IN THIS ISSUE:

THE AGE OF THE MOBILE WEB IS AT HAND
THIS YEAR’S PROOF THE NETS ARE GOING AROUND YOU
HANDWRITING ON THE WALL: HERE’S A SAMPLE
SOCIAL NETWORKS HAVE A REAL SOCIAL LIFE TOO
RULES FOR (MEDIA) NETWORKING

THE AGE OF THE MOBILE WEB IS AT HAND (Terry)
The big geek news of the week so far has been the unveiling of T-Mobile’s G1, the first mobile phone built with Google’s mobile operating system, Android. The tech community has seen the phone, held it, read the specs, heard the propaganda, and the judgments are pouring in.

First up? Is it the “iPhone killer?” Well, no, but then it wasn’t necessarily designed to be one (nobody besides the tech community really cares anyway). What it does is raise the bar for everybody and put to rest the idea that a mobile phone can just be a mobile phone anymore. It’s not about the phone; it’s about the Web. The G1 and the iPhone are miniature computers with a web interface at the top of the list, and there’s no going back. In that sense, it’s a game-changer that will — along with the iPhone — shift the Mobile Web from the drawing board to the streets, and we need to hang on for the roller coaster ride that’s coming.

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch says it’s not an iPhone, but it’s close.

It doesn’t have quite the finish of the iPhone (both in terms of hardware or user interface), but it comes pretty damn close. And more importantly, it matches the iPhone on many fronts. It’s got GPS, WiFi, a touchscreen, an accelerometer, a camera, Gmail, Google Maps, a Webkit-based browser (just like Safari on the iPhone), and an App market.

Writing for Crunchgear, John Biggs pronounces the G1 “almost perfect” and calls it “an epic paradigm shift in the mobile space.”

Phones are now officially computers and the expectation for most users is that they behave in the same way a powerful laptop or desktop PC would perform, albeit in a considerably more compact package…

…Putting the G1 through its paces showed a intense attention to detail on the part of Google and a tacit promise from the phone that it was far more powerful than originally described.

Walt Mossberg at the Wall St. Journal:

Most importantly, the G1 complements its touch screen with a physical keyboard, the lack of which has made the iPhone a non-starter for some users. The G1’s keyboard is revealed when you slide open its screen. The keys are a bit flat, and you have to reach your right thumb around a bulging portion of the phone’s body to type, but it’s a real keyboard…

…the G1 is a powerful, versatile device which will offer users a real alternative in the new handheld computing category the iPhone has occupied alone.

Joshua Topolsky at Engadget:

The phone is surprisingly thinner than we thought it would be, and it feels pretty solid in your hand (though they’ve opted for an almost all plastic device, no metal here). The keyboard seems usable and reasonably well thought-out, and the slider action is like butter, with a nice little swoop for good effect.

Everybody notes that the G1 has a removable battery, which the iPhone lacks. The keyboard and the battery were two reasons I just couldn’t go with an iPhone when it came out.

Of course the big advantage that Google has here is that Android is open source, which means developers will have a ball building applications for it. Google is “seeding” that effort with $10 million in prizes for the best applications, so I suspect we’ll see some fascinating things in the months ahead.

The device’s importance to media companies is simple: we’re no longer dealing with simple phones or text-messaging, although it’ll take awhile for these mini-computers to reach mass. The Mobile Web is our playing ground now, and play we must. Media companies should be at the forefront of application development, even at the local level.

Television has the advantage in this space, because Mobile DTV will be a potentially big revenue play beginning late next year. But that’s TV on a portable device, and we’re talking about the Mobile Web with the G1 and the iPhone.   <Link>

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THIS YEAR’S PROOF THE NETS ARE GOING AROUND YOU (Steve)
I watched the premiere of “Chuck” Monday night. It premieres on NBC next week. I didn’t pirate the show. I just watched it online - at NBC.com. The NBC site is debuting some of its biggest fall shows online, and it’s doing so a week before the shows appear on TV. Traditionally, fall premieres do big numbers on TV. And look at what the nets are doing to the affiliates - cutting the excitement right from underneath them.

