Open (finds, minds, conversations)...

Social media in the enterprise is an anti de-motivator (not that I give a damn these days)

Image: Graffitti: "Don't Care, Won't Explain" - photo by spanaut

Reasons for organisations to set their people free (to organise themselves) are outlined in an excellent post by Rex Lee called 5 Social Computing Benefits that Adoption Rates Don't Show.

My favourite section is based on lessons from a favourite business book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins:

...Jim explains that the role of leadership is NOT to motivate. If you have to motivate and convince people to do something, you're already starting in a bad position. Instead, if you have the right people and the right opportunity they will be "self-motivated". The role of leadership then becomes making sure you don't let people become "de-motivated". Jim goes on to explain the importance of making sure you find the right people. But how do you do this?

One way is to leverage the power of self-organization.

Via social's new slim-line high priest, Euan Semple... Cheers as ever, Mr S...

...And yes the sub-headline is in the irony font...

Edelman's content studio move is super-smart

If I were starting a PR firm today the last thing I would do is admit it.

The term carries such baggage and the industry - for all its instances of brilliance - is regarded as having to narrow a remit.

However, if you're a leader in that field best to ignore the baggage and get on with leading things. And that's what I see Edelman doing with its moves into digital, metrics, social media and lately content production.

My former boss, Simon Jones at Bell Pottinger, put in place a really important fundamental in the way I've been thinking about the future of comms when he insisted, time and and again, that "PR is just content production and distribution".

At its most media-relations focussed, it works like this: your network of influencers are journalists. To do the best job for clients produce the content the journalists will want in a format that's useful to them and get it to them.

Much smarter then, than obsessing about the future of the press release, is thinking about how the network is changing and therefore they type of content that's useful to it.

Edelman's launch of a studio is, therefore, super-smart. Hope we'll see a blog or some other way of following the progress of the idea...

marketing, PR

Advertising by spectacular is addiction to high stakes gambling

Who doesn't love the Cadbury's drumming monkey ad?

It was 2007's UK TV ad spectacular...

The choc-promoting surrealism of the creative geniuses at Fallon was the most admired and - by reputation - the most successful ad of 2008 by most accounts.

It was of course also a sleight of hand branding move. Cadburys was dogged by the salmonella scandal and its brand value was deemed to have suffered. It's a strong brand, God knows - it's one of the few I go goo-ey for at some level, deep down.

Image by Chellbie

That purple. Mmmm. That simple, dependable, uncomplicated milk chocolate that followed me through my childhood. Ahhh. The curly lettered logo that was even on one of my Hornby train carriages. Mmm. Mentions of social reforming and Methodist good intentions in history lessons. Wow. Delicious and on the side of the angels too - what a brand.

Cadburys: Home. Simple, home pleasures. Lovely.

Anyway, that was deemed to be in danger, the story goes. Of course people would forgive and trust the brand again soon enough - it was practically part of the family. But they didn't trust it as much this quarter as workthe equivalent last year. Sales had fallen.

So, time to bring in a work of genius. A work that would make its creators even more famous. That would win awards.

Out came the drumming man in a monkey suit... and glory shone around.

But what to do next?

The much-antIcipated (by marketers and people who write about marketers) sequel jumped onto the UK's screens and the web not so long ago. As they'd won big on the monkey, Fallon and Cadburys felt like upping the stakes - they thought this could be bigger...

After the simplicity and straightforward, unexpected lunacy of the monkey that proved so successful, the creatives had reverted to ad industry type (treatment: page one: we open on a [insert exotic location here]) and went nuts with a when-airport-vehicles-go-wild concept set to a Queen track (which I will forever associate with a brilliant scene in Shaun of the Dead).

It was a bit of a let down by the accounts of those who know advertising better than I (Tom Hopkins is as eloquent as ever on the subject, in a post brilliantly headlined One Truck Pony).

It was spectacular alright, but no one was really bothered.

Tom follows up this post with a note about a Facebook ad for, of all things, the Cadbury's Trucks ad:

Apart from being an absolute copywriting car crash, doesn’t this Facebook ad for Cadbury’s Trucks campaign raise a question about what exactly the original ad was for.

I’m guessing the agency is getting a few of those ‘why didn’t it go viral?’ questions from the client and is trying to give it a little helping hand.

Absolutely. Even with a budget as big as Cadbury's viral's not a tactic, it's an outcome. Or as Tom puts it:

Viral isn’t a method, it’s a mark of success

So if "viral" is the jackpot in the creative roulette game that is 30-second spot advertising what does the 18-month-average-tenure CMO of today do?

