The Princeton Press announced this week that it would be offering hundreds of its textbooks via Amazon’s Kindle electronic book reader for students who’d rather buy electronic books than carry around the big printed versions. Yale University Press and Oxford University Press already have a similar presence for students. The University of California Press recently had about 40 of its volumes placed on Kindle and is ramping up.

According to an article in Inside Higher Ed, image-heavy textbooks aren’t conducive to the Kindle, but everything else is moving in that direction.

The university presses participating in Kindle were reluctant to describe the specific financial arrangements they have with Amazon (which also declined to discuss them), but said that they were revenue-sharing deals, and that preparing the books for release on Kindle was not particularly burdensome or expensive.

But here’s the mystery: the Kindle editions don’t come much cheaper than the always expensive standard college texts. Most of the electronic offerings run just a few bucks less than their printed counterparts.

This is yet another example of a traditional form of media trying to hang onto a revenue stream that cannot be justified by the technology that provides it in a different format. The cost of making a printed book is significant. It costs pennies (if anything) to duplicate a digital file, but the textbook industry is enormous (and authors of textbooks can make a pretty penny). It won’t separate itself from all that money easily.

But this is exactly the kind of scenario that produces disruptions, and it should be fun to watch.

Few people tell it like Stowe Boyd.

This weekend, Boyd added his considerable insight to a fascinating discussion that has grown out of Nick Carr’s provocative Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Later, Scott Karp added his wealth of insight, and now Boyd. It’s a complex topic but boils down to Carr’s question about what’s happening with our his mind these days. He feels his mind shifting and doesn’t like it. Do yourself a favor and read all of the link references, beginning with Carr’s.

Karp elaborates on Carr’s premise by discussing the differences between absorbing knowledge in big chucks versus little chucks, and Boyd agrees with Karp that the answer to Carr’s question is a resounding “no.”

As I have been saying for years, the inherent conservatism of the mass media and other mass organizations (those that are based on one:many modes of communication, like government, religions, business, and so on) will lead them to say that this new sort of thinking is illegitimate: they war against it, saying that our new ways of talking and thinking and the social structures that they engender are bad, inferior, immoral, and stupid; and that those in favor of this web revolution are dumb, misguided, or evil fringe lunatics.

This is exactly the nut of the thing for me, too, but my take has always been the shift from the modernist, colonialist, hierarchical culture to the participatory, postmodernist, post-colonial culture. Traditionalists will love the concept of Google making people stupid, because it beautifully validates their illusions about knowledge and life and gives them a platform from which to point and say, “See? See?” It’s demagoguery, plain and simple, and I don’t believe for a minute that the cultural changes are “bad” for us. Does it make me feel uncomfortable? Perhaps, but that’s just fear of the unknown.

I’ve oft quoted my daughter Jenny, who at age seven got her first calculator (in the mid 70s). She asked me then, “If I have one of these, why do I need to study math?” Is she stupid, because her mind wants to explore other uses? If she uses her calculator, does that make her more stupid than one who doesn’t?

We’re always hearing how we humans only use 10 percent of our brains, but dammit, we sure seem to be comfortable with that. Why?

The ability to instantly deconstruct vastly complex arguments with a mouse click is certainly the enemy of a culture run by protected knowledge and absolute authorities, but it doesn’t follow that this means doom for humanity. Besides, cultural changes tend not to be “all or nothing,” so hierarchy of some form will always have its place.

This is a hilarious view of the current media disruption through the comedy of That Mitchell and Webb Look and, of course, YouTube.

(Hat tip to David Weinberger, a real bronzie)

I first became familiar with the term “critical mass” in the early 1980s as producer of The 700 Club. Most people don’t realize the extent to which the program and its founder, Pat Robertson, were driven by research. Little was left to chance back in my days there, which is why executives would occasionally gather at an enormous country house at the Homestead in the Virginia mountains to talk about culture and trends.

