Week's Best Reads - Digital Media Biz, Transmedia & Higher Ed

This post looks at recent trends in three areas that I'm tracking, the overall digital media business, the impact of the internet on higher education, and storytelling forms (transmedia). Please share, and post your comments.

THE MEDIA  BUSINESS

Readers of this blog will remember my post last year when Warner Bros bought Flixster in which I argued that the studios needed to use the data generated by audiences to create relationships that move beyond their historical "wholesale" business model. Instead, we learned, Flixster was turned into a storefront for the studios digital locker project, Ultra Violet, and clumsily at that. 

Now, finally, Flixster is launching "Social Movies Targeting," an initiative that crunches user activity on its sites to predict future trends and to improve targeting for advertisers, according to this interesting Media Post report.

As the web world and the finance world (hell, the entire world) focuses upon the pending Facebook IPO and the enormous wealth being created, it's interesting to understand why. One factor is the ecosystem of startup companies creating apps for the FB platform, as this thorough article by Mike Swift of the Mercury News articulates.

Gunther Sonnenfeld examines what it means to distribute and scale stories across multiple platforms in a series on his blog that you'll find very thought-provoking. I know I did, in part because he positions today's "transmedia" storytelling paradigm within the history of distribution and story formats. 

Legendary investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel teaches at Stanford. I stumbled across this summary of his lecture (by Stanford Law student Blake Masters)  on "distribution" which is comprehensive and fascinating. This is dense, but may be worth the trouble if you want to understand the critical and changing role of distribution in the digital ecosystem. 

Speaking of distribution, its dominance in the digital universe helps Ben Elowitz make the case for the "Chief Audience Officer" in a world where "Content is No Longer King."

As ISPs start restricting Internet band witch, this post asks, "Is Web TV's Free Ride Over?" Not if the trend towards original web programming continues to gain traction.

The rise of made-for-broadband video content also means an upsurge in M&A activity, exemplified by the acquisition of Revision3 by mainstream cable broadcaster Discovery Communications. 

Two posts that look at crowd-funding trends from different perspectives: "Has Kickstarter become just a storefront?" in which the writer argues that the premiere crowd-funding site is star-struck. And "What does crowd funding mean for the VC business?" asks investor Fred Wilson, and then answers. 

EDUCATION

Education is yet one more industry in the throes of revolutionary change as the web and entrepreneurial innovation upend many of the historical institutional verities. 

Last week Harvard and MIT announced edX, a platform for online courses, mostly lectures. This alone is nothing new, with similar initiatives dating all the way back to the first dot-com bubble days. (Here's some perspective in a smart post from BostInno.com.)

Could online learning, along with accelerator-style education and various web-based continuing education platforms spell the end of the MBA, a cash-cow for many universities? This is a well-reasoned case for just that.

While MIT, Harvard and other prestige universities are porting their lecture content to the web, Stanford is undertaking the real revolution in education, according to an interesting Tech Crunch post, by embracing the "flipped" classroom model pioneered by Khan Academy. 

This surge in web-distributed college courses will only become significant, argues this provocative post, when we "jailbreak" consumers from the full degree. Why can't accreditation occur at the course level?

In another online education move, Washington University's Law School will offer a master's degree entirely online, in partnership with a commercial company 2tor.com, reports the NY Times. 

TRANSMEDIA AND STORYTELLING

Fourth Wall's interactive web series "Dirty Work" debuts with a lot of attention, and with a lot riding on it and the RIDES.tv platform (pun not intended).

Transmedia is on the rise in television, or more specifically in ad-supported television, according to this post from ad agency JWT. 

StoryCode.org, the group that grew out of the NY Transmedia Meet-up, held a "story hack" a few weeks ago, stimulating a flurry of posts by the transmedia true believers (like this one from Queen Spade Creative). This Washington Post story does a nice job of contextualizing the event, and why it's ground-breaking.

Transmedia Storytelling Berlin interviews USC prof and transmedia theorist Henry Jenkins, who is now on a European tour. I would expect more as he makes his rounds.

"Prison Dancer" is a transmedia musical (and YouTube phenom) that launched back in 2007 with a video of prisoners jailed in the Phillipines dancing to Michael Jackson's Thriller. Now you can interact with a 12-part web series, as described in this extensive post from KCET.org.