The pressure from the channel-thinking, creative agency-dominated culture of marketing as it stands is: put it all on red. Go for the spectacular. You've had a spectacular work out before? Great - let's put it all on black this time...

Well if I were them, I'd start thinking like a creative studio and not a desperate high stakes gambling addict. Take your £20m budget and put some into safe bets and a portion in seeding ideas, programmes, creative approaches that might. Only a portion, mind you - holding back a reserve to put behind the bets that turn out to be contenders.

And another thing - the web is not an after-market for TV-focussed creative. If you start the planning process in the here and now, where people's attention is and where the real conversations are... everything changes.

Comes back to brands as players in a markets for attention a bit, doesn't it? A smart trader or investor in whatever market knows to hedge, to take a spread of positions, always ready to move to bolster one or more of those positions when they start to look like a contender.

Big brands should be thinking like a combination of a Hollywood Studio, a VC and a financial markets trader.

Oh yeah - and stop thinking in terms of campaigns. Just because they suit the business model of creative agencies doesn't mean they are the most appropriate approach for a brand which has substance, reputation earned over lifetimes (e.g. Cadburys) and will continue to do so for years to come.

advertising, brands, cadburys, marketing

Farewell, then Humph...

Happy and sad to hear of Humphrey Lyttleton's death yesterday. Sad of course that he's gone, but happy because everywhere you turn there's another clutch of clips and one-liners from the genius compere of my favourite radio show, I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue which he hosted since 1972.

He was of course an accomplished Jazz trumpeter, but that wasn't really my sort of thing, so I'll just remember him for the relentless hilarity, and one of the only people who could caryy off clangingly obvious puns and double entendres such as:

"The story of Hastings only really begins with the historic battle, which was fought at a nearby town called Battle. Now, what are the chances of that happening."

or, of his fictitious assistant on the show...

"Samantha's going out now for an ice cream with her new Italian gentleman friend. She says she's looking forward to licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan."

Listen to some more classic Humph moments on the BBC site...

Now, in the words of Humph: "...And so, ladies and gentlemen, as the 4x4 of destiny on the level crossing of fate stalls in the path of the speeding freight train of doom, and the signalman of time rushes to fetch his camera..."

iPhone gaming (wow)

A few months ago someone showed me a game they had developed fro the iPhone. It was a simple spaceship shooter, but what was really amazing to me was the way they had used the device's motion sensors (the ones that flip the screen between portrait and landscape depending on how you're holding it) as its controls.

A few months on and SEGA's developers are showing what the machine can really so. They took just two weeks to create this incredible looking Super Monkey Ball game.

In a Cnet video (below) the producer describes the way the device exceeded their expectations thus:

"This is a full console game... if anything we underestimated what the machine could do. We had to fly in another artist to scale up the graphics..."

Check out the video here to see what he means. Prepare for a whole new generation of games fro this incredible device. Just as I thought when it came out, more fasicnating than the device itself will be the ecosystem of applications and services that grow up around it...

Via @shanerichmond and @martinstabe Tweeting from a windowless Telegraph Developers conference so I can blog it from my sunny garden in Hove... Cheers, chaps... :-)

gaming, iPhone, sega

My last 500 visits

Feel a bit like I'm going back to some basics at the moment. Listening to FIR regularly, picking up Yochai Benkler, rethinking the fundamentals and principles of the work I'm doing with social media and marketing.

So it's kind of nice to go back to the sort of posts and observations that I would make - and others would too - when.

I like history, because even more than the lessons that come from studying the past, it gives a broader perspective on now. And the more you know about he past, about how things were even a lifetime ago, about how much has changed so quickly the easier it is to retain a sense of child-like wonder, of awe really, at the world as it is today.

Stops you getting jaded, if you look at history the right way.

Anyway, here's a map of the locations of the last 500 people who visited the blog.

I got used to the global network view after a while. But I want to become not used to it again. It's amazing.

In the same vein, here's a screenshot of the astounding TwittEarth... (via Nilhan). A beautiful rendition of a simple mashup - the globe twirls round to show the location of a person who has just posted every few minutes.

socialmedia, socialmedia, twitter

Don't be dangled out on a dongle: 3's HSDPA modem in action

So I've been testing the 3 Mobile Broadband service this week, courtesy of the guys at 3Mobilebuzz... This is a long review, but the upshot is: 3 dongle not as good on trains as Vodafone, but 3 = mobile hero and has better contracts.

