I took a lot of notes the second day of the Webby Connect conference, so grab a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable before you sit down to read this. You’ll find notes from Michael Eisner’s keynote address near the end. (All photos by Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images for The Webby Awards, available on Flickr).

1515520265_ae2f4b93d7.jpgSee, Hear Everything (Except This)

Today’s first presentation panel was composed of Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr and Shawn Gold, head of Marketing and Content Development at MySpace.com. The moderator was Roy Sekoff, Founding Editor of HuffingtonPost.com.

Roy began with a brief introduction about privacy online, calling it “The New Privacy.” So much information is now “out” there on the web: personal blogs, resumes, pictures, community space information. And this information has both positive and negative repercussions.

For example, resumes can be found by potential employers, pictures serve as a resource for millions, and personal blogs can create connections. But personal information can also affect the safety and even employability of the individual.

When other types of information are made public it’s viewed more as an intrusion. For instance, medical information, online viewing habits, phone habits. With current data mining capabilities, all of these personal data points can be mined and correlated, providing information for targeted marketing and personalized come-ons.

Where does it cross the line into “creepy big brother-dom?” Is the loss of privacy just the price we pay for being connected?

Caterina: sites like Flickr would not even exist without this lack of privacy. Flickr didn’t borrow metaphors from old technologies (like cars used to be called ‘horseless carriages’). Instead, Flickr benefits from a culture of generosity, where the site becomes about contributing to others. Which involves a certain reduction in privacy.

Shawn: Users perceive the benefits to counterbalance the loss of privacy. For instance, using Flickr has an advantage of gaining pictures of an event you attend without having to carry a camera - because others are willing to post photos and tag them appropriately. On the web, loss of privacy is balanced by benefits such as

  • romantic benefits
  • better connections
  • creative benefits
  • professional benefits

Caterina: a recent study showed 15% of all newlyweds today met online.

Shawn: Kids today are growing up under surveillance. After 9/11, homeland security, school security, etc. So they don’t have the same sense of privacy as their elders. To them, the web is theater and community. Their friends equal their audience. They see themselves as being only 1 degree of difference away from being truly famous.

Caterina: There is evidence of a counter-trend, in a 25-year cycle of inward- versus outward-facing trends. The next reaction may be to restrict personal networks to select people. Research shows most people communicate regularly with only 7-12 people, no matter how large their virtual networks may be. Research by Dunbar shows the human brain is wired to “know” only 150 - 200 people.

Shawn: This may also be a life-stage thing. New, younger people put it all out there as part of their identity development. Upcoming trend: more control to the user for privacy, what advertising they see, access to them and their information, etc.

Caterina: Rumors of a company / tool that can erase a person’s online ‘footprint.’

Roy: have seen evidence of this (relates a specific incident).

Roy: Is anything on the internet private?

Collective answer: not really. Don’t put anything out there you don’t want everyone to know. A single PHP coding error and “boom” - all your photos are public, for instance.

Roy: references the Navy’s presentation on how parents view ‘millenials’ (kids coming of age now) and how millenials view parents. (I made a note to look for this)

Roy: what about the legal implications of privacy for companies?

Caterina: Fickr very strict & careful. Users tend to follow the lead of what they see already posted up there. “One person puts their junk up and the next person comes along and says, hey, I’ll put my junk up too.” The Yahoo acquisition of Flickr actually resulted in a more liberal guideline set. Still many challenges.

Shawn: At MySpace, EVERY photo posted to it (around 8 million per day) is viewed by eye in a semi-automated process, then looked at more closely if certain patterns such as nudity, gang symbols, etc. warrant the attention. Every video uploaded (over 60,000/day) has a 15-frame slice previewed, more if warranted. Other reporting tools and fallback systems are in place, as well.

(at this point I lost track of who was speaking in my notes)

Attentiontrust.org - users taking back control of their “attention,” selling it as a commodity to advertisers. Why don’t we own our own shopping histories, for instance? Consumer control as a major upcoming trend. We need to create awareness / understanding that our EVERY move on the web is being tracked in one way or another.

People do actually read privacy policies. It’s tough not to have a lot of legalese, but it helps to have “translations” available that extract the most salient points.

Targeted ads generally increase the ad’s click-through rate. Some view targeted ads as intrusive, but there are positive benefits as well, such as:

  • targeted ads less likely to waste a user’s time
  • better CTR generally means better relevancy for the user
  • MySpace aiming for better, fewer advertising
  • this requires input from the users, creating more dialog

Advertisers are tapping into the cultural exchange going on in social networks. People sharing songs, ideas, creates a transfer that advertisers are trying to be a part of.

