In a typical game of chess, there are three distinct phases of play: the opening, in which a handful of chess pieces stake out strategic territory on the chessboard, the middle game, in which the positions of many pieces are used to jockey for control of the chessboard, and the endgame, in which the pieces are traded and moved rapidly into a reduced and final push for ultimate control of the board and the strategic goal of the game - capturing the king. It takes both logic and passion to excel at chess, but at the end of the day it's a well-executed plan that wins the day.
You might say that Google has been in the process of introducing its own endgame for online publishing, quietly moving dozens of initiatives into strategic positions which in and of themselves may seem inconsequential to the game as a whole - until its ultimate position begins to evolve rapidly. As in a chess endgame, Google's recent moves are swift, monumental in their impact and, potentially, decisive in determining the outcome of how content becomes valuable on the Web. Media critics like Ken Auletta have quipped that Google needs more "Kirks" and fewer "Spocks" to succeed, mistaking the crowded middle game of media posturing against Google for an ongoing battle, when in fact Google has been keeping its well-reasoned eye on the pieces that will be most important for the outcome of the game.
What's the king that needs to be captured in this endgame? The Moment. Media companies continue to churn out outdated moves such as media players serving up magazine-like renditions of their own content, thinking that quality that reflects the last game that they won is what will win the day. In the meantime, Google's intense concentration on processing power in cloud computing, Web-standardized applications and search dominance have revealed a strategy that is quickly eliminating viable moves for many B2B and consumer content and technology companies. After the September introduction of The Second Web via its Google Wave preview platform for real-time collaboration, Google has in recent days extended its dominance of The Moment via three new initiatives: expanded personalization of search results, real-time search results and voice, location and sight-activated mobile searches, including Google Goggles, a point-and-click camera-activated search feature.
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has an excellent analysis of how Google's debut of personalized searching that doesn't require a Google login is introducing a "new normal" for its search environment, in which the content presented in search results will by default be different for different people based on their last 180 searches on Google. What is The Moment for these people? Where their interests have been most recently. Instead of waiting for editorial boards to decide what The Moment should be, Google is yet again trumping traditional editorial functions and allowing people's own behavior to have a seat at the editorial table automatically.
The introduction of content from real-time Web sources such as Twitter, Facebook and other status-oriented messaging services in Google search results extends The Moment into content sources that have split-second relevancy to online content seekers. Klipp Bodnar points out that this stream of tweets and postings means that B2B companies can no longer ignore real-time in favor of traditional SEO strategies if they're going to get people's attention. It's a broader scope than that, of course: nobody can afford to ignore real-time social media content generation now any more than a securities trader can ignore real-time stock tickers. All brands must enter the real-time conversation of The Moment to keep in touch with their markets and to define their markets.
Google's mobile search initiatives, introduced last week at the Computer History Museum, are perhaps the most profound in their potential impact, even if their ultimate powers are years away from being felt. Voice-activated and GPS-activated Web search is being perfected rapidly at Google and through other outlets, but the Google Goggles initiative, previewed in its development phases on MSNBC recently, brings a point-and-click element to The Moment that promises to give Google a real leg-up in mobile search markets. Using the camera in mobile phones, Goggles enables searches for information on things such as landmarks, stores, products and text simply by filling the camera's viewfinder with the item and clicking. Remember all of those fussy infra-red applications that were supposed to get us "beaming" business cards to one another? Now, just take a photo of someone's card and it will be uploaded into a contacts record. In just those few capabilities already targeted, whole content markets are about to develop as people capture content in The Moment.
And who will have all of the search data and metadata regarding all of these Moments? Yep. Yet again, Google is positioning itself to be the cloud-empowered master of what people are interested in right now, giving them the ability to bring people closer to their interests and passions simply by asking for them. And, yet again, by including as much content as possible in serving their customers, Google doesn't second-guess what people consider to be valuable in The Moment. If the stock and news tickers of the 20th century distributing content from central markets and publishers were the gold mines of Moments in that era, Google's absorption and distribution of content from anywhere to anywhere in The Moment has enabled it to enlarge its unique databases far more broadly and rapidly than any other publisher on earth. And, like a chess endgame, the speed with which other players are losing effective counter-moves against Google's strategic position in The Moment is only quickening.
No small wonder, then, that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is scrutinizing Google's acquisition of AdMob, a leading mobile ad network. Markets thrive when there are still a good number of pieces on the board to keep competition high. But perhaps it's time for the FTC and companies in the content industry to look beyond this rapidly emptying game board and to consider what the next round of content industry chess is going to look like. If The Moment is the new center of the publishing industry, how does content become most valuable in this context? The answer to this question is, in part, to acknowledge that the companies who collect the most input about the world most rapidly become the most knowledgeable about what is happening in The Moment.
