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Some nice data in this sample report from Netpopresearch on the shift from online entertainment consumption to communication.



Posted by Ed Cotton There's often a temptation for brands to do too much and although new initiatives might seem right for the brand and even make good business sense, there can make an amazingly complex world, even more so.

Witness Netflix's recent shuttering of its Red Envelope division which distributed over 100 films in its short life, including the critically acclaimed Two Days in Paris.

However, it's existence created incredible complexity for the company, especially in its relationship with the studios.

According to Variety....

"One hurdle to continuing Red Envelope, execs said, was the notion of the company competing against the same studio suppliers it was negotiating with every day over DVDs and streamed content. The complications involved in acquiring, producing and distributing pics were an unnecessary headache for a company already battling a resurgent Blockbuster and the dizzying pace of technological change and consumer habit."

Just look at the complexity here..

1. Competing with its own suppliers
2. Having to acquire produce and distribute films
3. Dealing with the competition
4. Copying with technological change
5. Dealing with the pace of change of consumer habits

Netflix is not alone in dealing with such complexity, most brands are trying to work the same things out for themselves with increasingly limited bandwidth.

While the cry from many analysts looking at the agency side of the business is to provide more value add and to deliver more creative business-building ideas, this might be the last thing clients can cope with.

Perhaps, rather than adding to the complexity, we should instead, be looking for ways to help them streamline and simplify the complex.




Posted by Ed Cotton Some great thinking from Clay Shirky on the real threat to established media content, the idea that people start doing something useful with their cognitive surplus.

"And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads....

And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we're talking about. It's so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that  is 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.

I think that's going to be a big deal. Don't you? "

It's a great new way to think about the 2.0 world and consumer generated content, at last!

From a version of the talk Clay gave at Web 2.0 last week.




Posted by Ed Cotton There’s no doubting the functional power of iTunes software, but it plays second fiddle to the more powerful and dominant iPod.

Now it looks as if Apple would like to beef up the  iTunes brand a little more.

No 9 on Influx's prediction list for 2007 is happening

In the UK, Apple worked with the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) to create the iTunes Music Festival. The festival takes place during the month of July at the ICA where bands and artists will play to an intimate crowd of 350 people. Acts lined up for this include; Ash, Athlete, Groove Armada, Imogen Heap.

Not surprisingly, there’s some nice integration with the iTunes brand, as all the concerts will be recorded and be available for sale on the site.

You can’t buy tickets, you can only win them in a prize draw, so Apple gets to capture lots of nice data.
 

Posted by Ed Cotton Peter Moore, VP of Xbox, in a recent Bloomberg interview, higlighted the need to expand his brand's franchise.

``If we don't make that move, make it early and expand our demographic, we will wind up in the same place as with Xbox 1, a solid business with 25 million people,'' said Peter Moore, a vice president who oversees the Xbox. ``What I need is a solid business with 90 million people.''

The Wii has changed the gaming landscape and it's competitors are finally starting to pay attention.

It will be interesting to see if Nintendo can maintain its momentum, if Xbox can realistically re-position itself as a family machine, without alienating it's core audience and if Sony can get back into the race.

The game is far from over in this category.

Posted by Ed Cotton Last week, Ben Silverman was made co-chair of NBC Entertainment. In an interview with TV Week he was asked  what kind of projects the "community should be bringing to the network.

This is his reponse.

"I want to be aspirational. I want to be positive. I think people are so busy and overwhelmed in their lives and have so much choice, but also a cacophony exploding in their brain, and they look to television to disengage from that. I want to create environments that are warm and places they want to be—whether funny places or happy places or aspirational places. I want to lighten up the air.

I also want to be pro-social and conscious and deliver through humor, character and narrative strong emotional connection. I want to find quality that has inherent touchpoints that could make it mass. I wouldn't make shows about Hollywood. There's just certain things I wouldn't do based on my knowledge of them being too coastal."