Blogging for me is something that squeezed into small, spare moments of the day. A bit of reading here, a bit of writing there, an edit and a... publish... lovely. So mobile internet access really does help the whole blogging thing along. And besides, it is a joy to use otherwise potentially boring waiting or travellig time to get stuck into a bit of blogging.

Because of the lack of free Wifi in the UK, an HSDPA dongle with unlimited data is not a bad idea for the road warrior or mobile blogger.

I've been using mobile internet in one form or another since BT Cellnet committed one of the greatest over-sells in the not-so-proud history of hyped up tech marketing: surf the BT Cellnet. The WAP reality was far removed from the promise...

I've also used 3G cards since they became available. First when I was part of a PR agency team working for Vodafone and just as part of my next job's road warrior standard issue kit. When they worked they were great - but the software was so flakey that I often spent months without being able to access the service.

Recently I got a Vodafone HSDPA dongle (great name, don't lose it mobile industry), which was a leap forward in speed and design. They are so much more reliable, carry their own software which kind of installs itself when you plug them in and the speeds are similar - a lot of the time - to a basic home broadband pipe (actually quite incredible when you think of it).

The 3 version is an HSDPA stick modem from Huwawei does the same job, and is newer. Offered the chance to test I was very pleased to do so. Vodafone trampled over my respect for them a little in my dealings with their consumer handset business in recent months so I was up for trying an alternative.

3's a company I've liked the approach of recently too. Not least for their aggressive plays with fixed-price mobile broadband, which has really moved the whole market forward (I can't believe the industry pretended that a per MB pricing model was realistic for so long).

So I took the 3 dongle into the most demanding testing environment I know for any mobile technology: the Hove to London trainline. I love the train for working - and this hour long trip is perfect getting things done time.

Here's the live-blogging action as dongle meets Macbook Air...

• Testing it first off with reading feeds... Google Reader - I use Google Reader as opposed to an offline editor so having mobile internet's helpful even with the Google Gears offline function to let me read the text-only version offline.
• The 3 device doesn't seem to be as quick off the mark on the train to get me connected as the Vodafone one. This is definitely a point against. Fiddling for a few mins is a frustration and a real waste of time. You have to be able to get online immeidately to get into workflow otherwise all you're really doing on the train is mucking about on the computer and getting a bit stressed.
• Anyway - passing Hassocks (10 minutes into the journey) and I still had no connection. Not being a professional reviewer I'm considering getting my Voda dongle out about now. But a reconnect of the Dongle and moments later we're away.
• I carry out a speed test at Haywards Heath - there's a good 3G connection here usually.

• Pretty good, my friend...

Image: At the speed of 3G (strange floating sigil courtesy of Skitch and my lack of competence)

• And then it disconnects... This doesn't happen very often with the Voda dongle on this journey.
• 26 mins into the journey and we're disconnecting again - why is it doing this? Why not just reconnect next time it gets a chance?
• Annoying...
• Fiddly to reconnect so far. Still dropping.
• If I had moved from Vodafone to this I would be annoyed. Really annoyed. Voda may have mucked me around on my personal mobile, but they are still the most reliable network, so they're going to remain number one for me.
• Wasting precious train time. Reconnecting. No carrier. Now it needs my password. Now it is connected as I pass Gatwick. Groo...
• Sod this - getting my Voda dongle out.

I'm really not interested in brands when it comes to my mobile services. Despite the far too much money poured into ads trying the express the brand essence, I am interested in the experience of using the device and the network and the data connection and the customer service.

At the moment, though I've a lot of goodwill towards 3 - for its disrupting effect on proicing, its embrace of Skype and things that customers actually want - if I was about to buy mobile devices and contracts I would reluctantly head for the red of a Vodafone store.

So on balance so far, Vodafone have the edge if you're a fast-moving (train bound) road warrior. If you're more likely to be hopping from cafe to hotel lobby to wherever, 3 may be the one for you as the contracts look a lot better at first glance.

The 3 guys asked me to link to their mobile broadband price plan. Like the rest of the market they are offering a free dongle and £15 a month for a 3GB a month limit, or £25 for 7GB. There's also a light option at £10 for 1GB, which may actually suit some people more. I'm
However, with 3 you can opt for 12 month contract, which seems more sensible than the 24 months demanded by Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange demand.

After Vodafone sold me a dodgy bit of Nokia kit and then downgraded me when we both agreed they'd sold me a lemon in the first place, I'm now serving out an 18 month contract with a phone that's not up to the job I bought it for. It's an expensive mistake and one I'm keen not to repeat.

