Larry Page & Mark Zuckerberg. (Image originally atlanticwire.com)

Every time you go online you are entering a war zone. It might not feel like it, but there is an almighty battle taking place between two superpowers and you are caught in the crossfire.

Welcome to the war for web supremacy. The super powers, if you haven’t already guessed, are the search behemoth Google and social heavyweight champion Facebook. The prize is you and your data.

Sure, there are other combatants in this war; Twitter, Apple, Bing, LinkedIn…even Yahoo!, but they are merely involved in skirmishes and are open to being co-opted into alliances with the main players. Amazon currently appears to be Switzerland (more about them another time).

The nature of systems like the web is that monopolies emerge. We have a dominant search engine in Google, a dominant online encyclopedia in Wikipedia, a dominant retailer in Amazon, a dominant auction site in eBay, and now we have a dominant social network in Facebook. That’s normal and has been happening in business for centuries.

But what happens when two different monopolies decide to battle for a middle ground? That’s where it gets interesting, and that whats happening now. Facebook and Google share common goals but differing philosophies.

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originally uploaded by http://www.intersectionofonlineandoffline.com

Ok, I’ll admit it….I’m a little bit addicted to social networks. Using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ is an important part of my work, but it probably fair to say that over the course of a day I am exceeding what is needed to effectively get the job done. When you add the many different blogs and websites I check daily for great content and industry news, I am beginning to consume an amazing amount of media.

And then it becomes a default habit, something that can easily fill the day and lead you down endless clickable rabbit holes.

I’m sure I’m not alone. These days we’re consuming more media than anytime in history. Its accessible 24/7 and sometimes it seems that we are too. The lines between work and play have become so blurred that we tend to suffer an inevitable burnout.

This year I am totally rethinking how I consume media with the aim to improve my productivity and put some more space between work and play. The approach I am adopting is based on dedicated devices and apps for different functions:

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Do you still believe the digital revolution is the domain of cool young Gen-Y’s and upwardly mobile Gen-X’s? Do you still think your business is immune? Think again.

As I spend the Christmas break with my extended family I can’t help but notice how connected everyone now is. With ages from 5 to 68 filling the house, nobody here could be considered a Luddite.

My father flits between his MacBook, iPad and iPhone. He downloads his books and music, reads all his news online and buys golf gear, fishing gear, clothing and more online. The iPad is his favorite device.

Mum just received an iPad 2 and is doing puzzles and organizing photo galleries. She is also starting to shop more online.

My brother-in-law uses an iPad and Blackberry for working remotely and keeps up to date on international sport and surf conditions constantly.

My sister has a MacBook and iPhone in her armory and is quickly getting up to speed on the benefit of being connected.

There’s a 12 year old with his first iPhone who is using Instagram, Path and Skype whilst listening to music, playing games and taking pictures. The pressure for a Facebook account looms.

There’s a 9 year old who is making stop-motion movies on a MacBook and uploading them to YouTube. He also makes his own games on Sploder and manages his own Posterous websites in between playing Minecraft with his friends, listening to music on his iPod or playing assorted games on his Wii.

The two youngest kids, 8 and 6, have received a Nintendo DS for Christmas and know how to get online with them. They’re also Minecraft fans.

The digital revolution is no longer a generational thing, it’s all pervasive. The transfer of information, products and money is increasing online daily. Even your oldest, most loyal customers cannot be relied upon when planning for the future.

The question is: what is your organization doing to address this?

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Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman in Sydney

Popular US-based user recommendation website Yelp launched today in Australia. First launched in San Francisco in 2004 by founders Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, Yelp has grown to 14 countries and more than 61 million monthly unique visitors.

Aussies are now able to create accounts on Yelp to share their opinions about local businesses and services in their neighborhoods. Yelp’s free iPhone and Android mobile applications are available, as is Yelp for Business Owners, the company’s free suite of business owner tools.

