Tipping Points

Corporate mash-ups - Corporate crash-ups

"When Companies Do The Mash"  ponders BusinessWeek, software development is done more quickly and cheaply using off-the-shelf components, but many companies aren't doing it.  As BusinessWeek describes it, mash-ups could be viewed as replacements for offshoring of tech dev.

"Mash-ups as product" make sense to me, that is, products to be purchased shrink-wrapped or custom-ordered by corporations from vendors.

But mash-up products are the result of mash-up processes.  Those processes are something few corporations can do.  It's a cultural thing.   

Companies  also result from mash-ups.  The process of creating a start-up is often a mash-up in which technology is but one component, where prototypes of businesses are quickly assembled, disassembled, smashed, tweaked, and smushed together in an improvisational collage whose ingredients can include economic unit analysis, human capital, money, customer needs, infrastructure and entrepreneurial passion.   

This flies in the face of corporate hierarchy, tradition and education. 

The whole idea of  synergy is related to mash-ups.  Putting magazines, cable, Internet and Hollywood together is a great idea IF a culture were designed to support creatively-oriented accidents that could eventually result in an entirely new corporate model obsessively focused on addressing known and unknown customer needs.  But I guess it might not then be a Corporation.  It would be a mash-up.

It is also at the heart of capitalism.  One of its flavors was known as Creative Destruction. 

Mash-ups.  It's how we do what we do.

Thank You, Scott Kirsner

I've never met Scott, have no relationship to him, in fact until today never heard of him.

Web Video 101 .  Scott has published a simple compilation called "The Future of Web Video" that anyone interested in video on the web - producing, distributing, selling, advertising - should go out and buy, especially because as an e-book, it only costs 15 bucks.  Don't expect brilliant insights; utility is its raison d'etre.

Scott writes that "the launch of YouTube, like the first demonstrations of cinema and television before it, marked a new era in creating and distributing moving images. This third era – the Web video era – is creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs and independent content producers, and presenting new challenges to the media companies and advertisers who have thrived in the businesses of cinema and television."

Released on November 22, 2006, it is timely as only an ebook can be, full of facts, indispensable when you need to sound smart, a reference for all the key players and stats, quick read, and fun.  So don't walk.  Run.

Also, take a look at Scott's blog.

Trust and the Press, an Oxymoron

'Trust' seems to be a major preoccupation in big media - at least in the U.K.

Last week, I was in London to speak on a citizen media panel, alongside representatives from three of the UK's large media companies. The three delivered a seamlessly choreographed show of hand-wringing and serious nods over the ostensible lack of quality control among citizen media. 

My own knee-jerk empathy was on full volume during the panel.  But, afterwards, the waves of regret washed over me.  Trust?  Media?  Quality control?  Citizen media?  Wasn't it the constant barrage of citizen media that forced the issue of WMDs to the forefront?  Who bit that story, hook, line and sinker?

Outright lies aside, what about selective data presentation, of which sensationalism is but one flavor?  I was reminded of this in Dan Gillmor's elegantly simple post responding to a Washington Post headline.   

We know that truth is relative, and may be unique based upon the confluence of history, science, and time.  We also know from history that consolidation of power in the hands of a few leads to consolidation of information access, and the inevitably resultant distortions of the truth.  In that environment, we the people should be grateful for our citizen information watchdogs - bloggers.  Keeping big media honest. 

What Does Tipping Point Partners Do?

I’ve struggled mightily with this question. 

Conventional classifications don’t quite fit: investment banking, venture capital, consulting. 

Merchant banking comes the closest.  We are like the early merchant bankers who provided capital and advice for high-risk trade expeditions searching for gold, spices, and valuable commodities in the New World. 

Except that we actually go on the expeditions as our form of risk capital.  Does that make us mercenaries?  Or maybe samurai.  Co-venturers.  Co-founders. 

Please humor a flight of imagination:

"We arm, outfit and guide expeditions to help insurgent tribal chieftains seize under- and un-exploited lands in the guerilla-infested battlegrounds where the kingdoms of media, entertainment and technology continue to wage war.  Our weapons include Ruby, Rails, SMS, J2ME, VXML, Ajax, BREW, SIP, IVR wielded by a scraggly-haired, demin- and black-garbed guerilla band that eschews uniforms for native garb and listens to different beats at the same time.   Although we’re small, we can assemble a powerful force quickly when we use our large network of old allies to assemble new alliances and partnerships on the fly.  Most importantly, we create growing and sustainable encampments.  We use our administrative expertise to design and build fortifications and infrastructure, commence trade, install a financial system, put in place social services and engender a culture." 

The Most Important Creative Asset (Not the Copyright)

The most important asset to a creative artist of any kind is your fan’s email address. 

It has the power to make what you do profitable, to allow you to do it longer, to control your own destiny, and maybe, just maybe, make a sustainable living and more.  It has the ability to create a symbiotic relationship with your fans, gives you a way to hear their dreams for and frustrations with you.

Skeptical?  O.A.R., Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Dan Zanes will tell you that it’s achievable by a mortal artist, today.

The email address represents the deeply personal relationship between the artist and your fans, to be managed with both the emotional care of a relationship and also the financial value of an asset.  Techies will call it a data asset.  When linked with other data like the shows attended, songs purchased, favorite songs, zip code, age, other favorite musicians, it truly becomes a valuable asset.

Allowing your email list to be built inside a social network has the potential to supercharge the power of the email address and more sensitively interact with that list, focusing on issues that require action or direct response, like special tickets for an upcoming concert, private parties, etc.  MySpace is only the first framework for the artist-fan-oriented community and a hint at the possibilities.  For musicians and their fans, Haystack takes the artist development potential of the social network one giant step forward.  I don’t need to repeat what others have written.  Check out what Trendcentral and Daily Candy say.

And keep in mind the power of the email address. 

I am the financial advisor to Haystack.