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• People Are Reluctant to Shop on Social Channels - (by @baekdal)
  

  Harris Interactive recently conducted a study that looked at people's willingness to interact with social commerce. They found (among other things) that 75% are open to recommendations by friends when shopping for products, but only 20% are willing to purchase the products on social sites.

  They then came to the conclusion that this could mean trouble for the future of social commerce. They just have no idea what social commerce is.

  

  The problem is that they think social commerce is a thing you do on Facebook. It's not.

  People are used to thinking of the world as objects and destinations. A concert is a thing that you can watch in a specific place. A car is a thing you buy at a dealer. Food is a thing that you eat at restaurant, etc.

  But the internet is not a thing, nor is it a destination. The internet is a connector, or a facilitator, linking things together. But in itself the internet is not a thing.

  One good example is when we look at mobile. Almost all 'mobile' studies define mobile as a phone. They see it as a thing. When they talk about the rise in mobile shopping, they only mean the shopping you do from a mobile phone.

  But that is an irrelevant way to look at mobile. The real mobile is a verb. It's not a thing, but the ability to shop, read, or interact from wherever you are. Mobile means connecting what you want to do, with wherever you happen to be, using whatever device you want to use.

  Mobile is a verb. It's a feeling of being free to do what you want.

  Social is just like mobile - a verb. It's not a thing, it's not a place, it's not a destination, it's not a specific channel, nor is it a specific site.

  Being social means you are engaging *with* your audience.

  The same is true for Social Commerce. Most think of it as a thing. As in, "create a shop in a Facebook tab and ask people to go there to buy your products."

  But that is not what social commerce is about. That is F-commerce (or Facebook commerce). As in the act of buying something *on* Facebook.

  Social commerce is, like mobile, a verb. It is the act of using social engagement to drive a sale. But that sale does not have to take place on Facebook, or on any other social channel to be social.

  Harris Interactive didn't look at social commerce, they only looked at social as a thing. They looked at F-commerce.

  They found that only 20% are willing to buy products on Facebook, which isn't really that surprising because Facebook is not a good platform for selling products. People are reluctant, in general, to do business on platforms that are designed around sharing. We love to share what we do and what we like, but we don't like to give Facebook or other social channels access to our money.

  One reason is that we don't trust Facebook to keep our transactions private. Facebook would obviously never share our credit card information, but do you trust them to not auto-share every product you look at and every product you buy? That's what they do every time you listen to a song on Spotify or read an article in the Guardian.

  People want to feel in control of sharing when it comes to buying products. What if it is something you don't want other people to know about - like an anniversary edition of Hello Kitty with a cute little exclusive plus toy. What if it is a gift and you want to keep it as a surprise. Do you trust Facebook to not auto-share that purchase if you bought it on a shop *on* Facebook?

  I wouldn't...

  Facebook is a terrible destination for selling products, but it is a brilliant platform for sharing.

  Harris Interactive found that only 20% trust Facebook enough for shopping. But that is f-commerce, not social commerce.

  They also found that 75% are influenced by friend recommendations before they buy a product, which is the real future of social commerce.

  Social commerce is not a thing. It's a facilitator. When you engage with social commerce, you are not setting up a shop, you are facilitating the connection between people and your product. It's the act of selling, not the place of a sale.

  You can read much more about this in my book, "The Future of Social Commerce". The key message is the same as in this article. Social commerce is not a thing, so forget about setting up a shop in a Facebook tab. That is not where the magic is.

  And Harris Interactive, please stop asking people if they are willing to shop on Facebook. That's irrelevant. The power of social commerce is in the act of sharing, not if the link happens to go to a Facebook tab (or app).

  
  

  
  

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• How To Be Authentic - (by @baekdal)
  

  One of the most important things about communicating in a two-way connected world is to be authentic, but many people don't seem to realize what that means.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

  
  

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• People Already Have News, Now What? - (by @baekdal)
  

  Earlier this week we heard how Sky News and the BBC implemented new social media policies dictating that journalists have to report news first to the newspaper, and not on Twitter. Sky News, being the one with the most social-phobia, even went as far as to tell their journalists not to retweet other people's stories.

  And it is not the first time we hear of this. Other newspapers have tried something similar, and so have several sport organizations.

  There are arguments both for and against this fear of sharing. The main argument is that SKY News is not paying their journalists to promote themselves or their competitors.

  The arguments against it are, of course, that they are living a world that no longer exists.

  The first problem is how we connect. If all you do is to create a one-way broadcast that is only about "me, me, me, and my brand" nobody will care about it.

  A simple example is just to look at my two baekdal Twitter profiles.

  One is baekdal with which I do all the things SKY News is against. I constantly retweet outside links, talk about what other people are doing, point people to other sites etc. Only about 5% of my tweets is about me (or Baekdal as a brand).

  The other is baekdalarticles. It is only about Baekdal.com. I never post outside links. I never talk about other people. It is just me and my brand.

  baekdal has 4,125 follower, while baekdalarticles has only 444 followers. And they both bring in the same rate of clicks per followers (around 3%).

  Which one do you think is the most popular, and more to the point, which one do you think bring in more people to my articles? Yep, my baekdal account, with which I constantly retweet others people content, wins every time.

  The key to success in the connected world is to ...connect! It's really that simple.

  The other problem is bit more profound. I think Matthew Ingram said it best when he said:

  If a single tweet from someone on your staff gives away enough of the value of your story that you have to forbid it, you have a lot bigger problems than just breaking news on Twitter.

  This is something that most traditional newspaper people just don't get. You are no longer the bringer of news. In a connected world, any delay you might add just means news will come to us in some other way. If your main product is to 'bring people the news' you are going to go out of business.

  Let me tell you a little story. Back when I was a kid I was a newspaper boy. Every morning, at around 4 AM, I would get up, take my bike and drive my route to bring people their morning newspaper.

  This was a great responsibility, because, if didn't deliver, people would not get the news. I was their link to the rest of the world. If i failed to deliver, or made a mistake, people would get very angry.

  The reason was that, in those days, the role of the newspaper was to bring you the news. If the news didn't arrive, people would have to go trough their entire day not knowing what was going in the world. People would have to wait until that evening when they got home from work to catch the 7 o'clock evening news on TV.

  It was an absolute disaster if I didn't the deliver the news. So I got up every day at 4 AM to 'bring people the news'.

  Fast forward to today. I'm no longer a newspaper boy, but what would happen today if your morning paper didn't arrive? The laggards who are still living in the old world would still get angry, but most people would just get slightly upset, take out their tablet or smartphone and check the latest news there. Not to mention that they have probably already done that even before getting out of bed.

  Even if a newspaper where to disappear completely, like if the journalists of the BBC where to go on strike for a week, it would make no difference to people's lives. They would just read something else. News, from any source, is just a click away. People are no longer waiting for your newspaper to arrive.

  There is no longer value in being the bringer of news. We already have too much of it. You have to be more than the news. You have to be the news that isn't out there by default.

  If there is a train wreck, you need to tweet:

  A train has wrecked between Paris and Orleans, we are heading out to investigate - stay tuned!

  If you delay breaking the news, people will just get the news from somewhere else. In fact, they already have it. Mere seconds after the train ran off the track people would start sharing pictures and videos, in real time. This was probably how you, as a journalist, heard about in the first place.

  All this real time reporting is, of course, a mess - it always is. People will have a hard time figuring out what's really happening. But that's where you come in. You are no longer the bringer of news. It's already here. You are the one who makes sense of it.

  You use tweets to let people know you are on the job, and that they can rely on you to get the bigger picture.

  If you delay that, people are just going to rely on somebody else ...Or in the case of Sky News, people would just get the breaking news from Guardian's reporters (or probably from their friends) while they 'wait' for you to 'go through proper channels'.

  BTW: Here is an idea. Why don't you bring tweets into your editorial system? Instead of asking people to 'tell your colleagues first, tweet second' have your editorial system 'follow' all your journalist's Twitter accounts, and add a hashtag for breaking news to automatically highlight them.

  
  

  
  

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• RESET - What If You Could Start Again? - (by @baekdal)
  

  I would like to give you a challenge. It is a thought experiment that is going to change how you do things. It is not something you can do within the next five minutes. It is something you have to sit down with, maybe with some of your colleagues, and really think about.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

  
  

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• StumbleUpon vs. Google Juice - (by @baekdal)
  

  Last week I published the article "Debunking StumbleUpon", in which I illustrated just how little value StumbleUpon's traffic produce. After publishing that article, several people pointed out that StumbleUpon might produce low value traffic, but its sheer traffic numbers help my search engine ranking. Or, as we say in the industry. StumbleUpon is producing Google Juice!

  This is an argument I have heard many times before. Many SEO optimization "experts" point to Stumble as a traffic driving "engine". Sure enough, it does drive a lot of traffic but, as I wrote in last week's article, what's the point if isn't valuable to you?

  More to the point, why would Google rank your site higher in the first place? They would have to include StumbleUpon as a special site, measuring not just the link itself, but the view and Stumbles that StumbleUpon records for each URL - and then give that a disproportionate higher value in relation to the search engine listings.

  It might be that is useful for small unknown sites with an already low PageRank, but I don't think it's caused by the activity on StumbleUpon. Its probably just the effect of normal link exposure.

  I don't really know, but I would be very surprised if Google valued StumbleUpon links higher than identical links on other sites.

