Agora Media Group Innovation Blog

Tagwhat is a geo-centric mobile Augmented Reality application that by means of a social network, users can create and share content which can be seen on location.
Some of the opportunities -as can be seen in the video- are Local Businesses, keeping a journal, Videos, store locations and advertising.
Furthermore it’s possible to follow other people enabling a network of Augmented Reality tags.

Augmented Reality networks still have to validate their value, but novelty of such networks and the AR technology itself fuel initial interest of users.
A business model for Tagwhat is of course advertising which blends in with other types of tags, creating a less pushy advertising model. Besides this, context/location is key, making advertising more relevant and less disturbing.

Pre-conditions like the following make or break a social network:
*The amount of interaction between people.
*The amount of quality content/interaction between people.
*The amount of people.
*The amount of active people must be big enough, most people are passive, they like to sign up and read, but are not the content/interaction generators.
*The community must be relevant and specific to one or more segments, the more niche, the higher value added, but the fewer people and thus interaction.
*People need to make a choice.

The furthering fragmentation of the social network landscape will create increasing pressure on succession or failure. Augmented Reality has the power to uniquely position a platform in favor of its usage. It’s up to the users to adopt and integrate a network like Tagwhat in their daily lives.

Will such social Augmented Reality networks diffuse or not?
What could business models be for User Generated Content networks like these?

Wow! That came out of left field -  unsuspected but… really – something that really makes sense when we consider TV Everywhere as a concept (at least for me!). If the iPad does get the traction that many are predicting (Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer hits US shelves on Saturday, April 3, 2010), and they do flog 10-20 million in 2010, the converging media landscape will really have a new player in terms of co-viewed TV and Social TV.

Personally, I have always had issues with watching video on mobile devices – not that I am blind, I can actually see well. But I just don’t enjoy the experience. Interactive TV on an iPad (24.3 cm × 19.0 cm × 1.3 cm) will certainly be more enjoyable and feasible for most consumers.

Will this be a one screen or two screen play? Or both?

“Part of the idea is that mobile devices are easier and more appealing to play with while watching TV than laptop or desktop computers — but the tablet will hit the sweet spot in between.” reports Ad Age, so let’s wait and see.

MTV Developing ‘Co-Viewing’ Apps for the iPad

Magazines and newspapers aren’t the only media eying big benefits upon the iPad’s arrival: TV is poised to use the device in new ways, including creating interactive, social apps designed to be used while watching live programming.

MTV Networks, for example, is developing a “co-browsing app meant to be used while watching live TV,” said one executive familiar with MTV’s iPad plans. “This means the iPad could be the appendage that makes interactive TV a reality.”

Kristin Frank, general manager of MTV and VH1 Digital, said MTV is focusing on two approaches to its apps, whether for mobile or the iPad: co-viewing apps that capture the social-media chatter around TV and awards shows and apps for video on the go. IPad apps for “Beavis and Butt-Head,” “MTV News” and “VH1 To Go” are all due in April, she said.

“Fifty-nine percent of people are multitasking when watching TV — that’s something we’ve always known,” said Ms. Frank, referring to recent Nielsen data quantifying a longstanding observation. “This is the next evolution.”

Mobile phone apps to run on the iPhone and Android devices remain MTV’s priority for 2010, Ms. Frank noted, but the iPad apps under construction are a reminder that TV is not about to sit the tablet out.

Read More…

In the past I’ve referred multiple times to the Hype Cycle by Gartner.
Whilst having a look at one of Gartner’s presentation, I came across this slide, which indeed poses two key questions when examining a Hype Cycle.

Basically it’s a different point of perspective and goal as when one examines the ‘standard’ graph as seen below.

Instead of exploring the different emerging technologies and in which phases they’re located in, you can question yourself why certain technologies are not used and what are the reasons for that.

For technologies that are located in the Technology Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations and the Trough of Disillusionment Slope, the key question is “What’s here that we could be using?”
Not all technologies are relevant for a business, but be open for a wide range of technologies and understand how or how it can’t impact your business, your product/service and your target group(s).

