Notes from a panel with Stewart Butterfield (Flickr/Yahoo), Mike Iampietro (Adobe), Terence Swee (Muvee), Richard Ting (R/GA ad agency)

What trends are you seeing in the development of user-generated content?

Stewart: Just to make the panel more interesting I’ll start by disagreeing with the question. Personally I hate the phrase ‘user-generated content’ because it doesn’t accurately describe the activity of these people. When you’re in the media business you talk about content, with the idea that it fills up some vessel that you can then make money off of by selling advertising around it. To the people on these services it’s not about content it’s about participating in an activity.

To answer the question, we’re observing three trends on Flickr:
1) Ubiquity of capturing devices. People have cameras in their pockets all the time
2) Spread of the network. 10 years ago it was unusual to have internet, now it’s everywhere
3) Change in perception of what it means to participate in activities online. 10 years ago the public perception of the internet user was a creepy ugly fat man in the basement of his house. Today it’s considered normal and most people use online services including dating services for instance.

Terence: The Office TV show campaign. They posted short clips on YouTube, people voted which one gets shown on TV.

Role of DRM
Stewart: There’s a need to help the people on Flickr protect themselves from commercial exploitation. When there’s an invitation to have people submit their content it usually works pretty well. Nikon got 50,000 photos from Flickr users when it issued a campaign.

Terence: At Muvee we recognized we need to be on the same side with content owners like Warner Music. For example you can personalize your Madonna video. We can add value to premium content by allowing users to personalize it.

Do you have stories of people who’ve made an income from their content?
Terence: Wedding videographers use our software because it means you can have the church ceremony in the morning and show the video at lunchtime. Wedding videographers charge money for the ‘instant service’.

Richard: My New York friends Josh Rubin of Coolhunting and another friend who runs a sneaker blog called FreshnessMag. The blogs started as just something they were interested in and have evolved into businesses with advertising and services related to the topic they cover.

Stewart: We see this all the time on Flickr. A lot of people in the media business search for photos and contact the users when they want to purchase them. A friend of mine traveled in Southeast Asia and got contacted 25 times because he took such interesting photos. We hear about it maybe a dozen or two dozen times a day and it’s having a signigicant impact.

What’s the future for a company like Getty Images?
Stewart: Flickr’s pretty disruptive. Getty’s also active, they acquired iStockphoto a service where people can post photos and sell rights to use them commercially. Right now there are about 26 million photos on Flickr under the Creative Commons license. So there’s a growing body of photos available for free use and this is quite disruptive.

Richard: We have about 150 designers in our studio and they often download photos for use in non-commercial presentations. Before Flickr we used Getty and others, and Flickr’s just a lot better.

Question from the audience: Is there any business model for operators regarding Flickr on Nokia handsets?

Stewart: One of the reasons consumers like Flickr is because they get around having to pay MMS charges. There may be other business models that don’t require charging consumers directly.

Mike: Anything that encourages usage is revenue to the operators. Outside that there may not be much in the form of revenue share.

Anssi Vanjoki is EVP & head of Multimedia at Nokia. Rough notes from his talk:

“I’m going to walk you through a day in the life of four people whose lives are enriched by Web 2.0 type services”

Jason, a journalist in London
– is very social, likes to be with other people
– wakes up to the sound of his multimedia computer
– has set up a task in 43things(woot Robots!) using WidSets
– in his home he has Wi-Fi and he goes to Google Video to download a video of a blowfish (fugu)
– he uses MSN Messenger to chat on his phone
– He has N93, he watches Mission Impossible 3 on the plane

Sanna, software developer in Helsinki
– uses N770 Wi-Fi tablet
– she finds the N770 elegant
– listens to Internet radio
– uses Web browser to check Amsterdam on Lonely Planet

Michael, publisher(?) in Brussels
– uses N95 because he likes it’s so powerful
– IMs with Jason to play a round of golf before their fugu party, sends geotag to him
– Listens to podcast in the car

Emily, model scout in Amsterdam
– reads IHT using Channels app
– Uses N93 to take photos, uploads to Flickr

Meanwile at the golf course

“I personally took up golf after 25 years of pressure from my friends last summer and discovered it’s very difficult” :)