I remember one such occasion when our marketing director spoke of the rise of the remote control, and what it would mean once it reached 50 percent of the households with TV. Half of consumers is known as “critical mass,” a magical threshold that somehow validates the concept in the world of marketing. We all know what happened with the remote control, but now a new concept has crossed into validity — Web 2.0.

According to an article in Online Media Daily, the latest installment of an ongoing tracking study from Interpublic’s Universal McCann unit reveals that text messaging, blogging and social networking have reached critical mass, with more than half of all adults in the U.S. using one of these to communicate with friends, family, or colleagues on a regular basis. But the big story — and it is huge — is that nearly nine of ten in the age group 18-34 use these, making it the most dominant form of communications for the group.

Yet we wonder why traditional media methods of communicating are dying.

In ten years, this group will be 28-44, and the new 18-34 year old group will be even more socially connected.

Text messaging, meanwhile, proves that mobile media also is becoming a dominant source of personal communications beyond the cell phone, even if mass marketers haven’t yet figured out how to crack the potential of marketing through the medium. The percentage of U.S. adults who say they’ve never sent a text message fell to 41% this year from 49% a year ago. And among 18- to 34-year-olds, it dropped to 22% from 38%.

“Even if mass marketers haven’t yet figured out how to crack the potential of marketing through the medium?” Good grief, let’s hope that never happens. It would be like a phone call being interrupted for a brief commercial announcement.

Hopefully, I’ll be long gone before that ever reaches critical mass.

The Encyclopedia Britannica opens its wall just a bit.

The AP’s foolish blunder in trying to enforce its view of fair use is getting more and more coverage in the blogosphere, including from notable voices such as Mark Glaser, Matthew Ingram (who makes a very important point) and Duncan Riley. It’s reached the point where it can only end badly for the AP, but here’s the worst case scenario.

Most media people dismiss the blogosphere as unsubstantiated crap, but like other “worlds,” the blogosphere contains some really, really sharp minds. Those minds are tapped daily by the people with money in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. These kinds of people seize financial opportunities when presented, and the clear opportunity here is for somebody to create a new world competitor to the walled garden that is the Associated Press.

Think about it. You have newspapers in Ohio organizing to swap stories. You have the newspaper consortium, brought together by the deal with Yahoo but talking amongst themselves about other opportunities. Given the huge sums of money that member media companies pay to participate in the “cooperative,” I’d be surprised if this subject hasn’t already come up in many places.

And what happens if somebody like Craig Newmark comes along and creates the aggregator for free?

Like I said earlier, the AP’s future has always been questionable, given the disruptive nature of the Web and what it does to middle men. But by its own foolish actions with The Drudge Retort, the AP has likely accelerated that by months, if not years.

UPDATE: The Drudge Retort considers suing the AP. Stay tuned.

This one is pretty hard to believe. The Online Journalism Review is shuttering after a decade, according to the “voice” of the OJR, Robert Niles. He’ll continue writing at his blog (SensibleTalk.com) and the mission of the OJR will continue through the Knight Digital Media Center.

Robert is an excellent writer with real insight into new media. I’m swapping RSS feeds from the OJR to his personal site.

The Associated Press entered highly dangerous territory last week when it sent take down notices to a publication (a.k.a. blog) known as The Drudge Retort over what it considered copyright violations. In what is widely regarded as typical fair use for blogs, the Drudge Retort copied a couple of sentences from AP reports and provided a link back to the original. The AP argued that it was not fair use, which prompted many people, including Jeff Jarvis, to cry “foul.”

My suspicion is that it’s the lawyers who got the AP into this mess. My best advice for the AP’s executives is that they should try to practice the bloggers’ ethic of the link and quote themselves (updating their news values with one more value). My next-best advice is that they should walk down the hall and tell the lawyers to put a damned sock in it or send them off for a very long off-site on a golf course where they can do no harm. This is not going to be resolved enforcing the fine print of outmoded laws built for an extinct age. This is a constantly changing landscape that must be maneuvered with flexibility and openness. But if those lawyers continue to threaten bloggers who know more about this new age and are only practicing their appropriate ethics, I will continue to use this space to suggest where socks should go.

