Author Archives: Content in Context

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About Content in Context

Content in Context helps companies to define the market for their products and services, to identify customers and build the business pipeline, and to develop their content marketing strategies. By working with our clients to design, build and grow their business, our primary focus is to extract commercial value from unique assets, including knowledge, data, know-how, processes and transactional information.

Interlude: Looking for some design inspiration

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I’m currently working on a start-up project in the area of performance management. Part of the challenge is designing a user interface that combines the visual language of iconography with universally appropriate contextual metaphors, without lapsing into mere skeumorphism.

Having read some of the criticisms of Apple’s iOS7 logos and user frustration with the “improved functionality” of Apple’s new operating system, I found myself turning to the design philosophy of Paul Rand, who created the famous IBM rebus – the genius of which lies in the way it deployed human and natural components to depict a major computer brand. Rand said that simplicity wasn’t his goal, more a result of the design process. He also said design is simple, which is why it is so complex, and that design is everything.

So, while I ponder the application of human factors to a new product design, and as I search for some inspiration, I came across this animated version of Rand’s logo by Chris Rush.

From student hacker to start-up mogul – an audience with Jonathan Teo

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“The man with the Midas touch…”

Jonathan Teo, tech VC with a Midas touch, has been back in Australia recently, and found time to stop by Lean Startup Melbourne for a Q&A with Michelle Bourke in front of an audience of 350 members of the local startup scene.

With a track record that includes Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat in his portfolio of start-up investments, Teo is obviously someone who deserves to be taken seriously, but the candour and humility with which he talked about his experience made for a very down-to-earth evening with such a high-profile investor.

As usual, the event was hosted by Inspire9, with generous support from Kussowski Brothers, Startup Victoria, Products Are Hard, BlueChilli, Investors’ Organisation, Startup Weekend and National Australia Bank.

Teo’s backstory has been told elsewhere (childhood in Singapore, college in Sydney, post-grad at Stanford, Google engineer, venture capitalist…) but the combination of having a great mentor, working in the (then) emerging technology of cloud computing, and some “right time, right place” good fortune has provided him with a powerful platform from which to join the upper echelons of silicon valley VCs.

“The Secrets of My Success”

Naturally, people wanted to know the key to his investing success. Rather than referring to some “special sauce”, Teo pointed to some simple principles:

  • Relationships – strong relationships are essential, both within the founding team, and across the right networks and insiders
  • Self awareness – many founders don’t see their own capability gaps, and therefore can overlook inherent weaknesses in their business
  • Key metrics – know what run-rates the business needs to achieve to meet its performance goals (cash burn rate, retention levels, acquisition costs, daily and consecutive customer usage)

In particular, Teo stressed that new distribution models form the lens for assessing new investment opportunities.

“Show me the money!”

During a discussion about bringing in investors, Teo was pretty sanguine – what works for some start-ups, won’t work for others. If you can self-fund, then do so; if you do need to tap external funding, start with friends and family (who will generally be more patient than professional investors); and if you have to bring in VC’s, make sure you know the trade-offs. He also suggested that crowdfunding is great for consumer plays, but ultimately valuations are determined by demand.

“New Thang”

When asked where “the next big thing” was going to come from, Teo was understandably coy (or simply discreet), and politely suggested it could emerge from somewhere in the audience. What he did offer were some thoughts on emerging trends that will influence future start-ups:

  • Fewer mass-market consumer products – according to Teo, “only China can support a purely domestic consumer play”
  • Less focus on patents, more emphasis on survival – not that IP isn’t important, just that the cost and effort of securing patents mustn’t outweigh the need to generate revenue in the early stages
  • Content niches – unique content is key to attracting advertisers and subscribers, and when combined with rich user data makes for compelling communication and network apps
  • The human touch – products that bring a more human digital experience will gain traction

Finally, Teo predicted the growth of disposable hardware – not sure I agree with this one, but I understand what he is getting at. Personally, I’d be more interested in recyclable hardware, and greater user-serviceable and customisable components.

Declaration: Thanks to the hosts and sponsors, I along with everyone else enjoyed the bounteous gift of free pizza laid on by the organisers.

Defining the Prosumer product

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This week, Do.com announced it will be closing down in January. It may simply be the latest in a string of social networking apps to call it quits, but it also highlights the difficulty in developing Prosumer products that generate market traction.

do-com-logoPositioned as a productivity solution, Do.Com was also viewed as an app that straddles the work/personal divide, to be a veritable Prosumer product.

The problem is, it did not have a clear vision of what defines the “Prosumer” market, and it did not adequately redefine workflow needs in a permeable environment that increasingly blurs the dividing line between the personal and the professional.

As a result, Do.com probably missed an opportunity to craft a new perspective on the elusive Prosumer demographic. For example, as a Prosumer, my primary need is to consolidate all the social networking and collaborative platforms I use. At the same time, I need to manage the different types of connections and co-ordinate the different degrees of sharing that these tools offer, but not based on “projects” or “transactions” – rather, based on “relationships” (which are not the same as “connections”).

Despite their attempts to capture “3-dimensional” linkages amongst my networks, most collaborative tools and social networking platforms are limited by their 2-dimensional perspective of linear connections, rather than multi-dimensional relationships.

Until tools like Do.com do a better job of managing the qualitative and contextual nature of professional and personal relationships (and offer better ways to manage the different facets of these connections), they will be interesting, but not essential.

POSTSCRIPT: Here’s why Facebook can never be taken seriously as a productivity or professional tool – when editing my “official” Facebook page the day, I was prompted to add my “likes” for music and films – why would I want to share that sort of information with my professional contacts (unless it was really relevant to our relationship – client karaoke night, perhaps?).