During the Slope of Enlightenment and the Plateau of Productivity, technologies show their benefits and become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technologies stabilize and evolve into second+ generations. The hight of the Plateau depends on the scope of application, meaning it’s only applicable in a niche market or that it can be applied massively throughout many markets.
For the key questions “What’s here that we’re not using?” and “Was that a deliberate decision?” it’s important to understand if they’re tested or not, and find out how the decision-making for that particular technology happened.
If there are relevant technologies in these phases and during the past strategic decision-making something went wrong it can harm the portfolio and growth strategies of a business on the long term.

What key questions can you ask yourself when looking at the Hype Cycle?

Recently, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do a lecture / presentation at the Annual MARUG (Marketing Associatie Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) Conference,  the largest Dutch marketing event organised by students  here in Groningen. There were over 400 students and business participants this year and the marketing theme for 2010 was Experience Marketing (I actually prefer the term Experiential Marketing). Some of my more recent writings and research have been around emerging television platforms and convergent media so I thought it might be interesting to blend it into the presentation and make it relevant for future marketeers. Because this space could very much play a part in their futures.

Jason Goecke is the Vice President of Innovation at Voxeo Labs and this article was originally posted on the Tropo blog. He’s been a friend and technology mentor to Agora Media’s  Richard Kastelein since 2003 when they built the original  Expatforums community as North American tech refugees in Europe.

Speech Synthesis, otherwise known as Text to Speech (TTS), is a technology that quickly synthesizes a human voice using text as input. Speech synthesis  is the default behavior for voice calls on the Tropo platform. The Tropo ‘say‘ verb is the one that provides the TTS capability, by taking a string of text and speaking it back. It is of course possible for this verb to take a URL to a ‘wav’ or ‘mp3′ file for pre-recorded audio to be played as well.

When it comes to teaching your application to speak we follow the Perl ethos of making “the simple things easy and difficult things possible”. So your application may speak very well with the simplicity of our APIs, or it may be as sophisticated and emotional as you like through Tropo exposing powerful capabilities for giving your voices character.

For our first example we will simply say:

Which then renders this audio.

Next, we may choose from a voice that speaks any number of languages supported by Tropo (US/UK English, Castilian/Mexican Spanish, French, German, Italian & Dutch). Lets give French a try for our next example:

Which then renders this audio.

Now, those were the simple examples that anyone may use to add a little speech to their applications. But, remember, we also make the difficult possible for those who want to really make their characters speak. As sometimes simply customizing the voice is not enough. There are cases when you’d also like control over pitch, volume and intonation. Tropo natively supports a standard called the Synthesized Speech Markup Language (SSML).

The Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) is a W3C standard for controlling the pace, tone, pitch and all around sound of computer generated voices. Here’s a Ruby script that repeats the same sentence four times; each at a gradually lower speed:

Which renders this audio. The previous example made use of the rate property of the SSML prosody element to control the playback speed. There are many other elements and attributes you may use, including: emphasis, phoneme, etc. To learn more about SSML and related technologies check out the W3C site at http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/.

If you would like to call in and listen to these examples live, you may do so by dialing +990009369991429940 on Skype (free) or calling +1.408.940.5920 from any phone. What are you waiting for? Get started by signing up for an always free developer account @ Tropo.com.

In a huge boost for Augmented Reality, Time Magazine recognizes the technology and has included it in it’s top ten technologies for 2010 – at number four. Many thanks to AR companies in the mobile space such as Netherlands-based Layar and US  Wikitude, along with a number of high profile marketing campaigns using the technology, AR is becoming a serious technology and carving its way out of ‘Geekdom’ and into the Zeitgeist.

Conceptually, augmented reality isn’t anything new — if you’ve watched the Olympics or seen a first-down marker during a televised football game, you’re familiar with digital overlays enhancing real-life events. But one challenge for 2010 will be harnessing the growing ubiquity of webcams and smartphones to make augmented reality useful as a tool in day-to-day life. One of the best examples yet is the virtual box simulator from the U.S. Postal Service, which taps into your webcam to let you figure out what size box is needed to ship an an item through overlaying a semi-transparent 3D model of the box. Other examples for 2010 range from a John Mayer music video to Xbox’s upcoming Project Natal.

