High definition set top boxes, mobile TV, digital radio – all contenders for the future of media, right? Well, not exactly. It can be tempting to assume if something is digital it must be good. But there is a more subtle pattern at play. If you want to understand how traditional media is being disrupted – the key is not technology but audience behaviour.

South Korea is about as close to tech nirvana as it gets. Step on a subway, and you will see commuters mesmerised by tiny television tuners embedded in their mobile phones. The number of mobile TV users in Korea has reached 10 million in just two and half years. But as they and other mobile TV markets are discovering - there is trouble in paradise. Despite the hype of digital broadcast - no one is actually making money. Advertising on handheld devices in Korea accounts for a mere 0.2% of broadcast media advertising.

It’s becoming a familiar paradox. Around the world, governments and big companies are sinking billions to build new digital broadcast infrastructure. They are hoping that the lure of higher resolution, better sound and more channels will cover the costs of implementation and provide a bridge to the future of radio and television. But the funny thing is - innovation is already happening. Just not on broadcast.

There is a critical and frequently overlooked difference between broadcast transmission, and content delivered by the Internet. Broadcast is about beaming content to a particular audience at a particular point of time. On the Internet, content is broken into lots of small pieces, stored in the cloud and reassembled when people actually request it. True – at present it is less reliable and lower in resolution than digital broadcast - but it is also infinitely more flexible and adaptable.

Think about it. In February this year, ComScore reported that American audiences watched ten billion videos on the Internet. That is a huge number, but even more tellingly most of that consumption didn’t occur on websites controlled by TV networks but rather on YouTube. Community is a big part of the YouTube experience. Audiences can not only watch online video when they want - they can break it up, share it, embed it, blog about it or even remix it into new forms. Digital broadcasting might look prettier than its analogue predecessor – but the audience experience is fundamentally the same as it always was.

I like to think of the difference between broadcast and the Internet using the analogy of a pipe and a straw. You can pump a hell of lot of volume through a pipe, but its not particularly flexible. A pipe is fixed, pointing in one direction, and only has two settings – on or off. Now a straw, on the other hand, won’t let you draw down as much volume, but you do have one big advantage. You can take a sip whenever you like.

Broadcast is not going to die anytime soon. For a start, it’s a very efficient way to distribute content when combined with clever recording devices. If you own a digital video recorder at home, you will know what I mean. Mobile may soon experience a similar time-shifting renaissance. One of the reasons that Japan’s mobile TV service based on ‘1-Seg’ technology has been popular is because broadcasts are DRM free. Consumers can choose a TV show from an electronic program guide and record the show onto a memory card in their phone to watch later.

Time-shifting is a neat trick, but it doesn’t solve the tougher dilemma facing audiences – deciding what to watch or listen to. In a world of infinite content choices, the real issue is discovery. And that is better achieved on the web. Broadcast networks are programmed by professionals, but content on the Internet is organised by audiences themselves. Today’s teenagers don’t discover content on radio, they use social networks like Myspace, imeem, Facebook or MOG. Applications like Last.FM or iLike learn from the music you listen to and recommend other songs you might like based on other users. Buy TV shows on iTunes, and you can see other content that people with similar tastes to you have selected.

That’s the power of audience networks.

If you a major media company today, digital broadcasting may look like the obvious next step. But actually, you would be better off focusing on the more disruptive technology of web distribution. Broadcasters have done a pretty good job of using the web as promotion for their core assets. Now the real job is to turn it into a platform in its own right. In the last twelve months, the US TV networks have taken action – making some of their prime time schedule available as a free web stream the next day after broadcast. It’s a start, but not enough.

It’s inevitable that all the world’s entertainment will be available free on the web. Most of that content is already there – uploaded by audiences themselves – it’s just not particularly well organised. That will change. And traditional broadcasters need to quickly figure out whether they are going to be the ones to do it.

There’s something big happening in the mapping space. All the indicators are there – significant M&A activity, a dramatic rise in the number of GPS enabled devices and exponential growth in geotagged content. Don’t be fooled. This is not Geography 2.0. Its something much more interesting.

