It’s been a while since I have posted something on Hypernarrative.com. The next weeks I’ll try to pick it up again and write about why the experimental news system EN.nl stalled and where it stalled, and what I learned from it. And I will write about some new private projects I’ve been working on in the last months.

Ideas
In a very interesting piece called World Building web artist Jonathan Harris is comparing online experiences with fast food culture. I can very much relate to what he writes and reading his essay-like story is definitely worth some your time.

City ideas have to do with a particular moment in time, a scene, a movement, other people’s work, what critics say, or what’s happening in the zeitgeist. City ideas tend to be slick, sexy, smart, and savvy, like the people who live in cities. City ideas are often incremental improvements—small steps forward, usually in response to what your neighbor is doing or what you just read in the paper. City ideas, like cities, are fashionable. But fashions change quickly, so city ideas live and die on short cycles.

The opposite of city ideas are “natural ideas”, which account for the big leaps forward and often appear to come from nowhere. These ideas come from nature, solitude, and meditation. They’re less concerned with how the world is, and more with how the world could and should be.

The development of and on the web is mostly iterative. We make small steps fast, and as a result our creative focus narrows, making bigger steps less likely. It’s also happening in our communication. Open communication like Twitter lowers the barriers to talk to someone, not only are the costs near zero, the social barrier is also very low. I can ask you something. And even easier, I can directly respond to something you share.

Open source software and the thrive to continuous communication with customers makes product development public and iterative. As a results it connects better to demands and minimizes risks.

Iterative culture
I don’t judge this culture. I don’t think you can. It’s the effect of a time. I don’t think you can judge it right or wrong, it’s a fact, something that’s happening right here, right now.

Personally I like the iterative structure the web is in. I also feel it’s blocking me from taking bigger steps. It’s difficult to take some distance from something that’s always moving.

If you do take some distance and ask yourself how will this be in five or ten years you will get a pretty clear focus and you will be able to think in leaps instead of iterative steps.

For me, my best and personal most successful and satisfying projects are those where I took some distance and time to research.

Despite RSS, Twitter feeds and Facebook fanpages, newsletter are still pretty nice. Below are some of my favorite newsletters. Please add your favorites in the comments.

Artkrush
My favorite newsletter about art, design and architecture.

About: art
Every: twice-monthly
Subscribe: http://artkrush.com/current/

Gvenk Daily (Dutch)
Every morning Dutch developer Gerard van Enk makes a daily tech update on Twitter. You should definitely follow @gvenkdaily (it’s in Dutch, but most links are English. You can also subscribe to the updates via e-mail.

About: technology news
Every: day
Subscribe: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=gvenkdaily

Springwise
“Springwise and its network of 8,000 spotters scan the globe for smart new business ideas, delivering instant inspiration to entrepreneurial minds. Time to start the next big thing!”

Springwise always surprises you.

About: great ideas
Every: week
Subscribe: http://springwise.com/newsletter/

Dexigner
“Weekly roundup of design news and competitions from the #1 portal for design related information.”

A collection of design related news links nicely ordered by field of interest.

About: design, architecture
Every: week
Subscribe: http://www.dexigner.com/newsletter/

Flavorpill Daily Dose
“Flavorpill’s Daily Dose is a jolt of cultural inspiration, delivered fresh to your inbox every weekday morning to help jump-start your day. Our mission is simple: to provide a quick look at what’s new in music, print, art, film, and online, by offering worthwhile culture to explore right from your screen.”

About: a daily dose of arts, music and culture
Every: day
Subscribe: http://flavorpill.com/signup

Photojojo
Photography tips and tricks. It’s a real feelgood website/newsletter about what you can do with photography.

About: photography
Every: twice-a-week
Subscribe: http://photojojo.com/

Sandbox
“Sandbox is a trusted global network where extraordinary young achievers under 30 come together. It’s an inspiring meeting place where a selection of young thinkers and doers connect, exchange ideas and talk about innovation.”

It’s not really a newsletter kind of newsletter, because the newsletter is also about updates to Sandbox, but the content is really good.

About: updates on the Sandbox Network and inspirational links
Every: month
Subscribe: http://www.sandbox-network.com/contact/

Share your favorite newsletters
Leave it the comments, send me a tweet or e-mail me at hypernarrative@gmail.com.

In the videos below Umar Haque and Douglas Rushkoff are both talking about a shift in how we consume and produce. Fueled by the financial crises there seems to be a growing focus on models that don’t extract value during the proces. The search for models where everyone benefits.

We see this in different fields. Michael Braungart and William McDonough propose in their book Cradle to Cradle a model where waste equeals food. And that we should create processes that are sustainable by itself or even add value on all sides of the proces (documentary).

Lev Manovich talks in his presentations about how a global collective culture gives us the same ideas at the same time. And that it’s almost impossible to have an unique idea, because we build so much on eachothers knowledge in this new connected culture. Working togother is the new ethos.

There is also a shift in advertising agencies. Agencies like Anomaly London and Nothing Amsterdam become creative partners. They Become part of the proces and add more sustainable value instead of extracting it.

Thinking about new models that try to add value. Nice things to wrap your head around. Enjoy.

Douglas Rushkoff is making a lot of interesting videos to promote his book Life Inc.

Life Inc. The Movie from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

Umar Haque recorded at the Constructive Capitalism conference

Umair Haque @ Daytona Sessions vol. 2 – Constructive Capitalism from Daytona Sessions on Vimeo.