Time’s top tech trend for 2010 is location, and it points out the growing popularity of services like Foursquare and Gowalla.

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The paper mentioned in this post is reviewed and provided with comment by Gianluigi Cuccureddu to benefit this position paper for Mobile AR revenue streams.
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A while back I wrote the article Complementing on Augmented Reality Business Models as a further elaboration on the efforts by Gary Hayes on this subject.
A new position paper has been published by Christine Perey -an industry analyst- for the Mobile AR Summit @MWC 2010 on the opportunities of revenue streams within Mobile Augmented Reality.

You can read the paper Where’s the Money? Mobile AR Revenue Streams on PDF.
For new technologies it is important and vital to have business cases and concrete revenue streams in order to take the technology and its opportunities to a mainstream adoption. It’s also needed to get the technology to the next phase of the Hype Cycle.
The paper distinguishes four kinds of sources, namely the Corporations, Small Businesses, Public Services and the End Users. For all the four sources there are revenue streams that can be tapped into when the applications are developed.
Where corporations benefit more from customized AR applications, the focus on small businesses, public services and end users will be on location, time and content (in relation to context).
For the sources mentioned in the paper, revenue streams are elaborated. What do you think of the revenue streams of corporations and end users?

I do believe here is where the power of Mobile AR will be shown. A flux of ubiquitous information requests (content) made relevant by interests (person), time and location (context).
Making sure these information requests are dynamic and only shown and offered when the need is there, will advance the coping of daily information overloads. This might not seem relevant at this point of time, but the real-time Web is just the beginning, and augmented information based on real-time streams will further increase information consumption and decrease information understanding.

One of the first and foremost challenges, put forth in the paper, is the distribution of revenues. Who is paying who, who is earning what?
This is important to keep the ecosystem ‘up and running’ without losing individual links due to a inbalance in monetary redistribution.
User Generated Content will add challenges to it, like UGC websites are already experiencing right now.

How do you think the Mobile AR relationships look like from a revenue distribution point of view?
What other revenue streams do you know which are not yet pointed out in the paper?

by Richard Kastelein

This article first appeared at Atlantic Free Press.

Ever since the New York Times launched word that Google TV will likely become a reality last week, the concept of convergent media has suddenly become a mass meme rather than a tech meme… and probably done more good for IPTV and the blossoming worlds of Social TV, tCommerce, TV Widgets, TV recommendation engines, TV Everywhere, TV 2.0, and opt-in TV advertising than any single event in this emerging landscape.

The TV deal between Google, Sony, Logitech and Intel which flooded the media zeitgeist last week was a perfect riposte to the other news that Facebook topped Google for the week ending March 13th with 7.07 per cent of all Internet traffic for that week, while Google.com got 7.03 per cent.

Sony looks set to rollout new Intel ‘chipped’ TV sets, while Google will make available set-top-boxes (STB)’s – and both will be powered by tiny keyboards built by Logitech. Makes perfect sense.

And what punter would not want an affordable Google Set Top Box (STB) with new cool Logitech remote that does stuff, so he can search his TV and do other cool things? Or just buy a new Sony LCD wall screen that does the same thing – sans the STB?

Interesting to see how it all plays against the Yahoo Connected TV – which already has its feed firmly entrenched in the space and has some cross over with their partners, including Sony and Intel. Most people still don’t even know about Yahoo TV, nor ever heard about. Including most developers I meet at the many events I attend each year in Europe. You can bet, with all the coverage last week, they know about the Google TV foray.

Probably the most exciting news for me is the fact that the New TV platform will be based on Android, and will remain Open Source. That means all code will be transparent, available and open to change and suggestions and managed by a core team… unlike the iPhone,  Facebook and Yahoo Connected TV developer communities  which offer a slice of code to allow developers to develop applications via Application Programming Interface (API)’s or Software Development Kit (SDK)’s.  Bear in mind, any external or 3rd party development has to meet stringent standards for the TV market. read more

Great graphic that presents very well the opportunities and the Content-Context relationship.

