October 28th, 2009

40 years ago the Internet was born - now it devalues everything it touches

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 9:20 pm

Categories: Disruptive

Tags: Guardian, Internet, Tom Foremski

There are millions of people being disrupted out of their jobs thanks to the Internet. Is it a good thing? I think so…

Let’s take a look at its beginnings:

The first command typed in was “lo” which crashed the entire Internet - all two machines. Internet Reaches 40th Birthday Milestone

Undergraduate Charley Kline was given the simple job of logging on remotely from UCLA to the SRI machine; his one command was “login”.
The first attempt, however, proved too much for the “interface message processor” or IMP for short - the system crashed as young Charley reached the letter “g”.

… 12 years on, only 213 computers being linked up to the network.

The Guardian is collecting stories for its “A people’s history of the internet.“

To mark the 40th anniversary of the first stirrings of the internet we asked you to tell us your experiences of life online. Hundreds of you responded, and here we present an interactive documentary of your stories and videos, alongside our own research and interviews with key figures (About this project)

Without doubt, the Internet is the most significant collection of technologies ever created. It enables huge numbers of new types of businesses and services, many of them replacing pre-Internet businesses.

Anything, any service, business, that can be digitized is now open to disruption because of the Internet. The Internet devalues everything it touches.

I define “devalues” in a monetary sense, dollars and cents because clearly it creates tremendous amounts of value. Read the rest of this entry »

October 9th, 2009

Porn stars and journalists share the same troubles caused by the Internet

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 3:13 pm

Categories: Disruptive

Tags: Industry, Internet, Strategy, Management, Tom Foremski

The Porn industry and the Media industry share many problems caused by the Internet. Both industries are losing revenues to cheaper and free content.

Here is a report from New Jersey’s The Star Ledger:

October 5th, 2009

What's the point of non-profit news ventures? Stop the handouts...

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 11:08 am

Categories: Business strategy, Disruptive

Tags: Handout, Media, Business Model, Advertising & Promotion, Strategy, Marketing, Management, Tom Foremski

There seems to be an ever larger number of non-profit journalism ventures. The latest one is from N. California philanthropist Warren Hellman. He is giving $5m to fund a non-profit news venture with UC Berkeley journalism school and KQED, the San Francisco public radio and TV station.

I don’t see the point in non-profit ventures such as this. The entire industry is already non-profit in that it doesn’t make money.

I think a better approach would be to fund the search for a new business model for news journalism. If we can develop new business models then everyone benefits because everyone can use the new business models.

But if news journalism has to wait for handouts then it will never be a healthy industry.

Innovation in media
Read the rest of this entry »

September 15th, 2009

New York Times memo: We're "not a newspaper company"

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 10:44 am

Categories: Disruptive

Tags: New York Times Co., Computer, IBM Corp., Productivity, Tom Foremski

Sometimes entire industries have to transform themselves. That’s what happened with the computer industry when it faced the challenge from the microprocessor/PC revolution.

This basket of inexpensive technologies grew to challenge all the computer (and software) companies. It disrupted hundreds of companies. Even IBM barely managed to survive.

It took Lou Gerstner, head of IBM, nearly ten years to transform IBM from “the world’s largest computer company” into “the world’s largest computer services company.”

It’s not a semantic distinction, it’s a vital distinction. And that’s what newspaper companies need to do, they need to transition into news services companies.

Paper or electron it shouldn’t matter how the news is delivered. Yet so many newspaper people — and I know a lot — still think of themselves as working for a newspaper company.

Well it seems the penny has finally dropped at the New York Times. Read the rest of this entry »

September 2nd, 2009

How a software engineer tried to save his sister and invented a breakthrough medical device

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 4:45 pm

Categories: Disruptive

Tags: Software, FDA, Sister, Medical Device, Robert Goldman, Federal Government, Government, Tom Foremski

Robert Goldman CEO Vascular Designs

I meet a lot of Silicon Valley companies but rarely do I come across a story as inspiring as this one. Robert Goldman is the founder of Vascular Designs, a company that just won FDA approval to sell a breakthrough medical device that could save the lives of countless terminally ill cancer patients.

It’s a story of Mr Goldman’s efforts to try and save his sister, diagnosed with terminal cancer. It’s a story of his stubbornness to try and succeed in an area he knew absolutely nothing about, and with experts that told him it couldn’t be done.

