Alex Kelleher’s Blog

It’s pretty easy to get caught up in being a wired-social-media-twitter-myfacespace-er and forget that actually, most people aren’t that wired.  By which I mean, most people on this 3rd rock from the sun aren’t participating in the heady-Web 2.0 life, and even those we might assume are, are not.  I meet a lot of people who would normally be included in the statistic of “internet users” who, unsurprisingly, are still largely untouched by the latest developments.  Some basic info-graphics (if you can call them that) to illustrate:

So, 5bn people aren’t internet users, versus 1.7bn who are (numbers courtesy of World Internet Stats).  A significant majority of the world’s current population who wouldn’t know a tweet from a poke, let alone who are actively using the internet for any purpose whatsoever.

Next, let’s assume that really wired internet users are members of one of a couple of key sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.  Sure, we could add MySpace, Orkut and so on into the mix, but it’s fairly obvious that the crossover between the different sites is going to be heavy – i.e. most Twitter users will have a facebook account, listen to spotify, whatever whatever.  Another high-tech infographic for your enlightenment:

(The twitter number I’ve derived from various sources, the other figures are from the sites’ own published stats)

Finally, here are a couple of other indicative statistics to keep in mind:

• The median number of tweets per twitter user is 1.  The vast majority of twitter users have bouts of occasional activity, and either give up/stop or take long periods off.  Only a few could probably be classified as very active – maybe less than 1 million?
• Even in the UK 10 million people still don’t have an internet connection.  That means 1/6th of the country who couldn’t even access it if they felt they wanted to.  And of the rest, my wager would be another 30-40million are very light users.

Obviously I’m not saying any of this to try and claim the “internet” is dead or broken or flawed.  The fact facebook has 300m accounts is hugely impressive, and a feat not achieved by any business before that quickly.   In fact, I’m saying the opposite: I’m underlining the huge potential still wrapped up in its growth, despite few people in our worlds talking about that growth, and despite the temptation to assume that everyone is equally tech savvy.

I’m fully aware that those with businesses exposed to BRIC countries know all this – and are building their businesses based on this potential growth.  But I’m also confronted daily with a significant section of the web-culture in the UK/US (including me) who can take a fully-wired society for granted.

Back in 1995 when I started my first company (a web agency) I thought then that maybe I was too late…!  Fact is, we’re still all very early to the game.

admin Web

At university I did a thesis on how people react to movies (part of which went into a chapter I co-wrote with Julian Friedman for his book How to Make Money Scriptwriting).  Turns out, if we empathise with a character on screen, we mimic what they’re doing with small (undetectable) muscle movements – if they’re running, our legs twitch, etc.

What’s even more fascinating is how we SEE the movie.  When we blink, we lose up to 10% of our viewing time.  So it’s really important that we time those blinks to moments when we won’t miss anything too important happening on the screen.  And that means that in an average movie (or YouTube clip), most of us will blink at the same time.

Synchronized blinking, in short.

A recent study discovered that it’s not always when expected (i.e. a scene break), but at points where something has completed, or the main character is off the screen for a moment.  So the result of a natural moment of low interest, when our brain calculates it can give the eyes a break.

Part of that seems obvious to me (our eyes would dry out if we waited for scene endings), but the fact that almost everyone anticipates the same best place to blink is pretty interesting. 

Watching where people blink could be a pretty strong indicator of interest not just in movies, but in video ads (if we blink when they show the brand, opportunity lost), in top-level sports (especially fast-moving sports like table tennis) in warfare (when do fighter pilots blink?), and so on.

Blinking useful.

admin Psychology, Television

Who cares???

I wrote a while ago about the Palm Pre (now available in the UK) unifying messaging.   It makes sense – all your messages to me are as one.   

The thing is, I don’t care how your message arrives.  If I’m at my work PC, sure a Skype message is handy, it’s right there.  In a meeting?  Email is pretty good.  On a train with just my Blackberry – well, any mobile message works.   But really, whether to message me in LinkedIn, Twitter, email - it doesn’t matter, it just makes your and my life harder working out which one to use.  We’re supposed to be in a new bright era of unparalleled communications - but, it’s actually a mess. 

Twitter?  Handy when I have Tweetdeck open.  And crazy when I get alerted to new messages by email (talk about duplication).  Can I be bothered to install twitter clients on my Blackberry so I have yet another format of message to read?  Is a tweet any more useful than a Skype IM?  Do I remember whether you told me about some new great thing via MSN rather than email?  No, no and no!

Sure, there are different ways you might want to message – just to me, just to our group of friends/interest group, or to the world including me.   But that doesn’t need 10 different platforms, 10 different interfaces, 10 apps on my iPhone (disclaimer: I don’t  have an iPhone, this guy outlines the reasons why pretty well).   It just needs a simple setting connected to the message: like a “purpose” or “audience” label.

