It looks like everyone is buffing up their predictions for another year of astonishing growth by social media. The last several years have brought so many surprises that the next several are promising to yield a bumper crop of “I told you so” fodder from the “pithier than thou” crowd.
My prediction for 2010 is that nothing is sacred, including the onslaught 2010 predictions. Therefore, I’ll will go way out on a limb and make my 2011 predictions in 2009.
In General:
The interest coming due on our national debt will consume increasingly more of the money that institutions need to provide basic services. As these institutions weaken, they will increasingly be replaced by social media enterprise. These structurally weakened institutions will drive social media innovation more than any other factor.
Specifically:
So there it is and be assured that 2012 will not disappoint even the hardiest eschatologist!
Sorry for not repeating the “real-time is king” mantra or singing the “people will finally pay for content” tune, or reciting the “every department is the marketing department” manifesto. Something much bigger is about to happen. The evolution away from the current financial system will drive social media more than any other factor.
We have posted a few articles about the Deep Web and presented an emerging technology project that promises to provide a database of databases for the next great development of Internet Search. This short post considers the significance of one aspect of Deep Web Search.
Google Search has provided a set of incentives that drives people to document their world by blogging, developing social media, and creating seemingly infinite video content. The ability to see and be seen is the essence of market economics.
While the promise of searching a huge store of databases may not sound like Saturday social night at the local drive in burger joint, it does by extension, introduce new incentives. The new technology will drive people to build databases. A new generation of entrepreneurs will collect, organize, analyze and create – not information – but data.
The first things entrepreneurs will organize are human knowledge data – starting with their own, then relating it to others. Not unlike the human genome project, the vast human knowledge reservoir will be mapped. Entrepreneurs will enter their communities (on line, neighborhood, work, school, church, social networks) and create a database for what other people know and parse the data in any number of important and useful databases.
The reason for this is simple; data are collections of human observations.This is the only thing people are willing to pay for. Markets cannot and do not get any more fundamental than that.
Anyone who follows the news, social media, or some of the tech blogs may have noticed a lot of rehashing of old data – every blog has a posts about how social media will “really catch on”. New media isn’t so new anymore. The only thing that makes money is is the disclosure or new data – followed by weeks of rehashing of the data all the way down the rankings.
All Financial instruments are characterized in terms of a quantity and a quality. Real news, real insight, and real productivity results from new and reliable data, qualified interpretation of data, and relevant analysis of data – relative to time. The value of money is directly associated with the quantity and quality of the data representing money – relative to time.
Data alone are useless. People must process data into information – the backbone of all economics. Human knowledge and productivity is the source of all information – derived from data. Therefore, the only things people are willing to pay for are, in fact, data. Monetization of social media may be the deep dive into the data. Do the math. That’s big news.
Conversational Currency Blog continues to present components of the Next Economic Paradigm as we spot the integrations. We believe that one of these features is the Deep Web, estimated to be 500 times bigger than the surface web or “Google-verse”.
One way to get an idea of how the deep web is hidden from view is to perform any simple Google search except add the term “database”. You immediately notice that an entirely different set of results appear – much of it is extremely interesting and useful. If you do this several times over several terms you will soon ask yourself:
“Where can I find a database of databases?”
Now take your original search term and add “database of databases” to it and again an entirely new search result appears. The results become highly localized and less organized. The results show FAR LESS ADVERTISING and even a few more subscription based data enterprises. But more than anything, the results give you an idea of how large the Deep Dark Web may be.
Now return to the surface web and visit your favorite blog. Where exactly are bloggers getting their insights? Follow the trail of references back to the sources (pass through Wikipedia and Forrester) and you will eventually wind up back at the Deep web.
Revenge of the Librarians
Now here comes Internous. A technology start up by library Scientists who shines the light on the Deep Dark Web with a search engine concept that combines both algorithmic search with human classification. By introducing a new standard called The Internet Search Environment Number, Internous will soon organize the database of databases.
The Next Economic Paradigm
Meanwhile, The Ingenesist Project has specified a parallel financial system with a currency similar to the dollar except backed by innovation instead of debt (both are a proxy for future productivity). In the specifications they call for a knowledge inventory system for what people in a community know (“what’s between their ears?”) as an requirement for a proxy for future productivity in a new financial system. While nobody can predict exactly how this may eventually arise, we most certainly will watch new technologies such as the ISEN very carefully.