Stoppelman was in Sydney today talking to a handful of bloggers about how Yelp was created to replace Yellow Pages, who he considered a dead tree business crying out for reinvention. Initially the Yelp founders didn’t believe user reviews would be key to the site but were surprised when they took off and became the main focus of Yelp and a major point of differentiation. Remember, this was back in the days before Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and even newcomers Oink and Roamz.

For millions of US users, Yelp has become an invaluable search resource to discover what’s nearby and how its rated.

It’ll be interesting to see how Yelp does launching in a new market 7 years later with many other location and recommendation contenders on the scene. Stoppelman is confident that the site can get good traction in Australia via their (rather ironic) partnership with Sensis (publisher of Yellow Pages) who provide the initial database of businesses and the sales force for future ad sales. Certainly the Yelp model of engaging community manager in each territory will go a long way to determining the public take-up of the service.

Yelp will be available throughout Australia; however, the company will focus its initial community-growth efforts in Melbourne and Sydney. This city-by-city expansion strategy has proven to be an effective one for the company in other markets.

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The great thing about inbound marketing is that there is no shortage of excellent tools to help you go about your job of attracting qualified traffic and converting it into something more meaningful like leads, inquiries or sales.

Here are the 16 top tools I use regularly for inbound marketing;

WordPress website. Sure there are other excellent open source content management systems available but for inbound marketing its hard to go past WordPress. Its easy to use, very search engine friendly, extremely optimisable and has thousands of great plugins to address just about any requirement. There’s a reason over 60 million people have chosen WordPress for their websites.

WordPress mobile app. Inbound marketers like to post content. Lots of content. From almost anywhere. That’s where the WordPress mobile apps come in. You can create and publish content directly from your iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry or Nokia to your website.

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A new global study of Chief Marketing Officers by IBM has revealed that Australian and New Zealand marketers are lagging behind their international counterparts when it comes to technology savviness and social media expertise.

From Stretched to Strengthened – Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study, was presented to a round-table of marketers yesterday in Sydney and some of the findings were concerning in this age of global competition.

The major insight appears to be that Australian and New Zealand marketers still rely heavily on traditional forms of promotion and research and are yet to embrace the more modern techniques of their global counterparts.

Especially concerning was the belief that Aussie and Kiwi CMOs rated technology savviness, social media expertise and finance skills as low priority capabilities crucial to their success in the next 3 to 5 years. in fact, IBM revealed that our ranking of 12% for social media expertise was HALF that of the global average.

This is despite CMOs acknowledging that ROI will become the primary measure of success.

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“The ten year free trial is over” say the executives at News Ltd referring to plans to commence charging for digital subscriptions to The Australian.

The much anticipated move to paid digital subscriptions will take place in the next few weeks Richard Freudenstein, CEO of News Digital Media and The Australian, told a selection of bloggers last night.

Freudenstein was candid in his acknowledgement that this is a very necessary move for the organisation as the current model of free websites with display advertising is not enough to support quality journalism. When asked if this was a big risk they’re were taking, the general consensus at News was that it was a bigger risk not to try subscription. The current model just didn’t add up economically.

News will begin their subscription experiment with The Australian newspaper, the more “premium” of their daily news journals. Following the lead from The Times in England and the New York Times, The Australian will be serving up news content on a new website that leads to walled content. Headlines and the first two paragraphs will be viewable on the website but payment would be required to go further.

The key to success, News believe, will be the bundling of offerings. Pricing is anticipated to be:

• Digital pass of $2.95/wk accessible across multiple platforms.

• $4.50/wk for a digital pass & the Saturday Australian newspaper.

• $7.95/wk for a digital pass & 6 day a week Australian newspaper.

At this stage News do not expect that this will be something to lure new readers to The Australian, but will appeal to a percentage of existing subscribers who they hope to migrate to the digital products.

They cite the experience of the music industry that moved from a pirated free period back to a paid digital product as evidence that people will favour convenience and reliability over free in the long run.

News also draw on their experience in another subscription model, Pay TV, where Foxtel took year to grow and become profitable but is now the most profitable TV model in Australia.