Shorter contracts = better.

3 , broaband, internet, internet, mobile, reviews, reviews, vodafone

Online shopping round-up: links, stats and other e-tail goodness

I was lucky enough to present at the IAB Engage for Shopping event on Wednesday .

You can see my slide deck and those from the other presentations on the IAB site...

I canvassed m’learned colleagues in the social media team in iCrossing UK and also m’learned fellow Twittrers for cool stats, sites and thoughts about online retail and social. It would be caddish not to share them with a wider network, so here goes all the social stuff that’s fit to link to...

Best Online Retail Blog Ever?: The most useful ecommerce blog ever?: Matt Neale said his favourite e-tailer blog was Get Elastic, describing it as a “mashable of online retail”. Written by the guys at an ecommerce software firm it is one of the best “corporate“ blogs I’ve ever seen, a prime example of being useful to your networks and demonstrating a team’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for its sector...

Why are fewer people searching for reviews?: Are fewer UK searchers looking for reviews: CharlieO asked why, if reviews are s important to people shopping online, that searches for ”reviews“ are apparently declining, according to Google Trends:

I wonder whether it might be because people know where to go for their trusted reviews more than they used to? More retailers (like Comet) are including independent / user reviews on their site? Personally, I tend to check out what the ratings and reviews on Amazon say about electrical products, books and videos.

It's a global trend, by the way - with decline even sharper when you take the world's searches on Google as a whole...

Product Wikis: Reviews can feel pretty random and it can make one’s head ache trying to work out which are relevant. Sites like Product Wiki and Shop Wiki are fascinating for the way that they are taking the wiki approach to give a more structured approach to people.

Video shopping: Coming soon - instant video shopping: A site called ShopFlick (mentioned by Getelastic) promises to:

”Watch entertaining videos directly from the designers, merchants, entrepreneurs and companies selling today's best items. Then see their products come to life through videos showing you features, details and stories way beyond still images.”

The logical retail extension of efforts like Qik and seesmic married with Etsy-inspired marketplace ideas? Could be interesting... (Read more about this at Techcrunch).

Interesting by their absence - social shopping sites: There was a lot of buzz around the idea of social shopping last year, and sites like Crowdstorm have gone through recent revamps. But social shopping sites weren’t top of mind for anyone I spoke to: an anomaly? Or has the concept still not found a way to come to life?

Private shopping: Posh types who like a a bargain are flocking to sites like Vente-Privee and Gilt which are invitation only shopping websites, according to LBI’s Laurent Ezekiel. If I ever get rich enough to be invited to look round one I’ll let you know what it’s like - meantime thoughts from well-heeled readers are welcome in the comments section...

Wildcard: Yoox.com was flagged by the LBI guys as a site they like (may or may not be a client). Basically a fashion website with community aspects.

LBIcon’s mirrored cool-fest: Last on at the IAB Engage for Shopping event (no slides posted for them, sadly), Laurent and Joseph Olewitz of LBI everyone at the IAB show away with their incredible Social Retailing concept (which may know as the interactive mirror for Nanette Lepore's concession at the Bloomingdales store in New York. You probably heard of this as it cleaned up on the buzz and PR fronts, even scooping a mention as one of the inventions of 2007 in Time Magazine.

What I really loved about this example was the vision and the ambition it showed, taking the campaign into the offline world, developing not only with web tools but with physical technologies like RFID. And wasn’t just PR stunt either - the 2.0 version should be in the shops, as it were, later this year with Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms connected up to it.

Hope this is all interesting to you - please do add in your favourite shopping sites, stats and thoughts below...

: : Bonus-links: Thanks to Adam B, Claire and Michael for these cool online retail related sites (just can't let 'em go to waste: we like Revoo's geotagged reviews, Ebuyer for just being a great site to use, Magento Commerce for its open source ecommerce content management system, Polyvore's fashion pallette and (second mention) Etsy for the colour picker and excellent search functions.

brands, IAB, LBI, m, marketing, online, retail, shopping, stats, web, web

Yochai the noo (economics of the post-industrial informaiton age)

I'm back on the revolutionary path and unashamedly stirring up my own thoughts and feelings with stuff like this from Yochai Benkler, Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School:

Posted just this month, but recorded in 2005, it is one of those 20 minute TED conference head-spinner videos, this time talking about how and why the web is changing the fundamentals of economics (following quotes are paraphrased slightly, but the meaning's not been changed):
"One of the problems with the internet is telling the difference between fashion and deep change."
Anyhow...
"The information economy is often used as the term for what followed the industrial age. But in fact we have been living in an information economy for 150 years, it's just been an industrial information age."
A key moment reminds me that I've drawn a great deal from Benkler over the past few years.