YouTube and guilty pleasures…

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My local gym has recently installed new cardio equipment with touch screen monitors and internet access. So I find myself indulging in what some musicologists call “guilty pleasures” on YouTube – music that was so naff or cheesy when it first came out that no serious music lover would ever admit to liking it, but now it’s OK because retro is cool.*

Dollar-Hand-Held-In-Blac-116568

However, when I stumbled upon a couple of unauthorised YouTube posts featuring my own band, it got me thinking about all the “unofficial” uploads, and the impact that digital technology and social media are having through the increasing disregard for copyright and the rapid erosion of traditional business models by which content creators commercialize their intellectual property.

As more companies use digital media to support sales and marketing, brand management, customer engagement and market analysis, it becomes a valuable product or asset in its own right.

Even if you don’t believe your business is concerned with either content creation or commercializing intangible assets, there are implications for how you protect your business against commoditization or disintermediation.

What are the implications of new delivery channels for contemporary content creators, and what lessons does this offer to other businesses? 

For example, how can artists earn adequate fees from music streaming services? What do broadcasters gain from personalised radio apps? Who is making sure authors and publishers get their fair share of royalties from “curated” and aggregated content services?

The truth is, I don’t think anyone really knows the answers to these questions.

Some musicians may feel they are not adequately compensated by commercial streaming services; others recognise that the game has changed, that releasing recorded music is no longer enough to provide them with a living. In the past, musicians toured to promote their latest albums; now they release music to promote their next concert tour. They also know they must take more direct control over their income sources and revenue streams from music sales, live performance, merchandising and publishing.

For broadcasters, traditional content syndication models may no longer work if content can be disaggregated and re-aggregated without them really knowing about it. Internet streaming and web broadcasting are wonderful things, but how will advertisers react when broadcasters have limited ways of measuring the audience, because nobody knows where they are, or who they are, or when they are listening/watching?

Even authors and publishers, with a long and established history of licensing systems such as public lending rights, are wary of schemes to digitize their back catalogues. They are in a bind, because they know some income from these programs is better than none, but does it justify losing a high degree of control over the commercialisation and distribution of their copyright material?

Which brings me back to YouTube, one of the “best” examples of commercialised copyright infringement that the internet and social media have created. Even if file sharing services such as Megaupload are no longer with us, or controversial music re-sellers like LegalSounds have shut down, with very little effort anyone can extract content posted to YouTube, despite the fact that the latter does not actually support a download function.

For my part, I’ll happily admit to accessing YouTube content which is subject to copyright infringement – so much material on YouTube appears to have been posted without the prior consent (or knowledge) of the copyright holder. I’m actually very pleased that someone has posted it because I enjoy watching long-forgotten documentaries and TV interviews, out-of-print live recordings and broadcasts, and stuff that is unavailable commercially. But my consumption of this content is largely predicated on unauthorised uploading.

Although much of this “re-cycled” content is tagged with a “Standard YouTube License” (which simply means the viewer cannot record, download, monetize or claim ownership over the content), many people posting and uploading 3rd party content don’t have permission to do so in the first place. (Even a broad interpretation of “fair use” exemptions would not justify the wholesale uploading of complete albums which are still commercially available.)

I acknowledge that YouTube provides a copyright infringement process, and a Content ID system designed to help content owners assert copyright over material that has been unlawfully uploaded. But personally, I can’t help feeling that this is a rather disingenuous arrangement. YouTube stresses it is not in a position to determine copyright status – but it is more than happy to create opportunities for generating advertising revenue as part of the dispute resolution process (revenue which it presumably shares with the aggrieved copyright holder?).

YouTube started out as a platform for user-defined and user-contributed content. It does not create its own content – although it invests in original content for its “channels”,  and supports curated and personalised content (“recommendations”). This means YouTube attracts everything from amateur cat videos to professionally produced music promos, as well as highly original, creative and informative content uploaded by the independent musicians, artists, designers, educators and film-makers who create it and who choose to upload it.

And yet I keep coming back to the fact that YouTube is also full of “shared” content – content which is not owned by or licensed to the people uploading it. This is where the real commercial value of YouTube was always going to be found: in 3rd party content, however dodgy the provenance, because this reveals what might be popular and therefore, what can be monetized.

As a result, it could be argued that YouTube has been a considerable beneficiary of  copyright abuse – by using its analytics and other data mining, it can identify potential revenue “hotspots”, even if the content has not been legitimately uploaded in the first place.

So, while YouTube is very useful as an archive resource, its future is written in the terms of its commercial alliance with Vevo. This deal is designed to promote popular artists through the distribution of their music and video content via highly controlled sales and marketing channels.

On one level, it’s merely the latest attempt by major record labels to reclaim their market dominance over a music industry that is increasingly subject to vertical re-integration. On another, it will inevitably lead to an uneven playing field: some (a very few?) content producers will generate huge revenues from mobile and on-line platforms through their share of the advertising (rather than from traditional airtime and mechanical royalties); others (the majority?) will neither be able to collect royalties (because the model is broken), nor attract advertising (because they don’t have the marketing budgets to spend on buying an audience big enough to be of interest to advertisers).

What is happening in the content and media industries today will likely happen to other industries tomorrow, especially in the services sector; but we can already see that the development of domestic 3-D printers creates the possibility of “open source” designs for producing our own consumer products – so what impact will this have on manufacturing, for example?

*Confession: Yes, I admit that Dollar’s “Hand Held in Black and White” is one of the “guilty pleasures” in my record collection. It’s big on cheese and none of my friends would ever admit to liking it, but it features some classic ’80s synth arpeggios and electronic drum programming, and was produced by Trevor Horn as he transitioned from the bubblegum synth pop of the Buggles to the splendour that was Art Of Noise….