1515522425_6e98d19079.jpg21st Century Swiss Army Knife

This session’s panel was composed of Frank Nuovo, Chief of Design for Nokia, Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, and David Pescovitz, Co-Editor of BoingBoing.net and Research Director at the Institute for the Future. The moderator was David-Michel Davies, Executive Director of the Webby Awards.

Frank Nuovo from Nokia gave a presentation on the company and their design experience past, present and future, which was interesting but seemed more than a little self-serving, or simply not attuned to the audience. There were some interesting bits, though:

  • Nokia has launched over 425 models of phones since 1982.
  • Nokia’s first internet-enabled device was created in 1986 - the “communicator”
  • Other stats & such on Nokia - not that I don’t like the company, but hey, I’m not a potential investor here.
  • Some experimental layouts for texting in other languages, such as a stylus-enabled screen for Chinese symbols.
  • When a device contains so many functions and features, what do we call it? a phone? camera? internet device
  • Latest venture Frank is working on is very high-end, luxury mobile devices. “People like their technology to mature, become fashionable, luxurious, personal.”
  • Vision for the future: multipurpose devices presented as jewelry, unobtrusive and decorative while still being highly functional.

Biz Stone from Twitter gave a brief background on how Twitter started:

  • Question: is there a simpler or easier way to stay in touch with friends?
  • Inspiration: the “status” line in IM platforms - leveraging this concept
  • Test: colleagues tried it out, and after first thinking it was silly they were hooked.

Twitter continues to be basic, simple, staying agnostic about how to get the messages between people. The simple question is “What are you doing right now?”

They’ve opened their API framework, now over 250 third-party applications are built on it.

Twitter provides social alchemy - unexpected results from this type of communication. For example, influencing the dinner decisions of a friend (unknowingly) by communicating your own dining experience.

Twitter provides user choice - you can tune in when you want, there are no expectations about staying connected at all times.

David Pescovitz of Institute for the Future presented on the growing mixture of ‘web’ or ‘virtual’ reality into ‘real’ reality. According to him, ‘cyberspace’ as a concept is played out. It is quickly becoming no longer a place you go to via a portal. With mobile devices, this is less and less how we experience the internet and unlikely to be how we experience it in the future.

The internet will become a layer on top of ‘reality.’ Some current examples:

  • Second Life “mixed reality” parties - where a screen of a virtual gathering is projected into a realspace, and the realspace gathering is projected into a Second Life gathering. Blurring the lines between reality and virtual reality.
  • Virtual games overlaid on the real world - i.e. PacMan via special headgear/goggles.
  • Digital ‘graffiti’ overlaid on more and more surroundings. For instance, reviews, history, comments, ratings, tagged onto buildings, newspaper stands, streetsigns, etc, with the ability for anyone to add to the localized discussion. This allows you to learn more about your surroundings in a contextual way, when you’re actually there and the information is the most useful.

David ran a mockup demo of a potential device that would allow someone to see and interact with this ‘virtual graffiti’, envisioning the device as eyeglasses with an uplink to the internet(s), that would allow:

  • viewing of ratings (i.e. for restaurants within sight)
  • viewing of reviews by other customers
  • IMs based on online experiences
  • Directions
  • Traffic info and past statistics (i.e. for intersections, accidents, etc.)
  • Photo captures - both allowing and displaying others
  • Recording and live transmitting of whatever’s being viewed
  • Biological data, i.e. blood sugar levels, both transmitting and receiving, twitter-like
  • Surveillance alerts, when cameras, etc. are detected
  • contextual news updates
  • subscribed news updates
  • Activism support
  • Facial recognition
  • Ability to ‘tag’ the real world like we currently do the web

David-Michel: What’s better, keeping it simple so there’s a quick adoption and learning curve, versus more features?

Biz: Twitter stays simple, but allows others to build complex items on top of it via the API.

Frank: Less can be best, but other forces such as marketing often counterbalance this. A new generation’s view of simplicity may also be different than others. Also depends on the output - designing multiple abilities into a physical device more challenging then online/virtual.

David: These shifts are generational, and they’re happening more rapidly than in the past.

(I missed some content here about spam, but was drawn back in by a slightly contentious discussion between Biz and Frank about Twitter versus email that sounded like an old-school versus new-school debate:)

Biz: Twitter untethers people from their computers. It delivers a sense of connection and communication without requiring them to hunch over a laptop. More control and more choice.

Frank: There’s still a place for email, it has a purpose in business as a legal document. You have to ask What is the potential problem of being this casual, of sharing this information. Lawsuit potentials, problems with other cultures not wanting to be as public.

Biz: Practical applications include receiving Twitter status from airlines (JetBlue does this), transit systems (BART does this) via subscription.

