It’s important to note that Twitter  is a platform, not a news service, and also that regardless, no one outlet can control the internet anyway: That’s the beauty and curse of the beast. So when news breaks it’s about two things: accuracy and distribution.  Right now we’re stuck with a drunk leaf blower in a flour factory. I’ll be the first to champion these tools as platforms for change, opportunity and knowledge sharing, but it has become clear we – and especially the reeling news media – are in need of a system that helps Twitter et al sort through the haze of breaking news and get the facts straight, faster. The current model and tools are not clearing things up – they are adding to the mess.

A centralized, collaborative evidence table

Sifting through the mountains of analysis on the bombings alone, I couldn’t help but think of the customized Twitter Nascar hashtag page that was put together in 2011, and how it tied in nicely with the New Yorker digital “evidence table” it describes for Reddit users. So one first step I propose is a one-stop place or system in times of important news or mass emergency. Literally just a single agreed upon place to gather the facts, or a system of checks and balances free from speculation. Like a central hub for help to be channeled and extra information provided – a bit like an active Storify stream.

This feels like a simple fix to a complicated problem at the source. Clearly there are huge questions about who administers it, but one thing is clear: It must be solitary and held to a strict code that is pre-agreed upon, possibly among a cross-collaboration of the major newspapers. For instance, each might host the same page so traffic stays where the trust is with the user.  There is no speculation: Simple fact dissemination and information being released – only after  it is verified – so that the news-consuming public has a go-to source that is consistent.

The ability to deal with errors

Imagine if Twitter or Facebook could lower the relevancy of an incorrect tweet or post in real-time so that bad information was less likely to be seen. Reddit and pals is a more difficult kettle of fish because of their very nature.  We will need to help them help themselves by providing clear information in order for them to do what they do best – engage with it.

The Atlantic wrote recently about the need to undo things on Twitter because it is currently a one-way system that, while capable of self-correcting over time, is pretty flawed when it comes to doing so in the moment. And so we need a system that enables users to revoke or modify what has been said so that it is instantly identifiable. Internet fundamentalists find this idea uncomfortable but many I suspect would cherish the ability to be alerted to incorrect information so the continued dissemination of knowingly false info can be minimized.  A technical nightmare sure, but something to work towards.

A need for innovation and cooperation

Right now big data is not being used or harnessed by news organization beyond visualization or longer-form pieces but I imagine a time (and not too far in the future either) when we see news outlets using Twitter and company in a much smarter fashion than simply looking at volume spikes and “first-grabs.”  So for instance, outlets might soon use data to predict, locate and activate “sleeper-unit” journalists (and trained citizen journalists) who are armed with Facetime technology – or simply volunteer individuals streaming through a phone that a news outlet is able to instantly locate via GPS. It’s interesting to note that Twitter has just appointed its first Data Editor who is charged with “explain[ing] how this phenomenon works.”

We have two options when it comes to “fixing” truly crucial news and real-time mass events: 1) Assume that what we’re doing now works but will need a few tweaks, or;  2) Realize that our current system is no longer tenable and so needs a complete overhaul. Any honest appraisal will quickly come to the brutal truth that the current system is failing, and so needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. In the short term, we will need to move toward something like a system of “Flash tweets:” site-wide notifications, that simultaneously tweet, post, alert, offer a donation system, etc to news sites when major events transpire. I’d like to see a system like this fleshed out by the social juggernauts as they further flex their news muscles.

Paul Armstrong is founder of  Digital Orange Consulting. Contact him via paularmstrong.net, or on Twitter @paul__armstrong or @TheMediaIsDying.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Photo courtesy Edward Meyer.

Community-inspired initiatives, much like journalism, need a sense of purpose, passion and objective urgency – the ability to look unflinchingly at a subject and capture it in a way that’s surprising and insightful. With that in mind, here’s how some of the most popular communities and social networks are experimenting with original content — and what works and doesn’t.

Tumblr

Storyboard sought to surface and report on interesting stories and users within the Tumblr community, applying a kind of branded journalism and marketing mix that’s becoming increasingly commonplace.