"Steampunk Holmes" is a new multi-platform fiction project from a group in Minneapolis that looks like a lot of fun, and which just raised $43K on Kickstarter. HT to @randyfinch

CATCHING UP (Pt. 4) - VIDEO AND DISTRIBUTION

My hiatus is over. What follows are four "catch-up" posts in which I attempt to review thought leadership on four topics I'm tracking right now (Start-up Culture; Crowdfunding; Storytelling and Transmedia; and Video/Distribution). PART 4 presents some interesting links about digital video content and distribution.

The key to the future of TV may be in such emerging products as second-screen apps, smart TV, and connected TVs, but check out the reality of the present in Willa Paskin's Salon post about the impact of DVRs called "TV's fast-forward revolution." BTW: she's describing exactly the way my viewing is now structured (and for which I pay my cable company a LOT of dough.)

The DVR frenzy is especially acute on Sunday nights, which networks fill with must-view TV to leverage the week's largest viewing night. The NY Times explores Sunday night DVR angst among the DVR-addicted, here.

Online video consumption is exploding, but advertising revenue still lags. Hence, the "Digital Content New Fronts," a parallel version of Madison Avenue's upfront sales extravaganza focusing on digital networks like AOL, Google/YouTube, Hulu, Microsoft, Vevo and Yahoo. BTW: People seem to like second screen apps for TV: that's the aha conclusion of the latest Nielsen research.

The NY Times reports on NimbleTV, the latest example of "technology companies trying to break into the closed system of television distribution in the US." The company streams packages of TV channels to which users have subscribed  -- a kind of uber-HBO Go.

I think I've caught up. Watch this space for more posts!

CATCHING UP (Pt. 3) - STORYTELLING & TRANSMEDIA

My hiatus is over. What follows are four "catch-up" posts in which I attempt to review thought leadership on four topics I'm tracking right now (Start-up Culture; Crowdfunding; Storytelling and Transmedia; and Video/Distribution). PART 3 presents some interesting links about storytelling and transmedia.

It's kind of big news when a guy like 'Carnivàle' show runner Daniel Knauf announces that his next project will unfurl as a full-fledged transmedia property, according to PBS's Media Shift blog, which carries an interview with Knauf. I loved HBO's 'Carnivàle,' a truly warped and wonderful series set in a circus in the Depression.

Knauf's new project "Haunted' is live now. Go to Knauf's BXXweb portal for an intro video, and to register, which allows you to access all of the interactive features. "Haunted" a fictional story that follows paranormal investigators working inside an abandoned house tormented by supernatural events. The storytelling format features multimedia elements such as research documentation and investigators' blogs. Shot with multiple cameras, the project's navigational timeline allows viewers to manipulate how they view the story.

Mobile operator Orange has announced the fall release of a transmedia game/interactive fiction piece called "Alt-Minds", co-produced by Lexis Numerique. It's billed as a mystery centering around a series of kidnappings in Europe that unfolds via computer, smartphones, tablets and social networks.

In many ways, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is the apotheosis of the patronage model for content funding, even in its undernourished state (Compare its measly $146 million overall budget to Europe, Canada and Australia, where the federal and state governments invest vastly more in content). With NEA's budget down overall, and an increase in grants to fund digital forms of content production and distribution, traditional recipients like documentaries are feeling the squeeze, as reported by IndieWire.

NY Times profiles 'serious' games pioneer Jane McGonigal, diving into her recently released SuperBetter, which helps people face personal challenges. She came up with it after suffering a concussion. 

O'Reilly Radar interviews Verane Pick of Counter Intelligence Media (with text summary), who looks at transmedia publishing from an agile development perspective. 

Robert Pratten of Transmedia Storyteller posits seven "tenets" of future story worlds, presented at last week's EBU TV Summit in Copenhagen: Pervasive, Persistent, Participatory, Personalized, Connected, Inclusive, and Cloud-based. 

Cynthia Lieberman curates "34 Great Transmedia Storytelling Resources." Some links are basic definitional, others touching on education, gaming, and marketing. 

Finally, I was disappointed that I could not speak on Henry Jenkins' panel at Transmedia Hollywood 3, due to my surgery, but am happy to read April Arrglington's typically thorough coverage here.