  What I do know is that, if I look at this site, StumbleUpon is definitely not producing any Google Juice. To illustrate this, I looked at the total amount of traffic from both StumbleUpon and Google Search for the past 4 years.

  

  As you can see, in 2008, StumbleUpon and Google Search referred about the same amount of traffic. But as StumbleUpon grew in popularity, Google Search actually dropped. Not only that, but my PageRank also dropped from 6 to 5 in 2011.

  I can definitely say that, on this site, StumbleUpon is not my friend when it comes to search engine rankings - just as it is not my friend when it comes to traffic value or advertising click-through rates.

  But, I don't think the drop in Google Search is caused by StumbleUpon. I think it is only natural that the search volume is dropping. In the past, search was how we discovered the internet, but the internet that we know today is allowing us to connect in many other ways. We have social sharing, microblogs, and many other channels that people can use to connect.

  In 2004, Search traffic amounted to roughly 33% of my traffic. In 2011, it had dropped to 13%. And I'm seeing no indication that StumbleUpon has any effect on search rankings or volume.

  
  

  
  

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• Debunking StumbleUpon - (by @baekdal)
  

  StumbleUpon is an extremely powerful social site. It is the top referrer of social sharing, even exceeding sites like Facebook. It has an estimated 12 million unique visitors per month and, as seen in the infographic below, is very influental.

  StumbleUpon makes up quite a big chunk of my traffic. From May to February it sent about 880,000 visitors my way. It is also completely useless at driving valuable traffic.

  

  The problem with StumbleUpon

  I want to show you something interesting. The graph below shows the total amount of visitors coming to this site, in comparison with advertising revenue, from May 2011 to February 2012. As you can see, it has been a roller coaster ride with rather dramatic changes from one month to the next.

  

  For a long time I didn't understand why my traffic looked like this. I thought perhaps I was doing something wrong? Maybe some of my articles were turning people away?

  But then I decided to compare it with the number of new subscribers to Baekdal Plus - and the result was a bit of a shock. There is no correlation between the two. Volume of traffic seems to have no impact on why or even when people subscribe.

  

  Note: As a publisher, this is a very important lesson. Advertising and subscriptions don't follow the same pattern.

  So I decide to investigate, and as I digged into the stats, StumbleUpon immediately stood out from the rest.

  Here is a graph illustrating total number of unique visitors with the number of unique referrers from StumbleUpon. Those roller coaster like curves are caused exclusively by StumbleUpon. The green line illustrate the total unique visitors if we exclude StumbleUpon from the graph. It is quite a difference!

  

  The next thing I looked at was the conversion rate of StumbleUpon - and, as far as I can tell, it's practically zero.

  In January, the top referrers to my plus content were: Direct (which also includes referrers using HTTPS), Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Google Search, LinkedIn, and my email newsletter (in that order). StumbleUpon came in on a 16th place with only 8 people in total (out of 138,000 visitors).

  That is a Plus referrer rate of only 0.0058%. In comparison, Twitter's Plus referrer rate is 8%, and Facebook's is 9%.

  StumbleUpon is just noise. It is really fun to have 138,000 people coming to your site, but what's the point if only 0.0058% of them are valuable?

  Another element is advertising revenue. As you can see from the graph above, those big traffic months from StumbleUpon also result in an increase in advertising revenue, but one thing you cannot see is the click-through rates.

  When I compared click-through rates in June (low-traffic) with September (high-traffic) I found that every month StumbleUpon referred a lot of traffic click-through rates dropped to less than half of the "slow months".

  So not only is StumbleUpon hopeless at bringing people to Baekdal Plus, its traffic is also hopeless at driving value for advertisers.

  The reason why StumbleUpon is so bad at creating value is because of how it works. If you haven't used it yourself, here is the short version:

  StumbleUpon is essentially the modern version of TV channel surfing - like when you sit down in front of your TV and you just flip through all the channels in search of something interesting. That is what people do on StumbleUpon.

  When you go to StumbleUpon, you are presented with a random website. If you don't like it, you click "stumble" to move on to the next ...and the next ...and the next ...and the next ...and the next ...until you eventually find something you like.

  

  The result is that every click is recorded as a "real" visitor, but most of that traffic is just people clicking on the stumble button several of hundred times. They are channel surfing, and your site is just one of thousands of channels they flip through.

  The value of this interaction is practically zero. Sure, if you are monetized by CPM based advertising you might make a little bit of extra money, but you do so at the cost of a much lower click-through rate for your advertiser. That means you will not be able to attract premium advertising partners.

  StumbleUpon is not a good site. It's persuasive in its sharing power, but the traffic it creates is not the type of traffic you want.

  The stats for your site might look different, but I'm seeing the same pattern over at 42Concepts. While StumbleUpon creates a lot of exposure, advertising click-through rates are appallingly low.

  I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that maybe I need to remove StumbleUpon for my analytics. It's distorting the image, and causing me to make the wrong assumptions about my traffic as a whole. I won't block it. But maybe I need to just ...ignore it.

  Filter it out by default.

  Update: Several people asked about the effect StumbleUpon has in boosting search engine traffic and ranking. As far as I can tell, there isn't any. Read more in "StumbleUpon vs. Google Juice".

  
  

  
  

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• How Much Would You Pay For TV In The Future? - (by @baekdal)
  

  There are two big problems in the world of media. The first problem is that media companies look at the internet as a "secondary" income stream, and, therefor, price their products too low.

  The second problem is that, because they see it as a secondary income stream, they don't give people a real reason, or even the right conditions, to shift from the old to the new. That means that people see these new channels as an accessory to the old rather than a real alternative.

  This is happening in all the digital content markets. Books, games, music and movies. But the area in which this is most clear, is in the TV industry.

  The future of TV

  We all know what the future of TV is going to be like. Instead of buying a package of random content where the content providers decide what shows to air and when you can watch them, we now demand to get access to everything so that we, the viewers, can decide what we specifically want to see at any given moment.

  The era of the TV Guide, where you would browse through the channels to see when something good is on, is over. In the future, you simply decide what we want to see, when you want to see it, and even how you want to see it.

  We could do this today - if the TV studios would just allow it.

  

  But the question is, how much would people be willing to pay for the new world? A new world that is providing you with the same content as before, just in a far more convenient and controllable way?

  The answer is obvious People are willing to pay the same amount of money as they are already spending on cable TV today. People always say they want to pay less, but when it comes down to it, people are willing to pay the same amount of money as they have always done - otherwise they would have stopped paying a long time ago.

  It's not rocket science.

  So, why is Hulu Plus or Netflix only $7.99, when it should be the $130 that people pay for Cable TV? It makes no sense. You get more than before, you have full control over the content, you decide what to watch and when to watch it. Why is that worth less than before?

  

  The answer is that services like Netflix isn't the new world. It is being limited and restricted by the TV studios.

  1. Netflix is being hampered by content licensing deals that both restrict what they can offer in each country, and what they can offer as a whole. We are not getting "full access".
  2. TV Studios are restricting distribution and adding delays. Like when BBC is imposing a six month delay, or when Warner Brothers adds limitations to not just when you can watch something, but even when you can add it to you queue.

  Netflix deal with Warner Bros. includes delay in queues. Under a new deal between the two companies, Netflix users won't just have to wait 56 days to rent Warner Bros. movies on DVD. They'll have to wait 28 days to add the movies to their queues.

  With those kinds of restrictions, people will never pay the same for Netflix as they do for cable TV. You not getting the same product. Netflix is being reduced to this half-baked puddle of goo. It looks like the new world, but the TV industry hasn't changed anything yet.

  Here is how devastation this strategy is:

  As long as the new world is being restricted, only a very small percentage of people will decide to "cut the cord". Instead, many people will pay for both.

  Take the example of Sky Cable TV (UK) + Netflix (UK).

  In the past, everyone was using cable. But now, with the introduction of Netflix in the UK, perhaps 10% will choose to subscribe to both. If you are a TV executive, this is an amazing development. People are paying twice for the same content.

  

  In 2015, things will go even better. Even though about 20% have now "cut the cord" and even larger percentage is now paying for both Sky Cable and Netflix.

  In 2017, 350,000 people will have shifted to streaming TV only, and things are starting to slow down. And finally in 2020, everyone will have shifted from the traditional cable TV world to the new streaming TV world.

  When you see a graph like the one above the shift itself looks pretty good, and the tactics of delaying the shift seems to be encouraging people to pay twice for the same content. But this is only half the story.

  If we instead look at the same numbers but from a total revenue perspective, you see a very different picture.

  

  In 2012, things are going well as some are paying for both services. And while Netflix only amounts to a tiny increase in revenue, the graph is going up.

  But then, in 2015 and onwards, things start to go horribly wrong. The problem is that one cable TV subscriber pays $130 while a Netflix subscriber only pays $7.99 - meaning that for every cable TV subscriber that "cut the cord" Netflix needs to get 16 new subscribers, and that simply isn't happening.

  When we finally reach 2020, even though the TV industry reaches the same amount of total subscribers as before, the revenue has dropped by a staggering 94% - and that is *game over*. No industry can survive such a dramatic drop in revenue.

  The TV industry is simply committing suicide.

  By hampering and restricting the new world, the TV industry is telling people that the digital world is worth less - and thus should be priced at much lower rate. But that isn't going to stop the world from changing. People will shift from traditional cable TV to the digital streaming world.