Via (TiD)

Social media is becoming a very influential referrer. Website like Facebook and Twitter generate growing amounts of traffic websites. They work best for the live web (news) and for memes. And they are in the race to become serious competition for Google in getting the right people on the right page.

Social media (Twitter/Facebook) is the new Google (making the web more useful with its service). It doesn’t care about page rank. It cares about what people think and how trustworthy and influential people are.

Google and Twitter are very different in a number of ways.

Google

1. Longer URL, the longer the better
2. Getting bigger websites to link to your website
3. Know and find
4. Authenticity
5. Ranking content
6. Optimization
7. The best of time

Twitter

1. Short URL, an URL is waste of space
2. Getting influential online people to talk about your website
3. Follow and discover
4. Creativity
5. Ranking people
6. Lobbying
7. The best of now

What does this mean for news reporting?
The major news websites and publication systems weren’t really designed for SEO. They are still catching up, far behind the current technological state blogs are in.

While media and journalist are still blaming Google the second disrupting innovation for their Industry is already taking place. And this time they won’t be able to blaim a company.

What about the editors? Google was about systems, about technology. The current wave of social media is about people. Are the news editors – the current and a new generation – ready?

The link
A news organization in a social media environment doesn’t have to create content, it creates context around links. It directs you. That’s the function of a news organization. Guide you as a customer to the best information you can find. Sometimes this mean (re)writing a summary or story, other times it means linking to other good stuff.

It’s also about value. If you – as a content creator – are not adding much to what’s already out there you can’t expect to have a sustainable business model. If you don’t add much, you won’t get much.

The link is the most important asset of the web. It is for Google and it is for Twitter. In a social media driven web it’s not about the content the link directs to. It’s about who presents the link. Linking builds trust. You have to earn this trust by linking to things that add value for your audience.

Jay Rosen, professor at NYU on the ethic of the link

I recently worked on a large mobile project for the Volkskrant. The project contained mobile websites and numerous applications for different devices, including iPhone apps (iTunes link).

Content as Software
I learned about the term content as software from Gerd Leonard. Not only does it sound very interesting, it’s also a very exiting development that follows from a series of events. A move from RSS, followed by widgets, API’s and standardization in platforms.

These new platforms like Adobe Air or the iPhone development platform make developing applications easier and accessible to a new and broader groups of developers.

On the other side software is being replaced by the – todays very powerful – browsers. Google is working hard to replace Microsoft Office functionality with Google Docs, and adding even more (web) functionality like working remotely together on documents.

A computer without internet connection is half the fun, or to most people useless. The computer as a communication device needs the web as much as it needs power. Todays software needs the web.

Should a media company make software?
Content as Software. Should media companies deliver content as software? We decided to with the Volkskrant iPhone application because we think an application gives a better user experience and is more effective on the iPhone platform compared to a mobile website. The New York Times released a desktop application based on Adobe Air. The content in the application isn’t unique, the presentation is.

A great advantage of distributing software for publishers is that it gives control to some extend. For example the Times Reader has free and subscription only articles in the same application. The “free” user experience is good, but they will try to persuade you to become a subscriber.

So, should a media company make software?
I don’t know. Just because we now can as easily develop software as we can develop websites doesn’t mean we should. From a pure logic perspective it doesn’t add much value to the content. It’s still the same content. From an emotional perspective it does add extra value to the experience, it’s a nice package. And that’s something you shouldn’t underestimate. An application is also more persistent, it’s always there on your startup screen, desktop or in your dock.

The best thing with content as software is to just try it. Like you would try with a website. Release soon and often. Todays software is like the web.

Screenshots of the Volkskrant iPhone news application

Screenshot of Times Reader Desktop application

For the Urban Explorers festival I used Roomware to make a new installation. My friend Ronnie made the animations and I connected the animations to Roomware.

Bluetooth animated pixel dancers installation from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

The Roomware server scans the venue for bluetooth devices. Each new device detected showed a new animation on the screen. When someone left the room (for example to go the bathroom) the character on the screen left the stage.

Eclectro installatie in Bibelot op Urban Explorers 2009 from Renier Eclectro on Vimeo.

The Urban Explorers video interface (live report) from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

For the music and art festival Urban Explorers festival I made a special video interface. During the festival reporters uploaded video with their mobile phones. The video was categorized on artists, venues and makers based on the video title. The project used the Blip API.

Give it a try.

The report was done by Eclectro.nl reporters. I was supposed to be a reporter as well, but missed the festival because of the birth of Benjamin.

The process of building the interface can be found here.

Linda and I got a son. His name is Benjamin. The little guy was born on May 27th and enjoys life :)

In March I updated the design of this blog because I wanted it to be more a portfolio website. It didn’t work out that well. The black background was difficult to read (thanks for all the comments and ideas). And this blog is a blog, changing it into a portfolio makes it less a blog and more serious. Bad idea. I like the simplicity of a blog, I’ll just figure out something else for a portfolio.

It didn’t work out so I’m switching back to white and simple and will focus more on posting great things ;)

Over the last few years I’ve worked on different live reports for different kind of festivals. I like what you can make with (almost) realtime information based on the API’s of other services. For the Urban Explorers festival in May this year I started working on a new interface.

