While listening to Mark talk about his college years (and how at the time, he never thought he’d play such a critical role in enabling social connections on the web), Charlie Rose proposed that Facebook had become “a personalized web within a web”. Zuckerberg responded by saying:

“I think it’s shaping the broader web. If you look back for the past 5-7 years, the story of social networking has really been about getting these 800 million people connected, so that they can stay in touch with all these people who they care about, and get them signed up for facebook and all that. But, if you look forward for the next five years, I think that the story that people are going to remember 5 years from now, isn’t how this one site was built, it was how every single service that you use, is now going to be better with your friends.“ – Mark Zuckerberg

I felt like that line perfectly crystallized the situation. In the broader context of the web, Mark’s actions weren’t/aren’t solely valuable because he managed to create “this one site” that connected people. Rather, they were/are valuable because “this one site” ultimately forced the web to focus on its users. FB helped “shape the web” into a more user centric environment.  It (alongside other social services) is making the web less about the technology and more about the people.

Feel free to check out the hour long interview on the Charlie Rose website. Interesting stuff, as always.

“My former colleague Mark Lemley wrote this wonderful little piece about nanotechnology and mid way through the piece, he kind of remarked in passing that: if you think about all the fundamental technologies of the 20th century (computer hardware/software, biotech technologies) all of those fundamental technologies were either by accident or intentionally FREE [ Note: as in 'unconfined by IP' as opposed to 'of no monetary cost']. So, they tried to patent the computer; the patent office rejected it. Software was not considered protectable in any effective way for most of the 20th century. Watson & Crick certainly didn’t want DNA protected in any effective way through IP. So these fundamental technologies were FREE and ON TOP OF THESE FREE TECHNOLOGIES, people innovated, and they got intellectual property FOR THE INNOVATIONS ON TOP.” - Larry lessig

This is definitely something to think about as he later goes on to remark that this approach to innovation, appears to have dissipated/lost favor in the 21st century (thus possibly harming our ability to innovate in the long run, but more importantly, potentially impinging upon our future ability to reap benefits from inherently beneficial innovations.)

Good Stuff!

]]> http://www.alexanderlynn.com/blog/lessig-on-innovation/feed/ 0 http://www.alexanderlynn.com/blog/our-social-propensity/ http://www.alexanderlynn.com/blog/our-social-propensity/#comments Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:38:47 +0000 alex http://www.alexanderlynn.com/blog/?p=547 It’s easy to be impressed by the beauty and intriguing nature of the following image, but one truly needs to read the account of it’s creator to fully comprehend the complexity of what (s)he is currently staring at. On the surface, it looks like a gorgeous visualization of Facebook users around the globe. Nevertheless, this isn’t exactly the case. While reading Paul Butler’s account of how he went about creating this piece (while interning at FB), one quickly realizes that this is far more than just a picture or map of Facebook users. It’s a truly mesmerizing data visualization that roots itself in one thing and one thing only: our human propensity to continually expand our social circle! You know that saying “we are social animals” which first emerged in greek philosophy, but has been reiterated in multiple ways by countless people ever since? Well this is that…visualized. The image is rather captivating and ably reminds one of just how social we were, are and have become as a species. (Check out the high-res version of the image in Paul Butler’s post. Enjoy!)

Facebook Data Visualization by Paul Butler (intern on Facebook’s data infrastructure engineering team)

Did your last marketing solution take cultural momentum into account? In simpler terms, did you ponder the fact that the ecosystem in which consumers live (and in which your ‘solution’ will be delivered) may change significantly mere months down the line?

If you think about that the next time you are trying to ‘connect’ with consumers, you’ll probably end up doing things differently!