  And by delaying the shift from happening, they are completely destroying their own future revenue. You never want to teach people that the new world is worth "less than before" - especially not when the new world is worth more, if done right!!

  And remember, this is not just happening to the TV industry. The newspaper industry is already close to the 2017 point in the graph. People are now dominantly consuming news online, but they also refuse to pay for it as the industry taught them not to.

  It is the same with the music industry. Spotify might sounds like a great idea, but the revenue payout is miniscule.

  The book industry is somewhere around the 2015 point. It's slightly different because you don't buy "packages of books". But the book industry is making the same mistakes - limiting books to single devices and platforms, adding geographic restrictions, insisting on licensing etc - all causing ebooks to drop in price.

  The movie industry is not far behind and it, in many ways, follow TV's future.

  The gaming world is just starting to get into trouble. On the XBOX, new games are not sold "on demand" until well after they have been released on traditional channels - and thus at a lower price.

  The content world's insistence of saving the past by devaluating the new might seem like a good idea in the short run, but it is the absolute worst thing anyone can ever do.

  If you want to create a future of content, in which people are willing to pay full price, you need to fully embrace the new world from the start.

  The TV industry needs to stop living in a one-way broadcast world, and fully engage in a two-way connected world. That means no licensing agreements but instead a direct connection. It means no restrictions or delays that devaluate the new. And it means giving people everything and then let them decide what they want instead of packaging it into predefined boxes.

  We cannot stop the world from changing, but we can stop making the new world 16 times less valuable than the old.

  

  It is the only way to win!

  
  

  
  

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• Your 2012 Social Strategy, What To Focus On - (by @baekdal)
  

  You have probably already read some of the many articles that have been posted in the past month predicting what 2012 would be about. Some were interesting, some not so much, and most were just written to get more page views.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

  
  

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• Lies, Damned Lies, and Ebooks - (by @baekdal)
  

  You might remember "The Emperor's New Clothes" the famous story by Hans Christian Andersen. It is about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to anyone who was either incompetent or stupid. At first everyone agrees that the Emperor's new clothes is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever seen. But one day, when the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out, "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"

  The story tells the tale of how people fear to speak out against what other people believe to be good.

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  So the good old minister went into the hall where the two swindlers sat working at their empty looms. "Goodness!" thought the old minister, opening his eyes wide. "I cannot see a thing!" But he did not say so.

  The two swindlers invited him to step closer, asking him if it wasn't a beautiful design and if the colors weren't magnificent. They pointed to the empty loom, and the poor old minister opened his eyes wider and wider. He still could see nothing, for nothing was there. "Gracious" he thought. "Is it possible that I am stupid? I have never thought so. Am I unfit for my position? No one must know this. No, it will never do for me to say that I was unable to see the material.

  "You aren't saying anything!" said one of the weavers.

  "Oh, it is magnificent! The very best!" said the old minister, peering through his glasses. "This pattern and these colors! Yes, I'll tell the emperor that I am very satisfied with it!

  ---

  And so begins a lie that eventually takes down an Emperor, and everyone around him.

  This story is a remarkable example of the powers of persuasion and the fear of not looking foolish - even when what you see clearly isn't as remarkable as it is made up to be.

  This story also fits something we all know. "The Emperor's New Clothes" exactly mimics the ebook industry of today. Publisher and authors, wanting to dazzle the world around them, are being cheated by the ebook platforms, which, in reality, are nothing but a watered down version of something that has existed for years.

  But the publishers, author and their advisers, in fear of looking foolish, is living a lie, publicly marveling in the ebook brilliance and never realizing they are not doing anything at all.

  It's time for us to find that little kid, who in all innocence can point out the obvious, and force the publishing industry to refocus on what really matters.

  I am, of course, referring to he mass-deception of the Amazon Kindle, The B&N Nook, The Kobo Reader, and worse, the Apple iBook + iBook Author. All of which is a deception designed to cheat the emperor (the publishers and authors) into thinking he is getting a new suit a clothes.

  ePub

  In the ebook industry, the most popular format today is ePub, but what do you think ePub really is? Is it a special ingenious format designed to create an entirely new form of publishing? No, not even close!

  Try this: If you are a Baekdal Plus subscriber, download one of my books and open it in the excellent ePub editor Sigil (it's free). It will show you exactly what's inside an ePub file. You will probably be surprised to find that it is simply a watered down version of XHTML. The type of HTML we used before HTML5.

  Here is a screenshot:

  

  As you can see, an ePub file is actually just a website with HTML pages, a folder for images and a normal CSS stylesheet. Which means that every single ebook that you have been reading so far is, in reality, just a bunch of web pages.

  What this also means is that every eReader you use, the Kindle, iBooks, Nook, Kobo and all the others are, in reality, just watered-down web browsers.

  So let me ask you this. If ePub is really just a web page, why do you accept that every book you bought in Apple's iBooksstore can only be read on the iPad - using iBooks?

  What Apple is doing is to take standard XHTML, wrap it into an ePub file, add some proprietary code that locks it down so that it can only be read in one app (iBooks) and on one device (iPad). And then, once they have assumed complete control over your HTML file, they require that you pay them 30% of your revenue.

  

  This is the reality of the ebook industry today, and it is the same with the Kindle, Nook and all the other ebook readers.

  When Apple presented iBooks, with its fancy page-curl effect, what they actually presented was a watered down web browser, designed to render XHTML files. The only difference is that instead of showing a scrollbar, they added this fancy page curl effect. But the result is the same, when you move from one page to the next, all you really do is scroll down the HTML page within the ePub file.

  Apple created a simple web browser but presented it to you as something completely new and spectacular. And every publisher, like the Emperor before them, was so impressed by this "new clothes" that they accepted to give Apple full control and 30% of their profit.

  And you, as a reader, are now forced into buying Apple's devices - and if you one day decide to buy something else, you will lose all your books. Books, that are just HTML pages saved into a single file. Take those extra elements away and you can use the exact same output in any browser, on any device, anywhere! It just the web.

  

  Rich Media eBooks

  The new development is that authors and publishers have started to want more. The "Emperor's clothes" wasn't fancy enough, so they wanted something smarter. They call it Rich Media eBooks and the idea is that books should be able to include amazing new things like videos, slide shows, interactive maps, and buttons that you can push.

  This, of course, is quite odd considering that ePub is still just XHTML and is therefore already fully capable of all those things. We have been using videos and interactivity in HTML for the past 15 years on the web, so why can't we do the same in ePub, which are also just HTML?

  The answer, of course, is that we are dealing with people with a print mentality. When they created the ebook, they didn't like this "web thingy". And while they used web technologies, they did everything in their powers to limit ebooks to the state of print. As such, you can only do text and images and everything has to conform to a preset print-page template.

  It's not that the ePub format cannot do it. The reason why we have this limitation is because the ebook providers didn't want us to do it. If everyone realized that ebooks was just HTML, we would demand a much more open market. Why would we allow companies to lock down web pages into a proprietary format? Doesn't that go against everything we believe in?

  To "fix" this, Amazon is now coming out with a new ebook format. It is called Kindle Format 8. And as Amazon puts it, it's pretty amazing:

  We want to make sure everyone knows about Kindle Format 8 (KF8), the new format for Kindle, which allows you to take advantage of highlighting, colored text, text wrapped around images, bulleted lists, tables, and more!

  Uhhh ...it's almost like the web in 1997. Isn't it amazing? Colored text? Not just black ...but in color! Real shiny colors!

  How stupid do they think we are? If this is not another case of "The Emperor's New Clothes" I don't know what is.

  What do you think Kindle Format 8 really is? Unlike ePub which is based on a watered-down version of XHTML+CSS, Kindle Format 8 is ...dramatic pause ...a watered-down version of HTML5+CSS3, saved into a proprietary Kindle file format that limits the book to Kindle devices only.

  

  Sure, that is a lot better than ePub, but why would any publisher do this when they could just as easily keep their books in HTML5 and have them work anywhere?

  Then yesterday, Apple came out with the new iBooks 2 and the free iBooks Author app. With it, they say, you can create stunning new rich media books. And sure, the app is very well made, and the books look amazing. But what do you think the iBook Author is really doing?

  Yes, it too is just creating HTML5+CSS3, which is then saved in an iBook format so that you can only read it on the iPad. The iBooks Author app is in reality just a WYSIWYG HTML5 editor!

  Note: Although Apple is creating a weird nonstandard version of HTML5+CSS3 - again in an attempt to lock you in. While it is based on HTML5, you cannot open the HTML files created by iBooks in a browser.

  Not only that, but Apple has decided to press their luck in cheating the publishing emperors, by adding a "terms of use" that states:

  If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a Work), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.

  Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

  Not only is Apple taking your HTML5 created book, limiting it to their platform, restricting it to be sold only via Apple (for a 30% cut). They might also decide not to allow you to publish it at all. Your only other option then is to export the book as PDF and give it away for free (thus destroying the whole point of using their app.

  This is a scam! There is no other word for it.

  Note: Also read, "ZDNet: Apple's mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement."

  What's pissing me off about this is not that Apple, Amazon and the others are creating apps and tools for their customers, nor that they try to get you to only buy from them. That's just business.

  What's pissing me off is that they are taking the web (HTML5), watering it down to what we had 5-10 years ago, presenting it as "the next big thing", while at the same time saying that publishers can't use HTML5 because it isn't good enough.

