Endless Innovation

The Art of Creating Emotional Attachments to Digital Objects

The argument for or against e-books always seems to boil down to one central issue: e-books can not be touched, bookmarked and lovingly annotated in the same way that real books can (sorry, Kindle). The early adopters will always embrace digital content, on whatever device is offered to them. It's the middle- to late-adopters who need an additional emotional connection to that digital content before they will embrace tablets and e-books. The current approach to "flipping pages" on a tablet is a cute start, of course, but there's more that can be done to create emotional attachments to digital objects.

In fact, I would argue that one of the reasons why people love physical books is that they announce to other people -- friends, guests, or the nosy onlooker -- that I am a Book Person. Take, for example, this picture of Karl Lagerfeld posing in his apartment's library. He is, without a doubt, a Book Person. (According to Todd Selby, Karl even owns the bookstore next to this fabulous wall-to-wall book fantasy apartment.) If he had been holding an iPad tablet in this image, would you have thought the same thing? Think whatever you want about the man, it's impossibe to think about Lagerfeld again in the same way once you've seen these impressive walls of books.

With tablets, you don't get that impression. A tablet does not announce I Am A Book Person. Peek over the shoulders of random people on commuter trains or urban subways -- it's surprising how many people are doing something like playing Angry Birds rather than digging into some serious reading. So people who read serious books on their iPad or Kindle need to find other ways to signal to others what they're up to.

It's the same reason people buy "coffee table books" -- usually large, heavy-ish, picture-laded works so full and plump that you don't actually read them or take them anywhere -- you just leave them in places where people will find them and say, oh wow, I had no idea that he was such a fan of molecular gastronomy and might possibly be contemplating a trip to Spain to visit the wonderful chef Ferran Adria. Or, oh wow, that's quite interesting that he knows so much about the Bollywood film industry and might have been to Bombay recently. Coffee table books are - quite simply - a statement that you want to make to people.

How can Tablet users replicate these types of "statements"? One idea that a colleague mentioned to me involved the notion of "dynamic weathering" of applications -- the more that you use an app, the more that it would appear "weathered" and used. People would know how often you were reading by how "worn" your iPad's screen looked, for example.

Another idea might be new ways of creating emotionally resonant "signatures" for digital objects. During the Obama election disaster of November, one of the Internet memes for a short time was how one enterprising young man got Obama to sign his iPad tablet using an Adobe Ideas app. This is an important point about books and "emotion" -- if you've ever been to a book-signing, it never fails that people want to get a "personalized inscription" on their books to make them more special. How can tablets replicate this as well?

Finally, there's the whole idea of using books as a conversation starter. The classic example, of course, is the young man on the subway who catches the eye of a beautiful young girl and decides to initiate the courtship ritual through a casual, "Oh, I love that book, too." Or, think about the classic scene on a leafy liberal arts campus, where it's intellectually in fashion to wear black turtlenecks and carry around books by heavyweight foreign thinkers. Nothing gets a conversation started faster than peeking over your cup of espresso and seeing the person next to you reading a little Dostoevsky.

Who knows? One day, there might even be an entire industry devoted to "weathering" tablets, the same way that there's an entire industry devoted to creating ripped, torn, acid-washed and otherwise unwearable jeans that are meant to look as if the jeans have spent a few years being tossed around when the reality is that you just bought them new yesterday.

[image: Karl Lagerfeld's Library via The Selby]

The Digital Tablet: Creating an Alternative to "Lean Forward" or "Lean Back"

During the peak of the social media revolution, "lean forward" was one of the buzzwords that was bandied about quite often to explain the changing habits of media consumption. The term “lean forward” implied a deeper engagement with the content, rather than just passive consumption - the type of content that you'd share with your friends on Facebook, tweet about on Twitter and interact with in real-time. On the other hand, “lean back” content was all about watching TV on the couch and passively consuming content. Not surprisingly, the goal of every brand over the past 24 months has been to offer "lean forward" content (in a brilliant co-opting of the term, MSNBC now refers to itself with the tagline Lean Forward TV).