About two years ago, John Walkenbach a Microsoft excel guru was one of the first people to notice that the Kindle’s price had been dropping at a consistent rate since its release. As Kevin Kelly recently put it in a blog post of his own: its price has been lowering “almost on a schedule”. Walkenbach went on to remark that should this trend continue, the Kindle would essentially be free around July 2011. Since then, several have concurred with his hypothesis. With the summer of 2011 not too far away, this raises some significant questions for the Ipad or any other product competing for some e-reader market share. As Mike Auraz, strategy director at Undercurrent put it on Twitter: “The Kindle doesn’t sound so bad compared to the iPad…if it’s free”

Kindle Price Forecast according to John Walkenbach

While many analysts have hopped onto the Ipad bandwagon and called it a winner, I urge them not to preemptively jump to any conclusions. A fulfillment of John Walkenbach’s hypothesis would readily dismiss the numerous analysts that believed that the Ipad would be a ‘Kindle Killer’. In fact, it would most probably have some dramatic effects on the e-book market, increasing e-book consumption (and Amazon revenue) exponentially and assuring Amazon a significant lead as an e-reading platform-note my use of the term e-reading platform rather than tablet. One can also suppose that this would compel many publishers to back Amazon energetically. While it is certain that the Ipad will continue doing well (and it deserves to as it is a pioneering product) I don’t think the Kindle will be disappearing anytime soon!

In fact, should things unfold according to Walkenbach’s predictions, I believe this would drive a systemic shift in the tablet/e-reader market. We would once and for all stop lumping e-readers and tablets into the same product category. There would be an e-reader market dominated by Amazon (and fueled by publishers) and a tablet market dominated by Apple (fueled by apps & programmers). Tablets would be perceived more as computers (that can also read e-books) and e-readers would be perceived for what they truly are: book-reading devices. I personally think this shift is long overdue, because as Steve Jobs proved (once again) today: with applications such as Imovie or Garage Band, the Ipad is much more than an e-reader!

While I remain doubtful that the kindle will ever become completely free (as in 0.00$ and absolutely no costs attached), it might very well attain some form of what Chris Anderson described as “20th century free” in his book Free: the Future of a Radical Price. In other words: some form of agreement that the retailer will provide the product freely if the consumer agrees to certain terms. One of Anderson’s examples of this phenomenon was 20th century disposable razors: the consumer would receive the disposable razor freely and then have to purchase his own blades. A more contemporary example to think of would be cell phone plans (as Kevin Kelly discusses in his post), where one has to sign up for a significant period to get a free phone. Thus, as Anderson points out, it’s really about “giving away one thing to create demand for an another”. In Amazon’s case, distributing the Kindle freely would enable it to generate enormous growth and scale in its e-book sales (thus compensating for the fact that it distributed the technology freely in the first place).

Kevin Kelly suggest that they might propose to give the Kindle freely if if the consumer agrees to purchase X number of e-books. Michael Arrington from Techcrunch thought it could be a plausible gift for their prime customers only. When discussing the subject with a friend, he suggested that they might choose to provide it freely to people that sign up to specific book clubs or packages. While all of this might never happen, one thing remains sure: a continued downward adjustment in the products price would definitely help it gain valuable e-book market share. What do you think? Does the strategy make sense? Is it realistic, utopian or delusional? As always, your thoughts, comments and feedback are welcome!

Amazon (an industry leader in book sales) recently reported that for the first time last quarter, they sold considerably more e-books than print copies. While this is an incredible statistic, it is even more important to note that they did not achieve this feat due to a fall in paper book sales, as they have continued to experience solid sales in this sector as well, but rather by sustained growth in e-book sales. In the words of Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com: “The Kindle format has now overtaken the hardcover format (…) astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months.”

As mentioned above, it is incredible to think of the speed at witch the shift towards this new medium is happening. Here are a couple other interesting statistics that seem to point towards digital print going mainstream.

• The Amazon Kindle e-reader reached an important milestone a while back, when it became the #1 bestselling product on Amazon (and this certainly hasn’t changed as the sales have continued growing on a month-over month basis).

• The Association of American Publishers recently reported that they have observed a 207% increase in e-book sales since the beginning of this year (when compared to the same period last year)

Paradoxically though, none of these statistics actually point towards an actual demise of print, as Amazon actually experienced some growth in paper book sales as well last quarter. In other words, although one is growing, it doesn’t seem to be shrinking the other. Like I said in my initial post: I don’t think print is going anywhere anytime soon and think we will be experiencing this duality of media for a while.

What’s your take? Do you favor one medium over another? Is this print’s last climb in vain before an epic fall?

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