I am very sad that Michael Jackson is gone. He was gifted with talents that enabled him to accomplish things that no one in history has ever accomplished and, based upon the fragmented nature of consumer media, will never be able to accomplish again. Everything about Michael Jackson was extraordinary: his music, his dancing, his lifestyle, his wealth, his health and his problems.

During the 80’s, Michael Jackson “was” the music business. I remember when the certified numbers for Bad were announced. The 1987 album had sold about 23 million copies and, because it did not top the number for his world changing 1982 release, Thriller, it was considered a failure. Just to put this in perspective, go count up the number of albums that have ever sold 23 million copies … by anyone. During his time, there was Michael Jackson and then there was everybody else - none of his contemporaries even came close to his level of success. But the business side of the music business was only one part of the story.

While listening to his music this weekend, I was reminded how important Michael was to the musical side of the music business. For me, the Michael Jackson inspired transition of the pop music business started with “Shake Your Body Down to the Ground,” one of the singles from the Jackson 5’s 1978 album, Destiny. Although it was more of a mix of disco and funk, to me it stood out musically and foreshadowed Michael’s upcoming solo effort Off The Wall. I will never forget the first time I heard it. In fact, “Blame it on the Boogie,” the other single from that album had a super-solid rhythm arrangement by Greg Phillinganes that gave Michael a remarkable pocket to interact with. This early synthesis of pop, funk and R&B combined with Tom Tom 84’s semi-jazz-fusion horn and string arrangements truly set the stage for the world’s biggest crossover pop star to emerge. Anyone in the world who has ever heard an audio recording knows what happened next.

I hope that everyone can get past the theater of the moment and spend some time listening to Michael Jackson’s work. If you listen closely, you will hear him explain everything to you — in a profoundly personal way. May he rest in peace.

That being said, the long-term viability of big budget television is the cause of much angst. If audiences continue to atomize, can any given show make enough money to justify producing it? If consumers continue to transcode things they want to watch, edit out the commercials and make them available for free over the public Internet, will sponsors be willing to pay? If the most popular productions are the most pirated productions, is there any real future in production? Can free, advertiser-supported, Internet television continue with a fraction of the advertising avails and audiences of its broadcast counterpart?

One of the underlying issues is scarcity vs. ubiquity. On a closed network, any moment of time is a scarce resource. On an open network, no moment of time is a scarce resource. The immutable law of supply and demand tells us that we will never be able to charge for anything that is ubiquitously available. At least, that’s what the rulebook says.

However, I think the solution to almost all the problems related to consumer control of personal media consumption has been staring back at us from our television sets - we just didn’t see it.

Most people schooled-in-the-art will tell you that live programming such as news, weather, sports and events are, for all practical purposes, TiVo-proof. This isn’t strictly true, but if something is emergent, and the results are important, people tend to consume the media in real time. This almost always includes the associated commercial messaging. You can, of course, leave the room, talk to someone, play with your computer or do anything else you might think of during the commercial breaks — but this has been true since the ’50s. So, like I said, for all practical purposes, the commercials will play out.

Until consumers started to record television, TV was a real time device. No matter when the programming was created, it is always broadcast at specific times in a linear fashion. DVRs have changed that. When Jeff Zucker says, “The number one show at 10pm is TiVo,” he’s not kidding. This is the current state of the art — but it doesn’t have to be.

We have entered the super-digital age and now all television is digital. So why are we still broadcasting combined, fully finished, masters in real time? We don’t have to. It would be much, much better to serve individual streams of data that could be combined by the receiving technology to create custom formatted, device-specific pieces of content.

What?

Let’s walk it backwards for a second:

Problem 1: There are far too many devices that can play back video for anyone to deal with. I produce MediaBytes, my daily news feed, in 46 different formats and I don’t cover even a tiny fraction of the consumer electronics devices that are out there.

Problem 2: There are far too many places to obtain copies of any piece of video.

Problem 3: It is very difficult to measure who is watching, where they are and what else they may be doing.

Problem 4: Location and time of day are critical data points for the proper contextualization of message management.

The Real Time Data-based Digital Television Solution:

Break the data down to its component parts and broadcast them separately. So, text, graphics, music, script, metadata, voice-over, picture elements would all be packaged as individual data streams and made available in real time.

Next, the industry adopts the “Tom Sawyer Paint The Fence Paradigm.” This calls for the creation of a database (for the content), APIs (application programming interface) so third party developers can get at the data, an SDK (software development kit) so third party developers can license (and pay for) their use of the content, and some modifications to the current commercial trafficking networks and measurement tools.

The immediate result would be thousands of passionate, interested parties jumping on the opportunity to create thousands of virtual DMAs with virtual networks that could all be advertiser supported at scale.

Of course, anyone could still record a finished piece and have their way with it. But, imagine a broadcast world where television stations were broadcasting digital data feeds and economically motivated third party developers were crafting consumer interfaces that our industry simply will never be able to afford to create. Consumers who can obtain an emotionally satisfying media experience are far less likely to spend their valuable time looking for workarounds.