But is there a third way – an alternative to Lean Back and Lean Forward that we haven’t considered? The tablet computing generation seems to be creating just such an alternative. Consider the typical advertising for the Apple iPad -- what's surprising is how many of these iPad ads show people in a middle mode between “lean back” and “lean forward" -- a mode in which the tablet is positioned on the user's knee. Clearly, Apple seems to be promoting a form of media consumption that is more passive than "lean forward," yet more active than "lean back." (In the image above, for example, the user is clicking through the iBooks app on the iPad to download a new book.)

In perhaps one of the best long-form essays that I’ve read recently, designer Craig Mod explained exactly how he went around creating content for the iPad. He described the need to create tablet content that could be consumed in three different ways -- what he referred to as “bed, knee and breakfast.” These were the three distances (near, medium, far) in which people consume tablet media. “Bed” content is what you read on your bed, with the iPad close to your face. “Breakfast” content is when you prop up your tablet and watch from a distance without using your hands – think of it as consuming video during breakfast while eating a lox-and-cream cheese bagel. “Knee” content is the half-way position, where the tablet is propped up against your knee in a “half-way” mode: "Sitting on the couch or perhaps the Eurostar on your way to Paris, the iPad on your knee, catching up on Instapaper."

Obviously, there’s something going on here. The continuing evolution of digital devices is changing our media consumption habits – and there’s a whole new ecosystem emerging to take advantage. Think about apps like Instapaper or Flipboard, which make it possible to engage with content in new ways,  transforming "lean forward" content into "lean back" content that can be consumed later at greater leisure (e.g. riding on a subway train, without the need for Wi-Fi access).

It will be interesting to see how the next generation of tablet devices -- such as the Motorola XOOM and the BlackBerry PlayBook -- create new types of content experiences that play on the underlying tension between the "lean forward" and "lean back" mindsets.

How Live Performances Are Changing the Way We Think About Design

The current issue of Wallpaper* magazine - in addition to its feature on the global Design Awards 2011 Winners - has a wonderfully thought-provoking article about the growing popularity of "live performances" in the design world. In short, design is moving from a mysterious, tightly-guarded secret that happens behind closed doors to something that is performed in full public view:

"Designers used to be people behind the scenes. No longer... Designers are increasingly finding themselves in the business of a different sort of production - one that deserves an audience. While once, the drawing boards, the prototyping, the moulds, the models and the mess were all kept hidden, and the finished product unveiled in a 'ta-da' moment, these days it's the process that everyone wants to see..."

Perhaps the best analogy is the "open kitchen" now found at many of the best restaurants in the world -- instead of hiding their craft from the world, chefs now openly embrace public viewing of how their dishes are made from scratch. With that in mind, Wallpaper* cites a handful of interesting examples of the "live performance" concept being carried out in the design world:

(1) Neville Brody's Anti Design Festival in London, which featured real-time designing and printing in response to events as they unfolded in real-time

(2) Milan's Spazio Rossana Orlandi with James Plumb

(3) Craft Punk, a collaboration between Design Miami and Fendi

(4) Modern Primitives, a collaboration between Fendi and U.S. architects Aranda\Lasch

(4) Belgium's Z33 Gallery: "Design By Performance"

(5) London's design studio Raw-Edges

(6) Studio Glithero

(7) Total Trattoria from Martino Gamper

The obvious question, of course, is: To what extent will the world's elite design firms embrace the "live performance" concept of design? Certainly, opening up the design process will change the way we think about design:

"While a decade ago prestige was associated with closely guarded methodologies and highly developed techniques, design as performance is nothing if not open source. Intellectual property is also worth considering, then, especially as unlike art, craft or cooking, design processes are as much dependent on ideas as they are on skills."

The extent to which a designer should feel threatened, then, depends on how easy it is to imitate each step of the design process. That's where "design as performance" comes in -- any competitor not only has to steal your ideas and approach, he or she must also re-create each stage of the design process. 

