As many of you know, I have recently started a sabbatical from Brightcove.  I'd been thinking of doing so for a while but a confluence of factors made it possible, notably having recently had someone join to take over many of my responsibilities.  I'm a big believer in taking some time every 5 - 6 years to step back and take stock - I did just this in 2005 - and I'm looking forward to doing so again.  I'll be spending the time learning and absorbing as much as I can, talking to people about what's of interest to them, exploring some ideas that have been floating around in my head, possibly consulting with some Companies and writing more.  So if you know any areas for me to explore or people to meet, get in touch!

I've been thinking a lot about filters in the digital age.  GigaOm just published some of these musings.  Enjoy.

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Time was, we would get recommendations from “trusted” institutions. You know the names: Consumer Reports for products, Lonely Planet for travel, KCRW for music, the New York Times for all the news that’s fit to print, the list goes on. Their word was sacred, and we the masses were grateful for their filtering, their curation. If your track wasn’t on heavy rotation on their playlist, so to speak, you weren’t going to sell. But as we all know, the Internet changed things. And how.

I thought about this recently as I was planning a trip to Paris and sought recommendations on things to do, places to eat from a variety of sources. Between friends, colleagues, peer reviews on TripAdvisor, New York Times lists, the hotel concierge and travel sites, I was getting bombarded with tips on how to spend 36 hours in the City of Light. It was confusing, time-consuming and, ultimately, overwhelming to parse the recommendations, cross-check those that seemed promising and book.

It’s no blinding insight to say that, with the “democratization” of communication that the Internet enabled — and the resultant onslaught of data and artifacts created — there is a greater need for filters than ever before. We are sipping from the proverbial firehose and drowning in the ensuing deluge. Or, as Clay Shirky put it (by way of JP Rangaswami, who writes eloquently about the subject), we don’t live in an age of information overload, but of “filter failure.” Quite so.

The notion of authority and credibility is changing.  Previously credibility inured to institutions and brands.  We still revere traditional arbiters of taste – the Michelin guide still makes or breaks many restaurants.  But this is changing.  The filters of old are decreasing in reach, power and authority.  Instead, authority is atomizing to the individual level. Examples abound of individuals using social platforms such as Twitter and YouTube to broadcast to a much wider audience.  The Amazon star rating is becoming as important as the NYT Book review.

Social recommendations have always played a big part in our decisions, and this also is changing with the advent of the social graph. The concept of trusted peers or filters is expanding to those once or twice removed from our friends. The prospect of using this social graph to inform our searches, to be the new PageRank is what underpins the huge potential of Facebook.

At the same time, we as consumers have become more proactive in seeking filters, in “following.” Besides email, Twitter and YouTube, the concept of the “follow” is central to a new breed of vertically-oriented sites and feeds: Svpply for products, 8tracks for music (see disclosure), Lyst for fashion, I-Escape for boutique hotels, Covestor for stocks, food blogs like An American In London for local restaurants, Jason Hirschorn’s Media Redefined feed for my daily run-down of industry news, and so on.

But this also means a splintering of tastes. As we roll our own filters based on new authorities and new friends and Circles, so there becomes less overlap in our general tastes.  What does this all mean? It’s too early to tell. But, as always, the new filters will look to institutionalize themselves to cement and project their authority (Jason Hirschorn will turn his feed into a business, natch). At the same time, our splintered filters will result in a self-selecting bias.  We naturally gravitate towards filters that echo our point of view and taste. In public affairs, this leads to a polarization of the polity.  More darkly, as JP writes, “There is a growing risk that you will only be presented with information that someone else thinks is what you want to see, read or hear. Accentuating your biases and prejudices. Increasing groupthink. Narrowing your frame of reference.”  Whatever the case, there is enormous value to be created in being the new filter and the prospect of ‘owning’ this promises great wealth and power to those that can do it at scale.

Back to my weekend in Paris. After consulting so many sources, we ultimately just went with the recommendations of our concierge. He didn’t disappoint, but it got me thinking: it would have been great to have a Quora for Paris — a Q&A site where I could ask where the best Sunday brunch near the 1st is, with socially filtered answers or, better yet, a “Summify” to smartly condense recommendations from “institutions” and friends into an easily digested form. That I would pay for.

