Book launch: Futuretainment by Mike Walsh, Sydney, 1 December 2009

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Book launch: Futuretainment by Mike Walsh, Sydney, 1 December 2009

2 December 2009

Last night Mike Walsh launched his new book Futuretainment – which looks at the future of media and marketing – at the Hotel CBD in Sydney. He spoke with technology journalist Brad Howarth, and offered a few of his insights into advertising and marketing, particularly in Asia, together with a couple of trend predictions for 2010.

People born after 1994 are digital “naturals”. They have never lived in a world without web browsers.
“Naturals” have never known a time when they cannot access decent content somewhere online.
Content producers and creators (copy-righters) such as musicians are effectively marketers.
Musicians, for example, encourage “content theft”… they don\’t make revenue from recorded music, that comes from sales of merchandise, live performances, etc.
Social networks drive TV programming. People increasingly watch what is forwarded to them (videos, links to videos).
Viewers are deciding what they will watch, not the TV networks.
How will content producers make money? Become a celebrity… cue Ashton Kutcher and his declaration to become “the next new-media mogul“.
Japan excels at producing content for mobile phones.
The Chinese know how to make money with social networks. QQ, a Chinese variation of Facebook, made US$1 billion last year.
In Korea people watch more TV shows on mobile phones than a television.
Digital consumers in Asia are generally very tech savvy, have access to unlimited bandwidth, and have little regard for copyright.
Ninety per cent of Chinese internet users have broadband, which is considerably faster than that available in Australia.
Augmented reality will put consumers in control by way of real time product and service reviews and critiques.

Originally published Wednesday 2 December 2009, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Babies’ names are not carried far and wide by the internet

3 July 2009

Interesting premise, the rise of the internet, and even globalisation, has not quite created the global village that many people predicted it would.

At least this is the opinion of two researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, after studying names given to babies since 1995. They found naming trends tended to remain local rather global, despite the rise of email and the ability to spread ideas, and share information, quickly online.

The two researchers’ study of the spread of new names was prompted by their discovery that the relationship between the number of private e-mails sent in America and the distance between sender and recipient falls off far more steeply than they expected. People are overwhelmingly e-mailing others in the same city, rather than those far away.

Originally published Friday 3 July 2009.

Email is email, spam is spiced ham, talk is talk

2 February 2004

Bill Gates has unveiled a gallant plan to rid the world of email spam. A noble undertaking. I am not being sarcastic. I sincerely hope he succeeds. Especially as it is now estimated that half of all emails sent are unsolicited.

How annoying is it too see there are ten new messages in your in box, but nine turn out to be crap. But I suspect I am on the thin end of the spam email wedge. Some people receive way more.

Now there is a proposal to charge for each individual email sent. This charge, or e-stamp, may be as low as one cent per message. Not a lot, but it may be enough to deter the spammers who send out millions of messages, once they have to start paying for the privilege.

While it won’t stop the most determined or cashed up operators, it would make a welcome respite nevertheless. Many small spam operators would not only have to pay, but also make their identity known, in order to purchase e-stamps. This might be enough to see them give up.

That in turn would vastly reduce the amount of spam messages in the email system. So yes, bring it on, I say. I’m all in favour of the idea.

But a charge for email could have all sorts of intriguing ramifications. Take interoffice email messages, for example. Would they be chargeable as well? I certainly hope so. Working in an office — to my mind — is no fun at the best of times, but it gets worse when your manager and colleagues, who usually sit close by, communicate only by email. What’s with these people?

Can’t we just gather around and talk? Apparently not.

It would appear that it is far easier to correspond by email. Well maybe not for much longer. If it’s going to cost for each one liner that is dispatched to the next cubicle, we may be confronted with the prospect of a ban on interoffice email. How awful.

I’m not anti-email for work based communication though. Nothing of the sort. It is a vital tool in many situations. There is a time and a place though. Especially where distance is a factor.

My whole working relationship with some clients is purely email based. It’s of course an effective and economic method of communicating. The difference here being that they are often interstate (even overseas), and not just over the other side of a cubicle wall.

Originally published Monday 2 February 2004.