What interesting to see are the Synaptic Web derivatives when we have a look at the Context.
Information is being filtered and recommended, based upon interests, location, subscriptions and so on. By doing so, the offered Content is more relevant and appropriate.

When looking at the amount of possibilities that are shown in the image,  understanding the -potential- power of this device is important.
Why?
First of all to understand the business environment better, secondly to adjust business strategies to these new opportunities or maybe reinforcing current strategies in order to create a better positioning and proposition.

I should at least research the impact on middle- and long term, making sure you won’t be surprised and ready to thrive or survive this mobile transformation.

(click to enlarge)

What do you think of the graphic and that what is being shown?

Much has been written about the ROI that can be generated by Social Media, I’ve read many kinds of ROI’s, all trying to reflect efforts and its return.

But there’s a paradox when having a closer look at the two terms in relation to the new open business environement.
First let’s decompose ROI and Social Media.

ROI:

A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

Keep in mind that the calculation for return on investment and, therefore the definition, can be modified to suit the situation -it all depends on what you include as returns and costs. The definition of the term in the broadest sense just attempts to measure the profitability of an investment and, as such, there is no one “right” calculation.

For example, a marketer may compare two different products by dividing the revenue that each product has generated by its respective marketing expenses. A financial analyst, however, may compare the same two products using an entirely different ROI calculation, perhaps by dividing the net income of an investment by the total value of all resources that have been employed to make and sell the product.

This flexibility has a downside, as ROI calculations can be easily manipulated to suit the user’s purposes, and the result can be expressed in many different ways. When using this metric, make sure you understand what inputs are being used.

Secondly, let’s have a look at the definition of Social Media:

Social Media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). Social media utilization is believed to be a driving factor in the idea that the current period in time will be defined as the Attention Age.

When thinking of both terms and and how they can relate to each other, I conclude that the terms are “forced” in order to create meaning with current understanding and definitions.
The ROI of Social Media is like trying to ascribe ROI to a telephone line.
Part misinterpretation and misunderstanding of both terms and part the necessity to quantify in order to meet business objectives, are reasons why this enigma won’t be solved soon.

Return on Investment is a short term metric, a direct relation between cost and return is calculated, and (short term) objectives don’t have much room for tactics or actions that don’t add direct value to the ROI.
Here’s where the complication is, communication and interaction often do not add direct value to a quantifyable objective (for example sales).
The best example within Social Media is Trust. How can the long term process of gaining and retaining trust be expressed in a ROI?
Surely, when consumers do a purchase (be it a soft or hard conversion), it is the only quantifyable and “visible” action/reaction within a much larger process by the company and other consumers.

The latter is important and the crux within this question.
Social Media is causing a paradigm shift where all conventional wisdoms are becoming obsolete.
One of these wisdoms is the notion of two seperated entities, businesses versus consumers and the interaction between these two, ending up in sales, profit, revenue, ROI and so on.
A revaluation is necessary, in this transparent digital world, the seperation is disolving and consumers are complementing and replacing pieces of business processes.

If consumers become part of the business, how must these external entities be calculated and taken into account?
It’s not only the -direct- cost business cost what counts, but also the indirect and consumer-added related costs which should be taken into account in order to understand the new relationships and impact.

So, what is the real “ROI” of Social Media? I do not have a clear and sustaining answer yet.
A new digital landscape requires as a new way of conducting and quantifying business.
I believe the first step in this paradigm shift is to release the legacy of conventional business rules. Comparison -with old standards- is in this case a devaluation of the real opportunities and power of Social Media.
From there on, known metrics and KPI’s will have new interpretations which explain relations and money flows better than the current ones.

It’s a long learning curve and many challenges won’t be solved within months. Take the business effects of Social Media into long term strategies, set aside budget to research and test this phenomenon. In the mean time, transitions will happen and New and Old ways will meet.

What do you think the ROI of Social Media is?