This was recently posted on GigaOm:

I was recently asked to prognosticate about the next decade of TV and online video by an analyst. It was flattering and slightly bewildering, as I’m not exactly a visionary but I have been “in the biz” for a while. While the discussion was free-form, in retrospect, it focused around major trends in the video landscape and the fall-out from them:

The explosion of content

Clearly there has been an explosion of content over the past five years — a trend that shows no signs of abating. In the land of a million channels, the filter will be king. Value will accrue to those that aggregate and filter programming.

• As with traditional television, there will be a handful of new video aggregators that emerge with sustainable businesses. The fact is that aggregating video content today is an expensive proposition. One must have deep pockets to buy the rights and distribution scale to justify the expenditure. In the US, we’re seeing this play out with Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Apple, AOL, Yahoo and Hulu contending for online rights alongside the cable companies. It will be increasingly difficult for new entrants to make inroads here. There is no shortage of startups trying to be the EPG of online and mobile video.  But the best filters rely on scale and leverage network economies (Amazon reviews, Netflix, Pandora), and so it will be a “winner take all” (or, at least, “most”) outcome.

• YouTube will be spun out. Google will realize it could get more value from YouTube by spinning it out. YouTube is acting more and more like a traditional programmer of content – buying up rights, funding original programming and so on –- and getting more “media DNA” will be as important for them as technical talent.

• The plethora of available content will, paradoxically, mean that live events, especially premium sports with broad appeal (F1, World/Euro Cup, Superbowl, Olympics, IPL, major golf & tennis) will grow in stature and wealth. They will benefit from the scarcity of events with mass appeal given the time-shifted nature of video consumption. This lack of “supply” will result in concerted efforts to create more “tent-pole” events — there’s too much money at stake not to try. The IPL is the best recent example of this but look for more here — World Cup Basketball anyone?

The emergence of the social graph

We are still coming to terms with the power and implications of the social graph. While Facebook was first seen as a pure social networking and communication utility platform, it is increasingly becoming a place to consume media. So I predict that Facebook will overtake YouTube as a video consumption destination in the next five years.

Facebook is already a major media consumption platform with all of the social gaming that currently occurs. Moving into other content categories such as music and video is not a big stretch. In fact they just appointed Reed Hastings to their Board – a signal of their media ambitions not to be ignored. Moreover, they have a music strategy afoot (which I think will be big).

Video content owners today program channels on Facebook but there is no aggregation across channels. This represents a market opportunity for Facebook or another aggregator that would take advantage of their social graph.

Mobile and the cloud

Media consumption on smartphones and tablets is increasing on an exponential basis. At the same time, the “cloud” is enabling on-demand access to software and media, and obviating the need to store and sync files locally. Given these two trends, it seems a smart bet that the smartphone/tablet will be the hub for accessing and displaying content with “dumb screens” such as TVs and computer monitors that will get the signal from them. Smartphone docks are already being built into car dashboards, which could make the radio tuner redundant.

New Players on the World Stage

We will see a challenge to the dominance of U.S. and Western European media companies coinciding with the growing economic power of emerging market economies. There are players in these so-called emerging markets that are already making a splash and this will only continue. Abu Dhabi Media, Naspers, Al Jazeera, Globo, Televisa, Reliance, Mail.ru, CCTV and others will be asserting more influence on the world stage — and on par with the Disneys, News Corps and Universals of the world. Look for a major U.S./Western European network to be bought by an emerging market player. It wouldn’t surprise me to see one of them make a play for Hulu.

Finally, there’s the “wild card.” The above predictions aren’t necessary big leaps of faith to make. More significant will be the wild cards that aren’t even on the radar. After all, YouTube, Facebook and the explosion of social networking and UGC were mere glimmers in the eye 10 years ago.  It will be fun to watch.