The concepts of “relevance,” “engagement” and “conversations” all become meaningless when developers with enlightened self-interest are your partners. The business rules surrounding this kind of data-based, content distribution would require developers to build measurable messaging into the platforms they support. Partners who make money when you make money and lose money when you lose money make great partners! Stations and Networks would transmogrify into their true digital counterparts — platforms.

You can think of it as a real time Apple App store. Throw in a little real time web (like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) and you’ve got a serious media offering.

Studios have been wholesalers for years. They sell their programs to Networks who, in turn, package the shows for consumer consumption. It is abundantly obvious that Networks cannot afford to create all of the packaging that consumers now require (or are willing to pay for). We need a better, more cost-effective way to serve audiences that are growing in diversity and getting harder and harder to aggregate.

Problem 1: Too Many Devices — get third-party partners to pay you to modify your content to work with them.

Problem 2: There are far too many places to get video — turn the weakness into strength by getting third parties to pay you from all of the nooks and crannies of the media consumption world.

Problem 3: It is very difficult to measure who is watching, where they are and what else they may be doing — computers love data, build this functionality into the platform and the SDK.

Problem 4: Context is king — yes it is, and what could be more contextual than having a passionate partner create an application that is specific to a consumption form factor?

Real Time Data-based Digital Television is a viable solution. Broadcasting real time data in component parts can be achieved today with just a little bit of political will. Steve Jobs and a zillion other Silicon Valley companies have demonstrated how easy it is to create a passionate, motivated army of third party developers. To me, the answer to the television industry’s marginal cost, marginal gain problem has been staring us in the face since the transition to digital was announced. I just didn’t see it until now.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information visit www.shellypalmer.com

My staff sliced and diced the email comments and found that the overwhelming majority of MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer viewers would be willing to pay :11 seconds for 2 minutes of content? Here the exec summary:

Can MediaBytes have any advertising?
90% say yes, 10% say no.

Would you pay a subscription fee to view MediaBytes without advertising?
77% yes, 13% no. (no one offered to write a check, of course)

Would MediaBytes be OK with a third party sponsor?
78% yes, 22% no.

Where should the ad be placed?
38% pre-roll, 32% post-roll, 30% say short pre-roll teaser and a post-roll ad.

Before I get into specific example comments and show you some of your thoughtful suggestions, I have a confession to make. When I’m on the road, I have to do all of MediaBytes myself. This is a 3.5 hour job. I get the data points from my researchers, but, not only do I have to write the script, I have to do 100% of the production, post-production, encoding and uploading from the remote location. The raw files are simply too big to send via hotel broadband connections.

When I’m on the road, in order to save time, I always use the previous day’s Video Editing File as a template. Anyone who has ever done a large amount of video editing knows where this is going.

I was on the road for 10 days, I was tired and I didn’t have the wherewithal to create a new ad each day, so I just left the pre-roll in place and worked on the body of the show. The result is about 10 shows in a row with exactly the same :11 second pre-roll commercial. Beyond annoying … even for me.

The primary lesson to be learned from this experience is a lesson I learned years ago — and know all too well: “The audience doesn’t care what your issues are, or were, when they press play. They’re expecting your best work.” This dialog was brought about by my willingness to do less than my best work. I have no excuse.

If I were a MediaBytes viewer, I would have written a serious email to the jerk who produced the show and told him to freshen the damn ad or get rid of it. So, to all of you who said that — I could not agree more.

That being said, I saw the opportunity to start a conversation with each and every one of you on this topic. MediaBytes is branded content for me and I translate its value into wealth by selling my services as a consultant, author, keynote speaker, moderator, etc. I don’t need to incorporate any advertising into MediaBytes, I just need it to find the right audience.

On the other hand, what if I did need to fund MediaBytes with advertising? What would I have to do?

Here’s what you had to say:

Thoughtful Suggestions:

· Discuss a tip which can be inserted in Mediabytes a few times or once a week with the intention of previewing some of the information available in the videos (BTW: This is exactly what I did the previous week.)

· Have another person (girl) do the voiceover for the ZioPro ad. The latter was suggested in several responses with the assumption that distancing me from the advertisement makes it seem more legitimate.

· Create several DIFFERENT short ads that are randomly shown pre-roll or post-roll

· Create a lower third tune-in-ad like YouTube now uses, so users can click out of it if they are not interested.

· Consider the frequency of the ad, many responders said that using the same add annoyed them.

· Insert a 3 second teaser pre-roll then a full post-roll ad

Notable Quotes:

“I think suicide is the only legitimate remaining option. If you go that route, can I have your mac?” – Marty Y.

“I wanted to say, put an ad at the end of the video, but I see you have already done that in newer videos. Taking people’s valuable time before you give them anything of value is bad business model in my opinion. Give first than take.” –”bub”

“Somehow you have to distance yourself from the ad content, or it will look, feel, and sound like a shameless plug, and that is why I believe your audience has responded negatively.” –Adam K.