It's a phenomenon that I call "the Sensor Society," a world in which our corporate awareness and memory becomes a valuable through common access in a way that reverses the "information is power" equation. Certainly having private information will continue to empower people and organizations in select circumstances, but for the average person or business having access to all information in the right context is becoming a more powerful resource for decision-making. To borrow a concept from my book Content Nation, some portion of the DNA of society is migrating into the Google-dominated cloud, with each of us feeding that part of our collective consciousness through our voices, our camera "eyes" and our fingers touching screens and keyboards. That may be a good thing for society as a whole, but it will be an enormous challenge for institutions who are not ready to accept that migration as a beneficial development.
What does this mean for publishers? It means good things for those that can manage to get their content into these personally defined Moments more effectively. But it also takes an acceptance that "the first draft of history" that many in the media business cherish as their mission is taking on a radically new form. Like the "playback" feature in Google Wave, everyone will have access to who did what where and when soon enough. The question is, who edited it the best? Google has staked its claim as the world's dominant editorial resource for displaying billions of histories a day, sweeping away front pages across the Web into a stream that assembles Moments that matter most to audiences.
We will spend time with content in any number of spaces thanks to this editorial resource, as we have on the Web for many years. But Google has accelerated the endgame radically in the past few months for those not tuned into The Moment. 2010 is going to be a year of momentous change in the content industry. Publishers that are tuned into The Moment will be in good shape to take on all of the inputs of The Sensor Society and to trigger astounding growth in cloud-based content markets. For those that aren't tuned in, well, you better get used to the idea that you're playing a two-dimensional game of chess against a 3-D chess master. Set up the chess pieces again, Spock. It's a whole new game.
Traditionally when a ship is launched, it splashes into the water with a nicely painted hull but with still quite a bit of work to be done on its innards. Thus it seems to be with Google Wave, the cutting-edge messaging and collaboration technology unveiled today in preview form to about 100,000 people who signed up to participate in its testing. I had signed up for the early access program the day that Wave was announced, so I was pleased to see this morning an invite to try it out. One quick click of an email link, and I was in to my Wave space. Great! It appeared to be pretty much what I had seen in the developer's preview several weeks ago, and the features overall seemed to work as advertised, albeit without some of the flashy edges like real-time text translation. Drag and drop contacts into waves, easy embedding of widgets, videos and images, easy editing and organizing - good stuff for something that was just a cutting-edge demo a few weeks ago.
But...now what? Who do I Wave with - or to? Fortunately Google had pre-populated my contacts list with a couple of social media mavens, so I had some hope for interactions right away. One of the pre-populated waves (message/collaboration threads) enabled me to invite up to eight other people to join Wave. That was the good news, but the bad news was that these people would be nominees for joining Wave - in other words, Google will add them as the technology allows them to handle more users gracefully. This is, after all a preview version of Wave technology, meaning that it's more about testing its ability to handle users at scale and basic features before they begin to invite people with less tolerance for the cutting edge of new technologies. I decided to put a message out on Twitter to see who might want an invite to Wave. Ooops. Everyone came out of the woodwork looking for an invite to the new hotness. Seven invites later (some of them grumbling that they couldn't play right away), I have one spare and a long waiting list of possible invites who I would love to Wave with, but still not too many people on the live system.
Even with these limitations, Wave is quite impressive right out of the box. There's a bit of day-one instability in the system, of course - sometimes waves notify you that they need to be reloaded and a mysterious resync icon pops up now and again - but for a cutting-edge technology that just got rolled out to 100,000 people worldwide a few hours ago, that's to be expected. What was remarkable is how intuitive it is to use Wave, though for those wanting step-by-step instructions on "how to" usage, there's a wave in your initial inbox with lots of videos and links to good support materials. You just click, start typing, drag this, tag that, and you're off and running. Most email and Facebook users should find Wave's features pretty easy to use. You can import contacts from your Gmail contacts list easily (assuming that they're on Wave, which is pretty hit or miss), which is nice, and some of your Google Profile information is imported automatically into Wave, though updates in Wave will not flow back into your main Profile page. In other words, at least on Day One, there's really not that much integration with production systems yet (sorry, C.C. Chapman, let's be honest about this).