Jeff’s commentary and that of many others prompted the AP to back off a bit. In a New York Times piece on the matter, Saul Hansell writes that the AP released a statement defending its actions on Friday, but later held an emergency meeting and softened its position.

“We don’t want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more positive way to do this,” Mr. Kennedy (Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P.) said.

Mr. Kennedy said the company was going to meet with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association, a trade group, and others. He said he hopes that these discussions can all occur this week so that guidelines can be released soon.

Still, Mr. Kennedy said that the organization has not withdrawn its request that Drudge Retort remove the seven items. And he said that he still believes that it is more appropriate for blogs to use short summaries of A.P. articles rather than direct quotations, even short ones.

“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”

And now a boycott of AP content is underway, and it includes TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington:

The A.P. doesn’t get to make it’s own rules around how its content is used, if those rules are stricter than the law allows. So even thought they say they are making these new guidelines in the spirit of cooperation, it’s clear that, like the RIAA and MPAA, they are trying to claw their way to a set of property rights that don’t exist today and that they are not legally entitled to. And like the RIAA and MPAA, this is done to protect a dying business model - paid content.

The real problem for the A.P. is that it can’t win this argument, and by pressing the issue, they’re very likely to end up with a business model that dies overnight. And I don’t think I’m overstating that. Links are the currency of the Web, and the A.P. hard line spits in the face of that, which is leading to boycotts like Arrington’s. The monopoly co-operative is living in the past, but it needs that past to validate a business model that is as out-of-date as traditional media itself. Now, by pressing the matter, they run the significant risk of being in a contrary legal position, and what will be left for them after that?

They’ve announced that they’re willing to create a new policy, but that, too, is fraught with problems, for it can only shed further light on the weakness of their business model in a changing environment. Bloggers know that links go to the originator of the content, which would mean linking to the A.P.’s members, not the A.P. version thereof. When that happens, media companies will rightly ask why they need an expensive middle man in the equation. Always remember that the Web disrupts the middle of any transaction, including media. As such, the most enviable position in the new world is that of aggregator, but as Google News proves, there’s not exactly a whole lot of money to be made in so doing.

These are all questions that observers have been asking for years, of course, but the A.P.’s own foolish action with what is essentially a small social website have shined a significant spotlight on them all.

Two of the top tech observers are drumming a death march for Yahoo in the wake of yesterday’s big announcement that the company had struck a search advertising deal with arch-enemy Google. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Om Malik of GigaOm both think the company has shot itself in the foot (or worse). Arrington:

The deal terms announced with Google appear to be fairly innocent - a non-exclusive arrangement that let’s Yahoo take Google’s ads if and when they choose to, and put them alongside their own ads, and/or other third party ads. But the truth is that this will cause even more advertisers to flee Yahoo’s platform. Which will drive auction-determined ad rates down. Which will drive Yahoo to take more Google ads. Which will…

It’s a vicious cycle and they will have no choice, as a public company, but to rely more and more on Google as time goes on.

Malik echoes Arrington’s feelings in his typically colorful way:

I think this is yet another critical blunder by a company that lost its way back three years ago when then CEO Terry Semel lost interest in the company, putting it on a path of mediocrity. Of course, as one of my gurus once said, in hindsight, everyone is an idiot (or a genius).

And while that might assuage the short term concerns Wall Streeters have, the company is shooting itself in the face with deal. It is a almost like knowing your spouse is going to divorce while standing in the aisle, waiting for the priest.

Arrington went on to argue that this deal hurts more than just Yahoo; it hurts everybody in Silicon Valley, because competition in the search space means better value for publishers. It’s hard to argue with that, but his blind spot — and frankly that of all Valleyites — is their failure to understand the potential for competing with Google at the local level. And to that, I’ll say, “We’ll see.”