We’re running a real risk of losing out on the benefits of realtime communication by getting caught up in new brands that merely provide a way of sending messages (I’m looking at you, Twitter), rather than ways of getting that message to me in the most appropriate, useful, immediate way. 

It’s a little bit like providing gas to my house in pipes that are colourful, light up, have cute names, and make their journey via London’s top landmarks.  I don’t care – I just want the gas that comes out of the end, and feeds my boiler and oven.  Even more than that, I just want the heating it enables, and the food that comes out of the oven.  So, even if the gas itself is replaced by some new energy source, I’d be just as happy.

It’s the message that counts, not the medium.

admin Technology, Usability, Web

Tonight, in about 1/2 hour, I’m going to take a saliva sample and ship it off to the States. 

A company called 23andme is then going to analyze that DNA, and tell me my risks for 118 diseases, my ancestral path and allow me to navigate other people with similar DNA…

This is mainly thanks to Esther Dyson‘s persuasion, who has always been enthusiastic about the service (she’s also any advisor to my Company, Cognitive Match).  And, in fact, the moment the service was proposed (which from memory was still a year starting with 19) I knew I’d be signing up at some point.  The thing is, it’s at least 50% of what defines ME, it’s my DNA.  (Although note that researchers are finding other features of our DNA, including how it is folded, could be just as important - thanks to @christophebacon for that one).

So Bill Moorier’s app (http://abstractnonsense.com/mri/), “Inside my head” caught my eye for the same reason.  If you fancy, you can use this app to navigate around Bill’s head, presented in a full set of MRI scans… No, I’m not totally sure either why you would want to see inside Bill’s head – but I wouldn’t mind seeing inside my own.  Especially if it was labelled up with facts about brain areas, comparisons with other people’s brains and so on. 

That’s only the start, of course.  Twin this data with eHRs (electronic health records) which we’ll all be getting access to within 3-5 years  (Google Health is already delivering this, and Microsoft and others are working on int), and you have an electronic record of YOU.   Then what? Suddenly, you’ll be in control of your health – all in one place, at one time. 

And the combination of that data will make some amazing things happen in medicine – your genes, combined with your medical history, your travel plans, what you eat every day… Not only will it enable huge advances in personalized medicine, but connections between your health and your life will pour out of this thing.  And ultimately, we will all be a bit healthier.

So, getting 23andme to analyze my DNA, and considering buying the recently buzzed-up FitBit is the first step along that road.  I realise many people wouldn’t find all of this healthy, and it might even be more stressful/worrying than not knowing anything.  But for now, my curiosity is outweighing all that.

I’ll let you know if it changes once 23andme is done analyzing…

admin medicine

The concept that “information wants to be free“  has been around one way or another since the dawn of time.   News at the dawn of time (whenever that was) was most likely passed on by word of mouth – town criers, or neighbours in the cave next door.

These days it’s being touted as, amongst other things, the reason for the downfall of the newspaper industry.   As in the table below, only ONE of the UK national papers (the Daily Star, more of a celeb-paper than a newspaper) is up year-on-year in terms of circulation, and some are falling by as much as 15%. 

So what does “information wants to be free” actually mean?  As far as I can tell, the raw data that is the news (i.e. what’s happened) isn’t something the general public are any more willing to pay for.  As long as there are ways to subsidize the collection (or recycling) of news online, some or all of it will be offered free, and therefore no-one will be willing to pay for any of it. 

Some commentators bite back with comparisons like “Information doesn’t want to be free any more than gasoline wants to be free” – which is patently nonsense.   If I could find a business model to make gasoline free, gasoline would be free, almost overnight, everwhere. For instance, if I when filling my car up I watched 5 ads, filled out a long personal questionnaire, and did my weekly online shopping with an advertiser provider – there’s my free gasoline, job done.

The problem is in part that information covers a huge array of things: from “what time is it?” to “which stock should I buy” – and a whole complicated spectrum in-between.  And no-one can draw a line to say where the charging should begin.

The standard response of newspapers is that they don’t actually present the news – they present a mix of news, analysis, and “premium” news such as financial information or sports results, and so on.   It’s a form of entertainment.  Here’s my take on that:

• I reject the “premium” notion, as all news suffers from the same free-effect: if someone somewhere is willing to offer it for free, everyone everywhere expects to get it for free.  Even the FT online has only got around 117,000 paying subscribers around the world
• Analysis indicates that someone (or some people) who are smart have spent (chargeable) time processing the news, and coming up with useful views, slants and summaries - that we ourselves couldn’t or wouldn’t want to do.  It might be valid, but then 1billion blogs, including this one, do the analysis piece (if you can call it that in my case) and give it away.  Citizen journalists take the photos (more quickly).  It may not be as high quality – but then neither is the video on YouTube, and look where that got it
• The entertainmentpiece is probably the piece the Daily Star has got right – light on the news, heavy on entertaining, light and untroubling content

So what can the newspapers actually do?

