Lessons from FOE5

I recently attended one day of the "Futures of Entertainment 5" conference at M.I.T., which included a diverse group of panelist from advertising, academia, and entertainment.  Below, I've included everything I learned at the conference in one raw information dump...

Intro (William Uricchio of MIT, Ilya Vedrashko of Hill Holiday ad agency)

---In Europe, they are experimenting with technology that can transfer the data of 700 DVDs in one second.  It’s not publicly available, but supposedly demonstrates the expanding power of the internet.

---The Progressive Insurance Facebook page has 35,000 “likes.”  The Facebook page for their Flo character has 3.2 million “likes.”

---“Advertisers are content producers now.”

Panel 1: “Spreadable Media” (Henry Jenkins of USC, Sam Ford of Peppercom Strategic Communications, Joshua Green of Undercurrent)

---I think this Jenkins guy claimed to have invented the term “spreadable media.”  That is what you do as a professor, I guess.  You come up with a new name for something which is happening anyway, and then you get credit for the whole phenomenon.

---Supposedly the word “viral” is not accurate because it doesn’t recognize the agency of the community which spreads the thing around.  So that’s why “spreadable media” is better.  (I plan to still use the word “viral,” because people will actually know what I’m talking about.)  During the Q&A portion, Jenkins had a good phrase about how people might incorrectly think of social media, calling it the “smallpox infected blanket” theory of viral media.  This is what happens when you think you can force the viral phenomenon.  But just because you put it out there, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will spread.

---Copyright and piracy: Copyright owners have the right to exercise total control over their property.  But depending on the situation, it may or may not be in their BEST INTEREST to exercise control.

---Panelists recommended “Sita Sings the Blues” as an example of something that was released in an unconventional way.

---If you need to talk about internet piracy in a nice way, it’s better to say “unauthorized circulation” than “piracy.

---Distribution or circulation?  Distribution = top-down.  Circulation = part top-down, part bottom-up.

---A “gift economy” has different rules than a regular economy.  This is used in the context of user-generated content, crowd-sourced stuff, etc.  Do the people need to get paid for this?  Or would it corrupt their labor of love?  (Example: Would it be like paying for sex?)

Panel 2: Audience Participation in Decision-Making (C. Lee Harrington of Miami University, Seung Bak of Dramafever, Jamin Warren of Kill Screen)

---Piracy = a demand for content which has yet to be monetized.  (Sounds like something that belongs in the last panel, but was actually mentioned here.)

---Bak (Dramafever video streaming website): Korean TV show “Heartstrings” was a ratings flop in Korea, but a big hit on the internet among non-Koreans.

---Harrington: Fan participation in soap operas is a long-standing tradition that didn’t start with the internet; fans have long tried to drive soap opera plots through letter-writing campaigns.

---Fans who love a television program can become connected to their advertisers, too.  When the TV show Chuck was going to be cancelled, fans brought their protests directly to Subway, who saved the show with a sponsorship deal.  When All My Children was about to be cancelled, Hoover vacuums pulled all their advertising from ABC in protest.  It didn’t exactly work, but it endeared Hoover to soap fans by actually NOT advertising.  Whoever was running Hoover at the time said that members of his family were big fans of the show.  This gave Hoover’s protest a “perceived authenticity.”

---Warren (runs a website/magazine about video games): Video game fans want different levels of control.  Some people just want to be led along (this sounds like the video games I don’t like).  Some people want to explore someone else’s creation (this sounds like the video games I do like).  Some people want to be able to create their own thing (I’m not sophisticated enough for this).

---Due to the success of unauthorized “mods” (people hacking into and altering their games), video and computer games sometimes come with the built-in ability to create your own levels etc.  When you allow the users to create, you have to balance simplicity (what beginners want) and the ability to have more flexibility, control, and creativity (what sophisticated users want).

