Facebook will be worse than an abandoned shopping mall
by Eric Garland
Facebook will be worse than an abandoned shopping mall, and Twitter is doomed – or so sayeth my favorite comic, Patton Oswalt. (While it may seem to strange to cite standup comics for business insight, I submit that there’s nothing more comical than most of mainstream business television right now.) As such, I thought that his announcement that he is joining Twitter contained some cutting analysis on the future of social networks and the stability of their business models in an era of ultra-easy product substitution:
So, I’m joining Twitter this Saturday.
And, eventually, whatever replaces it.
I was on Friendster. It collapsed. I jumped on MySpace, and now it’s pretty much an abandoned shopping mall. I still get about 30 Friend Requests and 15 messages in my Inbox every day, but they’re all mailing list bullshit for bands I’ll never listen to, or porno-bots promoting some young Eurasian hottie. Even the comments are clearly all bot-generated. An abandoned mall still had trash, heating and cleaning services drop by, I guess.
I’ll still update my calendar and galleries here, but that’ll be about it.
Don’t feel bad, MySpace. Facebook is also, clearly, on the way out. Constant spam ads, weird privacy wormholes — yuck. Any social networking site, like a great punk band or TV show, has entropy and collapse built into its biography.
Remember how fun Friendster was for those three or four months?
His scenarios, however, are my favorite:
And Twitter will collapse, too. What will replace it? Here are my 3 predictions:
BlipBlap: Basically Twitter, but only 17 characters allowed, and no vowels. Xclnt!
Wh1ff: The first-ever “scent site” — you update your status from an “odor board” of 170 different scents. “(Snnnnnnfff) Patton had chili for lunch and he’s somewhere humid.”
DanzaQuip: Every single status update on this site is first sent to Tony Danza’s personal e-mail. He then decides which ones to post, and is the only one who can respond or comment. (*This site will replace the U.S. Post Office in 2027)
Really, is it any stranger than a prediction that 400 million people would voluntarily post embarrassing photos online in an ultra-complex social web of their coworkers and former elementary school classmates?
iPad: does anyone need another computer?
I answered that question in the negative out of pure instinct, but when you hear that Lulu is already signed on for a publishing distribution deal for iPad, you think – oh yeah, once again Apple doesn’t make devices, they make new business models. And exceedingly few companies are comfortable in that game.
Andy Ihnatko at the Chicago Sun-Times is just flat -out ebullient, in way that transcends fanboy excitement:
In fact, after a week with the iPad, I’m suddenly wondering if any other company is as committed to invention as Apple. Has any other company ever demonstrated a restlessness to stray from the safe and proven, and actually invent things?
Good question: Is your company restlessly invented new things?
Rupture! from Michel Cartier
by Eric Garland
I have no idea how I managed to miss this incredible video for so long:
Are You Ready for the 21st Century ? from Michel Cartier on Vimeo.
Local currencies in distressed towns
by Eric Garland
Between the Greeks staying in the European monetary union, or Detroiters keeping their dry cleaners and doggie-daycares afloat, there is a considerable amount of talk about the role of currency. The crux of the European issue is that the Portuguese and Greek economies are so different from the French and German ones, it is difficult to keep one currency with the same rules and assumptions in play. The fringe actors are no longer able to keep up the facade required for membership in the club.
We are seeing a microcosm of this in local towns in America, and the issue comes down to the ability to maintain a central currency. We note with interest an uptick in stories about local currencies not seen since the banking meltdown of 2008 and 2009.
Last year, two Detroit tavern owners were sitting at the bar, sampling their beverages and bemoaning the local economy — no one in the city had cash, and when they did, they spent it in the suburbs. Then the pair hit on a solution: Print their own money.
It is, after all, perfectly legal for anyone to issue currency, as long as it doesn’t look too much like a U.S. dollar. Thus was born the Detroit cheer, a local scrip accepted by a handful of city businesses, including a pizzeria, an electrician and a doggy day care center.
But why would people go to such trouble? Money is money, right?
When the Treasury prints billions to bail out banks and automakers, people look for alternatives. These folks may look nutty now, goes the quip, but wait till the dollar goes the way of the Argentine peso. Then you’ll be exchanging a wheelbarrow of cash for a bay buck, local currency boosters say.
What could this mean in terms of business strategies? One of the most likely implications would be a return to local distributors, those able to deal best with the local market and even local currencies. Compare this to the recent trend of market consolidation in a variety of industries. It just doesn’t match.