David: what happens when everything, every object has a status? “Zillionics” - when object begin to blog. When objects can sense and report their ongoing status, and there’s an endless stream of data. The challenge then becomes pattern recognition; how do you find valuable information in this huge stream of data? How do you recognize patterns?

Biz: 90% of Twitter users make all of there twitters public. (brief discussion as to the patterns available for mining in this data)

David-Michel: Is all of this just about people hooking up?

Collective response: YES.

There are different drivers, including finding a mate, business, parenting, etc. And one person can be in different modes within a single day. Discussion of the need for giant “mode” buttons to indicate/filter what kind of information we receive depending on our current need/mode.

1516378508_92bc54d25d.jpgiRun: the Online, Web-Based Candidate

This session panel included Steve Grove, head of News & Politics at YouTube, Viveca Novak, Department Director of FactCheck.org, and Andrew Rasiej, Founder, Publisher, Personal Democracy Forum & Tech, President.com. The moderator was Karen Tumulty, National Political Correspondent for TIME Magazine.

Steve: citizens and voters using online media to hold candidates accountable, and communicate their needs to candidates. It’s the new Town Hall for political discussion.

Andrew: Most campaigns have actually regressed from 2004 campaigns because the candidates are terrified of the loss of control. Compare the 2004 Howard Dean campaign with the campaigns of 2008.

The political establishment no longer has control over the process - but they largely choose to ignore it. Or don’t get it. For examples:

  • the Obama campaign shut down a 160,000-member MySpace page created by a supporter about Barack rather than pay the supporter a requested $39,000. Short-sighted and not cost-efficient.
  • Howard Dean raised $22,000 online, then spent it all on TV ads

Conclusion: politicians are focused on the money, and on the audiences that will contribute. Which is not necessarily the online audience.

Karen: Is the internet filling the needs of those disillusioned with regular media?

Viveca: There are advantages to online information, but these sources can also be a tremendous tool of disinformation. There are too many places to track to ensure accuracy. It’s easy to trash an opponent by quoting a blog or other non-authoritative source. Online ads can be very engaging, then slip in inaccurate information. It’s difficult to keep up with the information flow - falsehoods spread more quickly than fact-checking can follow.

Karen: What has gained the most traction?

Andrew:

  • doing something extraordinary. For instance, Michael J. Fox unmedicated
  • mis-steps, such as Hillary announcing online and inviting conversation when to those who live in the space and knew how it worked this appeared disingenuous, not real
  • viral ads, such as the Apple/Obama ad. It may not have gained any voters for Obama, but it sure woke up the Clinton campaign.

All politicians misunderstand the internet, viewing it as just another top-down interface like any other platform.

Steve: Many politicians and their staff do get that it needs to be a conversation, its a spectrum and an evolutionary process. They’re getting used to the medium.

Viveca: But why is Ron Paul hugely a rock star on the web but polling offline at only 1%? Partially because his beliefs align with the internet-user mentality.

Andrew: he has very loyal, very internet-savvy supporters.

Karen: Is the internet really a mind-changing, persuasive medium?

Andrew: Yes. The conversations are happening online. Blogs. MySpace pages. Outside of what the mainstream media is paying attention to. But they’re happening.

Question from audience: Where is the “get out the vote’ online effort?

Viveca: This is exactly where Howard Dean fell apart.

Andrew: no clear tool right now to allow more and better interaction.

Discussion: the internet has become a place where mainstream media goes for content and to track the progress of a campaign.

1525686442_8be3d990f0.jpgKeynote Address: Michael Eisner

Michael Eisner presented a speech about Change with a capital C, promoted his new companies The Tourante Company (an investment firm) and Vuguru, and talked about his vision for media on the internet. Again, please note this is a summarized and paraphrased report of the speech:

Change can be slow - like watching Regis age - or catastrophically quick, like an earthquake. Some things haven’t really changed, like movies are still movies, and people still go to see them in theaters. Other things, like TV, are still similar but are being profoundly affected by new technologies. DVR use has increased from 7% to 21% - which creates a challenge for dealing with time-shifting effects produced by the DVR technology.

Change is fun. Companies with a too-narrow view of what they do, however, aren’t open to change (gave an example of Topps not going after a broadcasting deal because they considered themselves a trading card company rather than the broader definition of a sports company).

The world is no longer flat - the world has become a point. We’re all connected, all together on the head of a pin.

Example: Michael was riding JetBlue (he defended - “I like JetBlue, I buy two seats. I like the movie screen.”). By the time he landed and got online, someone from the same flight had posted his photo from the plane along with a post wondering if his finances had gone south.

This affects everyone’s behavior. Anything you do can be recorded, posted immediately. We’re all connected. I consider this good news.

