MipTV 2010 Social experience

TV and the social experience

How real time engagement is changing content.

Twitter is going in some new directions, and are offering media partners to work with them to engage people more in content, creating higher ratings and also the long tail effect. Twittering about programs stimulates people to go and view the television, and start a twitter conversation on the subject. Nothing new here of course. But now Twitter provides tools and tips to better integrate the tweets that are send. Twitter also announced it will work with advertising, to get twitter more profitable.

Keynote by Jonathan Miller – Chairman and CEO, digital mediagroup, for News corporation tells us that content nowadays are 0 and 1’s with brands.  And we are going more and more to an agency model like ITunes for example. Where ITunes is distributing several content to the consumer, such as music, tv series and probably movies in the near future.

We will get different communication loads and download speeds, content will cost X euros depending on different parameters. And you will get more and more premium or freemium models. Pay walls will be activated.

Even though mySpace and Bebo are in a decline, social networks are here to stay, Bebo is losing it a bt under the umbrella of AOL, since Bebo was more a UK based social network, and if they want to get it up again, they have to focus on the UK, was the message of Jonathan Miller. Social networks created a big change in behavior and they start monetizing them, also a reason why they will stay.

There will be global distribution with local content.

There are 3 big shifts if you want:

1. Yahoo and Google are front doors to content and other services
2. The rise of social networks
3. The apps mania on mobile.

It should not come as a surprise that most broadband access is on mobile.

Comparing Facebook and mySpace, their different DNA. mySpace is about discovery and be discovered, while Facebook is about sharing among friends. Since these networks house a lot of people, and when things go bad or the momentum is gone, they move in flocks (people move in masses when losing momentum in social network.)

In the future we will also see more and more vertical networks, like shelfari, flixter and so on. Specific networks related to specific topics.

Location based applications and integration is more and more happening as well. Looking at gowalla and fourth square.

Good advertising needs good content

Content is king and the customer too, in this perspective we can have good advertising as well. Product placement and branded entertainment is not new, a d gets integrated in almost everything we do, now we can communicate realtime together while watching TV, advertising gets also new opportunities.

But with the broadband speed we have today, we can also make some beautiful online experiences.

To name a few:

Louis Vutton, works together with Wong Kar Wai. Together they launch a competition, ‘Where will a journey take you’, several online videos came in, you can watch them here

http://www.journeysawards.com

Social causes

Open a bottle of Coca cola, and you open hapiness

http://www.expedition206.com/

365 days, 206 countries. Coca cola makes people happy…

Starting January 2010, three happiness ambassadors will begin an unprecedented journey to all 206 countries where Coca-Cola is sold. That’s 14 more countries than are represented in the United Nations! Their mission is to seek out “what makes people happy” around the world.

These “happiness ambassadors” will search for and share the optimism and happiness of Coca-Cola from Aruba to Zimbabwe and everywhere in between. Their route will include some pretty amazing venues including- the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the World Cup in South Africa and the World Expo in Shanghai.

Throughout the year-long journey, these Happiness Ambassadors will be sharing their blog posts, tweets, videos, interviews and pictures so you can follow their adventures in every country along the way.

Summit on the summit

A social cause for clean water.

Fremantel media Enterprises and @ Radical media, launching Summit on the Summit.

Celebrety climers get together to go on a climbing expedition on the Kilimanjaro in the Himalayas. A webexperience and physical experience to create awareness of the global clean-water crisis, as 1 billion people still don’t have access to clear water.

http://www.summitonthesummit.com/#/sponsor-a-foot

This was sponsored by consumer goods giant Procter and Gamble, the film was produced and co-sponsered by MTVnetworks.

‘We took the DNA of the brands and integrated them into the show. That, we think, represents the future.

Brands more and more sponsor social cuases and create awareness, another form advertising, by supporting social causes, brands hope to get a more likability factor with customers. See earlier post on this.

Social media and building an entertainment brand online.

Gerd Leonhard, gave a very good session on future behavior in online and mobile environments.
This session was one of the better ones, with some interesting quotes.

Become a connector not a director
Power of the web is trust
Facebook broadcast to us and to each other
Social networks are the broadcasters
We need followers and viewers
Reduce control to get more share
Protection is no gain
Piracy is consequence of unmet demand
There has to be something after free
Gender change, men do monologues, women listen. Women are conversational, let’s hope we get more women in.

Webdocumentaries, worthwhile viewing

http://www.hanassuitcase.ca/

http://gaza-sderot.arte.tv/en/#/time/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/

The mobile space and Ipad of the future

Not so much hype as 2 years ago, but still there and more integrated in TV shows, location based applications, and mobile apps, augmented reality and so forth.

Ipad for now, mainly to consume games, entertainment, news

Social TV platform

Starling led by Kevin Slavin, Social TV platform, that enables viewers to chat, play and interact with others. Research shows that viewers are watching tv, and are online. And in the UK viewers are on the phone while watching tv, they are not phoning, but use their smart phone to interact mainly.

Starling is build for the next generation audience that is much more engaged by phone, tablet or pc.

Mondo 2000 Open Source History project

MONDO 2000: An Open Source History is a web project and a book. All those who touched directly upon the history of the scene/magazine (including the earlier versions, High Frontiers and Reality Hackers) will be invited to write — or, in some cases, speak on video or audio — their stories and perceptions. Additionally, small groups of people will be encouraged to get together and record conversations. These will be posted on a private page available only to other participants. Participants will have the opportunity to insert comments into the text or add fresh entries.