“It’s hyping the video series that makes you look like a huckster, not the fact that you accept advertising. You’ve implied that MediaBytes is all the promotion the Shelly Palmer brand really needs–so find yourself a sponsor instead. Few reasonable people would begrudge you making a buck off of MediaBytes.” — Pedro

“It’s the parallel line of logic that has mortally wounded the already self-inflicted, negligence of print media. The solution? Fostering a new grown-up culture of defining “value” and debating the “trust and responsibilities” within consumer/provider relationships. But that reciprocal give- and- take goes deep, to the very core of capitalism/consumerism — what is worth, worth?” –Crystal H.

“You are right we should not expect a free ride - I have unsubscribed. Thank You” – Sharron N.

“For those dopes who say it cheapens it there is a simple solution – make it more expensive. Let them pay 10 bucks a month, a year whatever for the pleasure of having no advertising. And to think these people are probably in the media business.” –Seth H.

“I have no problem with the concept of you promoting your self-generated products on your website. The problem comes with the repetition. Since it only comes at me once a day, it is not as irritating as the “Scottrade” barrage I’m forced to endure on Yahoo.news. After a few times of seeing the full 11 seconds of 101, I get it. After that, I only need to see 1.4 seconds of the ad to remember the gist. If there were 15 varieties of the commercial, I might be able to live with it serenely. Consider pulling 8 second sound bytes from the 101 content, punctuated with a 3 second tag line. Make up a whole bunch of them and put them in random rotation.” –Rick B.

“I watch your show pretty regularly. In fact it is one of only two Internet shows I do that with, the other being GeekBrief. I find your take very interesting and worth my 2 minutes a day. I am unfortunately not in a position to ever hire you for consulting, so my opinion may mean less than others. But 11 seconds of “advertising”, when the advertising relates directly to what you do, is nothing. People can’t expect valuable content to be free…” –Patrick C.

“Give those folks an opportunity to buy your daily show for $.30 a day ($60/ year?) for the ad free version. As for me, I’m a cheapo who will watch the ads.” -Sam N.

“1. Keeping the ads at the end and in the links to the right (or wherever they may be where you syndicate content). Same way your Digital Workshop was promoted. 2. Add to the above a 3 second teaser at the beginning of the 2 minute segment along the lines of: “Interested in Video Training for Facebook, stay tuned to till the end of this 2 minute segment” or “This non-interrupted segment is followed by a promo to Facebook training”. The former can be part of your spill after introducing yourself. The latter may work better even before the segment launches, narrated by someone else (Hulu Stle).” –Gaddy R.

“Making sure folks sit thro your ad before they get the message is very much old television-think.” –Dan O.

“Advertising is the lifeblood of media. It is what allows the Internet, radio, television and print to exist. That isn’t going to end; and those that complain that advertising is annoying should ask themselves how much they are willing to pay to watch Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and the Daily Show each week.” –Bill N.

Thank you to the thousands of people who responded to the first article. I think we have an opportunity as a group to continue this discussion. Please feel free to post comments or send me emails. This is a topic worth discussing!

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information visit www.shellypalmer.com

The show is created in HD and is distributed on various websites (including shellypalmer.com, huffingtonpost.com, imediaconnection.com, YouTube, Blip.tv and dozens more), TiVoCast, Sony Bravia Internet Link, NY Nonstop (WNBC-TV Channel 4.2), iTunes (both video and audio podcasts), feedburner (video, audio and text RSS feeds), Terrestrial Radio, Broadcast Television, every form of flash, h.264, mpg, .mp3 and, of course, HDTV. We also provide daily production elements which are distributed to several thousand radio and television stations worldwide.

The show is produced every business day and requires a research staff, a writer (me), an editor, an encoding/distribution manager and an affiliate relations staff. The reason for the production overview is that, this particular two-minutes may look like a talking head combined with some graphics and clips, but the work flow for any given show takes approximately 6 hour and all of the people involved in the production are on salary here at Advanced Media Ventures Group. And, for the record, MediaBytes, and the associated production materials, takes up approximately 25% of my day.

I am not going to tell you what it costs me to produce each episode, but from reading the previous paragraphs you should be able to fully understand that it is far from free. You should also know that I have not missed a business day in two years and I take a complete road rig with me when I travel and produce MediaBytes from wherever I am. Over the past week I was at Ft. Meade, MD, then in Rome, Italy, then in Banff, Canada and back to NYC. I produced the show from every city and it was available by 9am EDT each business day.

I do not sell advertising space to third parties. As I said, the goal of MediaBytes is to facilitate the self-assembly of a community of interest around my content. For over two years, I have translated the value of this content into wealth by using what I love to call, “The Jerry Garcia Model.” I make everything available for free, but clients pay me to consult, as a speaker, they buy my books and other merchandise. The content’s job is to make my self-assembled audience aware of my capabilities and everything else takes care of itself. This has worked absolutely perfectly since the first episode of MediaBytes and, my suspicion is that, it will continue to work perfectly as long as we keep producing content that our audience wants to consume.

However, a funny thing happened this week and, to be honest, I need your help to sort it out.

