Tip the Market

One World? Why not?

Someone asked me, "So this OneWorld thing. How does it actually work?"

Actually, I have no idea. But my general vision is:

1) It's a project that drives camphone usage while promoting passion, fun, social interaction, creativity and self-discovery
2) Tech companies provide technology, and non-tech corporations must make charitable contributions based on total number of photos uploaded, which will benefit visual impairment research
3) The key is to pair local heros with student videographers and photographers, who create the core of the works
4) We giveaway some camphones, digital cameras and camcorders to students, so we need manufacturers of handsets and imaging equipment, as well as carriers, search engines and moblog companies, to participate
5) We turn the results into a film festival

The key is to configure the technology so that project minimizes cost. In essence, my idea is:

1) A bunch of us decide to create a special XML tag that provides metadata on a picture, that says:
- this is an entry in the OneWorld/OneDay project
- so-and-so is the photographer, and how to reach him/her
- the rights for this image are such-and-such
- some explanation of the image
2) All the moblog companies agree to put this tag on photos uploaded by participants on that date, and some programmers create a free tool for applying this tag easily.
3) We talk Google Image into participating
4) We get a bunch of companies to support the idea and throw up a website

What do we get out of it?

1) Tech companies in the mobile imaging space get to push the field without cash investment
2) Moblogs get a cute project to generate interest
3) Celebrities get involved and produce ink about the project
4) Search engines suddenly get to do images more easily
5) We raise some money for a few notable charities
6) Enables participants to express, experience, be artistic
7) This event will capture life, and its meaning, for the first time in a wonderful new way... and is likely to be remembered in 500 years as the first “snapshot in time” of life on earth

8) We be gutsy and shoot to do it on February 14, 2005

What we need to get started:

1) For your company to say yes
2) Access to a little seed financing
3) Help from some smart imaging scientists around the creation of an XML tag

So what do you think? Comments? Suggestions? Am I crazy?

The Killer App is Unimaginable

As hard as I wrack my brain for truly useful and compelling consumer applications, I'm stunned when something truly obvious crosses my monitor. Peter Cochrane, the former CTO of British Telecom, told me that he NEVER in a million years, could have predicted the success of downloadable ringtones.

Anyway, here's the app - following a high number of car-jackings in Australia, where the seller was forced out of the vehicle during a test drive, a senior Australian police officer has recommended "that private sellers of motor vehicles take a photo of prospective buyers and record their licence particulars before allowing a test drive."

Wow. That's pretty simple and compelling. However, I think about it some more, and wouldn't the thief just steal the camera too? Well, somebody thought of that, and came up with RealSafe.net, a paying service, where you can send and store the pictures in a secure database, which can only be accessed by court order. So it's no use to steal the camera, when the photo is uploaded and published right away.

The scenario I'm not looking forward to seeing is somebody snapping a cameraphone shot of a suspicious person, and that said subject - whether a potential thief or someone who only looks like one and feels discriminated against - gets irate and suddenly beats up the photographer. I smell lots of lawsuits coming.

The social impact of all of this is pretty mind-boggling!

Invading the Government's Privacy

Margarita Quihuis, a notable VC from Silicon Valley, posted a terrific comment:

"Next time [ed: I assume this means at the next conference] I’d like to see a discussion on political movements, human rights and technology. If you think back on Tiananmen Square, the big enabler for that event was the ubiquitous access to fax machines. Now we have the shocking pictures of Abu Ghraib. How will cameraphones change the behavior of nations if human rights transgressions are broadcast as they occur? Dan Greening commented on privacy issues for individuals; I’d be interested to hear about the lack of “privacy” for governments and how that alters their behavior.

Cameraphones will reside in the realm of social phenomena rather than some corporate killer app/pain point solution. I can imagine a scenario where every employee with the United Nations, UNDP, Amnesty International, etc. is outfitted with a cameraphone as part of the standard operating toolkit. In fact, it would be interesting to see how cameraphones empower citizens to take on and communicate with their government - be it local, state or federal."

This is a great idea. There's actually quite a bit happening on this front already:

A Cameraphone for Rodney King

For example, a blatant act of racism by the Portland police was snapped by a "citizen reporter" armed with a camera phone. The story and the photos were published in the Portland Tribune and broadcasted on television. From the article:

"Police offers parked their car outside Ringlers restaurant with a stuffed gorilla attached to the car's grill last Tuesday night, - where a largely black crowd had gathered for a weekly hip-hop show hosted by disc jockey Mello Cee. Resident Calvin Washington took the photos around 1 a.m. last Tuesday morning outside the restaurant when he realized what was happening. He grabbed his cell phone camera and walked outside to take pictures. 'I went out and flicked a few pics. The police couldn’t tell what I was doing because I had the phone in my hand. They couldn’t tell what it was,' he said. The Portland Tribune published a follow-up article on Friday, questioning whether the 'incident may have launched the age of technological vigilantism in Portland'."

Citizens as camera phone reporters are sure to play an increasing role in news reporting. Or as Jeff Jarvis put it a while back, "Mobile cameras will be extraordinary tools for witnesses to capture events with more immediacy than news organizations can provide".

Korean Teacher Abuse Captured

At a school in Suwon, Gyeonggi-do, Korea, a teach made a girl step forward and brutally struck her in the face in front of the other students. This scene was covertly caught on a camera phone and uploaded to the Internet as a video clip on Wednesday afternoon. (You can see it at: mms://wmt1.chosun.com/entertainment/liveshop/mediachosun/interview/040401_teacher.wmv)

It also launched a citizen campaign, with over 5,000 messages posted on the district education office’s Web board in a single day, and the names of the school and teacher in question were revealed. The teacher in question was fired.

