[DollarManSteve]

And now... the future.

Im not sure how many of you are familiar with the concept of prosumerism - where the consumer is the producer - it is this idea is what will change the economy and especially the production/consumtion of media in the future. I will attempt to apply this idea to the concept of branding and show how stupid it is for a guy like Rupert Murdoch to buy MySpace.

Working everyday within the cozy, virtual confines of the internet give me (and Im sure all of you) a sense of having an 'insiders' view of whats really happening on the Internet. Am I the only one who can see that this 'internet' is what the entire future of our global economy will be built on? And its not even the physical wires and servers that matter (you think China will lay a bazillion miles of optical cable? yes.. they will.. but not to the end user). It is the wireless pervasiveness of the internet - everywhere, all the time, completely surrounding us - no 'offline' no 'online' - all these are old ideas that wont apply. The Internet will be an all penetrating aura and we will interact with it, use devices to peer inside of it, create with it, upload into it and download from it.

This is where the traditional notions of branding go out the window. Companies will not be able to plan and deploy a 'brand' - brands will create themselves and exist seperate from ownership - the empowered prosumer will be the brand, everyone has the opportunity to be their own brand. for example - the term 'blog' is to me a brand. When I hear 'blog' it conjures up a whole set of ideas in my mind. And yet, no company owns the concept of 'blog' - it just is. And it is because it has been created from the bottom up, a completely organic almost living thing that transcends a corporate marketing think tank.

Given the fickleness of the internet and the velocity of information in todays world, a company like Fox buying myspace - looking to capitalize on blogs - has no idea what they are getting themselves into. You cant 'own' the internet, because it costs virtually nothing to create something on the internet - and things on the internet recreate themselves of their own momentum, that is not something you can buy. Google is a wonderful example of this, and (along with yahoo) I think will be the first companies to live an e-lifecycle. Google appeared virtually out of nowhere 7 years ago - and given their current position - are a testament to the power of the internet. I think, however, that they will be a victim of their own success and unless they grab onto the new paradigms that will drive the economy 10, 20 years from now, they will be irrelevant.

With regards to the fox/mypace thing, I was dicussing it with one of my coworkers and he said "Do you know how much traffic you could buy for $500 million!!", an obviously hyperbolic comment, but poignant. Companies operate on old ideas - to control from the top down, thats what they know how to do. Yet, in the future, the power - and the money - will be the ability to participate in as many peer-to-peer interactions as possible, while being able to instantly deploy your participation to anywhere on the net.

Ok Im done. Cliff notes anyone?