Even if live "design performances" never catch on, they may serve an ancillary role - as a way of identifying the world's up-and-coming design talent: "A live performance is a sure-fire way to spot [raw talent]. Or the lack of it. While you don't want to be under the spotlight unless you know what you are doing, for those whose work might otherwise be an acquired taste, it is surely the best way to demonstrate why they do what they do and the way they do it." 

via: Wallpaper* and PSFK

Kickstarter, Tim Ferriss and a New Pricing Model for Creative Assets

Ever since the introduction of the iTunes music store, I was under the impression that $0.99 would become the default price for all digital content. One way or another, content would be continually sliced and diced into ever-smaller pieces of micro-content, such that the market-clearing price for that content would become $0.99.Then I ran into Kickstarter, the innovative crowdfunding site for artistic and creative projects.

While Kickstarter bills itself as "a way to fund and follow creativity," I'm starting to think that the true genius of the site is in the creation of a radically new pricing model for creative assets. Simply stated, it unbundles the pricing from the physical asset, and instead, bundles the pricing with the creative process. This is a subtle point, but here's how it works: the old model was that you pay $0.99, $9.99, $19.99 or whatever price for the finished artistic work (an album, a book, a magazine), regardless of the amount of time, effort and financing that went into the production of that work. That price was the price that established a minimum level of profit-taking for all the middlemen involved in distributing that creative asset.

The new model is that you fund an artistic process, and in return for a specified level of funding - anywhere from $25 up to $10,000 - you receive an increasingly personalized creative asset. (I've funded a book, a piece of art, and a film on Kickstarter, and each time, I've been offered different terms) For example, a $25 funding pledge for a film might get you a copy of the final DVD as well as a personalized thank-you note from the artist. A $50 pledge might get you all that - plus a mention in the final credits of the film. A $100 pledge might get you all that, plus a limited edition poster for the film. A $1000 pledge might get you all that, plus a 1-on-1 dinner with the film's producers and a private screening of the film.

What's interesting is that other artists - whether directly or indirectly - are experimenting with similar types of pricing models. Consider what bestselling author Tim Ferriss is doing: ahead of his book launch for The 4-Hour Body on December 14, he's offering readers a unique opportunity to receive additional bonuses and discounts that are linked to the book. In fact, in a "landgrab" promo that expires this weekend, Tim outlined how he planned to give out more than $4 million in "prizes" over a 48-hour period, based on the number of books that people buy. Every package is worth at least twice the cost of the books, often up to 10x the value of the books. The more you buy, the more you get.

My head is starting to churn on this one... It will be interesting to see how many books Tim Ferriss manages to sell -- especially whether he ends up on the New York Times bestseller list as planned. I loved his 4-Hour Workweek, and based on that alone, I'm willing to pony up for a Tim Ferriss bonus package. I don't quite have the purchasing power to be able to hang out with Miss India on a private Indian archipelago (that required a hefty investment of 1,000 books, or about $15K) -- but even with one book purchase, you still get $140 in bonuses...

[top image: still from The 4-Hour Body Trailer]

I Drink Your Milkshake: Your Credit Card is My Mobile Phone

It's always fun to watch I Drink Your Milkshake moments play out in the corporate world - those dramatic moments when one company announces that it will take over another company's entire industry, and there's nothing you can do about it. Google does it all the time -- but it's usually directed at a company like Apple, Facebook or Microsoft. This time, however, Google has its straw pointed at the milkshake that belongs to the major credit card companies.

Suspend belief for a second and imagine Google CEO Eric Schmidt as Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. In his keynote address at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Google CEO Eric Schmidt laid out a vision in which Android-powered mobile phones would be capable of making payments:

"Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, showed off the company’s next Android-powered phone, which will contain a chip that will allow people to make payments via their handsets. Opening this year’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Schmidt showed off the new phone, which had the manufacturer’s label deliberately covered up, but is assumed to be the next Nexus device, following the Nexus One, and will contain a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip, that will allow people to use their phones like credit cards. [...] The latest version of Android, called Gingerbread, due to come out in the “next few weeks”, will power this new handset according to Schmidt, and will feature this new mobile payments system as a key tool. “This could replace your credit card,” Schmidt said." 