The amount of aggregated information can be overwhelming for people, so I’m looking at how can you keep it understandable for new visitors. Or in the case of Urban Explorers for people who never visited or will never visit the festival. UE is a music and art festival that takes place in different venues in the city of Dordrecht.

Blip API
The idea is to start working with the Blip API. And cover the festival with an interface that only shows video. There will be Twitter coverage and blog posts, but the idea is to create a narrative that can be sorted based on people, performances and maybe venues.

I haven’t exactly figured out what it should look like, but just started to make some interfaces to see what works and what doesn’t. I you have ideas or great examples, please share them in the comments.

Last week the Next Web conference was organized in the Netherlands. This tech conference generates a lot of online media like tagged twitter messages. And was a perfect try-out for working with streaming video and twitter. I combined some old scripts and designs and made http://www.wilbertbaan.nl/thenexthack.

The Next Hack from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

The Next Web live video + tweets experiment – Yunoo presentation from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

I looked at a full screen interface that could work in a pop-up or fill your entire screen. It looks a bit like my old videoblog (http://www.hypernarrative.com/videoblog/index.html). I like these type of interfaces for live events because they are more experience based (click on what you see) instead of search based (like youtube).

Interface Experiment 1 from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

I started moving the video, since all tag result pages will give different amount of results the blocked interface looks nice, but it has limits in what it can show. And it looks weird if you haven’t got enough video to fill the entire interface. Both interfaces below are completely dynamic and can show only one item or 30.

Interface Experiment 2 from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

Interface Experiment 3 from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

I just make interfaces
It’s amazing that all those examples are made on top of infrastructure of other people. Blip is perfect because multiple people can send video using a mobile phone and I can get the source files from the server using the Blip API. It’s pretty weird how much difference you can make with only interfaces.

Last.fm Lovewall
Last year I made the Last.fm lovewall. A bluetooth based installation that matches people based on Last.fm data. This installation or something different build on this technology might find a spot at the festival as well.

Eclectro Last.fm Lovewall (interactive bluetooth installation) from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

The off- and online news markets around the world are under pressure. Newsmedia and press agencies feel the urge to find money, fast. As a result news companies are looking at alternatives to make more online revenues.

Although the money is needed the solutions aren’t always solutions. Ideas I’ve heard so far.
1. Find a model to pay for referral (for example charge Google)
2. Fight copyright infringement more actively (or pay for linking/embedding)
3. Charge your customers
4. Find some way to keep exclusive content exclusive.

These are all fallacies and in my opinion, and easy to deconstruct.

1. Pay for referral (for example charge Google)
Google directs a big portion of the online traffic. Probably not forever, but they are controlling it right now. Their business is to help people from point a to b without noise. This is key to Google. If they add noise or become less relevant a competitor will eventually take over their position.

There is no reason to pay. I think Google is good for almost 30/50% of the traffic to newspaper websites. And even more to some sections. News websites benefit from Google traffic.

If Google wants to be #1 the news provider, they can buy or create a press agency. Google is probably one of the few companies that can generate enough traffic to support the total costs of a press agency with online advertising.

A while ago I argued that online news is a freelance job in a network instead of a job in a company. You might like to read it, it relates to this subject.

Unlike paper hierarchy is less important online. Personal relevancy is much more important. For example. I read a few articles on the website of the New York Times almost every day. I almost never use the navigation or start at the homepage. I’m referred to the articles from blogs, search engines and social networks like Times People and Facebook. I love the NY Times. I don’t really care about the homepage or navigation structure.

Newsmedia should find hierarchy in design on the front-end for a large group of users. In the background they should put online as much information (enriched with metadata) as possible. New relevancy is not in owning the information. It is in what you can do with it. The web has no destinations, only stops.

2. Fight copyright infringement
Sure, people should respect fair use. And companies that aggregate and resell your complete data set should be stopped. This isn’t the biggest problem. Those companies that are mass copying your content are easier to find. The smaller infringements are readers with blogs, the long tail. Those readers are your fans. Just let them friendly know that what they do is not fair use, and suggest what they should do. They often don’t even realize what they are doing and if you just tell them you’re making friends (readers) for life.

3. Charge your customers
You have to make sure your content is worth it. What makes the thing you make more valuable compared to what your competitors do for free? People trust the brand and are willing to pay for derivations on the web. They might not want to pay for the things you offer on a daily base. Your brand or community creates value and this is value you can monetize. The brand of a newspaper is trust and openness. Find things that are close to your brand and with this you can make money. For example Nike is about the running experience. And they sell a lot of stuff around this experience, including shoes. If your newspaper is good in certain subjects, for example healthcare. Why not start a health insurance, the web makes it easy to do so. Or start a bank. The banking business could use some trust. Make sure the things you do live up to your brand standards.

Is this still transparent journalism? I think it can be, I don’t know. As long as you give access to all the numbers and all of your information, if you make yourself controllable. If you create a community and if you keep close to your brand it can be very transparent. In the long run your brand is about the truth and transparency. You can only benefit if you will always respect this.

4. Find some way to keep exclusive content exclusive.
You can’t. The web is for sharing. The only thing to keep something exclusive is to charge people for it. That’s why there is no real online business model for mass information, like news. The news will get out anyway, because people will tell it and someone will amplify the story or make a summary.

There is something the web is very good in and that’s in creating communities. Newsmedia should realize that you shouldn’t do research on your own attic. Share the information. Create a process instead of creating a moment. In a live storytelling environment the process is much more relevant and interesting. It also generates authority and creates an expert role. In a process the product (or publication moment) is less important. It’s about what’s going on. Share data with your readers and setup communities to discuss and analyze.

