POW #56 – Censorship

I took a photo of this quote by Margaret Mead at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. because times have changed oh so much…

Thanks to the new Internet, the young are making history and telling the story as it happens…

In some ways, I think we are also now predicting history as we piece together the actions of the masses who post their continuous status – whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or other online social mediums. We document history through blogs, tweets, loopt, etc. and will do so more exponentially as geotagging becomes prevalent over the next few years.

Take the disaster in Mumbai, for example and the microblog buzz about it hours before any major news outlet reported on it this past fall.  Or the story of @jamesbuck who tweeted a single word, “Arrested” from Egypt and ignited action across the globe in Berkeley, CA.  I had just started using Twitter and did not understand it’s power, until I heard the story of @jamesbuck… and I was glued to the story and my Twitter account for days.

Hybrid Economy

I’m waging a bet that successful new businesses will hinge on a hybrid economy.  In fact, the survival of many old school businesses (such as broadcast companies, newspapers, automative, etc.) here on out will depend on the ability to adapt to the hybrid economy of the future.

What is a hybrid economy?  I don’t think too many people have a grasp on this concept yet, even though we are living in the midst of it RIGHT NOW.

I did a Google search on hybrid economy and the results mostly revolve around the economical nature of hybrid cars.  One other search result – an article from 1993 – describes a hybrid economy as the convergence of the public-private sectors.

But the hybrid economy that I refer to is about the remix of real business and crowdsourcing, as Lawrence Lessig describes in short:

Commercial entities leverage value out of sharing economies, and vice versa.

Flickr is a service that depends on the content of its users and is highly successful.  Many third-party companies have spawned off the success of Flickr such as Moo, Imagekind, QOOP and Blurb.  Even Capital One is leveraging the power of the hybrid economy through Flickr by allowing users to create personalized credit cards.

Mass collaboration, crowd sourcing and social media has already proven to the market that people are willing to contribute for free or at little cost to organizers.  It’s also become evident over the last several years that the new generation of consumers are willing to put in labor and sweat equity for the reward of having simply participated, or being part of the design (ala Wikipedia).  Often times all anyone needs is due credit and publicity; sometimes to jump start their career or get their name on the map.  I’m one such individual.

New businesses here on out would be remiss if they ignore the potential of sourcing their customers.  @AdamAinbinder brought up a good example tonight with Friendster and their inability to reach the success that Facebook has.  First mover advantage has no advantage if you are unable to allow your community to feel that they are an integral part of the product or service.  Likewise, imagine where Apple might be today with the iPhone had they not opened up application development to the masses.

Whether it’s starting a very 1.0 business such as a recreational facility, or a 2.0 lifestyle business (i.e. MarthaStewart.com, Livestrong.com), the ability to interact with those most interested in your arena – the hobbyists and the connoisseurs – is what will feed the momentum, and thereby business awareness, growth and success.

More to come on this thought…

Remix: Lessig-Colbert

@Padrepablo introduced me to Lawrence Lessig sometime back, and I follow his blog regularly.  In fact, I posted pics of his talk about Remix @ Berkeley this past fall.

Lessig was on The Cobert Report this week and did a great interview!

And since then, there have been a few remixes, including this one.  (Lessig is tracking other remixes on his blog entry about this.)

Good times.

Revised Automotive Bailout Proposal

So lots of conversations around the current economic climate over Christmas meals. One idea that I kept lobbying everyone at the table was for “bailing out” (or rerouting the same funds used to bail out Detroit) towards U.S. production centers of Toyota, Honda and Mercedes.  This is an idea born from an economics professor that I had a short while back at UC Irvine.

In essence:

• The funds would go toward subsidizing the hybrid and environmentally conscious vehicles that these automakers are making;
• Which will in turn bring down the costs so that the vehicles will be made more accessible;
• And if more people drove hybrids or hi-mpg cars, the enviromnental damage will decrease; and
• Thus saving the government money in the future on environmental issues, as well as saving our environment.

What would happen to the Detroit autoworkers?

• Many of the autoworkers could get jobs at the Toyota, Honda and Mercedes plants, and
• Suppliers could compete for contracts with these auto builders and continue to stay in business.

I realize that this doesn’t address the many jobs that will be equally impacted including restaurateurs, barbers, etc. in MoTown.  No plan will ever solve all of the problems and trickle-down effects.  But if we can make a positive impact on two different, yet closely intertwined areas – automobiles and the environment – why the heck not?

How to get past the big bullies in the room… the oil companies?

Web2.0 Summit: Obama, Prop8, New Media, Green Tech

I would have loved, wait… LOVED to have been able to attend the Web2.0 Summit.  In fact I had an invite to meet someone there, but alas real life got in the way.

Moya Watson gives a great recap on her blog.  Here are some highlights that I enjoyed from the recap:

Web meets the president

“Were it not for the Internet, Obama would not have been elected President,” said Arianna Huffington in Friday’s great panel, The Web and Politics (with John Heilemann, Arianna Huffington, Gavin Newsom, and Joe Trippi). “It wasn’t the age of the candidate that mattered in this election,” she continued, “It was the age of the ideas.”

Web meets (dirty) politics

We’ve just experienced the terrible flipside of “truth into our living rooms,” which is that the Internet can also be used, with devastating effectiveness, to spread attacks and lies into our living rooms. Here are some specific examples from the fight against Proposition 8 — all true:

• Videos propagated on YouTube in which the official “Yes” campaign equated gays with Hitler
• No On Prop 8’s Web site attacked by denial-of-service (which we overcame mightily, thanks to our Web techs)
• Personal attacks from people in the blogosphere throughout open, unmoderated threads (when another side might have had closed threads)
• Videos propagated by the official “Yes” campaign using children without their parents’ agreement or permission
• Gay people (and straight alike) getting anti-gay “Yes” ads served on their site because the yes campaign invested heavily in Google AdWords

Web meets TV

“TV is the biggest medium in America that hasn’t been democratized yet,” said @ev. “Twitter changes how people connect with people – if you expand that to a very large user base, it can change culture.” Pointing out that it’s not just social, Evan continued, “it has potential to see aggregate real-time information, like during the election.” Add Current TV to the mix and what happens?

“With Twitter and this broadcast model together, what happens is that you can get alternate viewpoints WHILE they’re being broadcast” -@ev

Green is the new Web

Calling himself a “recovering politician,” Al Gore took stage late at the summit to a standing ovation, saying that the “redeeming quality of the election” was that “all humans are created equal” and that this “would not have been possible without the Internet.”

Web meets the iPhone

AND more…. read the whole blog post and video/photos links here.

Hoping to get to the Web2.0 Expo in the spring.  Anyone wanna’ go with??