For members of the Yahoo newspaper (and TV) consortium, this deal is likely creating some serious stomach churn. The long-term value prop for local media is Yahoo’s reach, which is a tricky beast that has a lot to do with brand and the fickle happiness of users. It’s hard to believe the company can keep up with the relentless pace of web development when it’s struggling with revenue problems downstream. As I have said all along, Yahoo needs the local media companies a whole lot more than the local companies need Yahoo, and this deal makes that even clearer.

So what the deal with Google means is uncertainty but probably not enough to disrupt the relationship at this point.

But the one certainty that the Web brings is change, and I’d be a fool to predict where this is all headed. I will repeat, however, that online revenue growth is guaranteed at the local level, and that the real competitor of all local media companies is Google, the company that Yahoo just snuggled up against.

Viacom is now distributing its hit shows “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” via Hulu, the NewsCorp, NBCU portal for television shows online. These two shows are but a crack-in-the-door to all that is Viacom, and one day CBS will get on board, too. Hulu has also announced that it’s adding some PBS shows later this month.

I’ve said all along that the only way this really works is if everybody’s along for the ride, because in this way, Hulu becomes “spectrum with spectrum” — a special corner of the Web that’s used for TV shows. It lets the shows compete with each other as if they were competing on cable or over-the-air. It’s the proper use of the Web for this kind of content, and Hulu is establishing itself as the leader in creating an internet conduit that’ll one day (hell, it already is) be served to your TV set, too.

I’m a regular Hulu user, and I think the experience is great. The emotional season-ender of House tugged at my heartstrings as I watched on my laptop just as it would’ve done in my living room.

I also think that local stations should consider doing something similar for news programming, and with the success of Hulu, we may actually see that kind of cooperation some day. I’m not, however, holding my breath.

It’s almost entertaining to watch, this disconnect between media companies and the Web. In fact, it would be entirely entertaining if so much wasn’t at stake.

Diane Mermigas writes of the problem media moguls are having with the inability to make money with online videos. Former Disney chairman Michael Eisner is frustrated, both as an investor and a participant, and Diane does her best to get her arms around it.

The online ad frontier is fraught with problems–from enraging members of a social network to easy misplacement of ads. (Eisner complained that a male enhancement drug ad was automatically targeted for and appeared with an episode of “Foreign Body.”) Other revenue sources must be created: from sponsorships and transaction-related fees to various forms of sharing revenue and costs.

The answers are found in shifting the online focus from the value of the content and the advertising to the value of connecting to and continuously transacting with the right consumer.

Um, huh? You see, folks, the problem is that the Web collapses every hierarchical attempt to control it, so while traditional media types search for the “formula” that will turn it into a money tree, the Web just sticks its tongue out at them. As a result, the whole media world — including the advertising industry — is unwilling or unable to participate in the very disruption that could save them.

It’s a disconnect, and there’s no other way to explain it.

For example, Zachary Rodgers at ClickZ penned a nice piece last week about signs of growth with RSS advertising. On balance, it’s an encouraging article, but RSS advertising is an uphill, almost vertical climb due to low adoption rates in the U.S. and its inability to serve the flashier types of ads.

…the U.S. ranks far down on the adoption list, with penetration of only 18.6 percent. That’s tiny compared to RSS-addicted nations like Russia (57 percent adoption), Brazil (55 percent) and China (54 percent). Additionally, of those who access feeds, only 25 percent of U.S. respondents said they do so daily. Another 35 percent said they access them weekly, while 16 percent said feed reading is a monthly endeavor.

The reason the U.S. lags in this arena — as it does with mobile technology — is that the quo wants to protect its status, so it is reluctant to move through even obvious doors. RSS isn’t huge in this country, because the media companies that could benefit most from it refuse to promote it or use it as anything other than a way to draw people back to the walled gardens they know so well. RSS 2.0 is a real communications marvel, but it will never reach its potential until media companies begin to use it and explore its possibilities.