I just noticed that every time you refresh the Twitter page of @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher), the amount of followers has grown. While writing this post he is at an incredible 714,479 followers.

In a while Kutcher will have over one million people that actively follow what he says or does. Making him continues mass media.

Due to the nature of the web we are all media and publishers. We might have fifteen minutes of fame, but very few people have access to a continues mass audience without necessary having something to say.

Somehow Twitter is growing very fast. This changes the numbers of followers and thus perspective.

Within some time it will be possible for some people to directly reach over 1 million people by just using their cellphone while waiting in a supermarket.

People are mass media.

Professional design is very conceptual. There is an idea about what something should be and why. It’s a mix of professionalism, creativity, rationality and personality. The designer makes something and iterates until there is a version that fits best to match the interests of the producer and his clients.

Or does it?

Collective ownership
Changing products on the web, like websites, is difficult. With comments and social networks readers are in direct contact. Reader don’t like change. And they are right. Change disrupts routines. Radical changes forces you – as a user – to rethink a product or service. What is this, why do I come here, where can I find…

Even if the new design is better, radical changes will only work when there is a big improvement for the user. You have to make sure the balance is right. You loose something (control) and you win something (a much better future experience).

From virtual to reality
The voice of your readers is strong on the web because they unite on your website. And it happens live. Readers can collectively turn against business changes a company make. The user is not the consumer, but part of the process.

This started on websites, but social networks take it further. Because people can easily gather creating groups and exchange information the power of each individual can be more amplified with less effort and at higher speed. This reflects to the physical world. People can online disagree about a product design update and this collective emotional disagreement amplified by groups and networks can demand a company to reverse a design strategy.

Brands out of control
Brands are experiencing the social pressure of users. It is not even about the physical product that changes, but about changes in presentation. The product identity is becoming something that grows much more out of the direct control of the creator.

Examples
Tropicana recently launched new packaging and reversed their decision after complaints. The updated Pepsi logo is also under attack.

The Pepsi logo update (brand doc. pdf) was not seen as a very popular improvement. Lawrence Yang, a San Francisco based designer busted the logo by turning the logo into a fat drinker. This is the kind of online creativity that is killing for the concept of a logo.

You can even buy the busted logo on a t-shirt.

Last weekend I updated hypernarrative.com to the most recent version of Wordpress. I haven’t been writing very frequently in the last months. I don’t know why, it just happened.

Black?
While updating the back-end of the site, I also decided to give the front-end a makeover. A more magazine style interface that also promotes some projects and things I do. Hypernarrative is not just a blog, it’s also a personal timeline.

The color black gives it a magazine/portfolio style interface. I haven’t figured out if black is optimal for reading.

Technical details
I use a five column design based on a 960 pixel width. The website has a Flash header, I’m not sure yet what to do with this, but I like something interactive. The site looks best on a Mac because they have the Helvetica and Rockwell fonts installed. If you have Windows you will see a combination of Courier and Arial, which is pretty nice as well.

I tried sIFR for font replacement, but didn’t like the loading speed of this.

The header picture was taken in the room of a bed and breakfast in France.

Subscriber
If you are a reader of the full article feed, or if you read this blog somewhere syndicated, nothing changed.

Clay Shirky is someone to follow. He has a very clear way of explaining what’s going on. He takes some distance and describes what’s happening, why it’s happening and what the consequences are. If you like to know what social media really means you should definitely read his book Here Comes Everybody.

Last friday he wrote a very interesting post on his blog about the future of newspapers. The post had this great quote in it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.” I think about that conversation a lot these days.

The main idea of his story. There is no need for newspapers, there is need for journalism.

Newspapers are like shoes
I think the most powerful asset newspapers have is engagement. Newspapers are a brand. And some brands you like because those brands extend your personality, others you don’t. It’s personal and changes.

You might not like it, but all journalism is branded, simply because of the medium that tells it. As soon as you are communicating you are “branding”.

Shirky; News is always subsidized: The expense of printing created an environment where Wal-Mart was willing to subsidize the Baghdad bureau. This wasn’t because of any deep link between advertising and reporting, nor was it about any real desire on the part of Wal-Mart to have their marketing budget go to international correspondents. It was just an accident.

Being a brand is difficult for news media, because it touches the concept of objectivity, but branding has value. In Europe newspapers are selling books and DVDs, why? The can only sell this because they are a brand and this brand value is transportable. It’s like stitching a Nike logo on a pair of sneakers or a t-shirt. The logo increases the value of the t-shirt.

Branding doesn’t tell news media to less objective, on the opposite, news media derive value and consumer trust from being objective. It’s the base of their existence. That news media is left, right, “in the middle” or local doesn’t really makes a difference. It tells you something about the focus and focus adds value.

Get connected
Branding is evolving in something more sophisticated and difficult to grasp. Brands want to be your friend, brands want to connect to you, not just for one purchase, for your entire life. Just like newspapers.

Brands relies less on buying ads in media, they are media, and some brands (like Apple) even orchestrate the media.

News media should focus on engagement. Connect readers with the thing that bounds them. The news brand as a place for truth, values, discussion, opinion, investigation, news.

This is where added value is.