About four weeks ago, I partnered with ZioPRO.com, a company that produces world-class training videos, to produce a series of Shelly Palmer branded digital skills courses. I won’t share the size of the MediaBytes subscription list with you, but it is big, by any measure, and highly targeted. On the list of “no-brainers,” selling Shelly Palmer branded merchandise to people who are consumers of MediaBytes is right at the top.

Or so I thought.

For the past six or seven episodes, I have put an integrated :11 second ZioPRO.com promo five seconds into the show. An average show is two minutes, so an :11 second promo represents an ad load of about 9%. (Just for reference, a network television hour has 22 minutes of commercials and promos which represents a 36.6% ad load). Again, MediaBytes opens with the show title, the date and then :11 seconds of promo copy followed by my thoughts and insights about the day’s top four or five stories. You can view today’s show at www.shellypalmer.com.

To my absolute astonishment, I have received dozens of emails, several txt messages and a couple of direct tweets telling me that the :11 seconds of commercial messaging “cheapens” MediaBytes. Several of my core viewers told me that putting a commercial for my own stuff in MediaBytes takes away from my credibility and makes me a huckster, etc. All of the writings were thoughtful and all were vicious in their certitude that MediaBytes should contain no advertising.

Now every bit of data I have ever seen on the subject says that a short, well-scripted pre-roll is the best form of message management for online content. My core audience obviously disagrees. So, I’ll put it to you. I want to sell my training courses to my audience as a way to offset/subsidize the cost of creating MediaBytes. I don’t want to charge a subscription fee, I don’t want to expose my audience to third party advertising that may be extremely irrelevant to them. I want to sell the online training, DVD’s, books, etc. that I create and produce.

You know how many different deliverables we create each day, the advertising has to work as video and audio, so it must be written like “radio with pictures.” What would you do? How would you offer these products? And, if you really don’t want to see any advertising in the body of MediaBytes, how do you suggest paying for the creation, production and distribution of the content?

This is the most serious question facing content producers today. Content costs money to produce. Third-party advertising/sponsor support is one model, promoting your own products is another, subscription is a third. At the end of the day, there are only three ways it works: I pay, you pay or someone else pays. Unfortunately, there is no business model called “no one pays.” In the case of MediaBytes, the model is “I pay.” It works for me as stated above. But, apparently, a fairly large number of people in my audience are uninterested in seeing even relevant product offerings. Is advertising over? If so, what’s next?

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information visit www.shellypalmer.com

Click to play the video.

Doing a Tandem Free Fall Jump does certain things for you and certain things to you — all of which are extremely positive. You experience the “now” in a way that is unique to falling out of a plane from two miles above the earth at 120 miles per hour. There are adrenaline rushes, and then there’s this. It is describable in one word, “awesome!”

On the other hand, those of us who were honored with this invitation got an up close and personal view of what it is literally like to put our lives in the hands of a soldier. All Americans do this every single day. Although we know that our men and women in uniform are always there to protect us, I know many of us do not keep this idea top of mind.

Shelly Palmer, LTG Benjamin Freakley and Secretary of the Army Geren, discussing media networking solutions.

That being said, when you meet the best-trained, best-equipped fighting force in the history of the world in person, the only thing you feel is, “safe.”

The Army Strong Experience was two days of extraordinary interaction with America’s Army that was, without question, a public relations mission. Its goal was to familiarize a select group of business and community influencers with some of the issues of maintaining a full-strength, volunteer military during a war. It should surprise no one that the Army has exceeded every recruiting quota. This is America, and Americans have stepped up.

What was a surprise was the fact that, because of academics, social, medical or other issues only 3 in 10 people between the ages of 17 and 23 are qualified to serve. 94% of Army recruits have high school diplomas the rest have GED’s. The force abounds with college grads and post-grads. Our fighting force is, by corporate standards, very educated. They are also dedicated to a level of excellence that (and I don’t mean to sound corny, but there’s no other way to say this) makes you proud to be an American.

Probably the most important thing I learned during my two days of jumping out of planes and shooting shot guns and pistols was that we (you and I) can actually help the Armed Forces of the United States by being experts in what we do and offering to help. We, as civilians, can do something to aid in the defense of our nation, besides paying taxes — we can learn about the Army, the opportunities it offers our citizens and help get the word out.

That’s the singular message for today. Visit shellypalmer.com today and you can see an episode of MediaBytes that features a video of my Tandem Free Fall Jump. It’s was fun and that comes through on the video. But, if you really want to do something great, visit goarmy.com and learn about the extraordinary men and women who serve and protect you everyday. If you’d like more information about how you can get involved, friend me on Facebook or drop me an email.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information visit www.shellypalmer.com

There are a few thousand companies that have emerged in just the last few months, many of which are dedicated to enhancing everyone’s social media experience or … helping to monetize it.

“Can social media be advertiser supported?” That’s a very popular query. Second only to, “Can social media companies make money?”