For the first time since the industrial revolution the most important means, the most important components of the core economic activities of the most advanced economies... are in the hands of the population at large. This is completely different to anything that has happened before...

Feeling that maybe a re-read of his (free to download) Wealth of Networks could well be in order.

Telegraph blogging crimewave

Spotted in my Google Reader...

Them's some bad boys they got blogging up at Telegraph Towers...

telegraph

To the barricades! (with a proper plan): Charlene Li on making revolutions stick...

Image: a Lego Vladimir Illich Lenin, by arimoore (via Moonrise).

[Note: this is a post that got stuck in the u-bend of my dysfunctional blog workflow recently - in the spirit of the blog as public notebook I'm just getting it out there.]

Revolutions and networks: I may get poetic, practical or pedantic at times, but most of my lines of thought end up at or can be traced back to revolutions and networks.

Primarily the revolution we are living through as a result of the web's arrival in the world and the networks we live in and how those are being expressed, optimised and expanded by living online.

So I'm always interested in the perspectives of others on revolutions, especially when they take the care to look to history for lessons in how they work and what it means for the web-driven revolution we're living through now.

And when I see Charlene Li talking about revolution, I'm definitely going to pay attention: Charlene's been one of the constants in my reading list over the past couple of years, and the work of the wider team at Forrester has been in turns inspiring, informative, reassuring and (sometimes unexpectedly) complementary to the work I've been doing with my colleagues / co-conspirators...

I'm definitely encouraged by the sentiment of a post and a presentation she made recently about the difference between radicals and revolutionaries. Well worth a look and a read, but the upshot is that while radicals provoke and stir up change revolutionaries are the ones who go further and make the transformations stick.

How do they do that and how do we make become revolutionaries in our organisations, industries, fields of endeavours, and our networks beyond that? The answer, according to Charlene, is to bring frameworks to bear that can help to make long-lasting change possible.

I couldn't agree more. It's this line of thought that the iCrossing Social Spaces F-numberramework has come from, sparked by the discourse about how you actually bring change through social computing, social media to large organisations that I had with Jim Byford one afternoon about a year ago.

Charlene's starting point for strategy is called POST:

P: People: Assess your customers' social activities.

O: Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish.

S: Strategy: Plan for how relationships will change.

T: Technology: Decide which social technologies to use.

It's a good place to start, but there are also other ways to think about it. The three principles we work to in the social media team at iCrossing are:

• Understand your networks.
• Be useful to your networks.
• Be live in your networks.

I would stress that your networks are about more than your customers, but should include all stakeholders. Networks are best searched for by topic, by the focus of interest, i.e. by what they mean to themselves, rather than what they mean to you.

Anyhow, I'm going to be going into more detail on all of this soon. Writing a book/blessay of sorts that should make things clear.

: : Acually, all of this also brings to mind another post by Umair Haque that is so cutting and to quick that I feel like printing it out and keeping a copy in my pocket with me always. (Must get a printer one of these days.)

It's a rallying call to *all of us*. That the time is now and that if you understand what is happening with the web revolution around us you need to start thinking about what that means for the way that you are going to change things.

Because change is very possible right now in everything from the global markets to the way your local neighbourhood is run.

Read the whole thing, but here's the conclusion. One which seriously stirs my soul - I think about it a lot at the moment. And I'll think about this morning as I sit down to write an outline plan for some changes in my world....

Let me put it more sharply. I think we have two choices. Help fix things, and get rich, or just get blown up along with everyone else.

Let me make that concrete.

-For venture guys, that means: most of you are going to have to develop new investment theses, centred on redefining industrial era DNA. What do next-gen value chains really look like? What do the economics of production and consumption look like tomorrow?

-For entrepreneurs, that means: forget about hot products/services (ads, games, etc) and tech. Think about DNA, and how it can reshape the markets and industries that are crying out for help. Where does business suck today, and how can you make it radically better?

-For corporates, that means: stop making acquisitions driven by growth/share thinking. That's easily dominated. Make acquisitions driven by DNA, and use it to suck the lameness out of your strategy - fast.

What are you waiting for? Let's get on with it...

strategy, thinking, web, business , forrester

A Twitter for the soul: Moonrise - how do you feel?