One suspects that if this gambit is to succeed that bundling of all of the News products will come into play. Foxtel, news press and niche publications could all be bundled for a larger, but more cost effective combined spend. Tellingly, News acknowledge that they now consider The Australian a “media franchise” rather than merely a newspaper and they are exploring how it will be utilised on “bigger screens”.

Of course there are plenty of cynics who believe that digital subscription will not succeed. One respected pundit I had breakfast with this morning scoffed at the plans to charge for The Australian online, adamant it would fail.

However News have done plenty of homework on this and feel they have no choice but to launch subscription models. They admit that they don’t have all the answers and the experiment will continually evolve. They have deep pockets and seem prepared to patiently see the industry follow suit and join them on the other side of the paywall.

News Ltd has launched a new website to take the discussion further. Read more and have your say at Future of Journalism

Other coverage of the #newsdigsub briefing at:

Servantofchaos

Ross Dawson

Mumbrella

Digital Tip

Personalize Media

Laurel Papworth

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Characteristics of new digital media and music environment:

Agile – able to move quickly to develop, produce & release

Independent – no longer controlled by traditional owners

Interruptive – whole industries being radically reinvented or fragmented. Rather than be protectionist we must embrace this otherwise we will be left behind.

Collaborative – clusters, crowd sourcing, geographically diverse

Fresh content – amazing amount of new, fresh content every day which can be organized and curated.

Fluid transactions – push button downloads for apps, music, books, TV shows & movies. New commerce models ie Facebook credits for content.

Issues and Needs for Australia

- Hi speed broadband required to keep pace with rest of world

- Better fostering of innovation – funding, tech VC market (tax incentives?)

- Digital Education – both business and students. Greater emphasis on modern digital practices. (NLYZR study). Strongly question whether current tertiary education is preparing people for the digital economy.

- Celebration of success – plenty of talent and up & coming media & music stories that need to be told. We’ve been proposing a leading event…like sxsw. But needs support and funding.

- Intellectual Property laws and processes are archaic and barely viable for current fast moving digital environment. We require a very different approach to licensing, IP, property “rights” and other elements of the underlying framework.

- Retaining talent in Australia – Oz mafia in Silicon Valley, moving where things happen.

- Overall need to decrease friction and roadblocks to enable rapid delivery of content and transactions.

Rather than laws to protect old establishment industries, new laws to enable creation of new business & industries.

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Tomorrow I am speaking at the Digital Culture Public Sphere consultation run by Senator Kate Lundy and Minister Simon Crean in order to form a collaborative submission on digital culture in Australia to the National Cultural Policy consultation.

I NEED YOUR HELP.

I’m covering “The future of media culture creation in a digital world” but the Public Sphere wiki hasn’t had many contributions. Here’s you chance to contribute to a 10 year strategy for Australian digital culture, and the broader national cultural agenda.

There’s plenty of ways you can get involved via the Wiki, but for expediency and to help me easily deliver your ideas could you please either write a comment here or via Twitter using the hashtag #publicspheremedia so I can collate.

This is fairly urgent. I will be presenting the collated ideas at about 12.30pm tomorrow (6 Oct 2011).

Ideas to address include:

• How do you imagine the sector could look in the future? How could Australia excel? What would a 10 year plan look like?

• What are some tangible ways we could measure progress in this area?

• Ideas to achieve the vision for Australia.

• Add your thoughts and references for where this sector is going, emerging business models, opportunities for commercialisation

• Any additional information you think might be useful, including case studies, success stories, research papers.

• Leading case studies from the sector to help contextualise Australian innovation in this area

GO FOR IT.

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The Internet is changing fast and impacting our lives in more ways than we ever imagined. Yet many industries are ignoring the need for change and suffering as their sector experiences massive interruption.

Imagine if you could gaze into a  crystal ball and see a few year into the future to understand what the Internet will look like. Perhaps you can.

This presentation “Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow” was created by NeoLabels, with a script by Inés Leopoldo of Mitsue Venture. Its really worth a look.

Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.

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