Special thanks to Matt Theobald. Here is the Internous video – well worth the time!!
In 2001, Michael K Bergman, an American academic and entrepreneur and one of the foremost authorities about the Internet, published a paper estimating the “Deep Web” to be 400-550 times larger than the known Googleverse. What does this mean for everything we claim to know about the web, social media, and social influence marketing?
Andy Becket wrote an excellent investigative piece called The dark side of the internet that I highly recommend reading. Among many great points, Andy describes the deep web:
“The darkweb”; “the deep web”; beneath “the surface web” – the metaphors alone make the internet feel suddenly more unfathomable and mysterious. Other terms circulate among those in the know: “darknet”, “invisible web”, “dark address space”, “murky address space”, “dirty address space”. Not all these phrases mean the same thing. While a “darknet” is an online network such as Freenet that is concealed from non-users, with all the potential for transgressive behaviour that implies, much of “the deep web”, spooky as it sounds, consists of unremarkable consumer and research data that is beyond the reach of search engines. “Dark address space” often refers to internet addresses that, for purely technical reasons, have simply stopped working.
The implications of the Dark Web are subtle. Like “Dark Matter” in space, the dark web may behave as a multiplier to account for that which cannot be explained except by some invisible, albeit, constant force. We can assume consistence because the common thread that transcends the entire Internet is still conversation. The ability to have a conversation as well as the ability to reject a conversation is part of the Dark Web and still a conversation nonetheless. The opposite of publicity is anonymity – if the universe seeks balance so too can we expect the web to equalize around the average anonymity of conversation.
Entrepreneurial factors also appear rational when applied to the Dark Web, specifically true ownership. Ownership includes the right to restrict access from others. In the Googleverse of search rankings and old economics, watered down and largely unenforceable copyright laws create a wasteful game of Cease and Desist among content providers – not exactly a safe place to converse. The inability to establish ownership and boundaries of user generated content is a primary constraint on monetization.
Meanwhile, the Dark Web utilizes a knowledge inventory where trusted people of known affinity are given free access to share freely – and anonymously. Ironically, anonymity improves the quality of a conversation by eliminating the irrelevant data that often constrains conversation. It is worthwhile to consider anonymity as a possibles monetization factor – pay to hide?
Not all anonymity is corrupt and perverse. People spend a great deal of time and effort developing a database that represents a knowledge inventory and they don’t want someone to just copy it. Trade secrets are the great competitive financial instrument of capitalism and depend on secrecy. For better or for worse, political activity in non-free countries such as China, Iran, and Afghanistan also rely on anonymity. The more time people spend on the web, the more of their personal life that would want to keep to themselves – the ability to avoid Google bots is a tangible conversation.
The phenomenon to consider is that people with mutual anonymity are able to share more freely. Ironically, anonymity improves the quality of a conversation by eliminating the irrelevant data that often constrains conversation. Conversely, efforts to constrain anonymity destroys freedom of the web. Tell that to your web analytics team.
The FTC recently issued guidelines for payola to bloggers. The impact and opinions are now emerging over what this means for social media. As with any game played on a new field, rules need to apply. The questions emerge regarding who the rules hurt, who they help, and how the game will develop in the future due to those rules.
Straight from the horse’s mouth:
The revised Guides also add new examples to illustrate the long standing principle that “material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.
Extrapolate into the future:
Continuing our series on the Search for the Next Economic Paradigm, we feature an unlikely authority on Economic development. The Gross National Happiness Metric hails from the Himalayan country of Bhutan listed by the UN as a “Least Developed Country”.
The linked presentation below reports on the GNH (Gross National Happiness) conference. Yes, people are getting together for an annual GNH conference just like the famed GNP (Gross Domestic Product) conferences elsewhere.
Hypothesis: Paradigm shift related to global societal development
• ‘Economic growth’ as the dominating paradigm of ‘progress’ is increasingly under challenge
• Growth of GDP is unsustainable and does not lead to more happiness
• We are in a process of Redefining Progress and Global Transformation
• Needed: Multi-stakeholder, multi-cultural and intradisciplinary as well as participatory public support networks for an emerging new development paradigm
The Production of Happiness
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