Tag: Clay Shirky

  • The Agency Experience

    Last Thursday was my first anniversary at GroupM, and the next day was my last there. A short tenure, and one year in an agency is too less a timeframe to be exposed to all the facets, people and processes a large (media) agency has to offer. But limiting though it is, I’d still like to share my (limited) thoughts, because I wasn’t able to get these perspectives before I made the shift to the agency side. My contacts on the client side had near zero clue on life in an agency, and my agency friends were veterans who had always been on that side. It wouldn’t have occurred to them that these things might be unfamiliar to a n00b! 🙂

    These are based on what I saw and experienced, and hence more subjective than objective. I’m restricting it to three aspects that bring out some good and some not-so-good points. (more…)

  • The narratives that we drive

    It probably started with the ‘narrative’ post, but a few things I read later made me wonder about our choices of narratives and where this could be leading to. Some narratives happen to us depending on our circumstances – time, geography etc, and some we choose of our own volition, or so it seems. Continuing from the earlier post, I think it’d be safe to say that with a more connected world, our ability to choose narratives has been heightened. Abundance of creation, and consumption. I think this was the related fantastic little piece of content that triggered this entire line of thought. It has some thoughts on material consumption, and though delivered differently, it has some profound insights as well.

    Partly thanks to that abundance, the noise around us has also increased, and has found better ways of being amplified. To quote Clay Shirky,

    It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.

    In fact, one could argue that compulsive consumption (material, and otherwise) is one of the reasons for our ‘emptying out‘. (do read) As I was writing this, I had a sense of deja vu, and some searching pointed me to this, written 3 years back, in which I tried to figure out whether there was a middle path between a self that was driven by others’ perceptions and one that was driven by a moral compass dictated by few external stimuli. In that post, I had quoted from Paul Graham’s ‘addiction’ post,“we will increasingly be defined by what we say no to” I think that still holds true.

    In this era of abundance, what narratives should we choose to be part of? How can one be objective, is one even right by being objective? An excellent post whose advice I hope to implement more is this. I really couldn’t disagree with any of the 30 things mentioned, it just seemed intuitively right. But I think this would serve as an excellent first lesson..

    (via)

    until next time, an open and shut existence

  • Of fame and purpose

    I completely missed Bigg Boss 6. Except for knowing that the arrested-for-sedition cartoonist and Sapna Bhavnani were participants, my exposure to it was limited to lunch conversations at office, where two of my friends seemed to be avid followers. 🙂 I thought my ignorance was only fair, since they are usually clueless when I mention the names of micro-celebrities on Twitter.

    Increasingly, I am realising that popular culture is going through massive fragmentation. The above was an example. I think this generation is connected with more people than any before it. It has always been so, with better means of communication, but this time, it has been an explosion. We’re still coping with the overload, or filter-failure, as Clay Shirky calls it. Despite social networks, or probably because of them and their algorithms, we miss out on many things.

    I was thinking of all this in the context of fame. Fame, to me, has some connection with my favourite subject these days – purpose. Fame can serve as a means, or end, or a by product of purpose. The thing is, with the fragmentation I mentioned earlier, fame probably has to be redefined, also because its shelf life has been drastically reduced. Once upon a time, a name/photo appearing in a newspaper was an achievement. (let’s ignore the notoriety piece 🙂 ) Later, before channels mushroomed, it was television. But now….

    One of the things that might happen because of all this is the gradual de-linking of fame and purpose, if it does exist. I’m still trying to figure out how that will shift our perspectives on purpose.

    until next time, being famous ain’t what it used to be…

  • In duress

    A few days back, when I met Balu and Conall, we happened to talk about the lifecycles of services (Twitter and Foursquare was the context) and then discuss whether product lifecycles were being compressed too. It is interesting because let’s say an organisation has invested in a new technology and brought out a product. If they price it high, adoption will be slow, and it may never become mainstream. If they subsidise and price it low, they may lose out if a better technology arrives before they  break even. Mobile phones (feature compatibility and obsolescence), content storage devices (VHS to Blu-Ray) were some of the examples discussed.

    Dina wrote a couple of good posts (Part One, Two) recently on durability,and whether it is losing its power as a consumer driver. The plethora of brands advertising in the youth category would seem to agree (best expressed in Fastrack’s ‘Move On’ campaign), but as pointed out by Goutam Jain in the post, in many cases it would be intrinsic to the brand’s value. The rise of ‘good enough’ in the real time era is not helping the durability cause either. We could go from fidelity in devices to that in human relationships and the cause/effects in consumption, but maybe we should get Dina to do it later. 🙂

    The second post is also a great read and is based on the comments on the first, and introduces some excellent dimensions to the original thought.  Convenience + cost of exit, opportunity cost of not entering the next ‘upgrade’ are things that I’d like to add to that.

    Brand equity is something that falls naturally into the scope of this discussion. But what i was more interested in its impact on the content that brands create, including their communication. Look at say, print ads, whose physical durability is perhaps one day (equity created might probably last longer), or radio jingles and television commercials., with a slightly larger shelf life. On the internet, it can exist ‘forever’. But there are costs involved in all of these, and in terms of durability, they might not really deliver in this era of content abundance, fleeting attention spans, and the constant search for the next ‘wow’. Also, on a smaller scale, what happens when you design say, applications for a particular platform/device like a Facebook/ iPad, and it doesn’t prove to be durable? It is many ways, a gamble.

    So, when I read Clay Shirky’s amazing post ‘The collapse of complex business models‘, I sensed a tangential connection. To broadly summarise, the post uses Joseph Tainter’s ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’, in the context of TV content producers’ inability to cut expenses below revenues, and explains how at some point, the level of complexity added to a system fails to add to the output, and becomes just a cost, because the different levels extract more value than the total output. Also, by this time, the system is too large and too interlocked for it to adapt quickly and change. Then ‘collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification.’