Dave Winer is one of those web geniuses who mainstream people don’t like (or refuse) to hear, but he speaks the truth regarding the Web. One of his core teachings is this: “People come back to places that send them away.” That makes no sense whatsoever to traditional media people, but it is, in fact, what “works” on the Web. Google practices it every day, and so do Yahoo and other forms of quality aggregators. And yet media companies are reluctant to offer outbound links to help users with stories for fear of driving them away.

Like I said. It’s a disconnect.

The Supreme Court decision earlier this week that gave for-profit fantasy baseball league sites the right to use the names of real players without paying a licensing fee is much bigger than it appears on the surface. It’s a pro-consumer vote by the court, and one that puts a big monkey wrench in the efforts of professional leagues — regardless of the sport — to frame EVERYTHING associated with their business as under their control.

You could almost sense a collective smile from media companies, who’ve seen their access to professional sports diminish to the point where the leagues are basically saying, “We don’t want or need you anymore.” This decision opens the door to create applications that serve the same purpose as cozying up to the leagues in the first place — the ability to serve advertising targeting a young and male audience.

Oops!

“Billions of dollars in licensing fees” are at stake, if you believe Major League Baseball’s argument, which was supported by the National Football League, the National Basketball Assn. and the National Hockey League. I don’t think it’s as much about licensing fees as it is about advertising. These leagues not only want to control everything about their sports (it’s their business), but they also want to control any ancillary access to potential profits. Sports isn’t about sports anymore; it’s all about the money.

My heart bleeds for professional sports. Really.

I hope that from time-to-time you are able to step back from the chaos that seems to be enveloping the media world of late to think about the remarkable opportunities that are before us. We’re living in a new Gutenberg moment, and I hope we don’t miss the forest for the trees.

From a memo to Tribune employees by Sam Zell and Randy Michaels:

What has become clear as we have gotten intimately familiar with the business is that the model for newspapers no longer works. Supply and demand are not in balance, and that manifests itself in two ways:

1. We are not giving readers what they want, and
2. We are printing bigger papers than we can afford to print

First, our publishing business — and to reiterate, it IS a business — needs to retool itself to a customer-centric model. We have now reviewed dozens of reader studies done by Tribune over the years, and they present clear and consistent findings. Readers want:

* Unbiased, honest journalism
* LOCAL consumer and community news
* Maps, graphics, lists, ranking and stats

Some of our papers do some of these things well, and some of our papers do them better than others. But, ALL of our papers need to improve in this area. We’re in the business of satisfying customers, and we WILL respond to what they say they want.

From an interview that Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer did with the Washington Post:

What is your outlook for the future of media?

In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down — my opinion.

Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.

10 years?

Yeah. If it’s 14 or if it’s 8, it’s immaterial to my fundamental point. . . . If we want TV to be more interactive, you’ll deliver it over an IP network. I mean, it’s sort of funny today. My son will stay up all night basically playing Xbox Live with friends that are in various parts of the world, and yet I can’t sit there in front of the TV and have the same kind of a social interaction around my favorite basketball game or golf match. It’s just because one of these things is delivered over an IP network and the other is not. . . .

Also in the world of 10 years from now, there are going to be far more producers of content than exist today. We’ve already started to see that certainly in the online world, but we’ve just scratched the surface. . . . I always take my favorite case: I grew up in Detroit. I went to a place called Detroit Country Day School. They’ve got a great basketball team. Why can’t I sit in front of my television and watch the Country Day basketball game when I know darn well it’s being video-recorded at all times? It’s there. It’s just not easy to navigate to.