Big deal? Small numbers? I point you to last year, when “The Office” had 9.7 million TV viewers in its first week and 2.7 million online viewers that week. And you can bet the online-to-TV ratio will be even higher this year.

Every year, the share of audience watching network television (and its ads) on local affiliates grows smaller. And every year we stand by, without creating anything in the way of competition. Every year, the lead-in to our 10 or 11 pm newscast gets a little smaller. Every year, we accept that “this is just the way it is.”

Can you name another business where a diagonal line downwards would be accepted? Expected? Embraced?

At what point do we take ratings of 1.2 and below and say “Hell - we can do better than that?” When pseudo networks come and go in a year, don’t we have the guts to say “let’s try something different on our own, rather than accept the #120 show at 9 pm?

We own television stations. We own the equipment and we hire the people who can create original material online and on TV. It can be done affordably. Cable news channels create original programming all day. NESN in Boston creates an original, fun dating show that takes place at Fenway Park. It can be done, and it can be done affordably.

The newspapers took a dive because the news went around them. Learn. The programming is going around you. Don’t let it contribute to our demise.

Reinvent.   <Link>

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HANDWRITING ON THE WALL: HERE’S A SAMPLE (Terry)
As if to punctuate Steve’s warning, Wired.com published a piece this week noting that online video will grow despite the economic meltdown.

Given that traditional television audiences are dwindling and piracy is rampant, television networks are going where the viewers are — the internet, which has become their great white hope.

“The cat is out of the bag,” says Mark Trefgarne, CEO of LiveRail, an online video advertising company. “The networks have accepted that the internet is the future. If ad revenue slows down, I don’t think it’s going to necessarily hinder their long-term view of the medium. No executive of a major media company who takes their job seriously would say, ‘Ad revenue won’t keep up with costs, therefore we won’t expand online.’ This is the time that they need to build a position online.”

At the annual Mixx Conference and Expo in New York City yesterday, CBS Corp. president and CEO Les Moonves said he used to lose sleep over the Internet siphoning off viewers, but that he’s changed his tune. In an article in MediaWeek, Moonves said that he now believes that any media company that does not distribute its content online in some manner is doomed to fail.

“The Internet is not cannibalistic; it is only additive,” as far as its relationship to CBS TV network goes. “We view the Internet as a lab for our TV network,” he said. “The Internet can help the network and vice versa.”

…The CBS Corp. head also said that the fact that CBS has its content on some 300 Web sites is a testament to how the company feels about the relationship between the Internet and television. “We want our content everywhere,” he said, while stressing that both CBS and the online distributors can make money on this.

Moonves added that he’s a fan of original content for the Web and not just repurposing or regurgitating what’s been broadcast on TV. This is what Steve and I would call a TV-to-Web basic, but CBS, like all the other networks, does offer its programming via streams.

Here’s Moonves as quoted in PaidContent.org:

“I love having a network where 24 million watch CSI or a network that attracts millions to the Olympics. Our idea is to be all things to all people—and to offer sales and marketing and content around that position. The CBS Interactive group works with every business group we have. And it is not cannibalistic. The main reason people go online is not to watch all of a TV series. Your most loyal viewer only watches two out of four episodes. People do other things at night, unfortunately. So they go online to watch those other two shows.”

Entertainment Weekly: Why wait? Grab a season premiere, online (Note the comments)

So the trend of the networks by-passing original distribution channels is headed in the one direction that Steve notes, and at some point, local television is going to have to come up with something different. Mark Antonitis has had the dubious distinction of doing just that as GM of San Francisco’s KRON-TV. KRON lost its network affiliation years ago, and Antonitis has had to do without, making him a pioneer, of sorts, in the world that Steve describes above. He summed it up nicely in an article in Broadcasting & Cable a couple of weeks ago:

“If you want to be successful, you can’t just deliver someone else’s product,” he says. “You have to make your own.”   <Link>

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SOCIAL NETWORKS HAVE A REAL SOCIAL LIFE TOO (Steve)
Last Saturday I attended a reunion. Or maybe it was a union. I don’t exactly know what to call it. Facebook “friends” met up in Boston and it was a hit. This particular group had its roots in my hometown of Wayland, Massachusetts, and many attendees were from the high school class of 1989 (I’m a bit older, sadly). But this wasn’t a planned reunion. This was spontaneous. One of the ‘89ers was in town on a stopover. So the word was out: Brett’s in town, let’s go to the bar.