    The post throws light on what is most likely the ‘tripping point’ for contemporary media. With increased connectivity between individuals thanks to various platforms, more ideas are being formed and honed. As new products and services arise, consumption patterns change, new needs are discovered and a disruption (which is perhaps another way of  describing simplification) always seems around the corner. I see this as a message to brands, many of whom have evolved their organisations, products and services on the basis of older ways of communication. How much has durability of products been a factor in the design and structure of communication and organisational processes? Or was it a result?  As durability ceases to be a major factor, is the new imperative flexibility?

    until next time, we still call it consumer durables 🙂

  • The next content aggregator

    There was a good ‘debate’ at the McKinsey debate zone on whether people will pay for content, in the context of newspapers. An old debate by now, and one whose conclusion is being seen around, with very few exceptions (the reasons for the relative success of the Big 3 of fee-for-content services—the FT, the Economist, and the WSJ are also dealt with), but made interesting because of its succinctness. Clay Shirky writes about the ‘high price of charging for content’, and starts with a very interesting line – “People will pay for content if it is necessary, irreplaceable, and unshareable.”

    [Before we go further, I have to share this amazing read (or listen) with you – Clay Shirky, at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. (also read the first 3 links to the commentaries on the web, the fourth is a twitter feed)]

    I’ll attempt a summary because the context is needed for the post. He talks about the temporary arrangement that had allowed accountable journalism to create an advertising based business model, and how in the internet era, specialist information sources have disrupted that model and allowed advertisers many more, and better options. He talks about how the newspapers’ way of bundling content, where readers and advertisers subsidised the content they didn’t want, doesn’t work now, and the aggregation has now moved from the ‘server-side’ to the ‘client-side’. He sees “the newspapers’ ability to produce accountability journalism shrinking”, and is convinced that “those changes are secular, monotonic, and irreversible, rather than being merely cyclic and waiting for the next go around.”  He also points out a major and adverse side effect of this disruption – the absence of newspapers as a bulwark against civic corruption. (While there are other media and their ‘sting ops’, I’d still say that the role of newspapers in this regard is still important). This is something I remember debating a few months back over at Iq’s blog, when he wrote on this issue.

    He believes that newspapers are irreplaceable in accountability journalism, and sees three kinds of experiments happening in the new media landscape – market based (commercial, the traditional advertising model of publishers), public (funded by income other than revenue – like non-profit models) and social (crowdsourced models). The internet makes the first difficult to sustain, the second easier, and the third, easiest.

    In a recent post, Umair Haque writes about the open ‘mediaconomy’, which offers tons of soda, but good wine too, and that’s the reason why most old media companies are in trouble now – ‘they’ve been for long producing generic soda, instead of distinctive kinds of wine.’ And in an economy where supply of soda far exceeds demand, how long will people continue to pay for it? As Umair points out, its not just about media, but any industry that’s doing the same.

    Now, a few days back, when I was searching for some information for a holiday, I went to my list of regular suspects – a  few Indian hotel/destination review portals and a few travel portals. I did find information, but was given a choice of hotels that I wasnt too happy with. I had opened another tab for the traveler advice on WikiTravel, and happened to come across options in the ‘Stay’ section which I hadn’t seen anywhere else. In fact it gave me more options than I’d have liked and I was forced to choose from two equally good places, whose websites had all the information I wanted.

    WikiTravel is free, created and curated by users, who take the time out to update and add information. They will obviously incur costs when doing this, and spend some time. They obviously are supported by a revenue model (personal) that allows this, a revenue model that most likely is part of the old economy (commercial, unlike public or social) And that’s what makes me worried about the transition period, the part when the old economy is too weak to support the new, and the new doesn’t have a way to support itself.

    The other point is that the content is out there, but the soda and wine are all mixed, and I’m yet to figure a model where I’m sure I’m not missing something. Yes, there is Reader, Twitter and perhaps a couple of other places, but these do have a tendency to evolve into an echo chamber every now and then. Serendipity does lose out a lot when I put systems and processes in place. Newspapers were aggregators in their time. I can customise tools to give me the news on only those categories I’m interested in. (Rarely) Sometimes people add the serendipity. In many cases, when I’m searching for specific information, the tools (search) and the humans (crowdsourcing) have failed me. I have ended up ‘discovering’ new resources – sites/tools/people and then sharing it. Its not as organised a way as I’d like, but I guess we’re still evolving.

    There is quite some work happening though. Google Reader recently added some ‘Magic’ which helps users discover interesting content faster. The new ‘Explore’ section has a generic popular items as well as recommended sources suggested basis the reader trends and web history (if opted in). Feeds can also now be sorted by ‘magic’, again basis the history of ‘like’ and ‘share’.  Twitter lists will add a new dimension to discovering users and content, and with the deals with Bing and Google, search is going to be more real time, and more importantly, involve a human filter – using the lists layer to deliver better, more relevant search results. The impact on SEO should be fun. TweetMixx is a site I came upon recently, and looks interesting in this context.

    Where will it land up? Is it possible to create an aggregator whose context is subjective preferences, but that will still bring in serendipity? (people who liked this also liked?) What kind of content aggregator will evolve that can either sustain itself without revenue, or convince me to pay for it? Or perhaps that single-entity era is over. It does make me wonder if at some point in time, everyone will be Hiro Protagonist like characters, paid for each piece of information they add into the overall system. 🙂

    until next time, infobesity

    Bonus Read: A very good read on ‘Why the great Indian media companies will fail on the internet‘

    Update: Set up Parse.ly Lets see what it delivers. 🙂