Facebook raised $200 million in Russian venture money and got a commitment for another $100 million to cash out some employees. You may not have much respect for $300 million as income, but if someone asked you to write a check for $300 million, they would certainly have your undivided attention. You probably would not write the check if you didn’t think you had a chance at a decent ROI. So, one could intuit from the size of this investment, plus fb’s previous capitalization (the company has now raised approximately $600 million all in) that there are some people who believe that you can make money with social media.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “Facebook did not need the money, [CEO] Mark Zuckerberg said. Its revenue is growing 70 percent year over year. He said the company would be able to run its operations from cash flow in 2010, even without the additional capital.” There’s so much Facebook noise, it might even knock Twitter out of the news for a cycle or two. But don’t count on it. Facebook, the more mature of the two organizations, is starting to sound eerily like MySpace sounded just after Facebook started to surpass them. Perhaps history should not be ignored.

While all of this is going on, service levels at both organizations have become top of mind. Facebook spam, phishing attacks and flat-out hijacking of accounts is now rampant. Security is a big problem for them, as is quality of service. New, useful features are few and far between and annoying bugs don’t seem to get fixed. Twitter is faring far worse. They don’t have enough employees and, although the Fail Whale is very cute, it is not a welcome sight.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing social media is the anthropological learning curve. Once your personal social network exceeds a certain number of people, it becomes less and less useful. At a certain point, it becomes simply unmanageable.

Obviously we all know how to communicate one-to-one. We do it everyday of our lives. We also know how to communicate one-to-many. We all make presentations to groups of people all the time. Small groups, big groups, it doesn’t matter. We know how to do it. However, no one knows how to deal with many-to-many communication or many-to-one. In fact, it is only possible to accomplish this type of communication using tools.

The more successful you are at social networking, the more your communicative experience will resemble that of a Kindergarten teacher. It’s sort of like standing in the middle of a circle of 30 kids who all want to get your attention. Since the kids really haven’t learned to raise their hands and wait to be called upon, they all talk at once. Do you have the physiological ability to sort out 30 questions at the same time — there is no real world analog to the new digital toolset we have created. Even if messages come in sequential order, normal people can’t handle the volume. What do you do with 30 responses to your Facebook update? You can’t respond to all of them. Since users don’t know what behaviors they are developing to deal with the new tools and businesses don’t know how to adapt, it may be a while before all of this comes out in the wash.

Can you make money in social media? Absolutely! We don’t need to hold a telethon for Mark Zuckerberg or Biz Stone or any of the individuals who are connected to Facebook and Twitter. They’re going to make a lot of money.

Can users make money using social media? Absolutely! You just need to understand the currencies of the Internet and build a model that allows you to translate the value of the social interaction into wealth. This is way easier than is sounds.

Can social media be advertiser supported? No. (Not the way traditional online advertising is bought and sold.)

Can it be used for advertising? Absolutely! And, it is very, very effective!

Where do I find a social media expert? Look in the mirror! You’ve been interacting socially since the day you were born.

What about the noise? Right now, it’s all noise. Everyone has an opinion about how best to use these new tools. The truth is, it’s early days and no one, not even people who are expert users of the tools, knows how this will ultimately play out.

Is there a good way to think about all of this? Yes. Do you own tools you don’t use very often? You know, the sledge hammer in the garage that your Dad left there after you used it to break up some old shed in the back yard. It was designed for a very specific purpose and, when you need it, nothing else will do. You can drive a finishing nail in with it, however, it’s not really the best tool for that job. Humm … there’s a lot you can learn from an old sledge hammer.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net. For information visit www.shellypalmer.com.

We immediately walked over to Debbie’s computer, to find her Facebook account gone. Had the hackers actually stolen her entire account? Within seconds, she received a “real world” email that looked like it was from Facebook. It said:

Hi Debbie,

Our systems indicate that your Facebook account has been compromised by cybercriminals attempting to impersonate you. These criminals often will try to trick your friends into sending them money by claiming that you are stuck in a far away location and need assistance. It is possible that your email account was compromised as well. As such, we have sent this email to all email accounts recently associated with your account. Obtaining access to a victim’s email is one of the primary ways these cybercriminals have been operating. Please change the passwords to any email addresses associated with your account.

There was some additional information in the email with links to webpages that were not helpful without access to Debbie’s account. Curiously, the email ended with this request:

In order to regain control of your Facebook account reply to this email with the answer to your security question: What was the name of your first pet?

Thanks,
Audrina User Operations

You want me to email you what? Is it not the first rule of Internet security that you never email anyone personal information about an account? Why would a real security person ask for this in an email? They should have pointed us to a link inside of Facebook where Debbie could enter the information directly into her profile. How could this email be from Facebook Security?

Erring on the side of caution, we replied to the email as follows:

Facebook team,

This is from a person I believe is posing as a member of your security team. She’s asking for me to answer a security question that I’m not going to answer. I believe this is the same person who hacked into my Facebook acct. I have not heard from anyone at FB since the first email. I cannot log onto or even get onto FB at this point.

I’d like to know why I’m being targeted twice and what you’re going to do about this?