One thing the web – as a communication tool – really pushed is co-creation. The network helps you to find peers. And it more often extends a hierarchical organization into a network where everyone is part of the product or process. You might even call it the end of the enduser.

Co-creation is already reforming marketing, but it is also reforming the way creative companies work. Not only consumers are invited to be part of the process also creative companies see this as a new way of collaborating by investing creativity and becoming part of the process. Take higher risks and get more involved with the product.

Marco van Heerde – an old colleague from de Volkskrant and friend – recently told me about these new creative companies. He is currently doing an internship at Nothing in Amsterdam (Nalden wrote about the amazing cardboard interior). And interviewed Paul Graham, the founder of Anomaly in London. Both companies were founded recently.

From the interview: ʻYou have to behave a bit like a venture capitalist. But instead of putting your money in, you put in your time and effort.’

Read the interview he did below.

Interview Paul Graham: ʻYou have to be a hustlerʼ
Interview Paul Graham founding partner Anomaly London February 13, 2009, London, Marco van Heerde & Ianthe Sahadat.

Barely seated, Paul Graham starts talking. Anomaly London – which has been founded 10 day ago – has just scored his first client.

One could have called Paul (32) eclectic, as a student. ʻI studied art and design, till a specific point. Later on I studied French and business administration as well as doing literature, law and economics.ʼ In between these studies he went abroad to live in Paris, ʻtrying to figure out what to do with lifeʼ and launching a bar. After graduating back in the UK, he still had no clear vision of what to pursue. But somehow, and fortunately, he ended up working as an account manager at the agency M&C Saatchi and via various employments made it to be Managing Partner of Saint at RKCR/Y&R. In the past he has been characterized as relentless, which he dubs ʻa rather dubious, but not so much false complimentʼ.

Currently he is setting up the London office of Anomaly, and he already has his first pieces of business.

So you already have your first client, congratulations. How do clients normally approach Anomaly? It may sound a bit vague what Anomaly actually does.
ʻA lot of the work Anomaly gets in New York is based on personal recommendation. This can be from the work we have done for entrepreneurs, business-owners and large organizations. Our reputation can kind of precede us, so rather than pitching, we are often approached by clients. We prefer not to pitch.ʼ

Do you work with fees, or do you have a different model?
ʻWe try not to work with fees. We actually become a business partner with our clients. We will try sharing the revenue of the success of what we do. Then you really want it to work. ʻThere are different types of creative people. Everyone at Anomaly is highly creative and has done incredible things in their previous lives. This can be in publishing, production, design, advertising or business school. The creative director of Urban Outfitters is now head of design at Anomaly. They are all focused on return on creativity. You only go into business with the things you can genuinely make a difference in.ʼ

How did Anomaly London get started?
ʻAnomaly started in New York about three years ago and I have worked with them on some occasions. As time went on, we realized it was good to start a business in London as more and more work was being asked to do here, in Europe. ʻHopefully this year we will start to work for Converse, which is based in Amsterdam and Manchester United. Besides that, we are going to work for Umbro, who are also the tailors for the English football team.ʼ

How do you handle the wide range of questions these clients might have?
ʻDepending on the different business-problems these clients have, Iʼll work with different people. Anomaly is based on never knowing what the answer is. We have different sets of concentric circles. In the middle of it, are the day-to-day diehard Anomaly people. In the second circle are freelance or project base people and outside of that are interesting people you will work with one day but maybe you havenʼt worked with yet. Itʼs really important to have a very large network. With a lot of these people I would love to work full ,time but we have to stay flexible.ʼ

It is quite difficult to label Anomaly. With what kind of requests do clients approach you?
ʻThat can be all kinds of business problems. For example, Umbro is an authentic English fashion brand. They were already sponsoring the English football team many years ago. Overtime they lost their position as a authentic brand. Nike recently acquired the brand and has asked us to give them back their heritage and relaunch Umbro into the media.ʼ

The Umbro case could also be done by a more traditional agency. It is brand strategy in essence.
ʻYes, exactly. But a traditional ad agency would probably give you a traditional approach. We have removed the walls and apply our creativity where ever it is needed, for any given problem. We are not limited by our own production departments or ʻblindedʼ by our own specialization.ʼ

Then what is the difference between Anomaly and the agency Naked, because this is what Naked also claims.
ʻIn my opinion, Naked, though awesome, is more strategic consultancy and quite theoretical. At Anomaly we also want to deliver. We try to be part multimedia, part media buyer, part PR, part ad agency, part marketing a part of everything. We would want do all of that and really make it happen.ʼ

Can you tell us more about the IP ventures or product development of Anomaly?
ʻHaving an idea or developing a brand or product is not easy but still relatively simple. An innovation company as ?What If! or IDEO do very good product development and venture capitalists invest in products. But what they both donʼt have is a high understanding of consumers imagery and brands. Which weʼd like to hope we do.

ʻWe also have the experience to grow something with very little money. This makes you more credible. You actually say, I know how to do this for you, without taking loads of money off you.ʼ

How do you get paid?
ʻWe never charge for time or man hours. When you work fee based, you actually put an incentive on working longer to tackle a problem. If you figure out a problem within one day, you will actually make less. This is certainly not the most creative way. ʻYou should put value to an idea, not hours. Hence your profit is made by doing the job quickly and the rest of the money is yours to put in the bank.