While these thoughts are terrifying, they are at the same time, exciting. Many print people are dismissing Balmer’s predictions, and I agree that those who make absolute prophecies tend to be wrong far more often than they’re right (2018? I’m not so sure). They point to the fact that free dailies are going like gangbusters in Europe, and that global newspaper circulation is trending upwards. We’ll see.

Regardless, these are incredible times in which we live.

I’ll be in Chicago (actually, Naperville) next week for a “news leadership summit” produced by the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation and sponsored by the McCormick Foundation. The title of the event is: “Wires and Lights in a Box: Murrow’s Legacy and the Future of Electronic News.” This year is the 50th anniversary of Murrow’s famous “wires and lights in a box” speech, which explains the title of the summit.

Participants are a Who’s Who of broadcast news managers and leaders at both the network and local level. Edward R. Murrow is the patron saint of broadcast news and a powerful figure in broadcasting history, so you can usually expect good attendance when asked to meet in his name.

There’s a session on Murrow’s legacy, one on entertainment versus news, another on ideology/partisanship in the press versus an impartial press, and my panel, “What is the business model of the future?”

Here are the questions we’ll be exploring with my panel:

• What will financial success look like in the future? What is the business model of the future?
• How does the industry address the ethical and credibility concerns raised by the intersection of news content and advertising? Even Murrow had sponsors.
• Will news operations continue to put news and public service over profit? How do news operations serve the public’s right to know and still say in business? Can public service journalism survive?

We’re also going to break into small groups (what would a conference be without small groups?) with the goal, it appears, of coming up with journalistic principles and standards to preserve for the future.

In all, it’s a pretty heady event, and I’m honored to be a participant. This has been my life’s work, and I appreciate the chance to share my thoughts. Besides, I really like to hear myself talk.

I’m always a little nervous, though, when an institution that’s being disrupted gets together to talk about the future. Broadcasting isn’t casting broadly anymore (to borrow a cool phrase from Scott Collins of the LA Times), so there’s a niggling sense that we’re heading for mediasaurus land. It’s natural that we’d turn to each other to try and figure things out, but it might be better to talk with those who are actually doing the disrupting.

I like to use a whale oil industry metaphor. Let’s go back in history to the annual whale oil industry conference, with the industry in the midst of disruption from electricity. Rather than seeing that they’re in the home lighting business, the whale oilers can only see electrical power in ways that will help them either extend the whale oil business or do it more cost-effectively — for example, by creating an electrically-powered harpoon (it cuts the manpower costs significantly, you see). So rather than invest in electricity for home lighting, they press forward to protect the bottom line. Nice, huh?

I’ll blog as much as I can from Naperville, and if you’re going to be there, I look forward to saying hello.

I don’t write much about web growth anymore. I even gave up on web advertising growth stories a couple of years ago, because it seemed kind of foolish to keep saying the same thing. Anybody even remotely interested in the Web could tell that everything about it was moving northward (still is).

But the Borrell report below and a new study from market research firm IDC are too much to resist. According to the IDC report, overall Internet advertising revenue in the U.S. will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012. That’s right: double! Borrell reveals that local online revenues are growing “at a phenomenal rate of 50 percent this year” and that double digit growth will continue for at least another 18 months. His prediction that 2008 will be a $13.1 billion year for local online spending is in line with the IDC numbers.

A little context is in order. Television advertising in the U.S. is a $70 billion industry. While there have been a lot of doomsday predictions about broadcast revenues, I think that number is going to be around for awhile. But at $51.1 billion in 2012, web advertising revenue will be pushing TV. IDG actually predicts that by 2012, internet advertising will displace TV and be second behind only direct marketing.

Think about that for a minute.

Meanwhile, the report offers promise for those who already live in the world of video (can you say TV?):

Video advertising will be the principal disruptor of Internet advertising over the next five years by attracting the most new marketing dollars. Its revenue will grow sevenfold from $0.5 billion in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 49.4%. This growth will take place because brand advertisers will shift significant amounts of money into these video commercials, primarily from broadcast television and to a lesser extent from cable television.