  You already have the tools you need to create great books. It is called HTML5. You already have all the eReaders you need. They are called browsers (+ offline browsing). And the combination of the two can be used on any device, anywhere, using any payment system, store or distribution channel.

  It is time for that little innocent kid to yell out:

  Publishers, when you buy into this hoax called ebooks, you are not wearing any clothes.

  

  Note: Screenshot from from Happy Reading's "The Emperor's New Clothes".

  Coming up (in about two weeks): The amazing future of ebooks - beyond print.

  
  

  
  

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• The Super-Connected Life - A Simple Example - (by @baekdal)
  

  Two of the things that I admire most about the world live in today: First, that we have managed to break down the walls of the physical world enabled us to connect freely with anyone, anywhere, using any channel, in any way. It's just amazing what we can do today. In my line of work, I rarely speak with people in the same country that I live in, but I have continual conversation with people from all over the planet.

  The other thing that amazes me is that not only are we connected but we asynchronously connected across so many different channels - most of which are coming from places we never expected. It's the metaverse, once thought up in a book as a science fiction virtual reality, now being brought to life as a "real" wold connection.

  It's just boggles your mind.

  Here is one simple example. Today, in Denmark, the government finalized the 2012 Budget. And on TV (which I watched online) we could see the politicians and ministers as they voted. At the end of it, one of the ministers suddenly took out her iPhone and snapped a picture of something.

  

  A few minutes later, we could see exactly what that picture looked like on her Twitter profile:

  

  I know this is just a simple example, and that you and I are doing this every day. But think of the implications of this. Sharing used to be a form of publishing. Something that was done from a sender to a receiver.

  Today, sharing has no destination. Individual channels intermingle without a predefined purpose or a specific destination. It's like air. It's coming from anywhere. Nobody planned to make this connection. It just happened naturally because we now share, naturally.

  This is the real future of social ...and we are still only just beginning to see the shift. The real social revolution has yet to come.

  
  

  
  

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• What People Say About Baekdal Plus - (by @baekdal)
  

  The past two weeks have been absolutely wonderful. I asked for your help to get 600 more subscribers, and while there is still a long way to go (we are at 15%), many of my existing subscribers tweeted the most wonderful things to support Baekdal Plus.

  Here are 20 examples and there are more out there.

  The first example is this one from Per Hkansson, and I absolutely love it. With just one sentence he managed to define my entire purpose, "One man's quest for what matters!"

  

  Another great tweet was this one from Avinash Kaushik. Avinash wrote the most wonderful post about Baekdal Plus I have ever seen. If you don't know who Avinash is, you should check his blog where he publishes some of the best posts online about analytic strategy.

  

  Other tweets from very generous people include these:

  

  And finally, Marta posted this very simple but wonderful tweet. A tweet like that can make you smile all day :)

  

  Thank you all, including those that I didn't include here. You are the ones who make it all worthwhile!

  And if you are not a subscriber, take a look at some the Plus articles, like "The Future of Active Advertising", "The Real Mobile Shift - for Publishers" (or brands) and many others. Sign-up for a free trial, and if it is valuable to you, subscribe for just $5/month!

  
  

  
  

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• How To Really Stop SOPA/PIPA - (by @baekdal)
  

  Today is apparently the day where many sites will go dark in protest over SOPA and PIPA, the two very invasive anti-piracy laws, which will cause a lot of damage if turned into law.

  Literally, any site that allows people to engage with it (i.e. every single site on the planet) will have to prescreen and actively monitor every single post a user makes, otherwise their site might be censored. One example is Facebook, just imagine if Facebook had to monitor every single post before it was posted. That would require an army of employees, which would cause them to go bankrupt in a second. The amount of information posted online has far exceeded any level of possible manual oversight. Even today, when the law isn't in place, many startups have been forced to closed down because the constant amount of DMCA take-down notices proved too expensive to manage.

  But there is another and much bigger issue at play here, one that none has been discussing so far. Would you allow employees of Facebook to manually read every one of your private and personal status updates? Would you allow employees of Google, to look over your shoulder every time you use one of their services?

  The privacy concerns of SOPA are enormous because it will literally mean that you will never be able to use any service online without having someone observe every move you make.

  There is no question about it. We need to stop SOPA and PIPA.

  The problem, however, is that we are doing it the wrong way. The copyright holder's argument is simple. Piracy is a huge problem as millions of sites are giving people the means to download their content without paying.

  And it is extremely easy for the RIAA or the MPAA to prove their point. All your need to do is to visit Google, search for ...say ..."Cars 2" brrip and you will find 21,400,000 sites that either host or link to a ripped Blue-Ray version of Pixar's latest movie. And many of these sites are dedicated to the sole purpose of facilitating piracy.

  

  It is the same on YouTube ...If you want to see an episode of "The Penquins of Madagascar" all you need to do is to search for it. Dreamworks Animation can then see that many of the videos have been viewed several thousand times--some even getting close to half a million views. Which means that the video's are viewed more times on YouTube than when they license the same videos to a TV network. MPAA argues that this is a big problem for them (and it is), and they have plenty of evidence to prove their case to the US Senators.

  

  On the other hand, we, in the tech world, know that this is not how the world works. We know that even if we managed to successfully stop content from being posted to YouTube, Dreamworks would not suddenly get half a million extra customers per video. We know that piracy, in some cases, helps content to grow, and we argue that piracy is merely a reaction to the copyright holders restricting their content. If people want to view it on YouTube, why do they still focus their business model on TV networks? Why do they not sell it directly to people wherever they are?

  The tech industry's argument is then that we should allow piracy to happen, because there is nothing we can do about it anyway.

  Imagine then that you are a US Senator, and you are being presented with these two arguments. On one side, you have the copyright holders who can point to 21 million websites facilitating copyright theft, and piracy view-rates exceeding most licensing agreements. On the other hand, you have the tech industry, saying that people should be allowed to steal, because of some vague opinion that it might not be such a bad thing ...or at least not that bad ...or at least not entirely good.

  What decision to you think a US Senator would come to? If I where a US Senator, with no clue about the internet, I would vote for SOPA. I would be stupid not to. We cannot have an internet where people can just steal other people's content. Of course we need to block those 21 million sites. They are engaging in unlawful activity and do not deserve to be protected. And if those sites hide in foreign countries, we need to have the ability to stop them from harming US businesses. This is what a US Senator must do. Protect America from foreign corruption. It is the patriotic things to do!

  So, today, many sites will censor themselves to protest against SOPA and PIPA ...which will have absolutely zero effect on the US Senators. All you do is to prove the copyright holder's case, and you annoy your readers.

  As John C. Dvorak wrote:

  Wikipedia's protest and other blackouts will not solve anything. They are a total inconvenience to users who may want to use the service. What is accomplished? People will get mad at Wikipedia rather than mad at the specific Congressmen who promoted these bills.

  Others encourage people to sign petitions and call the politicians, but we are using the same vague "opinions" as the tech industry, and as such, you are only confirming that there is indeed a big problem online. Not only is piracy a huge problem, but, apparently, many people even believe they have a right to it.

  Other people, like John C. Dvorak, argues that the real solution is to start a campaign directed against the Senators themselves, so that they will lose the next election. That is actually a pretty good idea, but it is not likely to work because SOPA will be turned into law before the next election.

  The only solution is to *prove* that the copyright holder's "evidence" is flawed. That, if piracy where to disappear, it would not provide these companies with tons of money, nor will it reignite their traditional business models.

  If we can prove that the copyright holder's claims of billions in lost sale isn't true, it will be very easy to also prove that the cost associated with any law censoring the internet would cause extreme economic harm to US businesses.

  How do we do that ...well, it's simple: We stop pirating and stop buying from companies that restrict. That is the only way we can come up with good enough counterargument to prove that SOPA is bad.

  Think what would happen if everyone where to stop pirating for the next 6 months:

  1. The millions of sites dedicated to pirated content will all go out of business, as they would no longer have any ad income. The positive effect of that is that when you search for a movie, Google Search would no longer be filled with thousands of irrelevant results.
  2. Running a startup would suddenly be a lot cheaper, because you would no longer have to hire as many layers, nor an army of employees whose only job it is to remove copyright-infringing content. You could instead focus solely on building great services and not spend all your time trying to stop people from misusing what you already made.
  3. Publishers would no longer have to be concerned about monitoring what people post, nor that linking to another site might get them into legal trouble.
  4. People's right to privacy would be secured, because when there is no need to monitor what you post, you can assume complete control over how public you want to be.
  5. Sites like Dropbox no longer have to build backdoors into their encryption system and thus dangerously jeopardizing the security of their services.
  6. We could abolish the misguided DMCA.