Moving from a card-centric view of payments to a device-centric view of payments is no longer a hypothetical what if? More companies are experimenting with innovative ways to transform mobile devices into a "digital wallet" capable of making and receiving contactless payments. The emerging NFC technology mentioned by Google at the Web 2.0 Summit makes it possible for a mobile device to wirelessly communicate with another device or object at very close range and exchange data. By doing so, the NFC chip has the potential to reshape the mobile payments space by shifting the payment experience from plastic cards to mobile devices.

Keep in mind that TIME magazine recently named the Square payment system - which threatens to disrupt credit card companies at the low end of the market - one of its Top 50 inventions of the year. The wildcard, of course, is Apple, which is rumored to be looking into integrating an RFID chip into the next iPhone 5 to facilitate NFC payments. Once customers are able to purchase NFC-ready smart phones, the market for contactless payments should really take off. 

[image: I Drink Your Milkshake]

Why Nespresso is the Next iTunes

When you look at how Apple completely disrupted the music industry with the introduction of the iTunes digital music store back in 2001, it's natural to ask: Which other companies or brands are capable of such wide-scale disruption? My current pick is Nespresso - and not just because I recently purchased a super-cool Nespresso Essenza espresso machine at Crate & Barrel.

Look at the structural characteristics of Apple iTunes -- and it's easy to see why Nespresso is on its way to becoming the next iTunes. Apple fundamentally created a "closed" system in which digital songs would only play on Apple devices (just try to transfer songs into or out of iTunes!); radically changed the way we think about buying music (a la carte, 1-song-at-a-time for $0.99); and created a "boutique" experience around the product ecosystem (the Apple stores with their Genius Bars and live events). On top of all that, Apple overlaid the impossible-to-define "hipness" quotient over the entire music experience.

Now, compare that to what Nespresso is on its way to replicating within the coffee industry. First of all, Nespresso has created a "closed" system where special Nespresso capsules are required to brew espresso - and these are only available online via Nespresso or at one of a handful of boutique stores in America. These capsules are not usable in any other coffee machine. Secondly, Nespresso has absolutely crushed it when it comes to the single-serve coffee market. Each capsule brews one cup at a time, and that's it. You buy little boxes of capsules on an a la carte basis. Thirdly, there's the growing network of Nespresso boutiques (two in New York City, one in Chicago, and several more planned around the U.S.), where Europhiles cluster around to drink really expensive espresso and then shop upstairs in a minimalistically elegant area. Finally, there's the whole Nespresso branding campaign that is centered around creating a new "coffee culture," complete with its own language and lingo ("grands crus" for coffee, anyone?).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to brew a capsule of Arpeggio.

Gawking at the Future of Content

When the smartest guy (or gal) in an industry decides to throw in the towel on a business model, it's time to stand up and take notice. This week, the ever-controversial Nick Denton of Gawker Media - the most successful and well-known of all the blog networks that exploded in popularity over the past decade, declared to the Wall Street Journal, "I don't want to be the No. 1 blog network anymore. That's like being king of the playground."

At which point, the Wall Street Journal diligently rushed out and collected quotes from all kinds of social media insiders that compared the art of blogging to the ancient art of calligraphy. Denton pointed out that the nine key blogs comprising the Gawker Media empire would take on a radically new look and appearance in 2011 in an effort to maximize eyeballs and advertising revenue:

(1) Greater focus on original content and reporting (rather than breathless re-blogging and re-linking)

(2) One big "persistent" story per page, rather than a chronological updating of new content as it becomes available (in other words, say goodbye to one of the fundamentals of blogging. See-ya!)

(3) More video -- and more video-based advertising units that will be triggered after a certain number of visitors hit the page

These three major changes, of course, will impact the future of content as we know it on the Web:

"The coming face-lift, which is being tested publicly, is likely to attract the attention of a variety of bloggers and media organizations that have long admired Mr. Denton's technology instincts. Since the launch of the first Gawker site, Gizmodo, in 2002, a number have copied such features as his tools for comments and his elaborate back-end analytics system, which, in the new design, helps power a live visitor counter at the top of each site. [...] "He has been pushing this envelope in terms of using technology," said Om Malik, who has been blogging about technology on Gigaom.com since 2001. He has a talent for "nudging [users] along towards a new usage behavior."