– They use a golf trainer app on their phones to improve their swing
– Use Catalog to find & download Tiger Woods Golf game

At the clubhouse, there’s open Wi-Fi. They use Gizmo to make a VoIP call to the girls to bypass roaming costs

Emily uses the barcode scanner on the N93 to check if the coffee is Fair Trade

They all meet for their fugu party in Amsterdam. The Web brought them together and their multimedia computers keep them connected

After the event their photos are available for display and printing on the Web

“I’ve just gone through a day in the life of four technology leaders. All the functions are in the devices and all those services are on the Web. What they enjoy the rest of us will be enjoying in a few years’ time. Just like 10 years ago we introduced narrowband sockets out of which WAP came out. Around that time the first decent Web browsers arrived. If I had told this stuff then, you’d have thought ‘Anssi is anybody home?'”

“To learn about the future, it’s important to look back. Try to memorize something from 1996. How was the world then? It wa very different. The leaders were downloading ringtones to their phones.”

“Be careful – don’t be left behind”

N95 highlight. “The centerpiece of Web2,0 behavior. The information retrieval tool and repository has become a social place. There’s no such thing as mobile internet, there’s only one Internet. You discover things and share them, that’s what you do with these devices. It’s the only channel you need. You can use other resources like screens with this device. You can use downtime for relaxation or productive work. It makes your life easier and more fun.”

“We think our slogan ‘connecting people’ is more true today than it was when we took it up 15 years ago. Web 2.0 is all about connecting people and social interaction.”

CTO Tero Ojanperä gave a refreshing closing keynote at Nokia World. He has a fun presentation style and there were lots of concrete examples. Here are my notes.

The Nokia World conference day in 2010 according to Tero:
– Wake up to your favorite MP3
– Check your favorite feeds
– Navigate to the conference
– Capture HDTV video on your phone
– Device finds your nearest coffee machine, order it using your phone

The key trends:
– Converged devides go mainstream
– Wireless braodband becomes universal
– Innovation proliferates
– Mobility transforms the internet
– Context is king

“Converged devices with open OS” will outsell laptops in 2007. They’ll replace the whole installed base of the PC market in 5 years. This will be a big change in how you access the internet.

* Media: Indexed, follows user. 100+hrs of music, 3D cinema surround
* Camera: mainstream products have 5MP, lead products 10MP & HDTV
* Display: mainstream products QVGA, DVD-quality video mainstream. Lead products: VGA, 3D console graphics, projection(!)
* Storage: mainstream products: 8GB, leading produtcs: 50-100 GB

Network:
2006 GSM/WCGM capacity doubles, <50ms latency
2007 I-HSPA: cost vanishes, flat arhitecture, halverd netowrk CAPEX
2008 HSUPA.
…

Innovations in the pipeline:
– Graphical notephonebook allows people who can’t read to use the phone
– Flashlight
– Speaking clock
– Location and context based services and content
– Mobile / Internet TV, podcasting
– NFC ticketing, payments & service discovery
– Wibree connects low-power devices

Mobility transforms the Internet
– 1st wave was about eliminating the middlemen
– 2nd wave was about communities and user-generated content. This is Web 2.0
– 3rd wave will “take the Internet from the PC scale, which is in the millions, to mobile scale, which is in the billions. Mobility will fundamentally change the Internet. It’ll be a completely new experience. It’s happening today as we speak. If you’re skeptical, consider some examples:
* we’ve turned the mobile phone into an Internet server (open source
* the mobile browser is turning into a developer platform. This will allow Web services, mash-ups, widgets
* Integrated mobile UI”

Smart technologies adapt to me and my context
– Smart spaces: Web of things, wireless mash-ups, digital me in a virtual home/office
– Smart senses: Motion sensors, haptics, multinsensory telepresence, centext automatics, invisible computing
– Smart sharing: Blogs & buddies, metadata, content search / match, memory/language/story prosthesis

Sensors: “We call it the 6th sense. It’s going to happen in the next 3 years”
Storage: The device is going to act as your memory prosthesis. It’ll remember all the things you did: things you saw, calls you made, who you met. Easy search & retrieval will be key.

