Here is the big post I’ve been meaning to write - on convergence, the players and the wire into the home.

For 15 years now we have watched a war rage over who can get the data to flow into and out of conusmer’s homes.  That wire - whether it be the cable TV or telephone wire - was surely going to be the gold mine that would enable folks to monetize and exploit the digital revolution.

With 15 years of precedence and history behind us - it is safe to say that no one wire will dominate the landscape - and that we are destined to live in a world of myriad lanscpaes and technology platforms.  That doesn’t mean that the Interactive TV world will give up or that everything will be IPTV.

What it means is that IPTV will not surplant cable TV or terrestial broadcast - it’ll simply add to it.  As TiVO, DirectTV and all the other new ‘forms of TV’ have done.  Orb recent successes and deployment has also contributed to shaking up a few entrenched souls.  Its amazing what these fangled ‘programmable devices’ can do. 

Cisco assembling a critical portfolio of related companies (Linksys, Scientific-Atlantic) is also contributing ot upsetting the status quo.  But I’m not here to promounce some new ‘era of TV’.  What I wanna say is that there’s plenty of room for everyone - and that its all about context.

In fact, I can venture out onto a ledge and say ”Context is ALL that matters”.

I’m participating in the Sprint Ambassador program - where they gave me (and others) a free phone and free service for six months. That means I can download as many songs, search for data, cruise the web - with a phone all setup andworking - and really enjoy a mobile on-line digital lifestyle (as opposed to my Lifeblog Nokia phone - which I still can’t get to browse the web or answer email and I have to pay for its usage.)

Getting free downloads is pretty coolio. It effectively turns my phone into an integrated MP3 player, similar to iTunes.  However the songs cost $2.50 (instead of iTunes ubiquitous $1 a song charges.) Why do I think Sprint will get away with charging over twice as much - for the same thing?

Cause of the context.

At that very moment that you wanna hear that song and be able to play it back - the difference between $1 and $2.50 ain’t that much.  I’d gladly pay for something - that I need - at the right moment and context.

And when your DSL line goes down in the middle of the night, oh how you wish for the cable modem account.  And when you wonder why your TiVO doesn’t connect in with other PVRs, or which Home Media Center system to go with - I say - go with the open one.

So prepare yourself for expensive PCs and hard drives in cars, all sorts of elaborate Home LAN boxes, PVRs, net based CD players and portable gizmos - all based upon the principle of IPTV, content and services on-demand - and good old fashioned ‘on-line communities’.

Cause I really think that’s the one thing that the hardware guys are missing.  How these online services and communities wil be an overwhelming sucess with cyber-savvy teen agers - and how they’ll fail miserably with folks over 60.  And vice versa.

Is there anybody out there who doesn’t intrisicly understand this intuitively?  Why do we even have to explain this to Telcos, so-called portals or cable TV companies?

Culturally relevant content, ethnically oriented content, sexually or religously oriented content - all have their place - in today’s content marketplace.  When static content morphs into interactive services - WATCH OUT for the oft promised explosion of people’s marketplaces, Long Tail marketing and guerilla viral uptakes.

But yah gotta get the context right.

When mainstream media can cleanly mix with web services - the juice will be there to drive an entirely new world of distruibuted meshed together brands.  New kinds of ’syndicates’ and ‘cartels’ will emerge. Maybe they’ll be owned by the same mothership - maybe they’ll just be partners with one another.  But the only way we’ll be able to equal Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Fox, IAC or AOL - is via our own sort of home-grown consortiums.

In other words - maybe the MySpace kids LIKE an inefficient, poorly designed site? Maybe they will continue to go against all the logic that says: “if its shitty, they will leave.” The kids keep going back to MySace and that’s clearly cause of the relationships they’ve got there and the bands they love to listen to and track.

The context for MySpace is perfect for them right now.  The issue is “what happens over time?”  Will MySpace stay hot or turn into the MTV of social networks (which is about as un-hot, un-cool as you can get.)

Only time will tell.

But one thing we do know, if you get the context right - you’ll have a pretty good chance of surviving.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.