And these kinds of predictions are always based on current models. What happens if the Web finally figures out how to advertise for real? It is a very long time (in web years) between now and 2012.

The point is the Web is where it’s at, and the size of those numbers mean disruptions will continue to relentlessly pound the status quo, even if that status quo was only created yesterday. We’re in an incredible season of change, and nobody really knows how its all going to play out, if it ever really does.

But you already knew that, right?

The Justice Department has announced a major settlement in its anti-trust case involving the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the use of its Multiple Listing Services (MLS) by internet-based residential real estate brokers. In a nutshell, it means Realtors won’t have exclusive access to MLS listings; they will be shared with those who are competing with Realtors by offering much lower commissions.

A New York Times article on the matter notes that MLS listings are the “lifeblood” of the real estate industry:

The settlement “is a win for consumers, certainly, who will now have the benefit of unrestricted competition,” Deborah A. Garza, deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust, said in an interview. “There inevitably will be more efficiency and more competition in the market.”

…The National Association of Realtors, with more than 1.2 million members, said that the settlement was “a win-win” for both the real estate industry and consumers. It noted that the association admitted no wrongdoing and paid no fines or damages as part of the deal.

The NAR notes that consumers won’t notice much difference, but I disagree. This opens the door for a high level of innovation in a $93 billion industry, and it will certainly benefit home buyers and sellers. Realtors? Not so much.

In a Buzzmachine.com post on the settlement, Jeff Jarvis says, “Kiss your 6 percent commission goodbye, Ms. Agent!”

This new economy can now come to real estate sales as information becomes freer. Oh, it’s not fully freed yet. But I do believe that the combination of this settlement and what it does to empower discount players and the depressed real estate market will combine to finally shove dynamite up Realtors’ rears.

I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that this is further evidence of the cultural shift from modernism to postmodernism, one that threatens every modernist institution of the West.

Protected knowledge (or access) is what empowers such institutions, and as we’re already witnessing with media, when you remove the protection, the institution collapses. Craig Newmark did it to classifieds with Craigslist, so what’s next?

How about medicine and the law, to name a couple. Back in the early days of the Web, the American Medical Association formed a special lobbying group to make sure they maintained control of medical information (to protect the people), because those within the group with vision could see what would come down-the-pike. Will we have a “doc-in-a-box” someday? The insurance industry might be interested in that. How about a “lawyer-in-a-box” to represent your needs in court?

I know those ideas are way out there, but the horse of postmodernism — that participatory, interactive culture — has already left the barn, and its destination is unknown.

A new web application called Flowww (warning slow loading) is out that’s generating discussion in the tech world, and I think it may have possibilities for media companies in the future. The developers are going to have to do a lot of work before it gets my full endorsement, but the nut of a really good idea is there.

Flowww takes the browser view of a page of content, turns it into a Flash image, and makes those images available in a simple click-and-flow experience. If you want more, clicking on a page image takes you directly to the page. Think of it as an RSS feed that looks at the actual pages of the feed instead of just a headline or headline and text. The beauty of it is that the ads come with the browser view, and that’s what intrigues me most. You have to use your imagination, but think of a page specifically designed to be distributed this way. Nice.

TechCrunch has an excellent write-up, and the comments are interesting, too. They’ve even created an example of what their site would like like presented this way.

I’ve been preaching unbundled media for a very long time, but the resistance has always been the loss of control over ad revenues. RSS advertising companies like Pheedo have helped with this some, but not enough to make it universally acceptable to distribute content in this manner. Flowww has the potential to change that.

As I said above, the developers have a lot of work to do before this can become viable, not the least of which is to fix the slow load time. Assuming they’re successful, this might be something to watch.

An excellent article by the BBC nails the problem many media companies are having trying to move the “frequency” needle in their efforts to build a sustainable mass for marketing.

Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.

Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.

