So, if you need to get something off your chest and would like to confess anonymously, ClearMyGuilt.com is your solution!

The content of the site is expected to shock people, perhaps even offend a few. Some confessions might make you cry, while others make you laugh, and some will make you shake your head in a circle while yelling, OH NO SHE DIDN’T! Either way it’s fun, entertaining, and for a good cause…you’re helping people clear their guilt!

Now go confess and clear YOUR guilt today!

Typically, most internet start-ups jump on the get-big-quick-by-making-it-free bandwagon and subsequently find themselves monetizing the business with advertisements galore. Google did it, Facebook is doing it, and Twitter is trying. Countless others have too, some wildly successful (so far) and other not so much. As I look forward to launching a couple small start-up ventures myself in 2012, I’m very much guilty of adopting this freemium model to help fast-track subscriber growth and product usage. Still I feel like there must be a better way to monetize without having to litter every piece of web real estate with advertisements and diminish the user-experience. I know, I know, I can hear you saying right now…just build a high-quality, desirable product and people will pay for it. Of course! Well, it’s not that easy. Heck, I believe Apple make some of the highest quality products on the planet, but they still advertise.

So, the multi-billion dollar question is, could there ever be an internet without ads? In theory, YES! It could happen. In reality, no. Ads will still be around and remain on the web for a long time. However, do expect them to have a radically different appearance and messaging format. Ads will not be dynamically placed in neat little designated spaces within pages on the web. In the future you may purchase something online without even knowing it was directly related to an ad, partly because it didn’t even look, feel, or seem like an ad in the first place.

The traditional model of having distinct boundaries between content will slowly give way to more content/ad hybrid models, subliminal messages, or something similar to product placement (like we often see in music videos and movies). In the coming age of HTML5 websites, web apps, and mobile apps, the freemium business model could become less necessary. If traditional online ads can no longer be directly correlated to sales or revenue, and in some cases be seen as ruining the user experience, they will become less important, less valuable, and less prevalent. I think a growing number of people will find value in paying for content again to eliminate ads, speed up or enhance their experience. The typical consumer has already grown immune to cold, intrusive, non-customized, non-creative ads, and they rarely ever click on them anyways.

The Internet of the future will have LESS ads, thankfully! Yes, that’s a prediction coming from someone who makes a living at a company delivering millions of online display ads every month. Although my employer (FetchBack) focuses on retargeting, which actually is a little different. Retargeting is not front-end selling, cold ads, or intrusive messages, it’s subtle reminders to people who left websites without buying. Ultimately, an HTML5-based web will make advertising more ubiquitous, embedded, subtle, targeted, and relevant. Trends in social media, online consumer behavior, and the ease by which people can access information will force online ads to be more passive and non-intrusive. As such, online ads will be considered almost exclusively for their branding aspects rather there ability to convert (you know that whole Impression vs. Clicks debate). Also, in order to remain effective, online ads will need to become more informational and referral based. That’s where social media and the social graph come into play.

As a result of everything I mentioned above, Google+ and Twitter could quite possibly be the new search engines by 2015. With information being posted, shared, commented on, +1′d, followed, and indexed, these open social platforms are quickly evolving into 3-dimensional search engines, with real-time, human-derived dynamic content. Social Search will offer far better content than Google, Yahoo, or Bing SERP’s which are basically just links gathered by an algorithm, influenced by hard working SEO experts and paid advertisers who bid up keywords. Search is still important and always will be, but just like keyboards are still important today even though nobody uses typewriters anymore.

Thus, advertising as we know it, I’m afraid to say, is obsolete! Who needs to be informed about a new product when the means by which to learn about something new or desired is now in the hands of the consumer. Anyone can search the “long tail” now, tap into their social networks to get advice or recommendations, and navigate a review engine to start researching products or services they’re in the market to buy. Information overload these days is a big problem- it causes people to only trust what they find on their own, or what is referred to them by trusted sources (not ads). In the information age, the consumer already knows about your product or can find it with a few clicks of a mouse. We’re at a point where companies can actually bypass ads for use in direct selling. There’s too many alternative ways now to reach sales goals, plus most consumers already ignore direct sales ads anyways.

That said, I do still see long-term value in advertising from the perspective of branding, thought-leadership, and retargeting. However, the value of most other forms of “front-end” online advertising and direct selling will be diminished and commoditized as mentioned in Eric Clemons article on TechCrunch back in March 2009 – Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet. Mr. Clemons is Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Yes, there will always be new companies who need to advertise new products, yet these companies are starting to adopt more creative and noble ways, outside of online ads, to accomplish this task. Being visible, genuinely educating the consumer, providing facts and unbiased information, and then retargeting them appropriately will deliver a trusted lead flow and actual sales. The need to promote, educate, and inform consumers will be key as the means by which to introduce a commercial product or service shifts from 1-way interruptions and misdirection, to more social, two-way conversations generated from the bottom up, not the top down.

In the end, I think everything will revolve around engagement, delivering the right message at the right time, at the right frequency, when people are most receptive, and educating, rather than selling. This must be done in the most creative, thoughtful, and non-intrusive way too! It won’t be easy, but tools do exist to manage this process effectively, and they’ll only get better over time.

What do you think? Is an internet without ads desirable? Is it possible? Would you pay $10 per month for Facebook to have it ad-free? What about Google, Twitter, or any web app or service for that matter? What’s been your personal experience with online ads? I’m curious to know. Post your comments below!

