Yep, that’s right. I turned 40 years old today. That’s the sad news. The good news is that for my forties I bought myself an US imported iPhone and unlocked it (iNdependance + AnySIM) to be able to use it with my belgian provider of choice, Proximus. Everything works perfectly but YouTube that Apple recently blocked for hacked iPhone.
I moved from my Nokia E61 to the iPhone overnight. What a great experience : I felt like upgrading from MS-DOS to MacOS X in one big step. The world will change now that the mobile Internet is a great thing and not a sub-par experience. You really enjoy browsing the web, reading online newspaper, checking email with HTML display, pictures and attachement and being able to answer on the go.
The iPhone is a big lesson given at a whole billion dollars industry that designing experiences is a very powerfull art.
Here is a very good idea : ask the crowd to create your logo, your member recruitment campaign or even your new ad big idea… and if you don’t get good creation, at least you’ll have done some buzz around your brand.
This very interesting interview of Faris Yakob, Digital Ninja at Naked Communication, and Iain Tait, Creative Strategic Planner at Poke, was shot during an event in Romania. Among other things they discuss the merge of the role of Strategic Planner and Creative in Interactive Agencies. If fully agree with most of their toughts. So if you’re in the business, stay tuned until the end.
Some of you knows that I’m the founder and President of Emakina, belgium largest Full Service Interactive Agency (they may have read the sidebar ;-). So please notes that Emakina’ baseline is “Building a Better Web.”. Seems that Iain like it 😉
But I’ll explain why, after only two weeks of Joost experience, I’m convinced that Joost will change the world.
Why ?
Because Joost will revolution television first, then slowly the audience habbits (personalized individual tv consumption), then the whole mass media segmentation system, then shift the power from the media moghuls that rules using their monopoly on frequencies, on satellite, cable, DSL channels to content creators.
Because Joost will change the business model of television, then destroy the advertising media agencies monopoly and their exclusive relation with advertisers, then turn whole advertising business sector (from ATL to Interactive) upside down – literally.
Because Joost will destroy the ambitions of most web video sharing websites (YouTube, Google Video, Daily Motion, and the numerous others) by cutting the bandwidth from the whole equation (thanks to peercasting) and adding advertising revenues (from day one) maybe subscriptions revenues and maybe pay-per-view revenues while respecting the whole rights system since day 1 (including territories distinction).
How is it possible ?
Joost can be viewed from any screen as long as you have broadband internet access and a Windows PC or a Mac. Watch it on a laptop over Wifi. Watch it on your desktop PC monitor or on a television (CRT, LCD, Plasma). No need for setop boxes, smart cards, satelite dishes. Watch it in your hotel room. Start watching a movie in the office, finish it in the living room. This is freedom of space! And freedom is a good reason to change your habbits.
Joost replicate the old plain TV experience (full screen) with a program (a playlist of shows). Don’t search snippets of video on the web, just trust a brand (channel), sit down, relax and watch. You just have access to a potentially infinite number of channels. You’ll never need to record a program again. Don’t invest in storage, recorders, tapes and EPG subscriptions. With Joost, you can navigate the channel playlist forward and skip a boring show or backward, to view an old show. This is freedom of time! And freedom is a good reason to change your habbits.
Joost has advertisement since day one. Both as sponsor of a channel (you watch an ad at the beginning of you program) or in the middle of your program (and to the contrary of television, you can’t zap). And you’ll watch those ads, as Joost will personalized them just for you. Joost know your name, your email, your email domain name, your location, your computer model and OS, your IP adress, your channel selection, your RSS feeds selection, so Joost know your profile. Joost will provide advertisers the GRAAAAL they have been searching forever : the emotional impact of television with the one-to-one personalisation possible with interactive media… And I bet Joost will provide advertiser a platform to buy ad space like you buy ad words in Google Ad sense program. Good bye media agencies…
Just like with Skype-out, soon Joost will ask your credit card number to allow you to subscribe to channels (great for porn), and buy pay-per-view movies. Even better a mobile payment system for teenagers like Tunz.com 😉 Then thanks to Joost integration of mozilla’ html rendering engine wich allow each channel to display an overlay with a mini website, you’ll be able to buy products from Joost in one click! Watch an TV ad, click. Done. Ho boy. That will be BIG.
In the near future bandwidth cost will drop and volume limits disappear. Even today in some market (eg: voo.be in belgium) broadband subscriptions have no volume limits, there Joost could also move from SD to HD in a codec snap and kill blue ray and HD DVD before birth.
Joost has the potential to change the media business, the advertising business, the e-commerce business, the interactive business. Soon the whole world.
Next episode : what are Joost’ threats.
Note : Like many others I thought I invented the peercasting in 1999 (see annex below). I remember an Apple Expo in Paris during which I had diner with my friend Martin and draw a QuickTime distributed streaming system on the napkin. By chance Frank Casanova, from Apple QuickTime team was in the restaurant, so I took my chance and gave him my little napkin drawing with an explanation. He gave me his email adress and asked me to send him my idea in writing. I never did. Ten years later Apple has AppleTV, FrontRow, iTunes, iPod, iPhone with Wifi, QuickTime Streaming Server and still no peercasting. So next time an idiot give you a napkin drawing, take him seriously.
You may know that on the internet people commonly blog, participating in communities, generate content on video, photo, power-point sharing applications. They browse and write blogs, they read and write wikis. They publish and subscribe to feeds using RSS, and share documents and information on groupwares. Those social web application that are used by the general public on the internet are known under the buzzname Web 2.0 coined by Tim O’Reilly..
Many companies were born of that. Yahoo recently bought del.icio.us, a bookmark sharing application. They bought flickr a photo-sharing application, Google bought writely.com, an online word processor that allows you to share files. Google bought jotspot.com, which is a wiki farm ASP provider – so that on the internet anyone can set up a wiki and start to read and write web pages.
The trend next year will be to use the same design philosophies, technologies, approaches, interfaces rules that became famous under the buzzname Web 2.0 inside enterprises, into enterprise web applications. I call this trend Enterprise 2.0.
To summarize, I think one of the big trends will be the use of the same philosophy and approach in the Web 2.0 world, inside enterprises. So people in companies will trash their C drives and email boxes and start working in another way that allows them better access to information, better discrimination into relevant information. Instead of getting thousands of emails, they’ll subscribe to rss feeds that will give them information about the topics they need.
Personellement pour trouver de bon plans, je me tourne plutôt vers La Tribune de Bruxelles qui fait au moins acte de courage en ne proposant que des restos corrects.
"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." — Anatole France