NEXT UP: VIDEO AND DISTRIBUTION

CATCHING UP (Pt. 2) - CROWDFUNDING

My hiatus is over. What follows are four "catch-up" posts in which I attempt to review thought leadership on four topics I'm tracking right now (Start-up Culture; Crowdfunding; Storytelling and Transmedia; and Video/Distribution). PART 2 presents some interesting links about the crowdfunding phenomenon.

Kickstarter has definitely turned a corner, not only in recognition and effectiveness, but in scale and revenue. The crowdfunding site is on pace to generate $300 million in funding this year, according to this post by Ben Popper at Venture Beat. 

Not everyone is a believer, however. "Are Kickstarter Investors Idiots or Geniuses?" turns a skeptical eye towards the crowd-funding phenomenon.

Kickstarter and IndieGogo are well-known crowd funding sites, but there are many more, lovingly detailed in this excellent "Crowdfunding Wiki.  I'm not entirely sure who generated all this great content, but I learned about it from Karine Halpern, @TransmediaReady Agency & Studio

One of the amazing things about the crowdfunding movement is its diversity. It's impossible to determine what the "crowd" will want to fund until the creators enter the market. As a result there are a lot of posts that offer advice on how to optimize one's chances on Kickstarter, like this  "25 Best Kickstarter Tips for Creative Students" The site Bachelors Degree Online is offering tips for student creators interested in Kickstarter, but the advice is good for anyone.

We are going to see a LOT of posting about the launch of equity crowdfunding in the wake of the passage of the "JOBS Act" that loosens regulations on small investors in start-ups, among other provisions. By far the harshest critique of equity crowdfunding I've read is Daniel Isenberg's post "The Road to Crowdfunding Hell" in the Harvard Business Review. 

Next Up: "STORYTELLING & TRANSMEDIA"

CATCHING UP (Pt. 1): START-UP CULTURE

My hiatus is over. What follows are four "catch-up" posts in which I attempt to review thought leadership on four topics I'm tracking right now (Start-up Culture; Crowdfunding; Storytelling and Transmedia; and Video/Distribution).

I start with Start-up Culture, this amazing phenomenon that is a hallmark of our current, tech-driven era -- including investing, accelerators and incubators. 

I've written about the potential for an incubator for the entertainment industry, and I'm advising a new Lab in Toronto that seeks to apply many of the start-up principals to early stage content developers. This is an idea whose time has come -- and two LA based efforts seem to bear out this prediction. 

The Creative Artists Agency, one of the world's biggest talent agencies, has a long history of helping content-related start-ups emerge from its core business -- the best known example is Will Ferrell's Funny or Die comedy website, but there are many others. A CAA-spawned startup called Moonshark will soon begin rolling out celebrity-based apps for iOS and Android. This USA Today article reports on this and other "accelerator-like" activities by CAA's biz-dev guru Michael Yanover.

io/LA is a new hybrid incubator and co-work space in Los Angeles -- Hollywood, not Santa Monica! -- with a specific focus on "bridging entertainment and technology," according to Liz Gannes's reporting. Co-founder Aber Whitcomb is looking for companies into  "digital distribution and efficient content creation." (see also this HuffPo coverage.)

Amidst the frenzy of start-up accelerators and incubators -- there seems to be a dozen new launches every week -- Canadian business consultant Lyn Blanchard analyzes whether and how they work in a very thoughtful post (HT to  Knowlton Thomas who cited it here).

In a related vein, Fortune reports on some entrepreneurs who are opting out of the accelerator game, and why.

Jorge Barba, one of the organizers of Startup Weekend Tijuana, muses on various models for incubators and accelerators. Thoughtful post, and evidences how pervasive the model has become in so many countries.

Silicon Valley, of course, is the engine that drives the start-up culture, nothwithstanding successes elsewhere. Ken Auletta, who brilliantly covers the media business for the New Yorker, has delivered another deeply informative piece called "Get Rich U" -- an in-depth look at the central role of Stanford within the Silicon Valley culture. A must-read piece for anyone interested in start-up culture. 

The contours of start-up investing continue to change. Here, Semil Shah articulates seven forces that are disrupting traditional venture capital investing: the cloud (specifically Amazon), Angel investors AngelList, Kickstarter, Y Combinator and accelerators, "new venture capital" and secondary markets. 

Thousands of blog posts enumerate problems and pitfalls for the start-up entrepreneur.Now Noam Wasserman has aggregated such pitfalls in "The Founders Dilemma." (HT to Read Write Web's coverage.)

Next up: CROWDFUNDING.