ʻOr, again, if youʼre partner in a small product, your are incentivized to maximize your profit. You have to be efficient, quick and open minded. You have to be a hustler. It makes you think differently.ʼ

What would you consider more important for Anomaly: the media independent approach or the fact that you become partners and do not work on a fee basis?
ʻThere are actually three important pillars for Anomaly. We are open minded about which solution is best for a problem. We have an entrepreneurial approach about how we get paid. Which is never charge for time and value an idea. The third one is to get a share of the commercial action and really making it happen.ʼ

Can you give us an example?
ʻThere is this girl in New Castle, her name is Lauren Luke, sheʼs a single mother and living with her parents. She does “how to” make-up tutorials. She can teach you to look like Britney Spears, Leona Lewis and other celebrities. In front of her webcam, she shows you inch by inch how to apply the makeup and puts it on Youtube. Every single one of her videos has over a million views within a day. We approached her and now we are helping her design her own range of makeup. We part-own the company with her and we put in the creativity, the communication and the design.ʼ

You approached her. But how about the opposite, is it also possible for anyone to approach Anomaly with a product or business idea?
ʻAbsolutely and people really do. The trick is to be quite selective.ʼ

How do you choose which project to invest in?
ʻYou have to behave a bit like a venture capitalist. But instead of putting your money in, you put in your time and effort. So this is quite a big investment. Furthermore your have to really like the people involved, you have to be able to work with each other. Secondly; could we be brilliant? Can we really make a difference? Third is, will it make any money? You have to pick carefully and be really sure. It can take two to three years before you start making money, so you have to hold your nerve. Therefore, also having customers for whom you can do communication projects helps to pay the bills.ʼ

Obviously a new type of creative is arising beside the traditional copy and art-direction creatives. How would you label yourself?
ʻA business strategist, or business conceptor…. Hmm, good question.ʼ

A commercial creative, perhaps?
ʻYes yes, that would be fitting. To illustrate this: at Anomaly we havenʼt got one creative director. That would be a too restrictive view of what creativity is. One person cannot grasp every form of creativity.ʼ

To conclude, what do you think of the traditional advertising model?
ʻWe certainly donʼt think everyone should be like Anomaly. The reason that weʼre called Anomaly, is because we are quite different. Thereʼs certainly still a need for traditional advertising. All we know is, it is not the only answer anymore.ʼ

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The image at the top of this post is from the Anomaly website.

CNN videostream with Facebook integration (zoom)

The Obama inauguration was broadcasted everywhere. Every upcoming video sharing-, hosting- or distributionservice did something around the big Obama event.

I think the most exiting and successful combination was what CNN did together with Facebook. CNN had a high quality live videostream with Facebook updates from your friends talking about the video stream.

The power of distribution

Current TV on the web (zoom)

Current TV was also broadcasting the event on television and used Twitter. Which is great for television, because television is a one-to-many medium and you can easily interact with the television by using a Twitter client on your phone or laptop.

Facebook was the best option for the web. Watching video on the web is more a personal and more interactive experience. This is what Facebooks adds. You’re watching the stream, not with the world (like Twitter+TV) but with your friends/contacts.

The computer is much more personal compared to a television and thus the interaction should be more personal as well. My social network is not your social network. It’s a distributed conversation.

Portable Social Networks
These kind of combinations or applications can only be created if social networks are (partly) open and allow services like CNN to use the network. For this event CNN didn’t create conversation tools, networks or any other infrastructure. They just connected the dots of Facebook to the dots of what they do best. Making live television.

This is what happens when services open up. You get the best of both worlds. Portable social networks are the future.

NY Times

The New York Times homepage (zoom)

Ustream

Ustream (zoom)

Joost

Joost (zoom)

Beyond links
Our information culture is changing into a networked culture. Distributing is changing how we publish from the traditional one-to-many into many-to-many.

For example. If I make a picture of people ice skating and publish it on Flickr. Than Flickr is a traditional one-to-many distribution system. Everyone can be a publisher.

I’m also re-publishing this same picture on my blog, because this is what we can do with data, a duplicate is the original. And beacuse Friendfeed checks my Flickr account, the picture will also appear on my friendfeed page.

Out of control
This makes three places to view this photograph. My blog, friendfeed and my Flickr page. Those platforms have some similar visitors, but most are different. These platforms, Flickr and friendfeed have also full article RSS feeds or API’s that are being aggregated and republished. There is no control about what happens after we publish something.

We like things to have one place. We are used to physical objects that can only be in one place at the same time. This is how we order and structure information. This is how we control the amount of information. This is structure, instead of chaos.

The emerging web with API’s, feeds and social networks is chaos, its networked. The more instances or copies are distributed the more people you reach.

To be a successful publisher on todays web you need to work distributed. Work with websites and integrate with communities instead of creating them. A gadget is one way of doing this.

Voting gadget
The Eclectro election for the best dance record of 2008 is finished. This election took place in a gadget. Over the past weeks we had 68.049 votes and 184 placed gadgets on blogs and social profiles.

The gadgets versus the amount of votes show a power law / long tail. Only a few websites collect the majority of the votes. The web is a networked environment, but not all nodes are equal. In this case the tail of the graph should have been four times as long to make up the amount of votes generated by the hoster of the gadget, the Eclectro website.

It’s difficult to spread gadgets. We had a continues flow of spreading, but there was no self-reinforcing effect. The tail did generate part of the votes, and reached a new audience.

In an ideal situation you want the nodes in a network to be more equal, a better distribution.