First Greece and Portugal, but they are on the outskirts of civilization. First Detroit and Western North Carolina, but those places aren’t prime time.
Next…California? Spain? Iceland? New York State?
Gregor Macdonald on the future of energy, economics, and society
by Eric Garland
For those of you who know Gregor MacDonald, you know you’re in for a treat with this podcast- a full hour of some of Gregor’s latest forecasts on energy, economics and society, insights you simply won’t get anywhere else.
For those of you who haven’t discovered Gregor yet, he is one of the top energy analysts in the world, and in our minds, one of the top analysts of anything, period.
This podcast covers sweeping ground:
- Why we’re at peak automobiles
- The end of cheap oil
- Coal’s role in the development of the world economy
- The return to human capital and small towns
- Why waterways are the future
- Our current period of “late phase economic decadence
- Why PAKISTAN holds the key to the Copenhagen Protocol
Crazier still, we could have spend ANOTHER hour talking to him and still not exhausted him of insight.
Enjoy.
Music – fix your business model!
by Eric Garland
This presentation from Alexander Osterwalder is a terrific, brief analysis of what is broken in the business model of music, and more importantly, how it can be fixed.
Note the systemic tear down of the different parts of the industry, looking at the value chain in great detail.
This analysis can and should be used by any company in any industry.
Music’s digital decade
by Eric Garland
Courtesy of Forrester Research, a great graphic describing the innovation of the music industry, from 25 billion euros in 2000 down to 10 billion euros today.
Competitive Futures has been using the music industry as the poster child for strategic disruption since the beginning of the decade. I remember discussions with music executives around the turn of the millennium. Mostly, they were caught in the “moral” indignation of “kids” “stealing” music when they should be paying $18 (closer to $30 in Europe!) for static music media.
My favorite discussion was with an industry exec who attempted to sell me on the notion that “Compared with going to the movies, which is $8, a CD is a great investment because you can play it again and again. It probably should be $100 or something.” Nice. Try.
The conclusion: just because you don’t want to face reality doesn’t make it have less impact.
2009: Collective disaster / 2010: Individual success
by Eric Garland
Psychologically, many are glad to have 2009 behind us. It is difficult for people to work in conditions where so much seems out of control, ready to collapse at any moment. The moment seems to have passed. The one facet of 2009 that was clear was the willingness, often at great long-term cost, for government policymakers to keep the status quo with our major institutions. For 2010 – 2020, we can use this political reality, and make more solid plans.
This is not to say that we think that everything is back to “normal.” Have a look at our strategic outlook last year on the major drivers of disruption; none of them are fundamentally different.
Disruption will continue to be the theme of 2010 -2020; those megatrends still hold. Still, the likely stability of 2010 is something you can use.
We have one lesson for clients about studying the future: Just because there is a crisis doesn’t make it a crisis for everyone. When you make solid strategies, disruption can become massive opportunity. In the past decade, the music industry has melted down. It is not a catastrophe for Apple, who launched billion-dollar devices that changed the landscape of media, and then followed up by becoming the world’s largest music retailer. The oil crisis of the 1970s took Shell to the top of the petrochemical industry. Look ahead, think differently, make bold decisions and catastrophe for some can mean success for you.
Perhaps last year many were attempting to avoid the collective catastrophe that comes when all of our institutions catch on fire at the same time. This year, choose your own success.
Arik Johnson on the organizations of the future
by Eric Garland
The most important implications of any strategic trend is usually not that your organization must do something drastic, it is that your organization is obsolete and can’t respond effectively at all.
Case in point: newspapers and the Internet. It’s not so much that newspapers could have done something to maintain their business model of classified advertising, it’s that they need a brand new business model and structure to survive. If that is the major implication of the trends we track as strategic analysts, then we almost must develop skills to help organizations change quickly and painlessly.
On that note, check out this talk from Aurora WDC’s Arik Johnson on the future of organizations, recorded at last month’s Intelligence Collaborative meeting in Washington.
Disruptive Innovation and the Bankruptcy of Ritz Camera
by Eric Garland
I was just surfing SlideShare for some competitive intelligence – always a great source of left-of-center information, unusual sources, and stuff that never gets published. I cam across a provocatively titled slideshow about how digital imaging killed the corner camera shop. Even though the market exploded, the model shifted to one where there was no margin for customer service of any sort.
Food for thought for this Monday.
About Eric Garland
Eric is one of the world's pre-eminent thoughtleaders in forecasting and strategy. He helps leaders of business and government make critical decisions about their futures.Connect with us
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