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Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Co-evolving bedrock 
| | I understand that media managers want feedback on this, but this is not what 'we' are about. The sooner they learn to get over it, the better. Yes, we will need new working ways of counting the feedback, but not this way. |
| | Just to give you an example on how 'good' this kind of silo works: Audible.de started in I think January of this year with an offer of two free audio books and a magazin for a month. I have not downloaded even that freebee. Why? Because first of all they have a very unusable website (javascript for every link so you can't tab, absolutly slow, a horror to use even if you would be used to click on one thing at a time) and second their system logs me out frequently. |
| | I have not even gotten to the point of actually putting something into my perhaps shopping cart. I have tried several times because of the freebee, but there is no way in hell I will pay something there. |
| | I think I will actually cancel this account without even downloading that. |
| | So let me think if I want to force _my_ listeners in any way into this kind of experience only so _I_ can have some statistics I should be able to generate otherwhise? No. Absolutly not. |
| | I've been having some conversations with folks on Audible's side of this thing. Their case, basically, is that there are people and organizations (libraries, for example) out there with needs for accountability, auditing, and degrees of usage control that podcasting doesn't provide. Audible is trying to provide that, without dissing or stomping all over podcasting and its pioneers. As Mitch Ratcliffe says, it's about Co-evolution, not just co-existence. |
| | What does Podcasting Mean? |
| | Open Media Production Model: Everyone can contribute and everyone can participate. |
| | New Formats
New Usage / New Consumption
New Relationships
New Commerce
New Economics
New Concept of Value |
| | ... adding Amen and enough said about this topic. |
| | Here's the thing. It's true that Audible had (and still has) a business offering that's kinda like podcasting, long before podcasting showed up. But podcasting was created, and has evolved, independently of Audible. It was, and still is, a grass roots, bottom-up, individual-driven co-creation of what Dave calls "users and developers, diggin' together." That's how it's continuing to evolve. |
| | The stuff Mitch says Amen to is the past of podcasting and not just its future. MP3 wasn't a new format (except relative to Audible's .aa, I suppose); but it was about new consumption, new relationships, new commerce, new economics and a new concept of value. Just because we haven't seen much yet in the way of new commerce and economics doesn't mean it's not there. (Note that Apple aggregates free podcasts inside its store. This is a way of working with the market, so that when some producers get ready to start charging money for their podcast goods, one retail channel will be ready to oblige.) |
| | My interest in podcasting, for myself, personally, is that it provides me with a way to do radio. (Not that I've done much of it. Yet.) Working around Audible never came to mind. Until the last few days, the Audible brand was mostly inaudible in conversations about podcasting. It hardly ever came up. |
| | Mitch and others were smart to call their system "WordCast" because it's not podcasting. It's a different species. It comes from a different business, and a different set of original intentions. |
| | This isn't to say that co-evolution, or merging in some ways, is impossible. I'm sure it will hapen, somehow, eventually, if Audible continues to talk and work with the podcasting community. In the meantime, let's bear in mind the importance of origins. |
| | Every company's life is a vector that makes the most sense when you know where it starts: literally, where it comes from. The same goes for every product and every person. The original personality embodied in an identity is like a fractal formula: a unique algorithm that produces the same kinds of shapes no matter where it goes or how big it gets. That formula is the company's DNA. It's the nature that persists no matter how the company is nurtured or damaged (or both) over time. |
| | When you know where Regis McKenna and Al Ries come from, you can understand why one guy cares about relationships and the other cares about advertising — even though both talk about positioning. Their origins show up in all their originalities. |
| | Audible still comes from what it was in the first place. So does podcasting. The problem for Audible with podcasting, as it was for every big company confronting the Net and the Web when those developments came along, is that podcasting has created a marketplace based (like the Net and the Web) on NEA principles: Nobody owns it, Everybody can use it, and Anybody can improve it. Early on, people said the Net and the Web couldn't support business because they were essentially noncommercial creations. As it turned out, the Net and the Web came to support the largest, most free and most open marketplace the world has ever known. |
| | The problem, for those who didn't understand the Web, was that they were trying to think of ways to make money with HTTP, with HTML and with other infrastructural standards that were as noncommercial, yet essential, as the core of the Earth. |
| | Eventually business succeeded because of those standards. |
| | The because of principle is deep, profound, and exceptionally hard to grok, mostly because we're so accustomed to thinking in with terms. "There's no way to make money with that," we say. While there may be all kinds of ways to make money because of that. |
| | There's lots of room in the future of podcasting for help from Audible, Apple and the rest of the Big Boys. But any attempt to push proprietary standards and silo foundations down into the market's free and open bedrock will fail. Worse, it will be met with emphatic resistance by the people who contributed that bedrock to the world in the first place. Simple as that. |
| | Bonus links: Dave Slusher's latest, Jonathan Schartz at the Churchill Club. On that podcast, check out what Jonathan says starting around six minutes in. Note what he says about the role of free-ness, and of the ubuity that causes, the value of that ubiquity, and the choices for montetization because of that freeness and that ubiquity. |
For when your company is ready to put its pants back on
| | I'm listening to Dave's November 1 podcast, which is an exceptionally valuable consulting session for Microsoft and Yahoo. And hell, for everybody else with a platform who's maybe beginning to think the Sun no longer shines out of their butts. |
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