The actual amount of votes versus websites

See the full graph: http://www.hypernarrative.com/images/long-tail-van-het-stemmen.gif

Pageviews and votes
In the image you see stats of every time the gadget was loaded or a vote was made versus all the websites that published the gadget.

See the full graph: http://www.hypernarrative.com/images/pageviews_eclectro_gadget_stemmen.gif

Votes a day

The winner: Ane Brun – Headphone Silence (Henrik Schwarz remix)

Dutch press release

What was the best dance song of 2008?
This is the third year we are organizing an election using the vote widget to determine what’s the best record. We use a simple system where you have to choose the best out of two. This is the easiest choice to make. In the database there are 100 records. You get random pairs. The voting system is a system that’s (for internet standards) pretty much protected against fraud, since you never know what records or combination you will get.

Local results
This year we are taking the voting a step further. If you embed the widget on your social network or website you can see how people vote on your website. For example, this is what tunes the visitors of hypernarrative.com like. You can compare the results against the global results.

Styling
We also made it possible to adjust the width, with this option you make sure the gadget always fits perfectly to the design of your blog. We used OpenSocial to connect the gadget to Hyves, the largest social network in the Netherlands. With one click you can add the widget to your Hyves profile.

What’s so special about widgets and gadgets
Widgets and gadgets have something special. They can act like a website without being a website. Sure, they need a central database to store information, but they are completely viral. Once you drop the gadget into a social network it can easily spread if people can directly (re)share your gadget.

With gadgets in a lot of personal networks you enter the long tail of users. People might have small networks and will maybe only make thirty votes. But if the gadget has a large user base this long-tail of installations could represent an enormous amount of votes. You distribute the voting interface, but not the election.

This afternoon someone told me about a company that’s making a business out of using empty gadget space. If a gadget is used (for example a Christmas gadget) the gadget often remains on the profile, but isn’t removed. This company creates gadgets and once they are no longer used, they use the inventory as advertising space/network. This is a completely new business, and although social networks will not like it, it’s a very smart idea. Use networks, to create your own network.

Disclaimer: Eclectro is a non-profit blog, we just do it for the love of music and love for the people making music, we will never sell gadgetspace ;)

Eclectro loves …

We couldn’t have made a gadget this advanced just by ourselves. I really want to thank the guys at Freshheads for helping us with the code, flash and database structure (did you know they turned an old office-vault into a dj-booth/club). And also special thanks to the gadgetguys at Open & Sociaal, for connecting the gadget to Hyves and OpenSocial.

The financial crisis speeds up the newspapershift. Media diverges. Newspapers become television, television becomes a press agency. And everything becomes the web. Probably not a single news websites makes enough revenue to employ the same amount of journalists traditional media like newspapers and television employ. The result is a shift. Not in demand, in distribution. What will happen, and how will this shift change organizations?

Here are some ideas and thoughts that I think make sense. Please help me sharpen this concept, or point me at my fallacies. It would be interesting to have a discussion about this.

Infinite
It all starts with information. Information is and will be infinite accessible everywhere. All smart devices will be connected. This is different to old media where the medium was not infinite and thus choices and timeframes were necessary.

In a connected culture information is directly online accessible, mass media and press functions less as a generator and more as a directional and filter service.

In a connected culture distributed services like Google and Facebook are the new mass media. To reach a mass audience you need to distribute your content through these new mass media. If old media no longer controls the medium it will change our organizations, how newspapers work and what kind of people will be working at newspapers or directional services.

Online you need more websites or less people. Link or syndicate the information that is already out there and focus on the value you can add.

The new rules of information?
I think the expertise journalists have is valuable. The traditional structure of a newspaper is restraining them from using their full online potential. Here is a paradox, because you need the traditional structure to publish a newspaper.

The newspaper is a middle man, this is where you already see a shift. Press agencies have become influential distributers on the live web, and consumers have become influential fire starters. To adapt to the new rules of information (everyone is a publisher), a newspaper should shift up or down the chain. Become a networked company or focus.

To be profitable in a hyperlinked economy you not only need to distribute your information, you should also distribute your costs.

What could the newspaper of the future look like?
Newspapers are in a race. I don’t believe paper is sacred. And I see no real advantages in paper compared to modern media. Even when e-readers become mainstream we probably want books and maybe magazines on these devices, we don’t want newspapers. We want something tailored to the medium. We want news as it happens. News is not a book, it is all about now, about relevancy, about why and what is happening. This consuming pattern is irreversible.

A modern news organization might not have that many people on the payroll. Journalism could become primarily a freelance job. Everything a journalist does can be done virtual. Journalists don’t have to work together in the same building at the same time. News very rarely happens in the building of a news organization, news happens somewhere else or is made by investigating. Being a reporter is a networked job. Your value is in your knowledge and your personal offline and online network. A journalist should feel at home in a networked culture.

If this shift happens journalists will work primarily on a free marketplace, like photographers. They will connect through online organizations (agencies) or virtual marketplaces that connect distribution channels (newspapers, search engines, social networks) and journalists.

These organizations act like press agencies distributing articles or information to all outlets. You can subscribe to specific feeds of information, buy articles, ask for research, or set assignments. If we can have public funded journalism, we can also have research or stories payed by media portals. If you want exclusive news or research the price will be higher. If you’re a very good and trustworthy journalist your value will be higher.