What's particularly interesting is how Wave has layered the types of communications that you can receive and share. Your inbox works pretty much like an email inbox, overall, and there are expected email-like filters like spam, trash bin, and such, which are all wave collections. But then you notice that the Settings link pops up a list of waves. In other words, much of the functionality of wave will appear as collections of applications built into waves as opposed to separate features. That's a real, real important thing to watch, one-upping the embeddable apps and widgets that have been in use for a while on other platforms. It means that the architectural "bones" of Wave can remain very lean, while much of its functionality gets loaded as content "meat." This parallels some of the thinking that has gone into Google's Chrome browser and nascent Chrome OS operating system, as well: lean core technology, fleshy content.
The most interesting layer of communications, though, has yet to be populated. As you float your cursor over a navigation element called "Requests," the tooltip text that pops up says, "Waves from untrusted parties or sources." In other words, there will be a Wave channel in which you can receive less personal communications, presumably a combination of marketing messages and more public sharing of messages akin to that found in Twitter. While the phrasing of this description needs some serious work, the concept seems to be quite elegant. One set of waves from trusted contacts, others from more "out of the blue" sources, both of which are important, of course, but by default you get to manage your circles of trust on two levels. That's a one-up on both Twitter and Facebook, if Google can pull it off. Of course, using folders and tagging you can create filters that combine both trusted and more public waves, so you can mix up communities at will, presumably. That's an interesting and very flexible way to manage networks, enabling people to be marketing-oriented or downright spammy in their communications but not cluttering up one's primary inbox of trusted contacts.
It will be interesting to see how some of these features roll out into the enterprise-oriented version of Wave, particularly the Requests feature. Obviously there will have to be some additional plumbing installed on Wave to enable enterprises to enforce policies on who from outside an organization can join particular inner circles of waves. But assuming that this is in the works, Wave should make it extraordinarily easy to move resources outside of an organization into a circle of trust on very specific waves that can help them to collaborate very efficiently - without exposing other information assets that are meant to be kept more private. Clearly Google is thinking way down the road on how to integrate Wave with its other efforts to enhance workplace productivity.
So although there's really not much happening on Day One in Google Wave, it's exciting to be hands-on with these features and to get a sense of how Wave is going to fit in to Google's strategy in a more intuitive way. For all of its promise, though, Wave has a tough battle ahead. Increasingly mature competitors like Facebook and Twitter, already endowed with millions of users, can always decide to swing in their extensive feature and applications sets to add more Wave-like features to keep their communities happy. But Wave has the distinct advantage of being a platform that is part of Google's wide technology vision that encompasses messaging, email, collaboration, enterprise productivity, mobile applications, operating systems and more.
Microsoft and others will attempt to compete with this new technology, to be sure, but the contenders all have deep legacies of software and relationships that will be far more difficult to migrate to a fresh new environment than Google need worry about. Put simply, there just isn't any one else out there coming close to daring thoughts as big as those surrounding Wave. I certainly welcome more effective competition in any market, and Wave itself has much to prove in the weeks and months ahead, but when it comes to collaborative messaging that can span both media and enterprise markets, it looks like Google is out there on a huge wave all by itself. Again.
After a day or so of tweaking, software downloading and restoring files from my JungleDisk network backup drive, Ariel has come to life in full. The fourth of a series of Dell Latitude laptop PCs that I have used (we'll forget that Compaq that I had for a corporate job), Ariel is the third unit I've owned named after archangels, a small but welcome comfort when I have need of a machine that can deliver some assurance to a hard-working road warrior. The processing power of this ES6400 model and its solid-state RAM drive certainly help Ariel to deliver those assurances. Having been out of the PC purchasing loop for several years, now, though, I must say that Ariel is representative of a new place in the content hierarchy for PCs than former units that I have owned, more a waystation than a destination in the stream of real-time content going and coming from a myriad of inputs and outputs.
The edges and guts of Ariel are bristling with interfaces to all kinds of content sources and outputs. An SD card slot on the front for camera and mobile media, a Firewire port and four USB ports for high-speed serial connections, one of which doubles as an eSATA port for high-volume storage units, high-definition video output port and a plain old LAN connector. Inside are wireless cards for WiFi, broadband, GPS and for Bluetooth-enabled devices. A CD-DVD drive is there for legacy media and storage, while the slot for the analog modem finally said goodbye. In other words, this machine is more like a switchboard for the galaxy of content sources and output devices surrounding it than a little walled garden unto itself. The fact that I have oodles of disk space is not as important as the peta-oodles of storage and processing available in the networks surrounding Ariel.
