Next Big Things

When Time magazine features Web2.0 as its lead story, you know the profit party is probably over. Or at least, the cutting edge is elsewhere. At Tim O'Reilly's ETech conference in San Diego last week there were a few ideas about where that might be. Although the agenda was eclectic, the underlying theme was self evident. Consumers are not just more connected than ever before, they are more connected to each other. In the next few years, that is going to lead to not only new ways of doing business, but also radical new forms of behavior. While you are waiting for those, here are five memes to chew over.

Manufacturing 2.0

When Jacob DeHart and Jeffrey Kalmikoff got tired of making clever websites for other people, they decided to create something fun for themselves. The result was Threadless - a tshirt company where people submit designs and the community votes Digg style for which the ones that get manufactured. The secret of Threadless is more than just clever interaction. Its a new way of thinking about production. Only small quantities are made of any particular item, feedback and production are inseperable, and product marketing is replaced by customer participation from the outset. With 80,000 t-shirts selling a month, the duo are now expanding the concept to a range of other higher value products.

Pattern Recognition

Although more data is available than ever before, being able to see patterns in networked systems requires a subtle change of thinking. Fortunately, spotting changes is something that Jeff Jonas, Chief Scientist at IBM's entity analytics business is good at. Before IBM he used to create software to help Casinos identify trends in their data flows that could reveal cheats or criminals trying to transact with them. The key to that, according to Jonas, is to turn operational systems into sensors. The problem with computers today, and even services like Google, is that they require you to ask smart questions at exactly the right time. However, whether its detecting possible terrorist activity or a sales opportunity, data in the future needs to find data - and let you know when situations change. Teaching computers to recognise when something matters and then publish it to people that are interested is the future of networked information systems.

Peak Shaving

If the amount of West Coast VC money flowing into energy innovation is any indication, the networks of the future may have more to do with power than information. At the moment, most power systems are wastefully engineered to meet the demands of peak periods. During those periods, every additional light switch requires a boost  from expensive spinning reserve generators.  One radical solution to shave those peaks is known as 'vehicle to grid' and contemplates a distributed network of consumer electric and hybrid cars which during peak periods could contribute power, and earn credits towards their energy bill. 

Collective Curation

Peter Bloom, Managing Partner at General Atlantic Partners, and economist Bill Janeway, former Vice Chairman of Warburg Pincus are about as Wall St as they come. In their view, over the last 25 years there has been a huge improvement in transactional efficiency, but an equal decrease in informational efficiency. Transactions are approaching a point of zero latency, but its becomming harder to get good information on which to act. Networked communities may start to change that. The pinstripe pair see a rise in sites like ValueInvestorsClub.com, where a limited pool of people share, track and rate each other based on the investment ideas they come up with. Tim O’Reilly puts it well. The essence of Web2.0 is that networked applications get better through participation. Its true collective intelligence.

Gridless

According to Tom Loosemore, Head of Innovations at the BBC, TV is broken. Programs remain a fantastic way to tell stories, but broadcasting is a very wasteful way of delivering television. When you turn it on you get a few dozen programs, most of which have already started. Figuring out how to let people access that archive has taken Tom and his team at the BBC on a long journey experimenting with new types of storage and P2P set top boxes. But the real issue in an era of unlimited choice, will be how to present what's available and help people decide what to watch. Certainly the era of the grid EPG, like the paper TV guide will soon come to end. Teenagers already discover most of their entertainment through referral. So if the future of schedules is social, what will they look like? Tom's not telling, but in his view, the real value of media platforms in the future will their capacity to create meta data that helps the discovery of content, rather than its simple distribution.

The common thread to all of these ideas is the network. Whether its energy systems, financial trading strategies or making tshirts - one way of looking at the Web2.0 revolution, is that it has given us a language to reconceive all kinds of other networked systems. Ajax is well and good, but really up until now, we have been mainly fiddling with interfaces. From here, things start to get interesting.

Comments

[Dean Collins]

Hi Mike,

I didn't know you were going to be at Etel or I would have organised for you to meet with one of my clients Tim Panton the lead developer of Mexuar Communications (www.Mexuar.com) who gave a speech at one of the sessions on the Future of Voice.

