• To see the Future, Turn to the Past: #NGIF for December 2, 2011.

What was I into this week? Well I was into the Past, the Future, the Culture and the Stats, or at least that was a convenient way to group the best of the tweets and links I consumed this week. What were you into? Here’s my weekly post, Nick’s Great Information Friday (#NGIF) for Friday, December 2^nd.

Into the Past

I’ve always found that the best way to look at the future is by understanding the past. This week’s posts were rich in backwards glances that offer some very useful insights:

LA Times columnist Michael Hilzik interviews early Internet millionaire David Bohnett, whose GeoCities was, in a way, the first social network back in the 90s. Bohnett is a prominent investor and philanthropist these days, working on GLBT issues and trying to amend California’s Prop. 13.  

In the article, Bohnett suggests that Wikipedia is a better analogy than Facebook, because of the emphasis upon content, not individuals. In this post, we see that Wikipedia can be useful, not only as a great historical source, but as a predictive one as well.

While you’re looking back at the Internet of the 90s, check out this infographic which compares 1996 to 2011. Amazing! 

GigaOm founder Om Malik looks back on a decade of blogging from his own personal statistical perspective. Guy didn’t sleep for ten years, it would seem. 

The Atlantic posted a remembrance of the pioneering 70s videoart/activist group Ant Farm, whose sensibility and modus operandi foreshadowed many features of today’s YouTube and video sharing culture. Well, sort of, having been there and known those guys pretty well. 

Into the Future

What a difference a name makes (and nearly a generation): Today all we hear about are “cloud” computing solutions. Back in the 90’s, the anti-Microsoft forces (mainly Sun and Oracle) rallied behind the slogan “the network is the computer.” Snappy, but not nearly so much as the concept of the “cloud.” Two articles this week helped me understand cloud more deeply: a Venture Beat piece about up and coming cloud companies.

NY Times Bits blog post about how cloud will challenge the old-school tech incumbants.

Steve Poland prognosticates on the prospects of a coming collapse of the tech market. Love the headline: “Will it End Badly? Probably not.”

Speaking of ending badly, rumblings from Redmond that Microsoft is eying an entry into scripted television. (When will they ever learn?)

LOTS of online chatter over the opening of online music service Spotify’s decision to open its platform for third-party development, like this self-referential coverage from The Guardian that shows how its online music reviews can now enable simultaneous playing. Many compare the move to the opening of Facebook’s API. Maybe!

Into the Culture

Thanksgiving is the start in earnest of Movies’ High Holy Days, as serious Oscar-contender movies crowd the theatres and the award announcements fall upon us like leaves in a Santa Ana wind. Since I saw HUGO on Turkey evening, I thought I’d highlight the best film article of the week, Fast Company’s profile of Martin Scorcese, with a killer graphic of the director’s amazingly diverse career. 

As an avid consumer of audiobooks (mostly in the car), in addition to print books and ebooks, I appreciated the Sunday NY Times Book Review’s appreciation of the form, still an object of snobbery from the printophiles.

“Free Ride” is a new book by Robert Levine, widely reviewed and cheered by the mainstream media whose banner he carries against the forces of “free” that are disrupting existing business models. I haven’t read the book yet, but have been surprised that it hasn’t seemed to spark a big old fashioned flame war online.

Into the Stats

E-Marketer provides numbers for the astounding growth of tablet and smartphones, amending the future growth patterns sharply upward.

TechCrunch reports the new monthly online video viewing record --- more than 46 billion. Ouch!

• Nick's Great Information Friday for 11/25/11

Pardon my turkey, but I guess I'll blame Thanksgiving for a tardy edition of my Friday summary of the best tweets, posts, and quotes from the past week.

THE FUTURE WAS YESTERDAY. This prescient piece in the NY Times looks at web-based predictive software: “The Web has come to reflect the world,” says Christopher Ahlberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Recorded Future. “We can use that to predict things.”

DIGITAL DARWIN: Brilliant biz strategist Brian Solis nails it in this Washington Post post: “Digital Darwinsim and why brands die.” Key quote: “ If organizations cannot recognize opportunities to further compete for attention and relevance, they cannot, by default, create meaningful connections, a desirable brand or drive shareable experiences. The brand, as a result, will lose preference in the face of consumer choice, which may one day lead to its succumbing to digital Darwinism.” 

E-TEXTS: Textbooks aren’t just any books, says Christopher Scheutze in the NY Times, and then explains why  “Textbooks Finally Take a Big Leap to Digital”

900 POUND APPLE: Fear of Apple iTV has manufacturers ‘scrambling’ says the LA Times. “Could any company other than Apple could be leaving its competitors in the dust in an industry it hasn't even entered yet?”

BUNDLE UP: Everyone knows that the cable bundle is a business model that is bound to collapse sooner or later – consumers hate It. Biz observers watch closely for signs of the chinks in cable’s armour, and this rundown on Starz’ options after it exits its Netflix deal may be one.