For anyone in the location business, its deal time. In the last year, Nokia bought digital map company NAVTEQ for $8.1 billion, TomTom took out Tele Atlas for $2.8 billion, and there have been a dozen other smaller transactions. There are two forces driving this. Mobile players are waking up to the potential of personal navigation. And secondly, car navigation manufacturers have seen the opportunity to consolidate and scale their products into a broader web connected platform.

And what is that platform? Well, for starters - its more than just Google Earth. Like everyone else, I played with Google Earth for five minutes when it launched. I looked up my house, the Pyramids and the Eiffel Tower – and then I didn’t touch it again for ages. That is, until recently. You see the power of Google Earth was never really the cool satellite images at all. It was the ability to add extra layers of content. And its only lately that geotagged content has started to reach a critical mass.

2008 will be the year of location enabled devices.

According to iSuppli, there will be 250 million GPS-enabled phones shipping per annum by 2010 alone. Add to that GPS enabled cameras, cars, computers and other portable devices. The more consumers create content marked with location data the more what we know of as the Internet will begin to acquire a physical context. It’s what people are already calling the Geoweb.

New GPS units like Dash will not only show you directions but give you an overlay of reviews, rating, hyperlocal news and other web content. Mobile applications like Socialight will display notes that other people have left when you walk into a space they have been in previously. And many of us will start using personal location broadcast platforms like Dopplr, Plazes, Loki and the upcoming Fireagle from Yahoo to not only share what we are doing, but where we are going.

On my last trip to Tokyo I was fortunate to meet some of the researchers at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory. They were pondering an interesting question. Most of us generate a huge amount of digital content without even realising it. Photos, messages, music you listened to, places you went to. So how do you identify what’s important so that you can archive your memories?

The Sony researchers came up with an interesting solution to this problem. With a route tracking application they observed where a person went everyday. By separating the ordinary (going to work or the supermarket) from the memorable (holidays, a walk in the park, a day trip to another city) - you could create automatic content albums based on significant days.

This, to me, is a great example of what the Geoweb really stands for. Not just clever GPS car navigation units or 3D spinning globes, but a mesh of the real world with the organising logic of the web.  In truth, the more that our physical environment is mapped to online data platforms, the more the former will start to resemble the latter.

The webification of the world.

Please, no more friend requests. If you are like most people - in the last few months you have gone from bemusement as invitations deluged your inbox, to addiction as you obsessed over what people wrote on your wall and finally depression once Facebook was banned at your work. It wasn't the first time you joined a social network. And it won't be the last. But maybe not for the reasons you might expect.

The concept of social networks predated the web. Originally they described ‘small world’ experiments conducted by mid 20th century sociologists studying how people were connected. Over the last ten years, there have been numerous online variations. SixDegrees was the first network I joined in the nineties. Others like Friendster, Linkedin, MySpace and finally Facebook followed. And each time, I dutifully filled in the fields and sold out my friends.

What distinguishes Facebook from its predecessors is the openness of its platform. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg figured out that most networking sites actually did two separate things – they helped people map out their social graphs, and then they overlaid applications to let you do useful things with them. By opening up their platform in May this year, Facebook demonstrated that there was no reason why the company doing the former had to monopolise the latter.

The results have been astonishing. In the last six months over 4,000 apps have been created, leading to over 276 million installs. That makes Facebook one of the most viral platforms in history. Why the rapid uptake? Every time you add a new application or do anything else for that matter - it turns up in a feed broadcasting to everyone else in your network.

Media companies should pay attention. The distribution of entertainment is in desperate need of becoming more social. These days, legally or otherwise, access to content is easy. There is simply no such thing anymore as an exclusive distribution deal. Whether its iTunes, Amazon or dubious indexes like TV-Links which provide updated location details and RSS feeds of almost every major TV show around – the simple fact is that you can download just about anything within moments of broadcast.

In a world of infinite content on demand, the tricky bit is not getting content but figuring out what to watch.

That’s why networks are useful. In their current form, Electronic Programming Guides are an anachronism. They won’t go away but they will certainly become less like grids and more graphs. Like an app on Facebook, they will show you what your friends are watching and listening to, or introduce you to new people who have similar tastes to you. It certainly makes you rethink just what it will mean to be an media aggregator in the future.