Love this: Moonrise - how do you feel?

Where Twitter asks "what are you doing?", Moonrise wants to know how you feel.

When you tell it, it offers a selection of photos from Flickr with tags, titles or descriptions that match your stated mood. You choose one and it posts it on the site. You can set it up so it publishes to your blog or wherever you decide to point a feed...

It'll also try and hook you up with some videos and quotations in the same vein.

When I said I felt "hurty" yesterday it matched me up with this pic by Tristan C used as a tag for the pic...

I also liked seeing my colleague Simon's Friday afternoon feeling up there on the homepage:

Sometimes, especially if you are emotionally complex or overly wordy there are no photos that match your mood. So you try again, and it ends up like being a bit of a micro-haiku, a one or two word distillation of the mood you're in.

It's the work of Amit Koth who works with the Headshift team in London (check out their thoughts on the BBC Global Business podcast about social networking / media in business this week, by the way). This project is part of his Right Brain Solution work though, with some advice from Maz Hurdey.

Via Jim Byford - who is posting his moods to his blog...

emotions, moonrise, photography

Blog block!: Unblocked

Oh my goodness, you wouldn't believe the frustration and pain I've been through with this bleeding blog.

What with one thing and another, it's been too long since I posted to Open.

I could blame a week of holiday, followed by a trans-Atlantic hopscotch of a meetings schedule...

I could ape Hugh MacLeod and blame an unhealthily deep involvement with Twitter. But I won't - I think I've got my Tweeting under control...

But actually it's been a down to...

...getting a Mac.

Which led to...

...a big fallout with Ecto and some other blog editors (I really *do* miss the Microsoft Live Writer / OneNote combo that was central to my distributed blogging workflow for so long).

Basically blogging away happily for the past couple of years I ha settled into a rhythm of using those two brilliant software packages in tandem, making it easy to capture text and URLs and almost effortless to put in any image I wanted at any time. A bit like a an (analogue) writer of the last century who can't get his favourite notebooks or type on his favourite typewriter it completely threw me out of kilter.

I lost my blogging mojo.

Anyway, I'm hoping now - after having half-written a dozen posts and abandoned them in about four different editors that I have managed to settle down with a combination of Ecto along with CaptureMe as a surrogate for the genius (which I took for granted) of Windows' OneNote's screen-clipping function.

It feels right. Funny, isn't it, how these things work?

blogging

Oh yeah... the only other revolutionary that didn't sell out

While I was thinking about the Last.fms, the Bebos and the rest who sold out revolutionary business models to established big business there was one name that didn’t get mentioned: Craigslist. Though Stephen Downes was good enough to point that out in the comments...

That great undo-er of newspaper classified advertising has just added 120 new cities, making 570 conurbations in all that enjoy the benefits of Craiglist. Brighton & Hove, has a Craigslist, but I think we’re more of a Gumtree city...

Via Roy Greenslade.

advertising, advertising, advertising, craigslist, newspapers, ve, web, web

The only revolutionary that didn't sell out?

Classic Umair Haque considering the conundrum: Why aren't there more Googles? (as in revolutionary companies that are developing business around the new economic models possible because of the web):

The answer's very simple. Because every company that had the potential to be economically revolutionary over the last five years sold out long before it ever had the chance to revolutionize anything economically.

Think about that for a second. Every single one: Myspace, Skype, Last.fm, del.icio.us, Right Media, the works. All sold out to behemoths who are destroying, with Kafkaesque precision, every ounce of radical innovation within them.

Let's replay the Google story. Google, despite serious interest from Microsoft and Yahoo - what must have seemed like lucrative interest at the time - didn't sell out. Google might simply have been nothing but Yahoo’s or MSN’s search box.

Why isn’t it? Because Google had a deeply felt sense of purpose: a conviction to change the world for the better. Because it did, it held on and revolutionized the advertising value chain – and, in turn, capital markets gave Google an exuberant welcome.

It reminds me of Ross Mayfield's view of Silicon Valley, a hotbed of aspirant revolutionaries, that its most interesting players are all interested first and foremost in changing the world.

On a human level though, I wonder how hard is it to keep your convictions when someone comes along and offers to really change your world, secure a future for you and your family, end the years of uncertainty etc.?

: : By the way, if you haven't read Umair Haque, or have tried and felt a bit lost - he's published a "story so far" primer which might be helpful in getting a handle on his thinking. Well worth it.

Tags: thinking, google, revolutions