Zeitgeist Day 1

I had the pleasure this year of being invited to Google's premiere conference called Zeitgeist. It's taking place today and tomorrow in the UK. The main goal of the conference is to discuss global issues we are all, as stewards of this planet, responsible for (AIDS, poverty, famine). The other topic of discussion is the internet and how it changes every part of our lives and businesses.

There were a few main themes today

• People are more interested in access than ownership
  Whether people are buying cars or music or books consumers don't have the need to 'own' anymore. This has profound impacts on how companies make money in the future. Daimler Benz is building a car sharing program for it's younger audience with the hope this will bring tomorrow's customers in today. Lord Mandelson, UK Secretary of State, believes constant consumer access and demand for information means business leaders and politicians are spending far too much time on media fires and not enough on the business at hand. Are we as citizens comfortable knowing our world leaders spend up to 50% of their week dealing with media concerns largely driven by consumers need for constant access to information rather than focusing on global issues?
• Business models have been changed forever
  Ian Bremmer, Political Scientist, believes 5 year graphics and data points are useless because historic data is based on trends before internet/Twitter/wikipedia, etc and the internet has had such a profound effect on the way the world communicates and does business data from pre-internet is no longer comparable. Businesses cannot accurately build a business strategy looking more than 18 months out because of ever changing technology. Not too long ago consumers paid for services such as newspapers (information) and entertainment (CD's). Today consumers expect information for free and on demand. They expect to only pay for music they like, not the whole CD. Vevo is building a business model based on the theory people will pay for music videos as a form of entertainment rather than get them for free. It assumes consumers will accept UGC for free but understand the value of high quality content and be willing to pay for it like they do a movie ticket today.
• Media companies business models must evolve
  Carolyn McCall, Chief Officer of The Guardian, believes the display ad model is flawed and will not support her business long term. The Guardian is focused on classified ad revenue because they believe consumers will find value for that content and will be willing to pay for it. It's unclear what impact businesses like CraigsList, free classified ads, will have on this model. Pedro Ramirez, Editor of El Mundo took serious issue with recent comment from Google that said "consumption of the news is no longer through the newspaper." Ramirez believes consumers will still be willing to pay for top journalist content. Charlie Leadbeater, author of 'We Think' countered that position with the advice media agencies should be investing in ways their consumers can contribute and participate, recognizing young people are interested in paragraphs, not articles.

What was clearly evident from today's speakers is no one has figured out how the internet will impact traditional business long term. Can traditional media companies survive? I think El Mundo has a somewhat dinosaur perspective and if they don't evolve their thinking by becoming a partner with content syndication platforms like Google and MSN they will be left in the dust much the way AOL was once it was clear the subscription model was flawed. Carolyn McCall from the Guardian said it best, "Newspaper companies need to learn how to partner with aggregators. Many other publishing houses will go down because they can't afford to invest in strong content." It does beg the question, what will happen if consumers continue to demand free information and subsequently threaten the future business of even the largest news agencies? What will become of our most trusted news sources? Can we live in a world where Wikipedia is THE news source? Will there be a time when citizen journalism replaces traditional journalism?

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