  For copyright holders, the non-piracy world would be a bit different:

  1. Copyright holders will suddenly realize that just because there isn't any privacy, people are still moving away from their traditional business models. Focusing on selling discs, cable TV, and other archaic forms of media are not suddenly going to go back to "the good old days of 1982".
  2. People would be very annoyed when a copyright holder decides to restrict content, so much, in fact, that it will threaten their entire business. Today, because of piracy, most people simply ignore bad business practices. But if piracy where to go away, those old geezers insisting that a new movie first has to be released on DVD before it, two months later, is available on Netflix, would experience an immediate and catastrophic social media backlash.
  3. Copyright holders would have no choice than to change and adapt to the digitally connected world, and start selling their product where people are (including partnering with Google TV and putting their content on YouTube). Today, they are avoiding this change, because they can use piracy as an excuse for sticking with the status quo. The blame their drop in sale on pirated content, but if piracy where to go away that excuse would no longer work.
  4. Copyright holders will also experience a sudden and massive drop in exposure, which will cause a drop in sale. Instead of making more money from the absence of piracy, they will lose money and will be forced to increase their advertising budgets to make up for it (which won't work).
  5. The RIAA and the MPAA would get fired, because the copyright holders will suddenly realize how a gigantic waste of money those two organizations really are.

  And, of course, for the people ...well, things might be frustrating for a while:

  1. Until the copyright holders learn their lesson, people will have to stop consuming those millions of songs, movies, books and games that they are today pirating on a daily basis.
  2. People would have to say no to buying a product from companies that restrict. This will be hard ...very hard.
  3. The upside of this is that people will start to look to other sources of content. If the traditional content providers restrict our way of life, instead of just pirating the content, we would have to turn to the independent providers, the podcasters, the self-publishing authors, the indie-artists and game creators. The result being that "the shift" we are experiencing today will accelerate, further disrupting the old world of media and drastically enhancing the economic potential of the new.

  That's it. If we want to stop SOPA and PIPA, the best thing we could possible do is to stop pirating. It would punish the traditional copyright holders and force them to change. It would reward the people in the digital world. We would have a much better economic foundation that encourages innovation. And, startups would be able to focus on what really matters instead of legal issues and privacy invasive monitoring.

  Piracy is not a technical problem - it is a cultural problem. It is actually hurting new media far more than the old media. We need to change that culture.

  
  

  
  

  
  

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• Debunking The Unique Visitor: Finding Your Real Readers - (by @baekdal)
  

  If you are publisher of content online, either as a newspaper, magazine or just a brand publishing a blog, you are likely to look at two measurements above any other. Those are "absolute unique visitors" and most popular content based on "unique page views."

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

  
  

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• Cut Cost By Changing and Focusing - (by @baekdal)
  

  Perhaps the most critical decision brands and publishers needs to make in 2012 is to cut cost. The reason is simple. The economics of the digital world demands a very different approach to operating your business.

  In "The Non-Future of Advertising" I explained how the cost of running GigaOm is only 5% of the cost of running the New York Times - per employee. There is a big digital divide between the cost of the old and the cost of the new.

  Sadly, most managers in big established companies (the ones who need to cut cost the most) seem to have no idea how to cut cost in a meaningful way. We see the news headlines every day: "Company x is laying off 1,500 employees to slim down their business." But the way they do it is all wrong.

  Imagine you have a big company with 11 different divisions, but revenue is dropping, cost is sky-rocketing, and your overall market share is in decline (sounds like Kodak doesn't it?)

  The CEO calls a meeting with all the division heads and tells them that, "In these economic times, we need to cut cost to keep up our margins. We have looked at each division, and the two smallest, the ones who are not contributing that much to the overall picture, will be closed and the employees will be fired. Adding to that, we are going to cut all the other divisions by 15% and not allow any new investments or budget increases for the rest of the year. "

  Sounds familiar?

  

  This was how most big companies chose to cut cost in 2011. And all the companies who did this are still in trouble.

  The problem is simple. Nobody is going to buy your products because you cut 15% of your employees. Companies who did this never actually changed anything. They are still making the same average products for average people, and each division is limping along with the same old strategy.

  The only real difference is that the employees are told to "work harder", but with 15% fewer resources available for them. Somehow, many managers believe this is doable, but when you ask an already overworked employee to "work harder", they get stressed. And stressed-out employees are the most demotivated unproductive employees you can have.

  As Scott McKain wrote:

  Chopping your training budget, slashing R&D, and cutting back on your marketing may cause you to be more profitable in the short term. However, it's impossible to consider that approach as a long-term strategy for growth and distinction.

  The option is not to spend more money, you are already spending far more than you should. You need to cut cost, but you need to be smart about it. Instead of looking at the profit margins for the past quarter, you need to look at the trend curves for the past 5-10 years.

  

  What you will likely find is that you have three different markets. You have a traditional market which has been in decline for the past 10 years - a decline that is now accelerating. This is bad, because it is your main source of revenue.

  Then you have a range of basic products that are also in decline, but not by much. And then you have the emerging market that, while nowhere near the revenue level of the traditional market, is what all the trend curves are telling you to focus on.

  So what should you do?

  First of all, you need to put your traditional market on automatic life-support. You still need to keep it around as it generates a lot of revenue, but you want to cut its resources to the bare minimum. Accept that it's dying, don't try to save it. Just let it die a natural death, and get rid of the excessive cost associated with it.

  

  For your basic products, you need to cut cost by optimizing your workflows. Don't just fire employees and ask the rest to "work harder" ...do real work, and figure out how to make the process more efficient.

  The big change, of course, is what you need to do with your emerging markets. It's absolutely idiotic if you decide to cut cost in those divisions that are responsible for your future. You need to give them the abilities and resources to grow. You need to add people to your new areas of business, not cut them.

  Also notice that the division that is closed in the "smart cut" is different from the two before. As I wrote in the article "Failure at 10%": If you want to be a race driver, you cannot just show up in your regular car, thinking: "I will try it first with my regular car, and then if I win I will go out and invest in a real race car!"

  You need to take a risk if you want to grow. And you need to focus your risk on the markets favored by the long-term trends. BTW: Social media and digital are both long-term trends.

  Don't drop new markets just because they are small. But if a trend curve is telling you that a new market is going to flop, drop it.

  The point is that, in 2012, a key element to success is going to be how good you are at optimizing your business and aggressively cut cost. There is no way around that. The new digitally connected world is based on a completely different level of economics. But the key to success is the way you do it.

  And BTW: This is true for everyone. Even artists have to share the same guitar, but that doesn't mean they cannot do amazing things - as "Walk Off the Earth" demonstrates brilliantly:

  Of course, this might be taking things to the extremes :)

  
  

  
  

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• I Need Your Help - (by @baekdal)
  

  Since we live in a world of transparency, I'm going to be upfront with you about Baekdal Plus. I'm not making enough money to cover the cost, and it is causing me many sleepless nights.

  I need your help to get 600 475 extra subscribers!

  UPDATE: Read what people say about Baekdal Plus.

  Don't get me wrong. I have no plans to stop doing what I do. If I have to go broke and live in a camper van somewhere, I would still do it. This is what I'm good at. This is my purpose!

  And almost every day, I receive comments or emails from Plus subscribers saying how great Baekdal Plus is. The Plus articles are statistically the most liked content of all. I know this because I'm measuring readers and sentiments instead of unique visitors and page views. The Plus content is always at the top in terms of read-rate, and the sharing rate is much higher than with the free content.

  Creating these Plus reports for you is the best thing I have ever done content-wise. Sure it attracts less traffic because it is behind a paygate, but the value is so much higher. In March 2011, Baekdal Plus exceeded my advertising income.

  However, Baekdal Plus has now been in operation for a year, but I'm still running at a loss ...and my cash reserves are running low.

  You might ask, how did I make a living in 2011? The answer is that I didn't. I lost money every single month, except one. Before launching Baekdal Plus I had a regular 9-5 job and I had been saving up to buy a house. I have always been an entrepreneur by heart, so one day I looked at myself in the mirror and asked, "What would I rather do? Continue having a 9-5 job making average products for average people ...or risk it all, including my savings, to do something that really matters! Not just for me, but also for you."

  To me this is not really a question. I don't know how to do an average job. I can't have a job just to have a job. I want to create something for you, and I want that it to be based on value and a purpose. Taking a risk and creating Baekdal Plus was the right thing to do.

  And it is going well. This is the graph for subscribers to Baekdal Plus.

  

  As you can see, it has been steadily growing all year, and cancellations are miniscule. Almost all the people who decide to subscribe also stick around afterwards. This, to me, indicates that I'm doing the right thing.

  The problem is the green bar. It is very hard to convince people to convert into subscribers. People are used to thinking that everything should be free on the web, and it takes a lot of effort to change that culture.

  The fact is that if I extrapolate this graph into the future, I will run our of money before I reach my goal - and that just frustrates the hell out of me.

  

  I know of nothing worse than to see a graph indicating that I'm doing the right thing, but I cannot make it to the end. It is like being a race driver and you are well on your way to winning the championship, but then you realize that you don't have enough money to cover the cost of the last pitstop.

  So ...I need your help.

  It isn't much. I just need 600 475 more subscribers. That's it. If I had that, everything would be fine.

  UPDATE: Read what people say about Baekdal Plus.

  ---

  3 ways you can help out

  1: New readers, welcome!

  If you are new to this site, have a look around. Take a look at "One Year of Baekdal Plus: What did you get?" to see what it is all about. And sign-up for a free trial.

  To get you started, here is my latest Plus report about changing passive advertising into a direct sale.

  2: Existing readers, come on board!

  If you are already a reader, but you just haven't decided to subscribe yet, please subscribe. It is not expensive. Baekdal Plus is just $5 a month ...it's like a cup of coffee.

  I don't care about the money. I just care about not going broke.

  Be a subscriber. It's worth it!

  3: Subscribers, share!