What's fascinating is that within the WSJ feature piece, Denton likens the new Gawker format to a "newsmagazine." WTF? We went through a decade of rapid technological and content change, destroyed and left for dead scores of the most prestigious magazines and newspapers in the world, transformed the profession of "journalist" into something akin to a "social worker," and lopped off billions of dollars of market value of the world's largest media organizations... and we're back to the concept of a newsmagazine?

UPDATE: Ha! I just noticed that my calligraphy provider has a new option for me that I can toggle on and off when adding a blog post -- "keep this post at the top of your blog's home page."

[image (in lieu of video) via Wall Street Journal]

Social Layers of Meaning: Correcting the Nearsightedness of Media

As Steven Johnson notes in his wonderful new book, Where Good Ideas Come From, innovation often happens when hunches and concepts from different disciplines bump up against each other in ways that are unpredictable and unplanned. This has implications for the future of media, which has been entirely too nearsighted in its approach to re-inventing itself. For traditional media to survive, it will take more than just publishing a more beautiful version of their magazines and newspapers on an iPad, creating Facebook fan pages or developing news reader iPhone applications for mobile users. It will require a fundamental re-thinking of what it means to be a "media platform" at a time when the near-ubiquity of the Internet means that the physical world is now a "platform" for publishing content.

Media companies need to start thinking in terms of "social layers" that publish information and data on top of the physical real world. This will require a tremendous shift in mindset -- they are no longer publishing to "the Web" or "mobile" - they are publishing to the real world. In order to do so, they will need to build on nascent trends in augmented reality and geo-location, enabling them to create layers of meaning everywhere in the real world. Media companies will be able to publish "social layers" of content, and readers will be able to subscribe to them. If the content is good enough, media companies will be able to charge for it. (That's the ka-ching factor.)

Correcting the nearsightedness of traditional media might just start with a visit to the local eye doctor. Think about the whole process of getting an eye exam at your optometrist -- the eye doctor hooks up the phoropter and spends about 30 minutes adjusting the various lenses to optimize your vision. After changing each lense, the doctor asks a simple question: "Better of Worse?" If it's better, the doctor leaves the lense and starts to adjust a different lense. Each lense is literally a different "layer" that slightly improves your view of reality.

Now, imagine a media publisher in the role of the optometrist. The publisher starts with a simple premise -- "I'm here to help you better understand the world around you, wherever you are" -- through the use of different layers. From there, the publisher provides a simple solution (flipping a lense "layer") that helps you see this world best. At any step, the reader can ask the publisher to reverse a lense "layer" or to see two lense "layers" side by side. A media company might publish an "arts" layer or a "business" layer or a "shopping" layer.

Social layers are already being "published" on top of the real world - we just don't call them social layers. Here, for example, is what a basic Google Map looks like.

Now, here's what it looks like when you add a "retail layer" on top of it... 

Social layers are also starting to be published on top of geo-location services like Foursquare. Visit Foursquare.com and scroll to the bottom of the homepage -- you'll see how media properties like People magazine, Lucky magazine and History are publishing "tips" and "news items" that are relevant to their media brands for specific real-world locations. (There's even a Gossip Girl layer, if you want to see your world through the eyes of Blake Lively, Leighton Meester and Chace Crawford.)

What's exciting is that there's already a company - Layar - that is taking the idea of "layers" to the next level through an online catalog of layers for its augmented reality browser. "Layers" in the store so far include one by travel-guide publisher Berlitz that points out hotels and places to shop and a layer for Disneyland and Disney World. There are also layers that could potentially disrupt the Web in the same way that the Web disrupted print --  such as "online classifieds" layers that display listings for available apartment rentals in a certain neighborhood. Why scroll through pages and pages of listings, when you can just walk around a neighborhood and see exactly what's available?

