-3 years tops. In 2-3 years time all your best audience will have made the shift to the web. This may be 30- 40% of the total. There will still be a conventional audience but it cannot pay the bills. Just as when a newspaper or a book publisher loses its best readers, it cannot pay its bills either.
The pace is change is accelerating as each new phase builds on the previous one and adds new platform power to the web. Coming right on the heels of all of this – a new web based system of education and then right after that a new web based health system. All based on the same idea – of putting you in the driver’s seat!
by Rob Paterson
January 3, 2008 at 1:18 pm · Filed under
Hugh McLeod, Netflix, Public Media, Social Media, Social Objects, TV, Video
Netflix are making a big move to a direct model.
Netflix and LG Electronics will deliver rental movies and TV series directly to TV sets, sidestepping the well-known red envelopes used by the DVD rental company.The companies announced Thursday that they will develop a set-top box that will allow users to stream movies and other content from the Internet to HDTV sets.
Netflix, which began to allow users to stream content to their PCs via the Internet last year, said the new system would bypass PCs. The companies said a networked LG player will be released to market by the second half of this year.
“Internet to the TV is a huge opportunity,” said Reed Hastings, Netflix’s founder, chairman, and CEO, in the announcement. “Netflix explored also offering its own Netflix-branded set-top boxes, but we concluded that familiar consumer electronics
devices from industry leaders like LG Electronics are a better consumer solution for getting the Internet to the TV.”
Netflix said the move reflects its larger strategy to offer customers a variety of ways to rent and view movies and television programs. Those who buy the hardware will be able to rent titles cataloged on the Internet. Netflix already offers more than 6,000 titles via the Internet, and the company said it plans to expand its online catalog. The company offers more than 90,000 titles on DVD.
“Consumers crave compelling and immediate content, and the Netflix online streaming movie feature can provide instant gratification,” Ki Kwon, president of the consumer electronics division of LG Electronics USA, said in the announcement.
LG Electronics said the partnership will improve its position in the U.S. digital television marketplace.
I have no opinion about whether this will work but it is part of a mass of innovation that will somehow bear fruit soon. One of my predictions for 2008 is that we will see a moment when it finally becomes easy to both find and access Movies and High End TV Shows without having to wait for the show to air on a schedule. We will be able to have TV and Movies when we want – We will have it our way!
There seems to be an inevitability here that most agree with. Where I differ with some friends in TV is how quickly this will occur.
I think that enough progress will take place in 2008 to make 2009 the Annus Horribilis for Traditional TV that uses the artificial scarcity of its broadcast area and schedule as its economic model. TV will suffer as Newspapers are suffering.
So in a world where there is masses of great content to be had at any time, where is the value?
I think that it is in making it easy to find what you want – Navigation. Maybe just Google – But I doubt it – Maybe a series of Hubs that house niches – The Military Channel – The Opera Channel etc
These Channels would make it easy to find the good stuff – and also have a lot more information linked to the film and reviews.
Here it would be easy to share what you like and to comments on it. John Wayne fans unite and talk to each other about the Duke -
Films and Shows become the Social Objects that Hugh Talks about.
So what then will be left for the local TV stations – both private and public? I think that their domain is to leverage the national content and to win the hyper local wars. More on this as 2008 unfolds as some of my clients do the world to solve this challenge.