  If you are already a subscriber, thank you very much! But please tell your friends and colleagues to get a subscription as well.

  And share the content. Sharing is really important! And as you know all Plus reports are fully sharable for subscribers. There are no restrictions, not "walls", just open sharing. It is really important that you share, because that is ultimately what leads to new subscribers.

  Encourage those you know to subscribe!

  ---

  Thank you! /Thomas

  
  

  
  

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• R.I.P. Kodak - (by @baekdal)
  

  Kodak has filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, not that it comes as a surprise to anyone. However, It is sad. Kodak was one of the good guys. It was a company that connected people, that brought us closer together and formed one of the first asynchronous social connections.

  

  Kodak allowed us to capture a moment of our lives, save it for later use, and send it to a friend. All long before the digital age of Instagram and Facebook, and Kodak was the one who started it.

  You push the button, we do the rest. George Eastman

  Seeing a company like Kodak fail is sad. It shouldn't be this way, but, unfortunately, that is what happens when you refuse to let go of the old before you embrace the new. Now it is too late for them. There is no way for them to come back, because they no longer have any momentum. And their managers are no longer in the business of being great, they are only in the business of being in business.

  

  Their plan now to give them time to sell off about 1,100 patents. But we have to ask, "then what?" They have no plan for the future. Selling patents might give them a bit more money to pay the bills, but it doesn't change anything. It is like peeing in your pants on a cold winter night. For a few seconds you get warmth, but then you freeze to death.

  The only business Kodak has now is their inkjet printer business, which isn't going well. Not to mention that this business is also out-of-date. Nobody is going to need an inkjet printer in 3 years. Everyone is online. Everyone is connected.

  The future for Kodak was to change their business from making films and move into the field of making lenses, SSD storage chips, or even become a smartphone developer. Kodak could have been the company who made the iPhone.

  

  Kodak did have a small innovative period developing digital cameras, but like so many other big companies, they refused to let it interfere with their existing business models. They refused to let the old world die to build the new.

  The problem is that Kodak made the same mistake as every other big company with a successful product. They became complacent, and when the trend curves started to change, they refused to look at the new. Instead they excused the new world with "it isn't that big".

  

  But then came the exponential growth of the new and when that happened it was all over. You have to innovate before the new trends take off - not after.

  From that point, Kodak was a laggard. A company whose only reason for staying in business, was to stay in business.

  In May 1995, as Kodak was loosing market share to Fuji films, Kodak filed a petition with the World Trade Organization arguing that its poor performance in the Japanese market was a direct result of unfair practices adopted by Fuji. However on January 30, 1998, the WTO rejected Kodak's complaints.

  In 2011, their main business strategy was to prevent other companies from moving forward, by focusing on patent lawsuits.

  As the Wall Street Journal wrote:

  Kodak has lost money each year but one since Mr. Perez, who previously headed the printer business at Hewlett-Packard Co., took over in 2005. The company's problems came to a head in 2011, as Mr. Perez's strategy of using patent lawsuits and licensing deals to raise cash ran dry.

  Even the very idea of hiring a "printer guy" in 2005 illustrates just how out of touch with reality Kodak was.

  There is no question that Kodak deserves to go bankrupt. They are nothing but a distraction, not worthy of anyone's time or money. And their managers deserve to be out of a job. They took a great company, stopped embracing the spirit of George Eastman, and let it rot.

  I think we all remember the great Madmen episode about the Kodak Carousel. That was what Kodak used to be about.

  Goodbye Kodak. You brought joy into our lives until your managers forgot to ask "why". It was nice knowing you.

  
  

  
  

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• The Future of Active Advertising - (by @baekdal)
  

  Just before Christmas I posted an analysis of the future of advertising. In it you can read how print advertising has already disappeared, and that digital advertising is not much better. With more and more sources, even if the overall advertising market grows, the ad revenue for each publisher is going to decline.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

  
  

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• Focus on Relevant Insights in 2012 - (by @baekdal)
  

  One thing I didn't like about 2011 was the drop in quality of good insightful surveys and studies. Like all the infographic, most surveys seemed to have been made primarily to attract page views and not to tell you anything useful.

  Here is one example:

  Arbitron and Edison Research looked at the ethnic composition of people using Twitter in the US and released this graph, and you might think this is interesting to see that Twitter is so diverse.

  

  But then you have to ask, what is the ethnic composition of the US population? And when you look that up, you get something like the graph below. Suddenly you find that the ethnic composition of Twitter's user in the US is pretty much the same as the ethnic composition of USA as a country.

  

  ...or to put it in another way, this study revealed nothing. The slight difference in numbers could easily be explained by statistical insignificance and difference in survey groups. What they found was that people in the US use Twitter.

  It is just a waste of time.

  And you have to ask yourself, why did they even ask this question? Black people don't decide to use Twitter because they are black, just as white people don't decide to use Twitter because they are white. You use the tools your friends and influencers use. Social media use is not caused by race. The color of your skin or the birthplace of your great-great-grandfather is completely irrelevant.

  If you are brand why even focus on this? You should spend your time more wisely and focus on where your customers are - whoever they are.

  Here is another one, from the same study:

  

  What they found was the Facebook is bigger than the other social networks, and since people are doing pretty much the same thing everywhere, Facebook is, overall, a bigger influencer. We knew that already, they didn't find anything new.

  And, you can't look at social networks as a whole, because that is like surveying what power company people use (surprise, people dominantly use the dominant provider). You have to look at specific elements. For instance: Is the purchasing power higher per follower on Facebook vs. Twitter ...and why is that?

  Oh ...and the biggest influencer is not Facebook, it is "None". Because the whole question is quite strange. Facebook is a platform. Your actual influence is not caused by Facebook. It is caused by what people do on it.

  In 2011 we saw a ton of studies like these. They were filled with data but with little or no value. Studies that look at a narrow area of new media, attributing significance to what they specifically measured with complete disregard to other factors that heavily influence the numbers (like with the ethnic composition graph).

  I predict this phenomenon will continue and even grow in 2012, because it is a great way to create link-baiting while, at the same time, make something that appears important.

  But the deal I want to make with you today is simple this:

  Let us focus in 2012 on data that really matters. Stop wasting your time on studies that tell that the Earth is round and rotating. Focus on studies that provide real value. Studies that identify real change, and focus on relevance.

  2012 is going to be the year of noise (we cannot change that because too many people are focusing on page views and short-term exposure).

  But let's make a pact between you and me and make it the year of relevance.

  
  

  
  

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• Merry Christmas Everyone - (by @baekdal)
  

  2011 is now almost over, and what an intense year. Two books, a ton of articles, helping several companies refine their new media strategies...and quite a lot of new trends to analyze.

  But now it's Christmas, so lets put all that aside for a couple of days and just relax. Here is a little something to get you into the right Christmas spirit:

  This first video is a great John Lewis ad:

  This second video is for those who are stressed out by everything Christmas, being over worked, continual financial turmoil and all the other things that can keep you on-edge. You need to disconnect. Go to a place where none of that matters.

  I did this a couple of days ago and made this video:

  And if you are still not ready for Christmas, these deers will certainly do it. I recorded it back in 2009, but worth repeating.

  Merry Christmas Everyone!

  /Thomas

  
  

  
  

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• The Non-Future of Advertising - (by @baekdal)
  

  There is an ongoing discussion about the future of advertising. On one hand we have print advertising, which is in decline - in some places drastically. Many newspaper executives apparently believe the "worst is over" and that while it will continue to decline for 2-3 more years, it will eventually stabilize.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

  
  

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• Google Translate is Changing Sources - (by @baekdal)
  

  I came across something quite odd today. Earlier I shared a quote from an article from a Danish media site about the degrading relevance of news.

  The number of news articles has more than doubled in 10 years, while the proportion of the population who cannot identify a single relevant news within the past 24 hours has increased from approximately one quarter to almost half.

  I then, as I always do, also wanted to link to the story, but since it was a Danish story I wanted to share a translated version. No problem, you think, just point people to Google Translate, right?

  But then this happened:

  The Original article:

  

  Roughly translated it says:

  "I think we will look back on 2011 as the year when journalism triumphed itself to death," he told Jyllands-Posten, adding:

  Jyllands-Posten being one of the largest national newspapers in Denmark.

  But here is the translated version:

  

  Google Translate changed the source from "Jyllands-Posten" to "CNN".

  Now, I'm sure this is not intentional. I don't think Google is favoring CNN to the point where they would credit them for a story they have no part in. But it illustrates a potential problem with automatic services.

  Google Translate doesn't actually translate each individual words. It looks at word patterns, matching those with similar word patterns in another language. What has probably happened here is that the common phrase referencing Jyllands-Posten in Danish, is, in that sentence pattern, a similar common phrase referencing CNN in English, hence the change.

  It is one thing to translate the words, but when you change the places, things or the companies it can lead to all kinds of problems. Imagine Google Translate changing Obama to Sarkozy when translating a document about an important international issue.

  The real lesson, of course, is always to check the original (which is often easier said than done).

  
  

  
  

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• Pricing: Music vs. ebooks - (by @baekdal)
  

  One argument I hear all the time that ebooks should be priced the same as music and also be part of streaming services like Spotify or Netflix (just for books). I agree. I think it would be great if that happened.