It’s also a story of discovering a calling, to help others.

It all began in the late 1990s after Mr Goldman had sold key intellectual property to Intellectual Ventures, the IP licensing company founded by Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft CTO. He had enough money that he didn’t need to work anymore.

But he was unable to enjoy his early retirement for long because his sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Here are some notes from our conversation: Read the rest of this entry »

August 25th, 2009

MIDs and netbooks - half the size, half the experience - Solomon type design

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 5:17 pm

Categories: Business strategy, Disruptive

Tags: Solomon Corp., Intel Atom, Netbook, Intel Corp., Chip, Semiconductors, Network Technology, Netbooks, Nettops & MIDs, Hardware, Networking

I’m not a big fan of MIDs (mobile Internet devices) or netbooks. They are underpowered and under-sized and underwhelming.

They do a good job of combining all the disadvantages of a PDA/smartphone and a notebook. Half-the size of a notebook, and half the PC experience - it adds up to some kind of King Solomon designed device. Read the rest of this entry »

August 21st, 2009

Where's the disruption from the Internet?

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 11:39 am

Categories: Disruptive

Tags: Internet, Tom Foremski

After leaving the Financial Times in mid-2004 to become a professional “blogger/journalist” I began to think intensely about the nature of media and its changes. Coming from the old world and now jumping into the deep-end of the new world, it triggered some very interesting insights into the nature of the world around me.

At the time, I had the attitude typical of traditional journalists: blogging was merely a hyped up form of self-publishing, a narcissistic trend with very little value, and frankly, we were all sick to death of hearing about it.

Boy, was I wrong, as I soon found out. In fact, soon after I started blogging, I began to see everything as a media “nail” - I had found my hammer. And the more I did it (blogged), the more I discovered . . . and the more I discovered about myself.

Who would have thought that an activity that I didn’t value at all, and which my colleagues often looked down upon, could turn into such an incredible resource of value to me.

New ways of thinking about old

The more I blogged the more I thought about media and it’s role in society, and what it means. This thinking process would happen in the background, it was as my mind would think about such things unconsciously. Then, when it had figured out an answer to a question, it would throw it out into my consciousness, usually during a time when I was doing something else, such as walking down the street.

One of the questions I had harbored for a long time was about the Internet. I had often wondered where was the disruption from this powerful set of technologies?
Read the rest of this entry »

July 30th, 2009

Measuring the ROI of PR

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 12:12 pm

Categories: Disruptive, Uncategorized

Tags: Public Relations Community, PR Industry, Public Relations, Marketing, Corporate Communications, Tom Foremski

The public relations community is going through some changes and many of those changes are similar to those that traditional media has gone through: adjusting to new business models.

The move to online publishing has not worked well for traditional media because advertising cannot be sold for the same amount of money as print advertising. In addition, the metrics available to online advertisers have enabled them to more finely tune what works, where, and even at what time of the day.

The old adage that half of your ad spending was wasted has now changed in the online world. Yet it was that “wasted” half that was subsidizing journalism, and other news services.

Similarly, the PR industry is moving towards a metric based system. The PR industry has long believed that it is undervalued, that the work it does brings in more dollars than a dollar spent on other marketing activities. Metrics would be a way of surfacing the value that PR provides, and thus bring in more business by tapping into adjacent marketing budgets. Read the rest of this entry »

June 29th, 2009

To blog or to Tweet? That is the question . . . here is an answer

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 8:10 pm

Categories: Disruptive

Tags: Web, Robert Scoble, Blog, Twitter, Friendfeed, Scobleizer, Blogging, Channel Management, Internet, Marketing

I’ve noticed that many people have abandoned their blogs in favor of real-time blogging on Twitter or on Friendfeed. Their argument is that they can’t do both. And it’s understandable because it all takes time, lots of it.

But it might be worth revisiting that strategy and doing more blogging. Here’s a cautionary tale . . . Read the rest of this entry »

June 26th, 2009

FridayWatch: The disruptive Bronze Age . . .

Posted by Tom Foremski @ 11:21 am

Categories: Disruptive, Uncategorized

Tags: Tom Foremski

We forget that disruption is a common feature of our society throughout history. Even though our disruptive cycles appear much more frequently than ever before, it seems we can deal with them.

Here is what it might have been liked transitioning from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age: Read the rest of this entry »