MPAA VS. TORRENT, AGAIN: The battle lines over piracy have been drawn for many years, with the studios on one side and “information wants to be free” team on the other. This post on TorrentFreak does something different: analyze the potential cost of copyrighted movies using Netflix as value. Not scientific, but interesting.

FUTURE OF TV: I summarized my opening remarks for a Future of Television Panel at Georgia Tech’s Future Media Fest.

WEB SERIES: Bill Robinson urges viewers to take a seat “in the Booth at the End” in a post on HuffPo about the much-loved made-for-broadband series.

DANISH MODERN: The Guardian reports that UK TV is getting more non-English series from other countries, due to the phenom success of Denmark’s THE KILLING, which returns for a second season. I watched season one, thanks to a secret friend, and am jonesing for season two of this most-brilliant police procedural, better than the American adaptation.

ONLINE REPUTATION – can’t live with it, can’t live without, evidently, given the heat and light around social reputation site Klout, like this scorcher from self-described geek Pam Moore, who tells why she has deleted her account. Check out this new reputation site with an even better name: Flout. How about Flaunt? Or Pander?

STATS: YouTube is now serving 3.5 billion videos per day, and that’s 1.5 million more per day than just a year ago. Jeez! A new study reports that one-third of online consumers will use a tablet by 2014.

SOFTWARE WARS: The headline says it all in this CNET post by Rafe Needleman further analyzing mobile content development in the post-Flash era: “HTML5 will kill mobile apps. No, it won’t!” 

SOFTWARE LOVE: You don’t see love-letters to software applications like this one every day, in which web designer Paul Boag sings the praises of Evernote. Since I happen to agree, I gave this tweet a star! Seriously, if you don’t know about Evernote, read this.

TWITTER LOVE: I learned much from this Business Insider post: “Twitter is Quietly Building a Huge Business” – fave quote: “Twitter is the new TV.”

TRANSMEDIA. My coverage of StoryWorld conference – What Transmedia Has to Teach (and to Learn) was published on The Wrap, an online showbiz trade, in case U missed it. Jen Begeal’s coverage of the same event has a decidedly feminist approach, due to the pronounced impact of females on stage and in the audience. Check out: “Where the Transmedia Girls Are”

Future of Television (restated)

My remarks about the “Future of Television” at Georgia Tech’s Future Media Fest this week included the following points.

• I hate the future: It’s always wrong.
• Content is always shaped by business model.
• Business models are defined by technology trends that create opportunity.
• Opportunity is another word for disruption.
• In the age of the Internet, if you are not disrupting, you are disrupted.
• The evidence is in consumer behavior.
• The future of the Internet is television, or to be more precise, video, some of which comes from traditional TV suppliers, and much of which no longer does.
• Tech trends are enabling new business models, which in turn empower new content models, such as:
• It costs less to capture and process video
• Broadband connectivity is widespread, even more so outside the U.S.
• Video compression makes mobile content possible
• IP massively distributes networks for both programs and ads & creates new models.
• Content is costing less, not only because of cheap tools and broader distribution of producers, but also because fees are going down (just look at reality TV trend).
• Most importantly, consumer behavior has changed.
• Three current buckets can help us understand the immediate future:
  • CONNECTED TV…(track consumer electronics companies like Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, Philips and new box providers including Apple, Google, Roku, Boxee and over-the-top superstars like Netflix, Amazon, Vudu, and others.
  • SOCIAL TV… Check-in sites like Miso, GetGlue, IntoNow, Tunerfish, Beyond TV are being joined by next-gen apps likeZeebox, Watchpoints, Frequency,
  • EXPANDED TV… is my name for companion apps to individual shows or networks. Companies in this space include Media Sync (Nielsen), Shazam, Sidebar, Facebook, YouTube, Android/ioS/Siri, cable’sTV Everywhere initiative, (HBO Go), and Ultraviolet/Flixster.

• Friday Update: SOPA, Flash, Storify, Bezos, FMFGT, privacy, TV & transmedia

Here's my weekly review of this week's links and tweets about the news, issues & trends I’m tracking. It's #NGIF (Nick’s Great Information Friday).

Future of TV

I learned a lot from my participation in Future Media Fest, a conference convened in Atlanta by Georgia Tech, where I spoke on a panel on the future of television with folks from Cisco, Intel and Motorola.  Video of some panels, including mine, will be archived sometime next week. I’ll post when that happens. Meanwhile, check out the live tweets from the conference at #FMFGT

Some of my thoughts on the future of television were posted in a presentation “Tracking Tomorrow’s Television Today” to the TV Academy Faculty Seminar.

Related and relevant are two videos from a recent GigaOm conference, one from VC Mark Suster and  this one from visionary exec Robert Tercek.

The buzz over UK-based TV companion app Zeebox continues with the news that the company will build companion apps for Channel 4.