Talk about everyone being connected, Mexuar have a java application that turns any web page into a softphone enabling you to call me with a simple point and click (check it out on www.cognation.net/contact)

We also have a number of websites who feel user generated text content/forums is fine but to jump forward into the next generation of 'interactive' communities are using Mexuar Corraleta as 24x7 live voice chat sessions - kind of like the old party line telephone example.....browse to your favourite football teams web site and talk using a headset and microphone with anyone else visiting the site at the same time. (Skype have Skype live which is similar but requires a downloaded executable and then subsequent configuration, this is much more spontaneous and real time).

I guess the next big thing is there will always be a next big thing.

Cheers,
Dean Collins
www.Cognation.net

[danielle]

Hi, I don't see how you can call this newsletter 'the fourth estate' when it has nothing to do with the definition of the term. It's quite misleading

[CHRIS SIMON]

©hris Simon-Bracket Boys-14 April-2007-Sydney….
2.0 is just an easy term to use and is as old as ‘them online hills’! So I think the term still serves well as a rich community and social networking thing on any device! A thing where everyone is having fun and, hopefully, making money as part of the fun! So you calling Threadless a manufacturing business is exactly what it is and what a great one! Great, I think, because it makes ‘the better 2.0’ easier to explain. Fashion trend rated and submitted by consumers or users; rewards; competition and this amazing new invention…..WOW!.......called supply and demand. I happened upon Threadless goodness knows how long ago.......Well
before ‘happening’ on your latest review on my hotmail, which I don’t get to that often nowadays!….But-as usual-you write eloquently about the ‘why of now’ and I thank you for that. I admire how this manufacturing business has reached cult status. Not just the blogs. music, pics….Just ‘getting it right’…Like T-Shirts will always ‘get it right’ and T-Shirts are the vernacular. And if you get vernacular right-you get it! I don’t want to be controversial here, but I’d prefer some of my Brackets’ appearing at new Threadless openings, rather than in Second Life, (but still with respect to SL ‘n our M-Verse Bracks). Threadless also seems to sing our mantra which is SEE ME. RATE ME. SHARE ME. SEND ME™…And check back folks, yes we did write and © worldwide first! However, I would need to consult about what happens ‘outside’ or ‘after’ the brilliant navigation and interaction on the ‘inside’. Design-art, etc can always be awesome on-screen…But what happens in the washing machine or in the laundry?….How cool is the fit?…I personally don’t own one of their designs yet….(YET) But I’ve crossed corners of the Earth to get the right T-Shirt, (for me and many others) and paid big….But “boy” if it got f……in the wash-that was the end “of my art” and that was the end of my customer loyalty to that “one limited edition”….But-I’m sure-these guys have got the after sales thing sorted. It’s a thriving-seemingly win win model. Many of “the designers” who just get exposure go on to get fashion label contracts…So there’s that element as well. I “sense” that it began with a more creative audience and that begats or inspires other creative audiences and then that “brings out the designer” in audiences who never knew they could…..CULT-CULT-CULT-UGC-UGC….I love it. Submitting ideas, scoring designs, customer care, loyalty, rewards, songs, merchandise- truly understanding interaction. And at all the ‘2.0 orientated’-UGC UK and Malaysia Seminars we have covered this last first quarter-we still hold fast on what we’ve always said….Navigation is getting there-interaction is having something to do when you get there. It needs a few mobile clips though! I remember what ‘me old bass player’ said, who got fired from ‘Adam and The Ants’, before Adam fired everyone else, including himself! (You see-some Pop Stars are just like advertising people!) Anyway, this old bass player who was always much younger than any living Ants (or gorilla!) turned round to ‘the boys’ once and said….”You supply the threads and I’ll supply the bass”! It was all about 2.0 then as well! I love this site, but I still also love video, games, animation, txt, pics, IM, art, music, brand, environment and lots and lots and lots of other 2.0 that has rich community, social networking, fun, environmental results and…………makes money!

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