  There is just one tiny catch most people don't seem to get. What should that price be? People think the price, for an ebook, should be 99 cents, just like a song. But wait a minute, that's not how artists sell their music. Here is how they do it.

  An artist creates an album, sells each song for $1.29, and the full album for $12.99.

  

  As an author, I would be perfectly happy to do the same. That is, sell you each chapter of my books for $1.29 and the full book for $12.99. It makes sense right? Then we, as authors, would sell our content the same way as the music industry.

  Unlike artists, authors don't have two revenue streams.

  Another problem with comparing music to ebooks is that artists have two revenue streams. One is the music that you buy (or subscribe to), the other, and much more profitable, are the concerts and other performances.

  As such, artists can afford to price each song at a low price, because the money comes in via their other venues. One product, two revenue streams - each supporting the other.

  Authors only have one revenue stream. As an author, I cannot create live performances. Nobody wants to sit around listening to an author read a book aloud for 18 hours. So, as an author, I have to get the full return of investment from the book sale itself.

  Note: Granted, here on Baekdal.com, my books are just a part of Baekdal Plus. Like Spotify I offer a subscription, and people can read whatever they like (whenever they like to). Even so, the point is still that each piece of content has to cover the cost of making it.

  There is a lot of room for improvement in the book industry. The ebook format itself is completely out of date with our connected society. But, the price is not one of the factors. Sure, it's stupid when publishers charge more for ebooks then the printed ones, but this constant discussion about price is distracting both you, as a reader, and us, as authors, from creating new and better books, new and better formats, and new and better ways to tell a story.

  
  

  
  

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• The Real Mobile Shift - For Brands - (by @baekdal)
  

  Last week, I published the article "The Real Mobile Shift - For Publishers" and it is all about what mobile means for content. If you are a publisher or a brand working with content marketing, you should read that first.

  Baekdal Plus: Read the rest of this article in Baekdal Plus

  
  

  
  

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• One Year of Baekdal Plus: What Did You Get? - (by @baekdal)
  

  Baekdal Plus has now been running for one full year, and this gives us a good opportunity to look back. What did you get for those $49 a subscription costs?

  I planned to write what amounted to one report per week (one report is between 10-15 pages), but as it turned out I exceed that by about 20%. The first year of Baekdal Plus amounted to this:

  The books

  First of all, there were the two books:

  The Shift: From print to digital...and beyond

  

  The story about the real shift that is happening in the world of new media. How it is not about the format, but instead a struggle for control between the creators, the publishers, and the readers. It is a struggle for freedom to publish for everyone, and what that shift means for all involved.

  - Download now

  The Future of Social Commerce

  

  A story about what it really means to create a social shop. That it is not to create a tab on Facebook, in which you display your "catalog". It is about connecting the shopping experience to people's content streams.

  - Download now

  Both books are free to download for all Plus subscribers.

  The reports

  Apart from the books, you could also read 42 reports about publishing and new media. Every report is focused around the shift in media that we see all around us.

  Each report is between 10-15 pages long and is written with you in mind. It's not generalized "mass-market" content. It is content that *you* can use and content that impacts *your* life. That is two very important elements of Baekdal Plus.

  

  Note: A Baekdal Plus report is coming about the four pillars of value you see illustrated above.

  Baekdal Plus is divided up into two main focus areas.

  For publishers and for brands focusing on content marketing

  • The Real Mobile Shift - For Publishers
  • The Complete Guide to Linking, Embedding, Crediting and Aggregating
  • Self-publishing is Great, but...
  • Dissecting a Print Magazine
  • The Future of Analytics for Publishers
  • Newspapers, Don't Shoot Yourself in the Foot
  • Identifying Your Real Readers, Not Just Traffic
  • Give Your Articles a Life
  • iPad Usage Behaviors - Think Future Trends
  • Publishers, You Need a DRM
  • Social Annihilates Page Views, So What?
  • News Is About News, Not Articles
  • Blogs, Newspapers, and Magazines vs. Social Media
  • How To Survive In A World of Abundance
  • The Rights of People
  • The Future of News And The Replicators
  • Converting Traffic to Subscribers
  • The New World of Sources, Channels, and Destinations
  • The Day Advertising Died
  • Use the Cloud, Luke!
  • Forget The Paywalls Build Shareable Paygates
  • The Real Challenge of TV's Future
  • The Digital Renting Business is Fundamentally Flawed
  • Content is not a Loss Leader
  • The Digital Content Business Model
  • Debunking The Digital Magazine

  For brands and publishers focusing on new media

  • Beyond Facebook Analytics, The Guide
  • The 2012 Marketing Budget Guide
  • How to Get *True* Followers, and not just fans
  • Social is About Creating Value Over Time
  • Where Are People Really on Facebook?
  • Social vs. Time vs. Buying
  • Google+ Circles Need To Be Turned Upside Down
  • No, You Do Not Need A Social Media Policy
  • Strategy Guide: The New Media Press Center
  • Social Culture vs. Crossposting Messages
  • Facebook Deemphasizing Twitter and Brands
  • Social commerce and the new store fronts
  • Forget Bounce Rates, focus on Conversions
  • The Return of Investment of Social Media
  • The Future of Marketing Budgets
  • How Trends Are Made The Macro Trends and Mobile Payments
  • How To Create a Social Media Release Plan

  The interesting thing about all this is that the value of Baekdal Plus is going up every day. Those who subscribed a year ago had to trust that I would produce the content they needed. But if you subscribe today, you get all of the above + all the content of the future.

  Free content

  On top of all of this, you can also read the 131 articles published for free on Baekdal.com (popular articles highlighted below):

  • Apple Never Designed the iPad - They Undesigned it
  • Kids Should Have Mobile Phones
  • Reaching Social Media Maturity
  • When News Sites Fail Spectacularly
  • Failure at 10%
  • "Stop Online Piracy Act" is Stupid, But so are the Arguments Against It
  • Social Computing, Interview and story
  • The Shift and The Struggle For Control
  • Google+ Pages: Start With 50 Posts
  • Busted: The 99 Cents Book Failed Miserably
  • Debunking The New York Times Interactive Mirror
  • Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere
  • Microsoft's Future Productivity Vision 2011
  • I Would Rather Have Bacon Than Klout
  • Why You Savor The Printed Newspaper
  • You Are Not Smart, According To The Newspapers
  • Buy The Right Tickets to Success
  • HP and Conde Nast in a Parallel Universe
  • People Don't Care About Your Competitors
  • Shopping Inconveniences And Why People Pay
  • Print to Digital Is Not A Two-way Street
  • The Apple Live Stream Conundrum
  • Think Better, not Think Different
  • Social is More Than Your Brand
  • It's a Magical Life
  • No, Netflix Got it Right
  • How Big is The Blogosphere?
  • Near-Future Trends for 2012
  • Infinite Choices and a World Abundance vs. Supply and Demand
  • The Myth of the 99 Cent Book
  • Google Circles Still Not Working
  • The Community Manager Disconnect
  • Tweet Buttons *don't* drive 7x more sharing
  • What is a Violation of Privacy?
  • Privacy, Smivacy. Tracking is not a problem
  • How Much Money? No Way!
  • Do You Believe in What You Believe?
  • Why Are You Doing This again?
  • How Much Should You Spend on Facebook?
  • Bots vs. Real People vs. Blockers
  • How Storytelling is Changing
  • Inside the Graphics of Baekdal
  • The shift in 2012
  • Trends are about People, not Things
  • Competing with Flipboard? Come one!
  • When is Something Dead?
  • 250 Words + A Picture
  • Debunking The Myth That People Read Less
  • When Mobile Payments Make Sense
  • Google+ I am excited
  • Google Stop Kicking Your Fans in the Groins
  • Toyota's Augmented Car
  • Why Books are Still a Powerful Media
  • The Crap About That 96% Use Facebook
  • How to Fix the Format
  • Format, you ask? What Format?
  • Creating Awareness about Garbage Cans
  • The Penguin Explorer
  • Everywhere!
  • How Ebooks Change Our Lives and Homes
  • What Happens When You Don't Change
  • Social Impact - Iceland Bigger Than Global
  • 3 Way Street - Illustrating Traffic Problems
  • Forget Prime Time - The End of Daily Issues
  • Did You Bring It All?
  • Google +1 Button Needs a Social Touch
  • Newspaper Industry in 1973
  • Print to Digital is only the first step
  • 10 Ways to Cultivate Your Community
  • Why Governments Have No Say Over The Internet
  • Summer 2011 is Digital. Not Online vs. Offline
  • IPad Stand for Your Hammock
  • The Panda Run
  • Twitter, you know, there is this thing called mobile
  • Dissecting an Episode of MythBusters
  • Think Value of Content, not Products - Digital Economics
  • A Gawker Redesign Moment
  • App vs. Web - Why not both?
  • How Should We Define News?
  • Seamless - how iTunes Should Work
  • A Cup of Optimism
  • Usable Security - Reply to "Security Now"
  • The Cost of a Fan
  • The Value of News vs. Cat videos
  • 3D without glasses on the iPad
  • Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts
  • Don't Trust Your Social Referral Data
  • Goab TV - The future of TV
  • Wall-of-Fame Crowd-sourcing Digital Graffiti
  • Don't trust Infographics based on Compete data
  • Advertising Turns Respectable Newspapers Into Spammers
  • The Social Media Bubble Doesn't Change a Thing
  • Social Is Like a Freight Train
  • Breaking the New York Times Paywall
  • I Have Removed Article Ratings
  • Why Single Issue Sale is Wrong
  • No, Facebook is not Killing Your Website. New user behavior is
  • The NYTimes Paywall and the missing Question
  • Dropmark - Organize and Share
  • You Business Model is Your Idea
  • Apple, Burst The Bubble!
  • Why Social? Do You Really Need to Ask?
  • Could You Repeat Seth's Success?
  • How can I Help You?
  • The CEO Slap-O-Matic
  • Let's Create a Real Micro-Payment System
  • Nokia is too afraid to let go of Symbian
  • Why the Nokia/Microsoft Deal is a Big Thing
  • Can You Really Outsource Social Media?
  • Study: Do Retail Results Justify The Investment?
  • Is The Daily Ready for the Digital World?
  • The Train-wreck called Quora and Why We Don't Need It
  • Apple thy name is Ebenezer Scrooge
  • Free of Charge For Just $199
  • I Love the Cloud
  • The Usability of Passwords - FAQ
  • The Mystery of Walking in A Straight Line
  • Why The Guardian Pricing Model Is Wrong
  • The Oxford Circus Twitter Frenzy That Never Happened
  • AdiVerse Virtual Footwear Wall
  • The Multi-Channel Web Shop
  • Copyright Theft in Traditional Media
  • Product, Purpose, Consistency, and Social - In That Order
  • The Mac App Store, The Good & Bad
  • Microsoft, Forget Windows and the Defensive Business Strategy
  • The Many Trends of 2011
  • Not Surprisingly, Ebooks Were Huge This Christmas
  • The Kraken Awakes - Brining Gaming to HTML5
  • Yahoo, Sell Flickr - or set it free!
  • Newspaper's Future in the Browser
  • Google Ebooks, the Platform