---Warren mentioned the fact that the Goldeneye video game is more successful than the Goldeneye movie.  Afterwards, I mentioned to him that I was writing something about this myself.  During our conversation, he had a general criticism about video game marketing: “Video games are usually marketed as a product, not an experience,” but mentioned the Call of Duty “We Are All Soldiers” campaign as an example of good video game marketing.

---The anonymity of internet memes: Even when people have no ability to receive credit in any way, they sometimes enjoy collaboration for its own sake.

Panel 3: Crowdsourcing/Crowdfunding (Mirko Schafer of Utrecht University, Bruno Natal of Queremos, Timo Vuorensola of Wreckamovie, and Caitlin Boyle of Film Sprout)

---Timo was clearly the star of this panel.  For one thing, he had a foreign accent (Finland).  Also, he is making a film about Nazis who live on the dark side of the moon.  Every time a new subject came up, he would begin a sentence by saying something like, “So, the way you can apply this to Moon Nazis…”  And somehow it was still funny every time.

---While Timo’s films elicit ideas and money from fans, he insists that the films are ultimately a “dictatorship.”  He and his producers make all the real decisions, and they get all the credit and money.  I guess he’s not quite so idealistic about stuff being “bottom-up.”

---One of Timo’s mottos regarding social media strategies is “fail fast.”  If people don’t respond to it quickly, just get rid of it.

---More Machiavellian talk from Timo (or Alinskyite talk?): It’s much easier to get people motivated when you present an enemy they can fight.  For example, people are more likely to support your campaign if you post a video of an obnoxious person saying, “It will never work.”  Then, you ask them to help prove that person wrong.

---Bruno is a young guy from Brazil who promotes concerts based on crowd funding.  When the concerts make enough money, the crowd investors get paid back.  However, they don’t make any money off of the concert; they just get the joy of making the concert happen.  Bruno and his partners make a profit.  Bruno says that people who give their money toward his concerts never complain about this because of the fact that the accounting is totally transparent.  He says, “People are OK with profit if you are honest about it.”

---No one gets anything done unless there is some sort of pressure or deadline.  Even crowds need to be put on a deadline.

---The size of the crowd is not as important as the passion of the crowd.

---No one gets noticed in social media unless they are on multiple platforms.

Panel 4: Location-based services (Germaine Halegoua of University of Kansas, Andy Ellwood of Gowalla.com, and some lady who was a last-minute replacement so her name isn't on my program)

---Online photos and virtual check-ins are today’s scrapbook.  (People don’t make real scrapbooks anymore.)

---No one uses foursquare.com for the coupons and financial incentives it gives.  It’s all about the social aspect of letting people know where they are or have been, or the gamification of building up your statistics.

---People expect that others will stalk their Facebook or their Foursquare, but if people actually come up to you and talk face-to-face with you about something you posted online, somehow that seems creepy.  So people feel like it’s OK for others to stalk them, but it’s not OK to actually respond honestly to what they’ve posted online?  Weird, but often appears to be true.

---Andy: QR codes are everywhere and people think everyone else is using them... but actually they are dumb and almost no one uses them.

---Andy: People are unwilling to waste time on anything.  If your website opens with a flash graphic, I’ve already given up on it.

Panel 5: Privacy concerns (Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard and Helen Nissenbaum of NYU)

---Nissenbaum has helped invent internet privacy tools like TrackMeNot and AdBlock Plus.

---Despite her work on privacy, Nissenbaum admits that voluntary sharing of information is different from loss of privacy, and if people demand “personalization,” they must give up some privacy.

---People want to get rid of online ads, but do they have an ethical obligation to tolerate them?  (After all, these ads are how they “pay” for “free” sites.)

---Traditionally, entertainment generates profit by either charging money or selling ads.  But is there now another way: profit by extracting labor, specifically through gamification?  Zittrain makes the analogy to Tom Sawyer and the fence; the work is portrayed as a game so that people want to do it for free.  The ESP game is an internet example.