Social layers could become big, the same way that apps became big. But how many media companies are monetizing their applications? How many media companies have figured out in-app advertising and in-app purchase events? These are two questions that need to be resolved if they are to shift their thinking to layers.

In contrast, social layers feel much more like what media companies have always done -- create amazing content, and make it available at our fingertips, no matter where we are in the world. You don't need to put on a pair of rose-colored glasses to see how layers could revolutionize the way we think about media. Instead of saying something like, "I subscribe to The Weekender version of the New York Times," we'll say something like "I subscribe to the New York Times' view of the world."

 

[image: Phoropter and Google Maps]

Digital Trends for 2010

I've been playing around with a staggeringly impressive presentation tool called Prezi. Above, I've uploaded a brief look at some of the DIGITAL TRENDS that I see coming to the forefront in 2010 -- real-time marketing, augmented reality, new mega-content companies to replace mainstream media companies, and interesting cultural trends like the re-invention of bank branding in the aftermath of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Shazam! And the New Superheroes of Venture Capital

Until last week, it was easy to think of iPhone apps more as a distribution channel, less as a full-fledged business that deep-pocketed venture capitalists would attempt to bring to market. After all, for any Fortune 500 company, the current revenue stream from iPhone apps would most likely amount to little more than a rounding error. Is it possible that start-ups selling iPhone apps for as little as $0.99 -- or, more likely, giving them away for free -- can ever transform themselves into billion-dollar companies?

The answer could be "yes." Celebrated venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins – the same Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers that has invested in some of the biggest names of the Internet -- recently announced that it was investing an undisclosed amount of money in popular iPhone app Shazam through its new $100 million iFund. As a rule of thumb, big-time VC firms like Kleiner Perkins don’t invest in companies unless there’s an identifiable billion-dollar market opportunity, so methinks that KPCB has a future vision of greatness for Shazam. Claire Cain Miller of The New York Times has the details:

“[Shazam] will soon be able to do a lot more, propelled by new capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the elite venture capital firm that is investing its $100 million iFund in start-ups that develop applications for the iPhone. It has invested an undisclosed amount in Shazam, which had previously raised $12.3 million from Acacia Capital and DN Capital.

Shazam’s app has been downloaded 10 million times on the iPhone and has 50 million users across all platforms, including BlackBerry and Android phones. It already helps people discover new music and results in more purchases from the iTunes Store than any other company, said Matt Murphy, the Kleiner Perkins partner who manages the iFund.

Shazam will add other ways to find new music, like recommendations and sharing with friends, he said. It will also move into other types of media, like video, and partner with media companies and artists, he said. For example, Shazam will most likely start selling items like band tickets and merchandise from within the application, he said.”

In the case of Shazam, it’s easy to see that the iPhone app is highly scalable across other entertainment fields beyond music. What’s also interesting, of course, is the new business model that Shazam is bringing to the music industry. In the ongoing battle for supremacy between intermediation and dis-intermediation, this time it looks like Shazam is playing the role of the intermediary, matching seekers of music with the sellers of music. Shazam is developing a diversified business model and exploring new ways to monetize the “discovery” process:

“Shazam is a model for how businesses can be successful with iPhone applications, because it began with something simple and started expanding once it got popular. Shazam is already cash-flow positive, with a variety of revenue streams. It makes money from carriers that preload the application on phones or that charge for the application. It gets a cut when users buy a song on iTunes and download paid versions. (Shazam’s app is free on the iPhone, but there are paid versions for BlackBerry and Nokia phones.) It also makes money from mobile ads… Shazam will start offering subscriptions for premium versions of its application, which is a popular model these days. Users will get a certain number of song identifications and some features free, and pay for unlimited identifications and features.”

These are exciting times for the mobile space, and especially for iPhone app developers. Any ideas on which other iPhone (or BlackBerry or Android) apps could also be ripe targets for deep-pocketed venture capitalists?

[image: Shazam ad via iPhone Blog]