UPDATE [January 10, 2012] : So no longer did I write this post and here we have it… Google Merges Search and Google+ Into Social Media Juggernaut

It’s already happening, sooner than expected! Google+ and Google Search are becoming one. Although I assumed Google+ would over take Google Search, it looks like the later is just being integrated into the former. Look out Facebook, the battle has just begun!

If You Don’t Fail, You Haven’t Tried Hard Enough” (Video)

I can certainly vouch for the above tagline, as I’ve surely experienced many failures in my life, but looking back I can only appreciate all that I have learned from those failures. So, tonight I stayed up past my bed time to watch a video I found on TechCrunch and felt compelled to add it to my blog. Say what you want about Mr. Sean Parker, but this touches on a point that quite possibly could be my personal inspiration for 2012 and beyond!

The video below was recorded at LeWeb 2011. In it, Sean Parker (founder of Napster and current investor in Facebook and Spotify, among many others), shares insights along with Shervin Pishevar, regarding success, failure, entrepreneurship, social networking, the music business, Facebook, and more! Check it out…

A true entrepreneur NEVER gives up… they just keep failing, learning, succeeding, and repeating the process over and over, creating change, adding value to peoples lives, and changing the world.

Sometimes I just get a good feeling, a feeling like I never, never, never had before…soooooo, on Friday night October 28th, we kicked the weekend off with Avicii (now the 6th best DJ in the world according to DJMag) at XS Nightclub. That uplifting stadium-like, arena style progressive house sound of Avicii made it a great 1st night! Below are a few pictures and videos from that show.

Saturday night it was about my all-time favorite DJ, artist, and producer, the one-and-only TIESTO in concert at The Joint – Hard Rock Hotel. The setting was somewhat dark and kind underground-like, but definitely cool! Tiesto hit it hard, and had me dancing the whole time, but ended at 3am when everyone there wanted to rage until 4 or 5! Apparently PaulyD was in town and Tiesto wanted to go get his own fist-pump on. In any case, it was awesome to see Tiesto for the 6th time- the 1st time in his very own concert set (yea, like he’s been doing all over Europe for the past decade!). His thumping electro-house bass and progressive trance made it a great night. Below a few pictures and video of “The Greatest DJ of All Time”!

Last up, on Sunday, October 30th, Deadmau5 made an appearance at XS Nightclub and really put on a show I’ll never forget. I could tell Joel and his whole crew on stage were living it up, doing shots, fucking around, and their energy seem to pulse through the crowd along with the electro-melodic house beats (and even a little dubpstep) that are signature of Deadmau5. Oh, and Holly Madison was in the house too, along with cute little Sofi (a.k.a. the queen of hearts), and many others. Pictures and video are below, because there aren’t many words that could describe this performance!

 Until next time, Rage-on!

…Equality helps economies grow, writes Nicholas Kristof: “In his important new book, ‘The Darwin Economy,’ Robert H. Frank of Cornell University cites a study showing that among 65 industrial nations, the more unequal ones experience slower growth on average. Likewise, individual countries grow more rapidly in periods when incomes are more equal, and slow down when incomes are skewed. That’s certainly true of the United States. We enjoyed considerable equality from the 1940s through the 1970s, and growth was strong. Since then inequality has surged, and growth has slowed. One reason may be that inequality is linked to financial distress and financial crises. There is mounting evidence that inequality leads to bankruptcies and to financial panics. ‘The recent global economic crisis, with its roots in U.S. financial markets, may have resulted, in part at least, from the increase in inequality,’ Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry of the International Monetary Fund wrote last month.”…

Also, here’s a chart for those who still sympathize with the top 1% income earners, and often make bogus claims that everyone has benefited from U.S. economic growth over the past 30 years.

Since I was born, all income growth has gone to the top 10% of earners, income for the bottom 90% declined. So, NO, not “everyone” has benefited from economic growth in the United States. Some things like cleaner air, individual rights, technological progress, and medical breakthroughs have improved our standard of living, but as far as wealth is concerned, just about all the gains have been concentrated at the top for over 3 decades!

This is not sustainable! This is just one reason why people are protesting in the streets!

Seriously, SongKick has about 90% of all the things I envisioned building myself. It has a few minor shortcomings, but still a great service and I know it can only get better over time. Best of all, its FREE! Not only can you seek out and plan your music event, concert, and music festival literary, you can also record your attendance history in something they call a “Gigography”. Plus, it’s integration with Facebook and partnerships with major ticketing systems sets the foundation for collaboration with friends when it comes to anything regarding music events. SongKick also has a free iPhone app that works amazingly well.

Check it out and let me know what you think. My profile name is Rynobeats!

Below are a few links I found scattered across the web that pay tribute to Steve Jobs.

Also, if you have not see this docudrama (Pirates of Silicon Valley) please do yourself a favor and watch. It’s about how Steve Jobs & Bill Gates competed in the late 70′s and early 80′s to give birth to the modern technology and PC industry. Cheesy quality, but quite entertaining and inspirational content!

Apple – http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

The 12 Most Inspirational Quotes From Steve Jobs - http://is.gd/tGBlYH

MacRumors.com – http://is.gd/6BQXin

Time.com – http://is.gd/gsYqz2

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

 - Steve Jobs (Stanford Commencement Address – 2005)

Update: 10/14/2011

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