The focus of a news publisher is how they sort information and on what news topics they focus. What news publishers can add to the knowledge and information that is already out there is focus and a filter. This focus and filter is their revenue model, the rest is a mix of syndicated, linked and original information.

Like a group blog. You can’t pay the salary of a hundred bloggers to write content, but you can make money with a group blog. You need to invest your money smart and use it for those things that really set you apart from others. Use money to create unique value that defines your brand.

News is free
I think news (defined as what’s happening right now) will always be free for the consumer. This doesn’t mean news has no value. For end-users it will be free. News will always atract people. By presenting, sorting, linking and packaging the news websites, search engines and networks can make money that funds new journalism and drives new traffic.

Where Attention Flows, Money Follows.

This blog post was also published on the online journalism blog, there are some interesting comments you might like.

Eclectro Last.fm Lovewall (interactive bluetooth installation) from Wilbert Baan on Vimeo.

Yesterday we had the first Eclectro party. As written in the last post I was working on a bluetooth/last.fm application. And it worked :)

The Eclectro Last.fm lovewall is an interactive installation that uses bluetooth to scan for mobile phones. Visitors are asked to change the bluetooth name of their phone into their Last.fm username.

A laptop scans the room using the open source Roomware software. It connects to random visitors and searches the Last.fm database for similarity. It then shows the similarity on a big screen by showing the profiles. A percentage and five artists both have in common.

Review
The installation worked well and I got a lot of very positive feedback by enthusiastic visitors. A few things I learned.

• It is possible to have a zero percent match but still have artists in common.
• Similar artists are often Gorillaz, U2, Muse, Air.
• It is very easy to join, people see something happen and they think it’s too difficult to join. If you tell them that all it takes is changing the bluetooth name of their mobile phone they are really surprised.
• Explain, explain, explain.
• People like seeing their avatars on a screen. Only showing avatars would probably make a successful application by itself.
• Make the screen dark. I used grey photographs and still the brightness of the beamer lightened up the entire place.
• The internet connection at public places is almost always difficult (unstable/low signal).

The interface with testdata (working demo)

Open in new window

And the photographs

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

on Flickr

This saturday we have the first Eclectro party in De Unie in Rotterdam (which itself is pretty amazing). It’s the first offline event for something (a group of people blogging) that until saturday does only exist online.

To Eclectrofy this evening we started thinking about doing something extra with the location. How can we make the place visually and interactive exciting as well. Without making it too difficult to use or showing computers.

This reminded me about the Roomware project

The Roomware Project is an open-source framework for interactive spaces. It allows developers of multiple origins to enhance any venue or event using technologies such as BlueTooth and RFID.

What I’m making for this saturday
Basically Roomware turns my Mac into a server that is able to read bluetooth names and convert this data into xml. We will ask people at the party to change the bluetooth name of their mobile phone into the username of their Last.fm account. With these Last.fm names an application searches the Last.fm API and extracts data about two random visitors and tell them how much Last.fm similarity they have and which artists they have in common.

Meet new people
The project autorepeats and makes new random matches with names of people that are actually in the room. The results are projected on a screen. Showing public information about people is a gimmick, but it might encourage visitors to meet new people.

Things to do before this saturday

All the technology works. What’s left is finding a beamer, finishing the design and the timing of the interface. The application doesn’t need much time to load, but I’m thinking about adding finctional timing to make it more exiting to watch.

For example first show one player. Show the second player a few seconds later. And finally show the bar (hearth) that indicates the percentages. And maybe add some hidden messages when people have 0 or 100% Last.fm similarity.

Eclectro presents Kettel (live)
The third man (live), Gastón Arévalo (live) & Starborough (dj-set)
November 15th, De Unie, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Entrance € 8,- (order tickets)

I will make a video of the system in action for hypernarrative. You can also visit the party this saturday to play with it youself. We can have a beer :)

More drafts

Based on Twitterpoll by Erik Borra I made this visualization. The animation is created form filtering tweets on content. If someone says he or she voted for Obama or McCain this information is stored and turned into numbers. This creates an election poll based on tweets.

You can say Twitter is pretty much in favor of Obama. To update the results refresh the page.

A point goes to Obama if the regular expression /vote.*?obama/i succeeds, it goes to McCain if the regular expression /vote.*mccain/i succeeds, else it is undecided / unrecognized.

The animations that led to this animation
1. http://www.hypernarrative.com/wordpress/2008/11/02/i-voted-storytelling-with-public-databases/
2. http://www.hypernarrative.com/wordpress/2008/11/03/we-say-twittertalk/

A second version of the first experiment. In this window you can sort Twitter messages on certain words. Try to work with two words or use the more obvious words like McCain / Obama if you want to use more words. Otherwise you won’t get any results.

Another great polling service
Erik Borra created a polling service based on what people say on Twitter. With the service you get results on what people say they voted on Twitter. I’m trying to make a bar graph for this.

I’m a big fan of public databases, the live web and storytelling. I think they all give new opportunities for interactive and online storytelling. Twitter itself a very interesting database. Because it tells you what is going on and the API is very good.

About “I voted”
The next days American citizens will vote for either McCain or Obama. My guess is a lot of Twitter users will say on Twitter when, and on who they voted. This Flash application uses Twitter Search to see who voted on who. The animation automatically updates with the most recent tweet.

Queries
For this animation I use search.twitter.com (used to be summize.com)
The query: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%22i+voted%22+%2B+McCain+OR+Obama+-twitvote