News Stations getting into the Act

Recently, a news station, 16 WNEP, called out to their readers to send in breaking-news photos taken with a camera phone. In their own words:

"Did you photograph breaking news with your camera-phone? Send those images to Newswatch 16 and we may use them on the air or on the web. Just send them straight to PHOTOLINK@WNEP.COM. Program this address into your phone NOW, so you will have it when you need it."

Clearly, something big will eventually happen to show how 800 million cameraphones will change the world...

(these newsbytes are from picturephoning.com... thanks!)

Welcome C-Summiters

Hey everyone, welcome to this private weblog for those interested in experimenting with market-tipping and influencing market dynamics.

I have a theory that market transitions are like First Order Phase Transitions in physical chemistry - a complex and chaotic process. When I was at Caltech, I saw this great demonstration of supercooling, where a liquid was rapidly cooled below its freezing point, but remained a liquid. Then, with a flick of a finger, the entire liquid crystallized as a solid.

But can market dynamics act in a similar manner? Well, consider Clark Gable. There was this movie he made with Claudette Colbert, “It Happened One Night.” In this famous scene, Clark Gable removes his shirt to reveal a bare chest… and suddenly, American men abandoned the wearing of undershirts in droves, so much so that undershirt sales declined by 75%. Undergarment manufacturers were "devastated," and the industry didn't recover until the requirements of World War II uniforms got men back into the habit of wearing undershirts.

As a commercial market moves from an early adopter phase into global uptake, can similar effects be produced? Well, we must first start by understanding the fundamental process of market take-off. In my study of the formation of critical mass markets, I’ve noticed that any product or technology that appears to "take off" is actually a series of cascading successful events, each spawning new applications and solutions which re-start the extreme slope of the adoption curve.

For the Internet, the cascading flow of technologies included the development of interconnected networks, the graphical browser, the Web, Java, etc. We simplify things by pointing to milestones, like the Netscape IPO or the exponential uptake of Napster, but the underlying chaos theory of market adoption and positive feedback lock-in is actually a complex system. This is the opposite of a catastrophe - sort of a benestrophe - in which everything miraculously goes right

I’ve found that Inhibitor/Enablers for critical mass market "take off" include factors like:

- the commoditization of the hardware or platform driven by economies of scale and Moore's Law
- emergence of meaningful standards
- achievement of negligible cost of use
- order of magnitude increase in usability and simplicity
- establishment of fair privacy/access policies that intelligently eliminate the possibility of spam
- development of compelling and useful vertical apps
- emergence of truly compelling mass market killer apps
- promotion of system and content-enriching activities
- development of innovative and effective revenue models
- willingness by US operators to embrace risk and change
- inhibitors are viewed as enablers/opportunities

So here’s the $64 question: Is it possible to Tip the Mobile Imaging Market collectively, collaboratively, and consciously?

Let’s consider and brainstorm a few possibilities:

Possibility #1: Social Engineering the Media

First consider the portrayal of cameraphone usage in the media. The first three movies or TV shows that I’ve seen that include cameraphones as a fundamental plot element are:

The Medallion with Jackie Chan
Use of Cameraphone by Kidnapper to Verify Identity of Victim

Law and Order - Special Victims Unit
Use of Cameraphone by Mean High School Girls to Photograph a Girls Shower, leading to a teen suicide

Tru Calling
Use of Cameraphone by Identity Thief to Steal a Credit Card

In other words, not a single positive portrayal of cameraphones in U.S. entertainment media.

What can the industry do about it?

Well, look at Apple requirements for product placement in hit TV shows: not only do the producers have to show the good guys using Mac’s, but they have to show the bad guys using Windows based PC’s.

For the mobile imaging industry, it’s important to send the message that cameraphones and mobile phones are linked to larger product placement budgets and that negative portrayals will bite the hand that feeds them.

Also, the industry could consider launching a Screenwriting Contest to reward positive, innovative portrayal of cameraphone use.

Possibility #2: Directing the Invisible Hand

Another interesting phenomena to consider are Spontaneous Group Happenings. These include:

Burning Man - 28,000 people paying $180 each
Flash Mobs - first mobility based fad
Hands Across America - 5.6 million participants
Spencer Turlock performance events - international recognition

The question then is to consider whether it might be possible to encourage the emergence of fad that aids mobile imaging growth. Something that would kickstart new technologies and content production, but not to over-commercialize.

I believe that something like this is possible with nothing more than a special XML tag, and a spontaneous worldwide art project could jumpstart visual search with perhaps 50 million new images.

Our proposal: One World/One Day, a Global Happening for Mobile Imaging

Document the beauty and passion of all human life for 24 hours Initial Target - Valentines Day of the year 2005 Focus - What do you love? One million cameraphones, 10,000 digital photographers and 1,000 student videographers throughout the world documenting the beauty of life KEY - coordinate access between students and local “celebrities” Aim to upload 50 million images, encoded with special XML tags Global premiere at C-Summit 2005

This project could drive global awareness, adoption and uptake of key mobile imaging technologies and solutions. And a portion of the proceeds will be donated to charities benefiting the visually impaired.

However, the key is to do something like this withperfect timing, and at a modicum of cost and effort… and thus providing non-linear returns to those participating in this in-vivo experiment.

So what are your ideas? Feel free to write me, or comment, and let’s get this show on the road!