Blogging

LeWeb 3 has come to an end in Paris. It’s been an interesting and worthwhile conference. Here are my headline take-aways in my key areas of interest:

OVERALL
The world is flat.

Borders are not as important as they used to be.

Intellectual property developed in online start-ups could be more valuable to an economy than its natural resources. In Australia we’re not doing enough in this area – we’re too busy worrying about finite resources to understand that better policies can create value out of innovation.

BLOGGING AND BLOGGERS
We are behind in Australia. We need a more visible and robust fifth estate. Bloggers of Australia ought to unite and encourage more people to blog. No one else will talk up blogging if we don’t.

There is a vibrant, vocal and effective fifth estate in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the US. We have not found it yet in Australia. Here in Europe there are more bloggers per capita and they are fierce in blogging. They are using blogging to navigate to a more transparent democracy with more voices heard. In Australia we’re barely started on that journey.

Bloggers are constituency to politicians and garner respect – well during a campaign at least.

Blogging is not for geeks. Well, they do it, but so many others do and on all manner of topics. We’re not hearing these voices in Australia.

NEWSAGENTS AND THE MEDIA
The world as we know it has been disrupted. Our (newsagents) dominant traffic generator, newspapers, are not what they used to be. News is being delivered and consumed anywhere and at anytime. There is a movement to reduce filters, like mainstream media companies, and to provide more direct and diverse access to news and opinion.

Newsagents need to find relevance in this new world and find it fast. We need traffic and from that sustainable revenue.

The Internet is a supply chain game. Newsagencies were created by publishers to be a supply chain game. They need us for the next few years so they can access profits while people transition from over the counter to online access of news and information. My feeling is that there will be a tipping point, for newspapers sooner than later, where our model is no longer viable. We should see that before our suppliers.

FIND IT, 3LOVES AND OUR NEW ONLINE BUSINESSES
I won’t list all take-aways here because it suits me commercially not to.

In this conference on 1,000 delegates I heard about more than 150 Internet start-ups and I didn’t network that much. The start-up world is noisy, companies and countries are scrambling to build IP which will be the natural resource of the next generation. There is some very exciting innovation.

Web 2.0 is about social interaction. Games, virtual worlds and many other traction-gaining innovative online businesses are more about social contact than anything else. Social connection is the game in town.

The customers in control, genuinely in control. If you do not allow this they will not support your business.

Traffic must be two-way including in news and information models.

Free is the price point target if you’re building an online business.

My final take-away was not presented by anyone but it’s one which has grown with me over the last few months and hearing people talk so much about monetization over the last few days it became more important to me:

Our mission is more important than profit.

Our mission is to help individuals and businesses spend less on more effective advertising so that they can pass on the savings to consumers who can in turn use the savings to create a better world.