The barriers seem to be gone:

  • money - getting online is less and less expensive. It used to be expensive to get your voice heard, not any longer.
  • time - quick and easy to post, connect, communicate
  • language - translation sites, tools are available
  • time displacement - we’re all on a 24/7 day.

One thing that’s stayed the same: bad writing and bad acting.

One thing that’s changed: the need for credible writing has increased. Kids polled say they believe everything they read online.

There was always user-generated content - example, America’s Funniest Home Videos showing home videos long before the internet.

(segue to brief history of The Tourante Company and how he decided on the name while bicycling in Italy - the signs going down the curving road said ‘tourante’ - hairpin curve).

User-generated content is unfiltered anarchy. There’s a place for experts, otherwise the world becomes full of unprofessional, unrestricted “stuff.” There’s a place for the editor, for the filtering system, to filter on culture, humor, and taste. There’s not a computer in the world with a brain that’s half as interesting as the brains in this room.

Is there a business around professionally-produced entertainment (online)? Yes. I believe this will be dominant in the future. Each new technology, telephone, radio, TV, cable, etc. has be additive, not subtractive. There is still a definite place for gifted editors, writers, producers, etc.

One dominant feature: regular old entertainment makes you feel good, maks you laugh, cry, get educated, etc.

It should be responsible - human beings filtering what actually goes out.

The first amendment specifically says the government doesn’t tell us what to say, which makes the exercise of good taste even more important. The new world still has old world responsibilities.

(brief segue into description of vuduru.com, which presents “one great thing every day” via a human filtering system).

I’m excited about the opportunities!

Question from the audience: Do you use Union workers?

Answer: No, there is no room for the restrictions most unions place on the use of the created content. There are plenty of talented actors, etc. Some unions allow enough flexibility, but studios these days have less money, advertisers are very far behind the curve in understanding the new online business model, and so are unions. Advertisers are hesitant because they don’t understand what they’re going to get.

(I think I missed a question here -sn)

Revenue sources for online media are still uncertain. Different models include

  • product placement (some success seen here)
  • 3-second ‘brought to you by’ clips embedded
  • 15-second promotion after a 90-second spot
  • 30-second pre-roll (like CNN does - Michael hates this)
  • 15-seconds in the middle of multiple segments

So far, I haven’t seen anything that works great. Users will accept some low level of advertisement, I think.

User-generated content providers will accept very little payment, any revenue split. (the implication seemed to be these providers are unsophisticated and don’t know how much their content could be worth - sn)

Professional content providers find it hard to get their costs covered.

The current thinking about the internet is that it’s driven by search. Michael believes it is driven by story-telling.

The internet allows for huge distribution, but how to monetize this distribution is another issue.

(there was a bit more, but I didn’t catch it. Audience response was positive and warm -sn)

1525684292_c76aab0470.jpgInternet Comedy - Pushing the F**king Limits

This session was composed of Jason Marks, VP Programming and Development for Heavy Networks; Lou Wallach, SVP, Original Programming-Television and Digital Development, Comedy Central; and Rich Webb, Co-Founder and COO of The Barbarian Group. The moderator was Sean Mills, President of The Onion.

Jason showed an example segment from a series titled “Honesty” where everyone spoke exactly what they thought, as an example of being funny and edgy without using sex or violence.

Lou showed an example of creating open-template characters that can then promote many different products. An ongoing series with characters trying to act out the movie “Hot Fuzz”.

Rich showed clips from SuperDeluxe.com - funny!

Lou: our core viewership (at Comedy Central) is men ages 18-34. This is the same group as early web adopters, so the transition for us was easy, going from television to the web. We have clear branding, so viewers know what to expect. Consistency and reliability of our productions. Some webisodes are leading to on-air, planning to drive traffic back to the Comedy Central site. In some cases, the web is serving as an incubator of ideas, talent. TV is the ‘mature’ side. Advertisers want the eyeballs present on the web, but are often wary of the content not fitting their image.

Rich: it’s important to push the limits, that’s our job. The client will push back.

Jason: The web allows more liberty for ‘weird’ content. There’s more ways to be funny, rebellious, non-traditional. Likes to set up a series that can be continued.

Lou: online comedy is sponsor-driven, so it’s self-regulating. But creatives should drive the business, not the other way around. Censorship is unnecessary for bad content - it doesn’t get watched.

Sean: Where are the lines for branded content?

General response:

  • Never try to fool the audience. They’ll never come back, and will hold a grudge.
  • Ask yourself: does the piece hold together without the branded portion? If so, then good.

Rich: People really don’t care who made it or why, they care if it’s entertaining and they’re grateful for it.

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