Best,
Debbie Palmer

A couple of days later Debbie received the following:

Hi Debbie,

You do not need access to your Facebook account to contact us. We have suspended the account until we can prove ownership. I understand that you are skeptical of our correspondence, but please be assured that you are dealing with a legitimate Facebook representative. If you would like us to reevaluate the status of your account, please reply with the requested information. We appreciate your cooperation.

Thanks,
Audrina
User Operations
Facebook

Audrina’s email address is “abuse+njjntt1@facebook.com” we dubbed her The Facebook Ninja.

Over the course of the following week, after a draft copy of Cloud Life Chronicles Part I started circulating around the blogosphere, Debbie was contacted by a different Facebook staffer (who asked her to pick a new security question and give the answer — all using email). It was impossible to tell who was a hacker and who worked for Facebook. The email headers were cryptic; the email address had a “plus” sign in it (not an illegal character, but highly unusual).

Was Audrina stuck in London asking Debbie’s friends for money? Is there an Audrina? We’ll never know.

Several days later, when Debbie regained control of her account, her profile picture was changed. This freaked her out. How did a different picture become her profile picture? Her Facebook friends didn’t believe that she was the real Debbie. It took the better part of this week to get everyone settled down.

THIS WEEK:

For Debbie, Facebook is different now. I’m not seeing as many updates from her in my news feed, no pictures were uploaded and far fewer wall posts. Is she gun shy? Obviously. Will she get ever regain trust in the integrity of her Facebook account? Time will tell.

THE FUTURE:

For me, this episode brought several interesting issues into focus.

1) If you have an active user-base that is the size of a large country, does it need a government? I grew up in a town (that had a government) that was in a county (that had a government) that was in a State (that had a government) that was in a country (that had a government). There were four levels of government all overseeing my hometown. Facebook has more than 200 million active users; who represents me?

2) Is Facebook improperly designed? This is a loaded question. Facebook is awesome. Security issues aside, when Facebook is functioning as designed, the experience is wonderful. I am really thinking about the deeper design issues. Facebook offers me a place to put my photos and stuff for free, they give me free disc space for my database of friends and store my internal-to-Facebook faux emails. Does that make sense? Should I have a way to back up my stuff? Should I have a way to keep my stuff on my computer and only share it with my Facebook friends? Should Facebook be more of a replicated version of my local database as opposed to a cloud-based application?

3) Would I pay for a better version of Facebook? Would you? If so, how much? Is there a frequent flyer program or a paid premium version of Facebook in our future? If I had a better security experience or a set of features that let me back-up the things I have on Facebook, would I be willing to subscribe?

4) What does the next Facebook look like? All the buzz is about Twitter right now. Facebook is making public relations noises that are eerie echoes of missives published by MySpace as Facebook was starting to eat MySpace’s lunch.

I wanted to ask Audrina, the Facebook ninja some of these questions, but alas, like all good stealthy warriors, she vanished into thin air. She may be gone, but the questions remain. How big is too big? How quickly will we move on to the next new, new thing? Will Debbie ever embrace life in the Facebook cloud again?

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net. For information visit www.shellypalmer.com.

I’ve been on facebook for as long as they have allowed grown-ups. You can friend me at shelly@palmer.net. I have kids who are on facebook, and literally hundreds of friends and colleagues who have profiles as well. So, as you can imagine, it didn’t take long for my wife to get a profile too. Now, like so many typical families, we have kids that live home, kids away at school, married kids, etc. We have friends and relatives all over the place and, because facebook now has the population of the 6th largest country, everyone we know is on fb.

For the past six months things have been great. My wife, although new to fb, is in love with the social networking aspect of the service. She has reconnected with her old friends, connected with her current group and has a direct digital connection with our kids.

Now, I leave fb open on my computer most of the day. But for me, it’s just one of many communications tools. However, my wife is a fb demon. She’s on it like glue. Actually, I think she’s addicted. For her, it has replaced IM, email and Kodak Easy-share. And that’s saying a lot!

BACKGROUND:

The other day, she came into my office and announced that one of her friends sent her a real-world email saying that they thought her fb profile had been hacked. I didn’t think much of it. We checked out her profile, messages, etc. and determined that everything looked OK. It wasn’t.

A few days later, several of her friends had contacted her (on and off fb) to tell her that they had received messages that they were sure were not from her. Then, I received a fb chat from her while she was standing next to me. The hacker was online!

I challenged the hacker and he/she told me that they were in my account too. Unlikely, but it sounded fierce.

By the time we got to my wife’s computer, fb had disabled her account and she had received a message that her account was compromised and that they were aware of the issue.

That sounded good at the time. But that was a week ago.

THIS WEEK:

Unwilling to use my connections to deal with this, and thinking that the experience would make for a good article, I asked my wife to see if she could deal with it. She agreed to try.

Within a few minutes she told me that she had no idea how to deal with it. There seemed to be no way to contact anyone.

I IM’d (AOL IM, that is) her the URL of the appropriate fb security page and told her to follow the instructions. The page clearly says, if you think your account has been hacked “click here.” Sadly, it asked for the URL of her fb profile, which she did not know. And, there was nothing we could do to help her since her account was gone.