The notion of PCs as switchboards and waystations for content is underscored by the main reason that I finally decided to spring for a new unit. My old unit was fine for browsing the Web and office automation tasks, but it groaned at the memory and processing required to produce video content. A new webcam that I purchased, able to produce high-definition video, was just not up to the task, complicated by a USB interface that was underpowered for processing video. Ariel is more than up to these tasks, equipped with its own tiny webcam to boot and a screen that is proportioned perfectly for video presentations. In a world in which video and other multimedia are beginning to become the focus of more mobile content than ever before - wait for a new generation of powerful mobile phones next year that will accelerate this trend signifcantly - PCs are becoming more of a filtering and production platform for sophisticated content that is consumed on other platforms oftentimes.
The other key factor that Ariel's power underscores is the depth and breadth of real-time information sources that it's able to handle. Dozens of browser tabs are no sweat for Ariel to manage, with streams from Twitter, email, videos humming along while I chug along on word processing, spreadsheets, graphics and slide presentations. Its dual-core CPU processor is designed to maximize the efficiency of multi-process computing, a capability that's underused via the Windows XP operating system loaded on to Ariel but a help nevertheless. This is power that used to be available only in the trading rooms of investment banks consuming hundreds of real-time information resources to make split-second decisions on securities.
With affordable multiple screen displays and larger displays becoming more common in both office and home computing to consume all of this information, our desktop and laptop computing capabilities are starting to focus on the types of benefits that used to be the focus of only a handful of securities traders. Integration of multiple content sources to help people attain the benefits of real-time computing power is going to become only more important as machines like Ariel begin to dominate the PC end of content production and consumption. With video and multimedia sources an increasingly important part of this real-time stream, the winners in publishing will the those who are able to understand the integration and collaboration requirements for people consuming information in ever more immediate decision-making cycles.
The other factor that's highlighted by Ariel's strengths is the constancy of content consumption in today's online environment. I settled for batteries that could keep Ariel going for about ten or twelve hours without recharging, but I could have opted for an even larger add-on unit that could have extended its off-cord power to eighteen hours. High-power mobile smart phones and smartbooks are about to enter this realm soon also, with the ability to power video, Web browsing and other content-intense applications for days between recharging. This "always on" culture of content production and consumption is leaving fewer and fewer gaps for people to consider alternative forms of publishing.
As emerging technologies such as Google Wave make instant content sharing and collaboration more immediate and global than ever before, the world of real-time content is going to produce even more emphasis on instant awareness and consensus-building through publishing services. While the world has not become Wall Street, in some ways the content marketing concepts - and challenges - that shaped financial markets with new generations of technologies in previous decades are becoming the baseline of how most enterprise and consumer publishers will have to adjust to content markets in the years ahead.
Immediacy is not just important, but essential to the process of making good decisions. Sophisticated analytics are needed to help people make sense of a myriad of real-time inputs and related archives. Sophisticated networks are needed to help people collaborate rapidly on high-value opportunities and to execute on those opportunities cost-effectively. All of this requires sophisticated and affordable cloud infrastructure that will enable these services to scale cost-effectively and to minimize technology investments in markets that reward rapid adoption of new technology advantages. Look no further than to companies like Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters to understand the full cycle of changes that will be required for your own markets if you plan to survive and to thrive in the years ahead as real-time information changes your own markets.
So here I go, off to a new era of slugging it out with my keyboard, mouse and webcam to produce and consume content in real-time more productively than ever before. I am glad to have Ariel as my new road warrior compadre. My travel bag will be a lot lighter thanks to all of its built-ins and my life will be more content-centric and real-time than ever. I hope that's a good thing.
If scholarly publishers are unsure as to whether social media can act as a cornerstone for research they should consider the plans of Reuters (Guardian) to introduce a private social media service for financial analysts later this year. While details are sketchy at this stage, it appears that Reuters will enable researchers and other financial professionals to post out analysis, data and other key information that can be picked up by Reuters subscribers on a premium basis. The 70,000-plus users already connected to the Reuters Messaging service are expected to provide the core audience for this service and will no doubt also provide the core of its contributors also. We'll see what the final product looks like but it's a shrewd move to leverage the power of Web publishing in a way that may yet unseat Bloomberg's messaging service as the core of financial dialogues in institutional trading circles.
It's this kind of advanced thinking about how audiences want to be connected to one another more than to publishers that's lacking from so much of the print-oriented publishing world. As the content industry becomes more real-time in its overall contours it should recognize that there is plenty of money to be made in enabling conversations amongst connected peers - enough to power the financial industry to record profits in 2006, by the way. Instead of looking at the bottom line of their clients more publishers need to look at their top lines and to consider how their services are contributing to overall revenues and profitability for their customers. If scholarly publishers were servicing Wall Street they'd be talking about the importance of ticker tape and carrier pigeons to investment banking. Publishers can do far better than that - and, yet again, Reuters has.
