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Disclaimer: not totally proofread... I might have had to much fun... Continues below.
I'm going to site Metcalf's law yet again. Attempts to build walls around isolated sites will fail in the long term because of Metcalfe's Law which states that the value of a network grows by the square of the size of the network. So a network that is twice as large will be four times as valuable because there are four times as many things that can be done due to the larger number of interconnections. Because of Metcalfe's Law, the largest network always wins over smaller networks, even if the smaller network has some larger initial value due to some special-purpose feature or benefit. First, realize that the free and open web IS the largest network. All other networks are secondary, especially cellular networks... for them to do information services such as audio, video, etc... but isolate themselves from the information services of the web at large is going to hurt them... increasingly... until the start opening up their networks and allowing outside services. This is like them offering voice to voice calling only between other people on their network. Once the idea is proposed, once one network's wall is breached there will be no going back as sure as there's no going back to in-operable separate phone networks. More reading along this subject... good depth: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990725.html more on metcalf's
Yes... BUT... competing networks such as cellular providers ALWAYS mistake that they're competition is other INDIVIDUAL immediate competitors... when it may be the aggregate of their competitors if their competitors are interoperable... OR... if they're moving into information services like email, SMS, IM, or video... they're competing with the largest network of services of them all... the internet! Put bluntly when you as a cellular network offer email and it's incompatible with Gmail, hotmail, yahoo and every other mail service... you're throwing money right down the toilet... you can't compete with an open network of services that's much larger than you on the internet. The same goes for video! THis is why I love it when these same companies say "oh! it's not there yet!" You're not there you idiots! This explains a lot of the B.S. in in-operability... because of this initial fallacy companies often perceive that they're in control... when in fact only one is... they misjudge that they're the biggest kid on the block and some googlezon or Microsoft comes along and turns their little in-operability game on them and kicks their ass. When you're the little guy you must be interoperable... and in a global economy... 99.999% of us are the little guy. We must be interoperable. This is VERY visible on the scale of world economics... in fact it's already played out in international politics. It's a done deal. A forgone conclusion. The biggest market always wins. It's why we've gone to a world economy... why we've moved toward free and open trade... and it directly reflects what's happening in this our information economy that we're quickly building. Why did the U.S. participate in free trade when we were the super power to beat after Russia fell... because if we didn't China, and now the EU would eventually kick our ass.... Why did Russia's economy fail... well part of it was poor central planning and military spending, but certainly the largest factor was it's closed markets... they couldn't compete with the evolving world market. There systems were to isolated, to inefficient do to lack of competition... and they just fell off pace with the world economy. To use a simple metaphor... they were building horse buggies when the rest of the world had moved on to cars. Why is China opening their markets when they are clearly the biggest market and indeed have a full 1/3 of the world population? Because the other 2/3 of the world population are opening their markets and that marketplace would (actually was already) kick(ing) China's ass. It's only because China opened it's markets that it is becoming an economic superpower. There is much we can learn from the larger world of economics which mirrors our economy of information and indeed the very internet itself. Like it or not in a world of open markets... the only option is to open your markets. Networks and markets for the sake of this conversation the two are one in the same. So... if cellular carriers don't open up there networks/markets... and this will persist for a time... then they are only missing out on huge growth opportunities... and eventually one of them is going to see this... and will reap the growth benefits while the others play catch up. What I'm saying is screw the ROCKR, itunes/Motorola half steps... their benefits are tactical not strategic... we're proposing another way... skip the B.S. and skip right to open markets... The only problem is... we're not ready with the infrastructure and marketplaces yet... we still have a bit further to go. More of my B.S. on open markets.... Open source is building this same sort of leverage against Microsoft... developers have found through open collaboration they can effectively compete with Microsoft's platform... because collectively they and their potentially infinite pool of developers outnumber Microsoft's pool of developers and resources. Which is pretty radical considering Microsoft is one of the largest entities in the world and had damn near monopoly control on the industry. But... those initially hurt by Microsoft such as IBM, Sun and others are finding collectively they can create competitive interoperable platform using an open system... a system which no ONE owns... a system controlled by radically new market forces beyond direct monetary exchange... a system with a much better ROI and a much more equitable distribution of wealth. In Microsoft's world there's a cost, a tariff, a tax... to participation in the market... in the world of Open Source that cost to entrance is much, much lower. And I'm not just talking about the cost of the development software either, though I'll leave other costs for you to thing about. As a result open source is clearly advancing on Microsoft though I won't jump on the bandwagon and say it's out and out winning. Open media... this lightnet, will press this same open an interoperable advantage against closed networks... walled gardens... and traditional TV and radio networks... and even these cellular networks. Bloggers out number newspapers... podcasters will out number radio shows... and eventually we will out number TV's and movies. It's not 100% certain, but we've got lots of precedence... a potential pool of vloggers that includes everyone on the planet... and even if it's not called vlogging when we get there... it's still going to be in essence portable, downloadable video loosely joined through RSS or RSS-like syndication mechanisms. In summary.... When we have 30 years of world economics driving in the direction of open markets, considerable world wide momentum, tremendous policy and leading academic work.... that has so clearly been established I'm surprised we're so pessimistic about the future of open networks, open markets, and the openness of our information economy... Call me crazy... but the only thing that concerns me is how quickly, and how smoothly or journey is to that promise land... where the IP market is completely accessible to all people and all intellectual property / media is price competitive in a world wide information economy. What has happened in the world economy is now happening to media and the information economy. There are infinite parallels and things to be learned from comparing the two. The question is not who will benefit, everyone will, but how much and when. How will this information economy grow? Will we conquer the digital divide and get those in developing countries access? Will we be able to build monetization mechanisms for everyone regardless of class, geography or language to participate? When will traditional media companies enter the game, how, and what will be the impact? If they hold out longer the market will establish itself more equitably for all... if they enter it sooner and more effectively they may subvert the inflated demand they've created for our "long tail" of goods... our tiny little markets of 2. Well, I've overdone it again... but it's always fun. :) Peace, -Mike mmeiser.com/blog evilvlog.com mefeedia.com
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- Re: [videoblogging] more players other than iPod Michael Meiser