1. Put up a “pay wall” so high that people actually turn back to cheaper print: As in the Newport Daily News (http://www.newsweek.com/id/214607).   I think this is a crazyand short-term idea.  In fact a pay wall of any kind is a crazy idea.  The common sentiment is that if Murdoch does it, everyone will have to do it.  But that’s bizarre thinking.  If Murdoch and everyone else puts up a pay wall, I’m launching a free newspaper, and boy am I going to get a lot of traffic.

2. Find smarter ways of monetising content – contextual ads are okay, but tighter links into other ways that consumers spend online is smarter.  This is my favorite approach.  Newspapers still (just) have a great mixture of brand, loyalty, customers and quality editorial staff  – and can churn out the content to support the revenue models to keep the industry alive.

3. Forget chasing the “next big charging thing”like ereaders.  Ereaders will very soon (if Apple has its way, by next year) be always-on web terminals.  Same story, same argument, and same free

4. Create entertainment products, like the Daily Star.  That seems to work, still.   But that may in part be because the audience of the Daily Star has yet to become as fully web-enabled, and in time too that advantage will erode

5. Realise that free means “free to the consumer”, not “completely without revenue”

In conclusion, I’m on the “information wants to be free” side, but absolutely don’t believe that means that there won’t be revenue models or a place for what we today know as newspapers.  In fact, as information power-houses, they’re really well positioned to take advantage of digital.  If only they’d just focus more on that, and less on lamenting the demise of paper and ink.

admin Web, news

Having just been to WPP’s Stream 09, and spoken at CTAM’s Eurosummit last month, I’ve been exposed a fair bit to a topic that affects both the cable (TV) and online industries fairly equally: video.  And, more importantly, how to monetize it.

YouTube generates billions of hours of viewing, and still are struggling to break even.  I’ve talked to people at YouTube, and clients of YouTube, and the frustration is the same: no clear way of applying advertising to the medium that both brings benefit to the brand, and to the user.

My 2cents worth on that a bit further down, but before that, something that just jumps out at me: Video is video is video!  There will be (at latest within 2-3 years) no distinction between online, digital TV, cable.  If (as someone else at Stream pointed out) I want to watch Family Guy, that means I want to watch Family guy.  What screen it’s on, what size that screen is, and what the platform is called doesn’t matter to me one bit.  What matters is watching the show – and soon (by which I mean very soon) I’ll have a set-top box under my TV that is “online”, no different from the box under my ‘lean-forward’ PC screen.  Forget the puny attempts by Panasonic et al to put some widgets onto a TV screen.  I mean full online access, with some optimisation to compensate for sitting 8ft away. 

What am I participating in then?  Online video?  Video on Demand?  Digital TV?

No, just video. So there is no “online or TV” debate, to my mind.  There’s “video”, that’s it.

Back to monetization: I did make the point to the YouTube guys that Google hasn’t yet done what it did so smartly with search.  There, it turned advertising into a user benefit (GoogleAds are of course frequently more relevant/useful than the organic results and generate up to perhaps 40% response from the audience).   And the format matches the context (short text snippet search results). 

With YouTube, Google seems to be forgetting its drive to innovate, and just wanting to copy TV advertising (pre-roll, post-roll and so on), or slap something up (annoying overlays).  The debate seems to be about how to annoy users least (by only pre-rolling, keeping the ads short and so no) rather than how to help users the most.  Helping users the most to my mind will help brand advertisers the most.

What’s really needed (especially in short form video, long form can probably carry TV-style advertising for a while) is a new, game-changing way of monetizing the content.  I spoke to quite a few people at Stream about this, and I’ll bet something will emerge soon.  As a thought-starter I regularly mention Net-a-porter (and have talked to Mark Sebba the Chief Executive recently about this and other things) as a great, simple example of smart monetization of content.  In their case, it’s like having a copy of Vogue magazine where women can click  on the clothes on the models, and buy them immediately. 

Perhaps there’s something in that approach for brand advertisers and video?

admin Television

So the whole world is going personalized.  Even in medicine, which I guess most people would think is personalized anyway, it’s the Next Big Thing.  Of course, it’s personalized to a degree in that your doctor will use their judgement in what you might have, but if you have the same disease as someone else, you’re likely to get the same drug and treatment.