After several emails into the black hole of fb customer service, I have decided to use my contacts to find a “real person” inside to speak with. This is not as easy as it sounds (even for me). I have several fb contacts, however, none of them work in security. This is going to be hard.

What’s my wife doing? Nothing. She doesn’t have a profile and she doesn’t know who to call, who to contact or what to do.

SEVERAL DAYS LATER:

This is actually now a social media nightmare. Debbie Sommers Palmer RIP. Her virtual world no longer exists. Every comment she made, every picture she uploaded, every connection she had, every one of the old friends that she reconnected with … all gone.

AN UNANSWERED CALL FOR HELP:

So, being the dutiful husband that I am, I decided to go wide with my call for help. Now, I have over 3,400 fb friends. Most of them are in the related fields of technology, media and entertainment. A large number of them are in pure play Internet. Three facebook updates, yielded several messages of solidarity, but no possible help. Two people in my fb network actually work at fb, no answer to the question. One is a relative of the founder, nope. Not even an answer to a direct message.

OK, if the fb community is not able to rally, how about the newest social media darling? Actually, I sent simultaneous tweets to Twitter, fb and LinkedIn using ping.fm — nothing, nada, zilch, zippo … we shall all mourn the loss of my virtual wife.

THE SAGA CONTINUES:

From a business perspective, this is the problem with an organization that has 200 million non-paying customers and no actual meaningful revenue model. How many customer service people would a reasonable person expect them to have? More to the point, the service is free — so it’s worth what you pay for it!

But that is not what consumers of Internet services have come to expect. We expect Facebook to live up to our extremely unrealistic expectations of customer retention and customer service. We shouldn’t, but we do.

During this week, several of my friends’ accounts have been hacked. Security on Facebook is becoming a real issue. That being said, it’s a technology problem and computer people are pretty good at solving those. The bigger problem for Zuckerberg and company is the fact that my wife won’t ever trust a cloud-based, social network again. She won’t bother to invest the time and energy to establish another virtual presence because she feels completely victimized. The hacker victimized her, then facebook penalized and victimized her and then, abandoned her. The damage is done, she’s gone — herein lies the challenge and the opportunity.

Author’s note: Just minutes before publishing this article, facebook reinstated Debbie’s account. She’s back … but for how long?

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net. For information visit www.shellypalmer.com.

Now, this is really old news. Lots of people I know use their DVR’s this way, but most don’t. They either forget to, or they simply record their favorite shows and watch them later (and skip the commercials).

As most of you know, I host a daily show called MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer. Every business day I pick the four or five stories about technology, media and entertainment that interest me the most and I talk about them. (Actually, my content is multi-format and available in multi-media, so it’s hard to call it a show. You can visit shellypalmer.com to see all of the ways - video, audio and text - that my daily messaging reaches my audience. But that’s not what this story is about.)

As most of you also know, I love television (the artform, not the platform) and I am a serious TV junkie. This season of Celebrity Apprentice is one of my guilty pleasures. To me, Sunday night’s episode was as good as it gets - high drama that built towards an ultimate showdown. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, the show was excellent and the ending had Joan and Melissa Rivers demonstrating that they might benefit from some anger management training.

As much as I love TV, I am as cynical and jaded a viewer as you can imagine and the whole, “you’re fired!” thing is old, as is the reality genre. But — truth be told — I thought Mark Burnett and his team did a remarkable job keeping the show fresh and making a tired format feel new and exciting. So, without giving it a second thought, I included a story about the kind-of-surprise ending of Sunday night’s Celebrity Apprentice in MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer on Monday morning.

Here’s the as-recorded script: “The Donald fired Melissa Rivers last night triggering a very expletive deleted and entertaining exit. Not to be outdone, her mother, Joan laced into Melissa’s teammates (as only a mother can) and walked off the show as well. Just when you think you’ve been there and done that, Mark Burnett always finds a way to keep it fresh. Kudos Mark, Celebrity Apprentice rocks!”

Harmless, right? Wrong!!!

By 10:00am EDT Monday morning, I had dozens of emails from my viewers that all went something like this:

“Hey Shelly – What’s with giving away the Celebrity Apprentice scoop? In the world of DVR, we have to assume that not everyone is caught up (especially when a show airs on such a huge DVR night, like Sundays). Please, please be more cautious next time – or put a big SPOILER ALERT warning beforehand on the email and webcast. I promise that will make me avert my eyes. Thanks!”

This was the nicest one, I can’t print the others. Then there were the phone calls and voicemail messages, then the txt messages and assorted direct tweets, to say nothing of the fb messages and nasty wall postings. Holy $##@, Batman! It’s just a TV show.

The lesson here is hardcore and dispassionate. DVR’s are now completely mainstream. As Jeff Zucker likes to say, “The number one show at 10pm is TiVo!” Not just for early adopters, not just for industry people, for everyone! No matter what the focus group people tell us, no matter how many stats guys and strategy wonks say that penetration is only x% and people don’t really use it for this or for that — it’s over! The end is now.