Think about the percentage of people who show up for a given reunion. Assume that maybe half your class has moved away. Of the people who live locally, what’s the percentage turnout? What is acceptable? 25 percent? 33? You’d be stunned to get 50, right?

Brett has 31 friends listed in the Boston area. 45 people showed up. Even if 14 more live in, but don’t list “Boston” as their hometown, that’s still 100 percent participation.

So this means that people showed who aren’t even friends of Brett. They just got the word that a Wayland-related party of people from approximately 1989 (and, perhaps, some spouses) was happening. And an excuse to get a babysitter and get out? Good enough.

It gets better. I knew, in person, maybe five or six people there. But I knew about half the people there via Facebook. People were coming up to me and saying “Steve Safran!” and I was saying their names just as excitedly because we had become whatever it is you call a modern day pen pal.

Let me tell you, this was far more fun than any official reunion I have ever attended. (Even if too many people kept referring to me as “Becky’s Older Brother.”) By the end of the night, I had added friends. Not “Facebook” friends. Friends.

So when I real bull-you-know-what articles like this one on a study about how you can tell narcissists by their Facebook postings, I don’t believe them - or care - for a second. (Someone is going to get a Ph.D. for this study?) And when one of the women at the party told me her sister proudly doesn’t use social networks because they are juvenile and a waste of time, I just feel bad for the sister. Twitter meetups, Facebook Meetups, MySpace Meetups — these are a fact of life right now and they bring people together IRL (in real life).

Get out there and cover one of these. This is a real trend. Host one and you can be a real part of the community. I can tell you Brett’s friends will certainly be there.   <Link>

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RULES FOR (MEDIA) NETWORKING (Terry)
The four tips offered in this wonderful entry on networking should be posted in the board rooms of every media company in the world. Andrew Hoag wrote these “rules” to help people learn how to network with others in Silicon Valley, but they really apply to human nature, the laws of attraction, and the new relationship between media companies and the people formerly known as the audience.

1. Never, ever, underestimate anyone. That old adage of the guy who cuts someone off driving to the interview, only to find out in the parking lot it was the hiring manager, is true more often than you’d like. The woman scraping the gum off the floor in the restaurant may be the owner, you don’t really know. I believe that every human being has something positive to give to this world, and those who are open to that premise stand to benefit from it the most.

2. Be genuine. While many people will tolerate a blowhard, most won’t reciprocate without self-interest. But by engaging with people you genuinely enjoy, you’ll quickly see reciprocal engagement and spontaneous acts of generosity. Being genuine is also more efficient. Put on an act, and you’ll end up wasting precious time in business relationships that may be useful to the other person, but which are not in your own interest.

3. Be patient. If people think you are expecting something from them, they tend to feel used or taken advantage of. What’s the rush? One contact I made resulted in a very important and marquis advisor being added to my company — three years later.

4. Give before you get. As soon as I meet someone new I’m immediately thinking about whether I can help them, not because I want to trade a favor (I may not need anything from them), but because this is how I would like to be treated by them. Pro-actively giving may seem like a cost, and it may require you to be a little extra patient as well, but in the end, the reciprocal support I receive, simply by offering to help people who aren’t asking for it, is overwhelming. It builds tremendous loyalty and respect.

Smart stuff, methinks.   <Link>

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CHUCKLE OF THE WEEK: REVIEWING THE BIBLE
The Web being what it is, wouldn’t you know it that humor would find its way into the Amazon.com “reviews” section for, of all things, the Bible. “Jed” writes:

This book doesn’t work. I’ve tried the “praying” method to get a new Porsche 996 delivered but to no avail. There’s nothing in the instructions about not wanting German sports cars but I tried praying for less ambitious things. I gave up when it didn’t even get me a Big Mac. In the early part there’s a bit about people crossing the desert and being sustained by manna from heaven, so you’d think that it would be able to manage at least a hamburger.

I’m disappointed and will contact the publisher. In the meantime I can’t recommend this book as it is clearly faulty.

The comments go on and on. It’s worth dropping in for a bit.