Privacy

Privacy is an issue that radiates throughout the web. My post, “The Virtual Self” examines the Hobson’s Choice between convenience and privacy on the web. (The piece was also posted on The Wrap this week, as well:)

Check out a useful Business Insider report on just exactly what Facebook gathers as you browse the web, and a Mashable report on the launch of a new company, appropriately called “Personal”, which seeks to be the data vault for your private information.  

While at #fmfgt, I encountered Social Fortress, an Atlanta start-up that offers a next-gen encryption platform. Available only for the enterprise right now, co-founder Adam Ghetti told me the consumer version will become available in Q1, 2012. 

Transmedia: Storytelling, Story Tools

My piece about the Story World Conference was posted at Tribeca Future of Film site. Earlier this month Tribeca hosted a panel on Transmedia for Documentaries at the New School, the video for which can be viewed here:

Bravo TV's digital chief Lisa Hsia weighed in with how Transmedia Storytelling is Changing TV on Mashable. Young adult author Michael Grant’s new transmedia property BZRK is getting a big marketing push from publisher Egmont  

More and more attention is turning to various platforms and toolsets, for instance this post about the new interface and features for Storify on Read Write Web, and another report detailing how “Storify comes into its own” as an aggregation tool for the coverage of Occupy Wall Street movement. I asked Twitter’s Director of Global Brand Strategy Joel Lunenfeld about Storify and other tools that leverage the Twitter API to present coherent stories, and his answer was unexpected and fascinating, basically that Twitter will be introducing new functionality in this area at an undisclosed date in the future. He would not tell me more, but I’ll keep you posted.

You may want to check out this report on a new tool for “online performance” called UpStage, from New Zealand. 

Flash Forward (not)

The web is still alive with chatter over Adobe’s announcement that it will no longer support Flash as a mobile development platform. Check out this roundup of comments from developers, produced by FWA (Favorite Website Awards).  

Bezos rising

Have you noticed the flood of words about the rise of Amazon chief Jeff Bezos as king of the web, esp. since Steve Job's death and the introduction of the Kindle Fire. Here's the best of the lot from WIRED.

#SOPA frenzy

Congressional hearings began over the “Stop Online Piracy Act” backed by the main trade groups representing copyright holders, and opposed by the Internet big-boys. Here is the case against.

And a report from showbiz journal The Wrap suggesting that the legislation goes too far, even for Hollywood’s allies.

AHA moments

Finally: You must check out "The Blu", a new site that allows users to explore the ocean online in an environment created by CG producers around the world. It's gorgeous, addictive and an unusual form of User-Generated Content.

My fave tweet quote this week: from coverage of the Future of Entertainment conference at MIT:  "That we don't have a venture capital model for creativity is one of the strangest things in contemporary culture." @grant27 #FoE5

• Introducing #NGIF: Nick's Great Information Friday

One of the first widespread uses of the #hashtag convention on Twitter was #FollowFriday, a goofy, but effective way to spread the love all over one's favorite fellow "tweeps." Kind of a #TGIF for the twitterati.

In tribute to this enduring social media meme, I'm starting #NGIF, or Nick's Great Information Friday, in which I shall review my favorite tweets of the previous week.

Why?

Well, mainly because it’s so easy to miss the good stuff. Services like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks are "life streams” – you must be on the shore watching as the information flows by.

Twitter and the others offer filtering systems that help (Lists, Circles, etc.). Even better  third-party tools automate curation and discovery in useful ways (Summify and Zite are my current favorites. And of course, we all subscribe to newsletters to get information shoved into our crowded in-boxes.

Which brings me back to #NGIF, my humble attempt to call your attention to some interesting items to chew over after a busy week. 

Transmedia & Story Telling

It’s only natural that transmedia storytelling was on my mind this week, since I attended two events (#DIYDAYS and StoryWorld Conference), and posted my thoughts as “Stories and Worlds: What the Transmedia Movement has to Teach… (and to Learn)” which appeared here on my blog and was published today on Tribeca’s Future of Film

I also learned a lot from Dan Levy’s coverage of #swc: “Finding the Story: Five Lessons from StoryWorld 2011

Brian Clark, who was everywhere at #swc, began a series of posts this week on transmedia business models at Henry Jenkins’ blog to spark a debate among practitioners about how to use lessons from past movements to move beyond what he calls the “patronage” model. This post will become more valuable over time, so bookmark it. I have.

Along the way, as is often the case, I turned to Quora during the course of my writing, only to discover a really interesting thread called “Storytelling: How will the craft of storytelling change in the future? 

Social Media

I was preparing a presentation to a group of college film and television professors about the future of television this week and, like many pundits, used the phrase “the social graph,” which is how Facebook describes the extended grid of people and brands generated by your voluntary associations and behaviors. No wonder this post on the Pinboard blog by Maciej Ceglowski stood out: “The Social Graph is Neither."

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