There is already action at the edges. Last.fm which connects you with the like minded by profiling your musical taste through an iTunes plugin - was purchased in May this year by CBS Interactive for US$280m. A similar service, iLike, has created one of the most popular apps on Facebook which allows you to dedicate songs to your friends and run music quizzes. And then there is Joost, the much hyped P2P television viewer, which has a whole host of social tools, although as yet little use of them.

So will there be an ultimate winner in this space? Facebook is looking pretty hot right now, but my guess is that in the long term there will be no one single network platform provider. Its pretty easy for people to transfer their contacts to a new platform. Last year, Myspace looked unassailable. Now, not so much. If anything, brands have a lot to do with network proliferation. Sure you can fiddle with your profile settings to juggle your colleagues and your buddies – but it certainly feels safer keeping work contacts in Linkedin. Not to mention, whatever you might be up to on a dating site.

In reality, we will be part of lots of networks - flipping between them like an optometrist changing lens on a pair of glasses to gain different perspectives on the world. If Google solved the problem of finding things you were looking for, networks will help us discover the things we didn’t know we wanted.

What you know will depend on who you know.

TV shows can get axed for all kinds of reasons. A competitive time slot against American Idol, fickle audience ratings or a studio executive having a bad hair day. Ironically, a lot of these shows are now ending up on the iTunes store making it a kind of elephant graveyard for discarded television. However, if you read through the user comments on these shows you will notice something interesting. In many cases, although these shows tanked on first broadcast - over time they have managed to accumulate a large and loyal audience. Trouble is, by the time that happens - its generally too late and everyone has moved on. So even if niche audiences want to buy niche content - the economics just don't match with the way that television is currently produced. So much for the long tail.

There's a book by Stephen Johnson that's as interesting as its title. Its called 'Everything Bad is Good For You' and one of its big ideas is that as popular culture becomes more complex, consuming it actually makes you smarter not dumber. Its a tantalising possibility and certainly right on the major point. TV drama is getting more complicated. Multiple character arcs, hidden clues, threaded story lines, obscure referencing and pay offs that can take multiple seasons to crystallize. Its also why buying DVD box sets of complete seasons provides a better experience than trying to watch shows as they trickle broadcast each week. And more tellingly, why downloading TV may be even better than DVD.

There are several reasons for this. Subscribing to a show, and having the latest episode pushed to you as soon as its ready beats waiting for your local network to screen last season's episode, or deciding to remove a series altogether from their programming schedule. Secondly - online delivery fits well with the way that the new generation of consumers will increasingly discover entertainment. Namely, through each other. Network based discovery examples include forwarded links to YouTube clips, embedded videos on social media profiles or intelligent recommendations from aggregators like iTunes or Amazon. Thirdly, there is a wealth of online content about television - reviews, fan material, episode analysis and audience detective work - just waiting to be aggregated and presented as an overlay on the original show. It makes decoding a series like Lost a lot easier, and is a hell of a lot better than any trite DVD extras feature. And now that it has become simpler to display downloaded content on garden variety televisions, all of the above will be increasingly relevant to your average, rather than alpha geek audience member.

Except for one thing. Most of the television currently available for legal download was formatted and financed by an entirely different business model. It wasn't made for individual episode retail. It was designed to deliver mass audiences at a particular point of time, and financed accordingly. And even then, most shows only become really profitable when enough seasons have been made for the series to go into a syndicated repeat cycle.

So, without a fat network output deal - who would be crazy enough to spend millions of dollars per episode for a desert island drama with polar bears and invisble dinosaurs? You certainly couldn't rely on a user pays model unless you were very sure that they would indeed pay. One possibility is that in the short term we will see more cheap and cheerful web entertainment, like Michael Eisner's Prom Queen series on Myspace. Certainly, the present immaturity of new media business models means that the only current solution for profitability is to keep production costs low. However in the longer term,  prepaid sales like the 'Season Pass' feature on iTunes may become a more important metric in determining whether pilots get turned into series, and series continue into a second season.