After a couple of boring talks by operators (the buzzword in that world: ‘market segementation’), Yahoo’s Mitch Lazar is up.

– “Mobility is absolutely core to Yahoo’s business”

– He flashes their “Vision” slide – says “to connect users with people and things regardless of connection and device” or something like that

Social platforms
– identity
– recommendations
– relationshops
– reputation
– …

– He’s remembering to be politically correct, talking not about Nokia phones but “Nokia multimedia computers” ;)

– Yahoo Answers has over 60 million registered users

– Search is a ‘very different paradigm on the mobile phone’. Most popular sites will have mobile-specific sites, rest will be transcoded

– Yahoo Vodafone deal makes Yahoo the exclusive advertiser

– The Web 1.0 vs. 2.0 slide: Operators still live in the 1.0 world of walled gardens. “Consumers have the key to escape, but they need to configure their GPRS settings and are faced with huge data charges.”

– Another problem: fragmentation of handsets. 5 different browsers on phones

– Yahoo’s offer to operators. Quotes Jazz musician Charles Mingus: “Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creative.”

– Yahoo Go to ship this spring on S60. Now announcing also Yahoo Go on three new S40 devices.

Summary of the talk:
* Mobile is key to Yahoo
* Search needs to be different
* The client experience is vital. It’s simple
* Mobile advertising

Interesting comment by an operator representative during Q&A: “You are taking away our revenues by introducing free email and instant messaging. Maybe if you tried to work with us to monetize these services using the monetizing mechanisms we have in place, then we might be more willing to let you in.”

Lazar’s response: “We understand that you have an existing business and we want to figure out how we can protect it. Many mobile operators are realizing they don’t know how to do the internet community thing. They’re realizing they might have to partner.”

I took a morning flight into Amsterdam for Nokia World. The event’s big but not huge. I overheard someone mention there are about 3,000 registered attendees.

CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo opened. “Mobility and the interenet – these are the two key drivers in our industry.”

– Approximately 41% of the world’s population will own a mobile phone; almost a third will use it to access the Internet. Almost half made their first call from a mobile, in other words they never heard the dialtone.

– “We’re committed to bringing the Internet to the next billion people”. An increasing number of people access the internet for the first time on the phone.

– Nokia has had to change its estimate for when 3 BN mobile users will be reached from 2008 to 2007.

– He predicts 4BN will be reached in 2010. Half of the new growth will be from China & India.

– 850M people use nokia devices today. He claims they have the potential to connect more people to the Internet than any ther company.

– They estimate a total of 970 million mobile phones will be sold next year.

– Nokia’s WiMax handsets will come in 2008.

– He claims “Nokia is an experiences company.” They’re the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players.

* Nokia Music Recommenders (powered by LoudEye). He makes it sound like it’s about top-down recommendations by David Bowie?
* Mobile TV to come to European countries in 6 months
* Catalog: buy software
* NFC: make payments
* Connect to Flickr (Flickr WidSets widget on the screen)

– Video insert where the CEO of a Hong Kong operator says mobile penetration there is 126%!

– Experience driven services. Services are about more than just technology.

– “Nokia is creating the world’s best platform for devices and solutions.” He also claims: “S60 developers can deliver applications without compromise.” That’s complete bollocks. Nokia recently started requiring developers to submit their applications for approval before the developers can legally distribute their own software. Imagine if Bill Gates had said no one is allowed to distribute Windows software before Microsoft has checked and approved the app. Would there ever have been the kind of Windows ecosystem we have now?

– He ends, “the internet on mobile devices will continue changing people’s lives all over the world. Nokia plans to be right there.”

The “mobility event of the year” aka Nokia World is taking place Wed-Thu. in Amsterdam. I’ll be heading there as will the key Nokia execs and a bunch of mobile developers so ping me on IM if you’re in town and would like to hook up.

Fredrik Weibull of Winkreative invited me to a herrmiddag, a sort of male bonding event in Stockholm this weekend. I never participated in a herrmiddag so it sounded exotic in an old-worldish way: about a hundred men, dressed in tuxedoes, meet at a luxury hotel from where they get whisked to some unknown location for the evening with no advance information about the particulars of the program.