This was a red-letter week for internet radio and Pandora.  They had a successful IPO and, while the stock is trading below its offering price, much of that may be attributed to the market in general.  I wrote a blog post for Gigaom on the Pandora story and their road to IPO.  I was then interviewed on Bloomberg on the day of their IPO.  It had been a while since I'd done a TV interview and there were many points I wanted to make but couldn't in the time allotted to me.  The TV interview lacked nuance - for instance, they positioned me as someone who had single-handedly 'rescued' Live365 and driven them to profitability.  So I'll use this forum to 'set the record straight' on some things:

• I am big admirer of what Pandora and their team have accomplished.  I separate the Company from the stock (which I thought was overvalued when I did the interview).  I couldn't agree more with what Om had to write on the journey undertaken for love, not money.
• I didn't single-handedly, 'heroically' rescue Live365.  It was a team effort and I would like to think that I played a large part.  While it wasn't a big financial win for me, helping right the boat and turn it around in the aftermath of the dot-com bust is one of my proudest professional accomplishments.
• There is a bullish story for Pandora as well if they can increase their audio advertising take-up, tap into local ad $, continue their growth in mobile, go into premium programming, etc.  Their management team have proven themselves before.
• I think Pandora is weak in some areas, notably on the social side.  I'm biased here - I'm an advisor and investor in 8tracks.com, which is going at it from a much more social angle.  
• There is a bullish story for Pandora as well if they can increase their audio advertising take-up, tap into local ad $, continue their growth in mobile, go into premium programming, etc.  Their management team have proven themselves before.

At the end of the day, Pandora's IPO, as long as they don't crater as a public company, is good for the medium to further legitimize it in the advertising community and I hope Pandora's 'tide' lifts the other boats.  I'll be watching with interest.

Every tech blogger’s favorite parlor game of the moment seems to be weighing in on the ‘is it or isn’t it a bubble?’ question.  I may as well join in with a qualified “meh”:

• There seems to be too much funding chasing too few early stage deals leading to the so-called frothy valuations. 
• These are also heady days on the recruiting front.  This story in the NYT reminded me of those halcyon days of 1999.
• However, clearly it’s a much different game this time around in terms of the secular trends around broadband penetration, user adoption, technology costs and so on.  What’s more, I don’t hear locker room attendants talking about stocks or angel investments they’ve made.  Yes, there are many more angel investors (including yours truly, slightly), but that is far from a bubble.
• There has been a dearth of tech growth stories on public markets leading to pent-up demand for secondary shares of private companies such as Facebook and Zynga, and appetite for those that do go IPO.

So, in short, there are unrealistic expectations within a pocket of the overall market.  People will lose out and get hurt.  But, on balance, it won’t be nearly as painful as it was ‘back then’.  Meh.

It’s been nearly 6 months since I last posted.  Shame on me.  But it’s not easy feeding the content beast and I felt the need for a hiatus to re-think why I blog and what I want to blog about.  I’m sure inertia had something to do with it too.  But I’ve missed blogging.  What I’ve most missed is being forced to organize and structure my thoughts into something that is hopefully cogent, especially since there are few opportunities to do this during the weekly grind. I also miss the people that I’d meet through my blog.  And so I’ve resolved to do the following:

• Average 1 post per week
• Focus on professional topics around digital media, e-commerce.  I’ll post about more personal topics from time to time, or I may find another outlet for that.  Ideally I’ll find a way to combine the two.
• Continue to tweet at www.twitter.com/ragsgupta.
• Favor analysis or ‘learnings’ over regurgitation of topical news.  Memes will no doubt drive what I post about but I’ll try not to take the easy way of adding a little commentary to a trending topic.

That’s it for now.  I look forward to getting past my blogger’s block.

Today was the end of the 7th annual DLD Conference.  DLD, short for Digital Life Design, is a conference founded and organized by the people at Hubert Burda Media, notably Marcel Reichart, Steffi Czerny and Mr. Burda himself.  It's the best show in Europe with respect to digital media:

• They attract a stellar line-up of speakers from the hottest companies.  This year's lineup included Eric Schmidt, Andrew Mason and Dennis Crowley.  But as much as these people are nice to watch, I really appreciate the 'non-techie' speakers that I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to - people such as Somaly Mam, Deepak Chopra and Paulo Coelho. 
• The invitation-only nature of the conference tends to ensure higher quality networking than at other shows and there are lots of opportunities to do so.  It's a pretty good mix of people in terms of geography, sector and company size, although it's a bit skewed towards Western Europe and the US.
• The folks at Burda put it on in style: they don't skimp on the food or drink, there's always a big party on the Monday night with a name performer (Lady Gaga & Cheryl Cole in years past; Duffy this year) and they think of the little things (for instance, mobile phone charging stations with 'valet' so you don't have to worry about leaving it).