That's not to say that the advertising funded model is dead. Quite the contrary. We are just now seeing the beginnings of the ultimate mash up between the targeting and price effificency of Google's Adwords with the brand impact of television advertising. The tricky bit to get right is measuring and delivering advertising when viewing is not concentrated at a particular time and on a particular channel, but fragmented across millions of sites, devices, and moments. If you read between the lines, that's what the new Newscorp joint venture with NBC is all about - creating a decentralized platform to commercialize eyeballs on content - whether they be on a portal, a social network, a blog site or even shared directly between consumers themselves.

The important thing to realise about all of this is that the future of television is not being driven by greedy media executives trying to be more creative about making more money. Or not entirely, anyway. There are deep changes in the nature of audiences and entertainment consumption taking place. Unfortunately, how fast those trends become solidified into everyday couch potato reality is as much in the hands of the lawyers as the bean counters. And that's never a good thing.

If you watch technology long enough, you get to see it become socialised. Cyber punk author Gibson said it well - "The Street finds its own uses for things". Networked audiences, powerful image and video capture devices, and simple publishing tools are all adding up to a new social vector. During a recent chat with one of my clients, they observed drily that their new generation of users seemed to be interested in just one thing. Make me famous.

Its a trend that has been bubbling for a while. Photo sharing and blog sites used to let everyone know what you and your friends have been doing. Youtube providing a platform for video confessions and gather fans. Teenagers using Myspace to package and promote themselves.

Forget social identity and think personal brands.

Over the last few months, strangely compulsive sites like Justin.tv have bubbled up. If you haven't seen it - its basically a live feed from a geeky guy who has managed to strap a video camera to his head, pushing out a feed from a mobile broadcast rig. The footage when cheeky users call emergency services who promptly burst into Justin's apartment waving guns is priceless.

Don't feel left out. There are a whole range of startups that let you get in on the act yourself. Ustream.tv provides a platform for live videocasting. Kyte.tv offers tools that let you broadcast video live from your phone, or Gordon Bell style, transmit images taken at regular intervals from your mobile camera. And lets not forget the text insanity of instant update service Twitter. However, chances are - unless you were born after 1994 - turning yourself into a personal version of the Truman Show is the very last thing you would want to do.

But there are plenty that will. And when I look at all of these shiny new personal broadcast toys I'm convinced that the world's most famous celebrity in the next few years will be an undiscovered teenage girl whose rampant party hedonism, off the shelf video streaming sunglasses and instant worldwide net audience will propel her into stellar regions. Yeah, its Paris 2.0.

It may be a hijack of the original purpose of what all this stuff was designed for. But as the Bowie song goes - fame, what you need you have to borrow.

Making Western designed electronics products faster, cheaper and in greater quantities was a copycat game that Asian manufacturers played from the 70s onward, until it was pretty clear that they had conclusively won. Ironically, the same thing is happening again in the Web2.0 space - but with a twist.

The China Web2.0 Review blog is an interesting site to keep an eye on - if for no other reason than to marvel at the macabre speed by which hot Silicon Valley startup concepts are reverse engineered, replicated and deployed in local Chinese varieties.

The latest is Popwu which is a oriental reincarnation of the uber mobile app Twitter. MSN integration is in place, but so far no SMS support. The latter is where the action will be if they can get it to work financially - considering the huge install base of Chinese mobile users. But you can also bet that there will be a dozen Popwu clones before the year is out if it looks as though someone is going to fund or buy Twitter for big dollars.

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but there is also a perverse fiscal logic at play. Most of the Chinese Web2.0 clones have been designed to both attract the hot VC cash that is pouring into the market, as well as prepare themselves to be digested whole by larger web entities.

So, should you be in China yourself transcribing the Techcrunch RSS feed into Beijing business plans? Maybe - but its harder than it looks. As eBay, Yahoo and Google have already discovered - the challenge for foreign entrants are the unusual dynamics of the Chinese market. The dominant web companies such as Tencent (which operates the 200m plus QQ messenger network) as well as search and portal players like Baidu, Sohu and Sina have consistently proved their ability to use their large user bases to dominate new application areas, snuffing the oxygen from pure play startups.

A billion customers, yes. But easy billions, no.