At the end of the process, estimated to take approximately two years, a collaboratively-edited electronic document will be released on the web. A more closely-edited print book composed of selections from this process — edited by Ken Goffman aka R.U. Sirius (that’s me!) with Morgan Russell — will be published. Finally, the video footage might be rolled into a Mondo 2000 film documentary.

I will be a major participant in this process, essentially writing my own full and complete memoir of this time and posting most of these in fragments on the collaborative site.

We are changing the world

They definitely do at www.theauteurs.com. An alternative film platform, where you can watch art movies for € 5 and some of them are free. In addition you get a forum, where you can discuss movies, with your peers and have a social community within the platform.

TheAuteurs.com, has a bright future I think. And according to Efe the founder, this is only the beginning. The auteurs was launched in November 2008. After a first year, they have 500K visits a month, and 150K registered members.  As more people are using the platform, the infrastrucuture gets more expensive, the video streams has to be of an excellent quality to not disappoint the viewer, and give them a great experience. Efe works with quality people, excellent developers, no outsourcing to India or other low rate countries, he wants to control, and have the feeling he owns its platform, and wants happy people, who share the same passion.

Theauteurs.com main partner is Celluloid Dreams, among others like The Criterion Collection and Costa Films. According to Efe these partners add tremendous value.  Hengameh Panahi, Celluloid Dreams boss, is today running day-to-day operations with Efe.  Even Martin Scorsese is in for this platform.

While discussing the future, we talk about Mobile, mobile has enormous potential for this platform, not to view films on your mobile, you could do that of course, but mainly new tablets will come out soon, also from Apple, and these tablets you could hang on to your HD television at home, and view your movies relax as you please, within your own time schedule. And if you are on a plane, you can watch it on your tablet, Iphone or Ipodtouch. With WIFI you avoid the expensive data communication in streaming the content to the viewer.

Efe is also a believer of non DRM delivering of movies. You download movies of your choice, for X euros or dollars or whatever currency, and you download them and do with them what you want. This would most probably then stimulate less piracy. I hope we have this soon available. The consumer is ready, but the distributor not yet. They still need to lose more money, and then they will see they have to change their distributing models…., like the music industry did after Apple’s Itunes.

TheAuteurs.com is not a replacement platform for the cinema, but a complementary channel for viewing films. Needless to say that now a days, art films hardly make it into the movie theatre, and thanks to TheAuteurs.com they can find a place, and maybe find the way to movie theathre in a different way or reverse way.

It is about changing the world, give the world a different experience, give the cinefile a new engaging platform. And it is also about passion and being surrounded by good people, Efe has good support from family and friends, and has his health, which is the main important thing!

Design for persuasion announcements

Announcements on our Design for persuasion conference, October the 1th in Brussels

Free – Chris Anderson

Yesterday I was posting a status update on Facebook:

‘Economy of atoms and economy of bits, digital immigrants and digital natives’. Could we make a love story of this….

immediate reactions from ‘friends’, they guided me to the video and audio book of Chris Anderson latest book Free. I just read the release announcement for Belgian market with my hairdresser that morning, yes….

So, here is the video and the link to the audio book.

It was in San Francisco when I first heard this term ‘Economy of bits’, or people are thinking in bits now, and before in atoms, while having a discussion with Gordon Knox from the humanities lab Stanford. I’m sure we will hear a lot more about this, and while the masses uses the internet more and more in a functional way, the digital divide will get more narrow as we get along. Hopefully internet access will get free, bandwidth will be available everywhere and accessible every where.

Design for Persuasion conference – 1th October Brussels Belgium

This conference will be hosted by BJ Fogg and Christel De Maeyer

Highlights and announced speakers:

Persuasive technology is broadly defined as technology that is designed to change attitudes or behaviors of the users through persuasion and social influence, but not through coercion (Fogg 2002). Such technologies are regularly used in sales, diplomacy, politics, religion, military training, public health, and management, and may potentially be used in any area of human-human or human-computer interaction. Most self-identified persuasive technology research focuses on interactive, computational technologies, including desktop computers, Internet services, video games, and mobile devices (Oinas-Kukkonen et al. 2008), but this incorporates and builds on the results and methods of experimental psychology, rhetoric (Bogost 2007), human-computer interaction, and design with intent.

The mobile phone will soon become the most powerful channel for persuasion, more influential than TV, radio, print, or the Internet.

More info on BJ FOGG

BJ Fogg published several books  Persuasive technology and  Mobile Persuasion , both available on Amazon

Info and subscription, payment with credit card

Info and subscription payment upon invoice

Supported and sponsored by Belgacom, Inside, Digimedia, Medianet Vlaanderen, plugmedia and Eclic

sixth sense tedtalk by Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry

This demo — from Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.

Schmap – city guides

Schmap city guides is a nice concept to explore your city  destinations online, also for Iphone and Nokia. You can also create your own guides with schmap 2.0, an app for creating your own maps.

They work together with Flickr content for photo material, one of my photos got selected!

The Auteurs.com

What a great discovery! A social platform on film, not just films, but films who changed our views, let us discover other sides of the world, new culture. The classics, the art films, it is an online virtual cinema place.

About the auteurs:

The Auteurs is Berlin, Cannes, Toronto, and Venice – 365 days a year. It’s an online movie theater where you watch, discover, and discuss films. Fall in love all over again with the movies, and meet other people who feel just the same way. Great films, original editorial coverage, and a community of the most interested and interesting film fans in the world – all waiting for you.

Think of it as a virtual cinematheque: a place where you leave the dark of the screening room, and find yourself amongst friends.

BT acquires Ribbit

Ribbit has been acquired by British Telecom. According to BT Managing Director the Ribbit platform will enable BT to transform a telco to a platform based software driven services company.

The complete interview on ribbit