I am usually the first person to tell a client that they cannot use themselves or their families as research subjects. But I’m not judging the tipping point by my own behaviors, I’m using much better armchair research. DVR’s are being used by average, normal people in the doing of their everyday life. Traditional television advertising will not recover.

As if this wasn’t depressing enough, DM’s on Twitter have almost completely replaced TXT messages in my world and, my FB profile page gets as many people commenting on my updates as do full blog posts.

So forget the economy, forget the swine flu, forget politics … tech notes-to-self:

• I must wait a suitable amount of time before discussing TV shows around my virtual water cooler to allow time-shifted viewing or incur the wrath of my friends and colleagues.

• I must carry a PDA with a Twitter app so that I can DM my friends and retweet important tweets to my followers.

• My facebook wall is now the center of my connected life and I must treat it accordingly.

Wow … and you thought the only people who liked change were babies in wet diapers.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2009, Lake House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information about Get Digital Classes, visit www.shellypalmer.com/seminars

Somewhat stunned, I asked her to explain. And she replied, “It’s my dream job. I want to be a famous talk show host or anchor and make a lot of money.” Thankfully, at that very moment, several people joined the conversation and I was able to make a stealthy getaway.

I thought to myself, what made her think that any of the jobs she is dreaming about actually exist? As a practical matter, they don’t. You can’t go from 34 year-old, female, third-string, foreign language, cable news reporter to NYC-based talk show host. In fact, you probably can’t get there at all. Not because of personal talent, but because the job doesn’t exist. There is no locally produced talk show that is looking to hire a host. That’s not how talk shows work.

Over the next several weeks, this conversation was replayed several times with several different individuals. Each person was asking me about a job that either no longer existed or worse, never existed at all. Then it dawned on me — if you ask the wrong question, you are guaranteed to get the wrong answer.

While all of this was going on, WNBC-TV announced that Len Berman, the venerable sportscaster, was being let go because of budget constraints. But wait! Len is a fixture in NYC, he’s a sports brand, he’s one of the main reasons people tune in to Channel 4 … um … nope, he’s a very big budget item that could easily be cut to make room for a bunch of high quality, low cost, good looking young people who can read, write and speak on camera.

Do you think they made a good decision? Go ahead, name all the “branded” sportscasters in the New York DMA. You can’t? Neither can anyone else. The job of “venerable” _____caster at a local TV station no longer exists - everyone can be replaced with younger, fresher, cheaper talent.

Well, that’s pretty depressing. Yeah, I think so too. But that’s not where it ends. How many people are now looking for jobs that no longer exist? If you used to be a computer photo typesetter, you were replaced in the 1980’s with desktop publishing. Now, if you had that skill set, you probably could have opened a boutique desktop-based print pre-production house and done fine. Or, you could have looked for work in the transportation or food services industry. They are all about as related.

Perhaps you’d like to be a theme music composer for television or a graphic designer for the broadcast industry. How about a gig as a professional studio trombone player, or a cameraperson on a remote three-person news crew?

All of these jobs still exist in some form, but they are far from dream jobs. In fact, these production skills have been commoditized and practitioners can look forward to making about the same kind of money as they would waiting tables in a good restaurant.

I started asking some of my more seasoned friends about what jobs actually exist in their industries now (as opposed to the jobs that people think exist). The answers were truly stunning.

Last week I had the honor of lecturing to a classroom full of graduate students at the Columbia Business School and then later in the week I had an opportunity to address a similar group of graduate students (via Skype) at the Newhouse School. As I do during every lecture, I gave the students my email address and invited them to contact me with questions or comments. Just for fun, I asked about a dozen of them what they hoped to be when they entered the work force. The answers were a total surprise. To a person, they are aspiring to jobs that have devolved into commoditized low wage work, that they still perceive to be high profile, high paying careers.

We hear so much these days about workforce development and career guidance. But I wonder who is educating the educators? Who is communicating reality to the job counselors? Does it make sense to go to school to become a studio musician in 2009? The short answer is no. You can certainly go to music school, that is a privilege and a joy. But there is no job called “studio musician” any more. In 1980, being good at that job guaranteed a six-figure income. Today, you’d be lucky to make $50k per year in a big city, and away from the three major production centers, beer money. Do you know how many students are in music school thinking that there’s a commercial production business to go into? Now, substitute camera operator, editor, graphic artist, set designer, copywriter, news giver, spokesperson, model/actress, script supervisor, the list just keeps on going. And it’s not just the production side; the same holds true for the business side, the promotion side, all of it.

What would you do differently if you had the ability to accurately assess the total potential of your dream job and found out that it was no longer possible for it to provide the living you dreamed accompanying it? There’s only one answer … you’d look for a different line of work.

The pace of change being what it is, it is truly surprising how many people still laud and revere certain jobs in our profession. Jobs that, in reality, bear little resemblance to what they used to be.

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press) and the upcoming, Get Digital: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the 21st Century Economy (2009, Lake House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.netFor information about Get Digital Classes, visit www.shellypalmer.com/seminars