  
  

  
  

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• Apple Never Designed the iPad - They Undesigned it - (by @baekdal)
  

  You have probably heard about the continual struggle between Apple and Samsung over similarities in their designs. Apple is suing Samsung and asking the courts to block the sale of the Galaxy Tab in many countries (and succeeding).

  Saturday, The Verge reported that Apple, in their usual arrogant way, felt they needed to tell Samsung how to design their devices. The list is quite humorous and completely outrageous.

  Apple has told Samsung that, in order not to infringe on their design, Samsung should create a design with:

  • Front surface that isn't black.
  • Overall shape that isn't rectangular, or doesn't have rounded corners.
  • Display screens that aren't centered on the front face and have substantial lateral borders.
  • Non-horizontal speaker slots.
  • No front bezel at all.
  • Thick frames rather than a thin rim around the front surface.
  • Profiles that aren't thin.

  And the two really silly ones:

  • Front surfaces with substantial adornment.
  • Cluttered appearance.

  Yes, the Galaxy tab looks very much like the iPad, but they couldn't really design it any other way.

  

  Apple never designed the iPad. They undesigned the tablet. They focused on creating the simplest form possible. Every single decision is based on usability, readability, comfort, and focusing your eyes on the content itself.

  To illustrate this, let's create a tablet from scratch.

  Designing a tablet

  If you design a tablet, the first thing you need to do is to decide on its overall shape. Apple told Samsung that their tablet couldn't be "rectangular" but that is of course absurd. Every single form of media that we have is rectangular, going back to the stone tablet several thousand years ago.

  The rectangular shape is determined by the viewpoint of our eyes, plus our ability to scan lines of text horizontally. This is why every book, magazine, newspaper, TV, laptop and desktop screens are rectangular. You cannot make it round or triangular, because our eyes see the world as a rectangle.

  The only usable format is a rectangle. And this is also the only format that fits the content.

  The point is also that with a touch based device you don't need space for any other elements than the screen itself. So we start off with a simple rectangle that contains nothing but the screen.

  

  The shape of a tablet has nothing to do with design. It is simple logic.

  Of course, a shape like this doesn't work. There are a number of problems we need to solve.

  Margin

  The first problem is one of margin. The main reason why every book has a margin, is to allow you to hold the book, while reading, without having your thumb and hand obscure the text. This is a simple readability concern. Without a margin, you would be forced constantly to move you hand out of the way, causing a rather intolerable reading experience.

  Also, on a touch based device, you don't want the hand holding the tablet to touch the active part of the screen. That would create a conflict in the software as the tablet would constantly be trying to figure out if you hand is actually touching the page, or just holding the tablet.

  The solution to both problems is to create a margin that is exactly the width of your thumb. Any more, and the tablet would be bigger than it needs to be. Any less, and you obscure the content.

  

  Again, this has nothing to do with design. The width of the margin is an engineering problem with only one solution.

  The margin also has to be both uniform and symmetrical. If the screen is positioned off to one side (As Apple suggested Samsung should do), you are limiting how you can hold it. The tablet needs to work at any orientation, and as such, the screen has to be completely centered.

  

  Corners

  Next, we take a look at the corners. Apple told Samsung that they couldn't use rounded corners, but that is just silly. We need rounded corners for comfort and usability.

  Sharp corners are uncomfortable to hold and use, and you are constantly poking yourself with them. The rounded corners make the edge of the tablet a smooth and comfortable experience.

  There is also another reason. Most designers know that a sharp corner forces your attention outward because it acts like an arrow, whereas a rounded corner focuses your attention inward.

  

  Again, none of this is a design problem. It is all about usability.

  Front color

  What about the color of the margin? Apple told Samsung that they couldn't use black, but what other color could they choose?

  If there were to make it bright blue and you visited a red website, you would probably throw up by its sheer ugliness. You don't want the colors to clash.

  

  Optimally speaking, the color of the margin should be the same as the background color of the content. That way, the margin would be there but not attract your attention. But that is not actually possible with today's technology.

  The only solution you have is to choose a neutral color. And the color of the margin also needs to more subdued than the content on the page. The reason being is simply that you want people to focus on the screen, not the frame around it.

  With a white page, the color of the frame could be light gray (like the Kindle), but since a tablet has to work with any content, the only color that is both neutral and more subdued than any other...is black.

  

  Note: This is also why every TV has a black frame.

  Thickness

  What about its thickness? Optimally speaking, the shape of a tablet should be something like the image below. The edge should be thick enough to fit the natural curvature of your hand, while at the same time slope inward to facilitate a firm grip.

  Like this:

  

  But there is a problem with this design, and the problem is the batteries. If you open any tablet, you find that the majority of the space is taken up by its batteries.

  The batteries make it impossible to create the optional shape for gripping. Instead, the back is shaped to be slightly thicker to fit the batteries, while keeping the edge as thin as possible.

  

  Again, this has nothing to do with design. This is an engineering constraint.

  Flat back

  Another point is that you cannot make the thickness of the back uneven. While it might work great at one orientation, it forces you to tilt you head at any other orientation. The back (and the front) of a tablet needs to be flat.

  

  Sony, for instance, seemed to have forgotten this simple usability factor when they designed their Sony Tablet S. Their tablet only works in one orientation. And true enough, when you visit Sony's website, they are not showing a single image of their tablet in portrait mode.

  

  It simply doesn't work.

  The final tablet

  The result is a tablet that looks like the image below.

  • It's rectangular to fit the viewpoint of your eyes and the content that is all around you.
  • It has a margin to prevent your hand from obscuring the content.
  • The thickness of the margin is exactly that of your thumb. Nothing more, nothing less.
  • It has rounded corners to make it more comfortable.
  • The color of the front is black to focus your attention on the content.
  • It has a thin, slightly rounded edge, with a slightly bulkier back to fit the batteries.
  • It is uniform, flat and symmetrical to make it work in any orientation.
  

  Note: This is not a photo of the iPad. This is the same shape I made six slides ago with a black background + a thin light gray frame.

  Apple never designed the iPad. Instead, they undesigned it by creating the simplest shape possible. The iPad is the core essence of what a tablet *can* look like.

  Apple is really good at this. Look at the Cinema Display, the Apple wireless keyboard, the Macbook Air, the iPod, and all their other devices. The reason why their "design" is so successful is because they are not actually designing their products. They are reducing them to the simplest form possible.

  It is beauty through simplicity.

  The problem is, of course, that everyone else has to do the same. They have to make it rectangular, they have to make it black, they have to use rounded corners, and they have to make it flat. Anything else would cause a distraction.

  Case in point, because of the lawsuit Samsung has decided to "give in" and change their design. The new tablet is asymmetrical, with slightly thicker borders at one side, with speaker ports clearly visible at the front.

  What has happened here is that Samsung has been forced to add design elements that don't need to be there. The borders and speakers distract your eye. It stops your eyes natural flow and forces your attention away from the content.

  

  Note: Apple doesn't think this is enough, and have sued again to stop Samsung from selling it.

  I'm all in favor of companies trademarking their designs. But Apple didn't trademark their design. They trademarked the natural shape a tablet could have. It's like the New York Times trademarking the shape of the newspaper.

  It is just as silly as Amazon's patent on "one-click-shopping", which also is not an invention, but pure common sense.

  Samsung is saying that there is no other way to design a tablet, and they are right. They could have used different materials, but the overall shape is not Apple's design. As I demonstrated in this article, the shape of an iPad is the logic progression of simplicity itself.

  You cannot force people to add design elements that don't need to be there. You can trademark design, but not simplicity.

  
  

  
  

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