The destination turned out to be a boat. We circulated in the Stockholm archipelago and the onboard menu consisted of snaps (shots) and skagen (toast). Each shot was preceded by a snapsvisa (drinking song). The Swedes were bellowing from their hearts; I was squinting to follow the lyrics from a sheet someone had thoughtfully administered.

Every once in a while the boat stopped on an island and the chic, increasingly raucous party climbed on the shore for short visits to seaside attractions (an aquarium, a historic telegraph station turned into a restaurant) and more booze, speeches, and singing. After the first couple of shots I had to start pouring water into my cup, stashing the shot glasses behind flower pots and tipping the contents inconspicuously into the water to avoid ending up in the hospital for a stomach hosing.

Although it’s not my regular scene I think I now understand better why these kind of collective drinking binges work. I got to talk with almost everyone during the evening: doctors, entrepreneurs, students, lawyers. Guys who’d otherwise never meet exchanged frank accounts of their professional and personal lives and worldviews.

On the plane back the experience got me thinking about how differently people still interact in the real world and online. It’s easier to be candid online when you have a fake identity – but the feeling of genuinity just isn’t there when nobody can trust the other person’s really who they claim to be in flesh and blood.

In contrast, the herrmiddag felt like the real thing. The Swedish gentlemen were genuine and the setting, attire, and alcohol worked to produce a state of mutual sincerity.

I agree with the panelists at SIME yesterday morning that there’s probably going to be more online socializing that happens with one’s real identity in the coming years. If so then people are probably going to create temporary spaces of reciprocal candidness online also. They’ll be getting drunk or whatever at home and logging on with their ‘real’ avatars to some ‘real’ virtual world (as opposed to make believe games) for schmoozing with each other as themselves but temporarily outside the regular social constraints connected with true identity. No doubt it’s already happening, just not yet evenly distributed.

On a related note, there’s a bit of a resurgence of interest in the personal trust element of online relationships going on in the research circles. Eric & Alex have more on that.

Marko closed the first day with seven points that I think astutely identified the collective brainwaves at this conference:
1. Bubble trouble: interpreting history through purely financial cycles will cause you to misinterpret what’s happening
2. Consumer power: they make the media, they listen to each other, corporations must adapt to communicate with those rules
3. Packaging experiences: those companies who overinvest in making things beautiful and simple to use will win
4. The end of anonymity: we’re no longer dogs on the internet. A growing importance of online communication based on real identities
5. Small group communication: from shouting to a mass, to engaging a group of 3-10 people to communicate with each other
6. Undeniable trend toward advertising business models: spinal tap for companies especially in mobile telecoms. Users represented by proxies
7. Let’s believe in Europe: in 5 years, over half of the top internet brands will be launched and run from Europe

Question from the audience (my translation): “What can save the mobile industry?”

Marko Ahtisaari: “I’d say drop data costs, make data pricing transparent, bring in advertising as a revenue source, and embrace the open internet.”

Some quotes (not precise, but by and large) from the Lords of the Blogosphere panel at SIME06 featuring blogger-entrepreneurs Loic Lemeur, Nico Lummma, Dan Gillmor and Henrik Torstensson. These snippets are shamelessly out of context and the guys said a lot more, but it’s what stuck in my mind:

On the core idea of blogging
“It’s not about mass audience. The majority of bloggers are not in it for the money, they’re in it to communicate. An obscure blog by some obscure person that is only read by their family members is more valuable per person than the most popular blog in the world” -Dan

On blogging in the local language
“I used to blog only in English but I rarely got any comments. These days blogging rocks in France. When I blog in French, hundreds of people attack me :)” -Loic

On how blogging fits in their personal life
“At first my wife was totally against my blogging but then she started a knitting blog” -Nico

“When I play WoW with my 8-year old son, I get killed all the time. It’s a weird experience when he has to come in to save his father.” -Loic

On blogging and marketing
“It’s a little harder for the marketers” -Dan

“You can’t fight agains 60 million people” -Loic

“The best example of a company using blogging to improve their brand was Microsoft and Robert Scoble – a real person instead of the corporation” -Henrik