That’s changing.  In fact, Pfizer’s DX Division Head says that personalized programs are “happening in the development and commercial stages right now”.  And that’s from the world’s largest pharmaceutical company.  There’s $110bn of company valuation they have to protect in the future, so you can bet they’re spending some good money in this area.

In the UK, the government last month released a note on personalised medicine, covering the current movement away from the “One size fits all” approach.  This note suggests that genetic differences between us can account for up to 95% of the variation in how we each respond to drugs. 

Really what we’re talking about here is a more granular approach.  Your medical, family and life history is combined with an ever greater number of lab test to build up a picture of you as different from another person with the same condition.  Strictly speaking, this isn’t “personal”.  It doesn’t mean that as an individual, you are unique, and will get a treatment no-one else will get. As the UK government report says, “Personalised medicine tailors treatment to patient subgroups“.

Of course it just isn’t possible to test new or existing drugs against every single person who could take them.  So the best that can be expected right now is to know that a drug works for “someone like you“.  One day, computer modelling of the effects of a drug on me as an individual (which would be my DNA plus my current health state, and changes that the environment and life have made – in fact a digital capture of the biology of me right now) will of course be possible – delivering truly personalised medicine. I’ll then pop a pill that would work for no-one else, and bingo – cured.  Until then, I plan to avoid all germs, and eat only aloe vera.

admin Technology, medicine

A couple of years ago I helped a friend (@JulianFriedmann who is a UK film/book agent) launch a site  for screenwriters, TwelvePoint.  I’ve talked to him many times over the years about storytelling.  In fact I contributedpart of a chapter to his book “How to Make Money Screenwriting“.   That chapter talked about the physiological/psychological effects of watching a movie, and what screenwriters might do with that information.  For instance, did you know that if you sympathise with a character on the screen who is running, your leg muscles will twitch in sync to their running?

Of course one of the basic truths about screenwriting (particularly US screenwriting) is the common structure of movie screenplay.  There’s a focus point in the narrative around page 15, a turning point around page 30, another focus point around midway, and a final turning point about 15 pages or so from the end (each page translates roughly to a minute).  Analysis shows that the vast majority of US movies are based on this formula – next time you watch a movie, check it out, it works.

This, and countless books and research, all point towards stories having a basic, common structure.  So it made perfect sense to me when I read about people looking at the concept of an ”Automyth“.  People (mainly in and around computer gaming) are looking at this, so there’s a lot of reference to fairy tales and ghosts and wizards and everything Terry Pratchett-esque.  For instance someone has created an online “Fairy Tale Generator” at http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/gen.html which does an okay job of fixing up a tale based on a bunch of selected inputs like “victory”, “rescue” or “difficult task”.

True, mainstream Automovies or Autobestseller novels are a little way away, it seems, but can it be that long before the first computer-generated bestseller hits a screen near you.  The technology to create the visual image, spoken word and automated music are there already.  All we’re missing is a piece of software that can generate a decent story.

UPDATE: Julian just sent me the following tweet: @alexkelleher I am the friend Alex helped; great blog in light of claims the 3 acts doesn’t work. Read Bettleheim Uses of Enchantment.

admin AI, software

Apparently. 

Craig Venter, one of the guys behind the Human Genome breakthrough, has just claimed that after a decade-long effort, his instituate is that close to creating artificial life.  Here’s how you can do it at home:

Step 1:Build the entire genetic code for a single bacteria
Step 2: Insert this code into a “host” cell
Step 3: “Reboot” host cell

Until 2007, Step 3 is where the process got stuck, the resulting bacterium just wasn’t viable.   Just recently, Craig and his Institute think they’ve cracked it using “methylation”, a way of protecting this new DNA from the cell’s defence systems. 

This breakthrough could give biology and medicine some great tools – in fact Venter is working on bacteria that transform coal into cleaner natural gas.  Pretty good for a guy who’s already helped us understand our own DNA, and is on a quest to “put everything Darwin missed into context” through his oceanographic surveys.

admin Genes, Technology

The New York Times chose to lead this story by pointing out that “the unemployed have more time for leisure and socializing“.   Yes, that seems pretty likely.

But in any case the interactive graph they created from their data is a pretty interesting breakdown of how different groups spend their days, by time of day. 

It’s full of “obvious” information, like men seem to watch more TV and do less housework, but it’s intriguing to play around with the different groups, they’ve certainly tried to analyze the data.  Here are some facts that I’m sure you wanted to know:

• Women shop for an average of half an hour a day
• At midnight, 2% of all Americans (which equates to 6m people) are working
• At noon, 4% of all Americans (12m) are asleep…
• 25% of people spend more than an hour travelling to work
• At 8:50pm, 2 fifths of people are in front of the television

More evidence that we’re a pretty predictable bunch of beings…

admin data mining, visualization