It's a good way to get the pulse of the internet/tech scene and this year was no different.  No surprise that group buying is hot, as is social media.  In terms of improvements, I'd have loved to have more coverage of non-western european/US scenes - the India panel was good but just a start.  I would also carve out some time for speaker presentations and fewer panels, which sometimes tend to 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'.  Moroever, more time could have been spent on one of the seminal digital issues of our time - that of the balance and tradeoffs between transparency and privacy in a digital world.  This was thrown into such stark contrast in the past year with the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the 'explosion' of Wilileaks, and yet I felt it was tangentially covered at the conference.

All that said, congrats to the Burda team for what was another successful show.  It was nice to see familiar faces and meet new ones, and there is no doubt that DLD is the best 'digital' conference in Europe.

Like many of you, I will be ringing in the New Year at a party.  Only this party will be in Jaisalmer, India and it will mark the beginning of the winter 2011 Rickshaw Run.  The Rickshaw Run is a rally organized by The Adventurists.  It involves roughly 64 teams driving an auto-rickshaw across India over a period of roughly two weeks.  Yes, it is actually as insane as it sounds.

My good friend Darren told me about it and I signed up for this Run, wanting to have a real adventure and see India from a much different perspective.  And how.

Our team name is 3 Idiots Aram Se, combinging the huge Bollywood hit (3 Idiots) and also the Hindi term for 'in a leisurely way'.  You can track us on our blog or on twitter.  We will be taking off at 12 pm India time tomorrow.  Wish us luck - we'll need it!

PS - Any donations would be appreciated - To Water Aid if you're in the US or Frank Water if in the UK.

I was on FB just now and a colllege friend chatted with me.  It sounded like he was up a creek but then some things sounded fishy - he's not one to cry easily for one.  Also the grammar and other details were vague and so I suspected a phishing scam and asked him something only the real guy would know.  Be wary!  Transcript below (scroll to bottom for my money quote):

4:53pm

HI

how you doing Rags?

4:53pm

ME: hey buddy, how goes?

4:54pm

Am not too good at the moment

4:54pm

ME: uh oh, what's up?

4:54pm

We are currently stuck in London uk,went there on a short vacation and was mugged at a gun point last night

4:54pm

ME: holy shit!

sorry to hear

4:55pm

I was hurt on my head,writing you in tears now as we speak,All cash and credit card was stolen off including cell phone,it was a brutal experience

4:55pm

ME: aww jeez, that is awful

4:55pm

it was scary

Thank God we have our life and passport

4:56pm

ME: where r u now?

how can i help?

4:56pm

I'll brief you in full as soon as am back home...I need your urgent help?

Our return flight leaves in few hours to this time and we are having a problem in sorting the hotel bill and get a cab down to the airport

Wondering if you can loan me some few $$$ i promise to refund it back to you as soon as we get back home tomorrow

4:57pm

ME: where r u now?

4:57pm

local library Cafe

4:57pm

ME: which one?

4:58pm

sonlandd hotel

I need a quick loan from you?

4:59pm

ME: sure btw do u remember the name of that frat we both tried to join?

it came up the other day

5:00pm

I don't know

5:02pm

ME: never mind...how do i send you the money?

i have a standing bank order for a bank acct in nigeria if that works?

Josh is offline.

Not long ago, I met with the founder of a b2b software startup in London.  He wanted to pick my brain: now that they're somewhat established in Europe, he wanted to know how they could 'crack the US' and what sort of partners he should try to meet on an upcoming trip.  He went on to state that entering the US was the most important thing for his Company (which I would agree with). 

I challenged him as to why they weren't moving themselves to the US.  If they're that serious about the US being their most important market, they would probably be best served to physically be there and not go through partners.

And finally, here's the thing: "cracking the States" is hard for European companies.  There aren't that many EU software or media companies that have successfully rolled out in the States.  MySQL & Skype are exceptions that come to mind but otherwise I'm drawing a blank...maybe Last.fm.  Spotify has potential but still hasn't launched. This doesn't mean that European companies shouldn't try but they should go in with their eyes open and be ready to go 'all in' if they're serious about it.