The information comes from usability guru Jakob Nielsen, who says most people are “hot potato” driven and just want to get a specific task completed. That’s not good news for sites who want people to explore and discover.

“The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment,” Dr Nielsen told BBC News.

Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.

This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.

“Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so,” said Dr Nielsen.

“People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience,” he said.

Media companies would do well to pay attention here, for this is yet another indication that the portal website concept is sinking deeper into the tar pits.

So YouTube has announced the hiring of a news manager and the launch of a citizen journalism channel. Don’t be fooled by the raw nature of this, folks, because you may be looking at not only future hires in your community but also future styles in presenting video news. This is an unorganized group with YouTube (Google) playing its typical support and distribution role in sidestepping traditional media companies to present a form of journalism that most professionals deem far beneath them.

The news manager is no novice when it comes to citizen journalism. Olivia Ma recently graduated from Harvard and was a regular contributor to Dan Gillmor’s Center for Citizen Media blog.

Gillmor, author of what is widely considered the original manifesto of the citizen journalism movement, We, the Media, told me via email this morning that the YouTube project is another worthwhile experiment, and “I’m looking forward to seeing how it works.”

“But as they monetize this,” he added, “I hope they’re going to find a way to reward the people who are doing the work. I’m not a fan of business models that say ‘You do all the work and we’ll take all the money, thank you very much.’ I also hope they’ll give people a way to post using Creative Commons licenses, which are all about sharing information, as opposed to the currently restrictive terms of service.”

I agree with Dan on the above, and his message is relevant for all media companies trying to “monetize” user-generated content.

But beyond that, this move by YouTube demands our attention for its assumption that anybody can “do news” and distribute their work for free. The pamphleteers of journalism’s past would’ve loved it.

(Originally posted in AR&D’s Media 2.0 Intel newsletter)

Despite all the evidence that the Web is different, there are those who are still trying to turn it into a form of cable television. These folks are happy with what they’re doing, and there certainly are elements of the Web that can function this way. But if you’re going to try and make cable TV out of the Web, then you cannot count on the norms of the Web being relevant to your product.

An Online Media Daily article today is headlined with what appears to be an “Ah-ha” moment: Research Contradicts Myths About Online TV Shows. The research is from Futurescape, a London-based digital entertainment R&D firm, and it appears to disprove the “myths” that with viral marketing, engaging and well-produced content will distribute itself online.

“It’s what we we’ve dubbed the ‘viral fallacy,’” explained Futurescape Director Colin Donald. “Producers are adamant that launching a show requires a full-scale promotional campaign, possibly employing broadcast television.”

As a result, said Donald, “total budgets will rise to reflect promotional costs, unless the producer has been commissioned by a social network that can be the promotional vehicle.”

Mr. Donald also refutes the “myth” that it’s cheap to produce online television and provides production cost numbers to prove it.

Here’s my beef with all of this. Futurescape’s “findings” are not findings at all, for what do you expect when the producers of online TV only see the Web as a form of cable TV? The “myths” of viral marketing and cost that the company cites cannot be applied to traditional television online, and, to be frank, I’ve never heard anyone make these assertions anyway.

What I see here is the conflict between web video and television for the Web. They’re two different animals, and what I fear is that false arguments such as those posed by this “research” will spread to media companies trying to figure out what to do in the wake of declining ratings and ad money shifting online.

The processes that are a part of making traditional television aren’t disrupted by the Web, for the creation and distribution of programs for the mass media world are the same whether online or off. The “myths” to which Mr. Donald refers are all part of the personal media revolution, a phrase coined by J.D. Lasica in his book, Darknet, Hollywood’s War Against The Digital Generation, and these people have a big dog in that fight. Rather than dealing with it, however, Hollywood wants needs to keep things as they are. Hence, “revelations” like those painted in this “research” are self-serving and, therefore, useless. The disruption is much deeper than people shifting viewing habits from one place to the next.