The failure of Storyboard was in its inability to find an editorial voice that resonated in the community. Tumblr users communicate with a pidgin lexicon of reaction GIFs, memes, and blog entries, but Storyboard took a more print-oriented approach. The content (and layout) was reminiscent of an in-flight magazine, as if trying to sell the reader on a particular destination.

Of course, Storyboard did produce a variety of laudable content in partnership with esteemed publishers, most notably its Letters from Newtown project with Mother Jones and WNYC’s look inside the New York Times morgue (and the Daily Dot syndicated a significant number of Storyboard articles). But the numbers don’t lie and Storyboard’s most popular posts hover around just 6,000 notes – surely a factor in the decision to shutter it.

Facebook

Like Storyboard, Facebook Stories is a branded editorial effort that relies on publishing partners and user submissions. Last month, former managing editor Dan Fletcher proclaimed the social network “doesn’t need reporters,” because there’s “no more engaging content Facebook could produce than you talking to your family and friends.” To be blunt, it’s almost as if Fletcher hasn’t seen a typical Facebook post. The most talked about pages on the social network are dominated by image spam and mindless posts about “teen swag.”

The greater  problem with Facebook Stories has been one of approach. It publishes monthly, a bizarre strategy that utterly defies the very best characteristics of the site and is obviously in direct conflict with the online ethos. Content on Facebook is instantaneous and reactionary; it’s about celebrating small moments not just milestones, and any editorial effort should mirror that.

Facebook Stories needs to take a cue from Upworthy – a comparable editorial effort centered on inspiring content – and focus less on presentation and more on how content should be packaged and shared. 

YouTube

YouTube made headlines when it invested $200 million in original channels and programming last January. Then, after cutting its losses on 70 percent of those recipients, it promptly dropped another $100 million in November. The few shows that actually succeeded – most notably, Philip DeFranco’s SourceFed, Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry channel, and the VlogBrothers’ Crash Course – were the ones that understood how to connect specifically with a YouTube audience and what makes content succeed on the platform. Notably, none of them are TV veterans.

The quick lesson is you can’t fake authenticity on YouTube, and celebrity status often doesn’t translate to subscriber counts. The content has to be immediate and impactful. As Hank Green of the Vlogbrothers (SciShow, CrashCourse) noted in a recent Tumblr post:  ”Online video isn’t about how good it looks, it’s about how good it is.”

LinkedIn

The career-oriented network is oddly the rare success story of implementing original content. Even before LinkedIn’s $90 million acquisition of popular news-reader Pulse, the professional network was making all the right moves in terms of content creation and curation with a leadership board in the form of LinkedIn Influencers and a daily news feed that distributes third-party content selected by users.

Where the company has invested in original content, it’s done so by popular demand, tapping proven influencers like Virgin CEO Richard Branson and ex-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski for exclusive articles that cater specifically to the network’s business-savvy audience. As Jennifer Van Grove noted for CNET, “content is quickly becoming the new connection on LinkedIn.” 

Outliers

The web is becoming one big imageboard, where the emphasis is placed on viral sharing. That can be seen in everything from Facebook’s redesign to LinkedIn’s revamp. A recent study of Reddit found that 86 percent of the posts on the social news site were easily disposable: image macros, photos, and videos.

The challenge facing that site, not to mention communities like Pinterest and Instagram – whose content strategies thus far have been comprised mostly of curated tags – is to create something of permanent value for the community, to offer more than a temporary spotlight.

Simply put, you have to add value. Social networks need to support the native content efforts of their users and accentuate it where they can. But if they are going to provide editorial content themselves, it must be in the spirit of the community, not forced from outside of it.

Austin Powell is assistant managing editor of The Daily Dot, which calls itself the hometown newspaper of the World Wide Web.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

In case you missed it, here’s Flipboard’s explanation and demonstration of its new capabilities:

It’s not if, but when

Now don’t get me wrong, Flipboard is no Facebook. Its 50 million-ish user base isn’t particularly active  (though I estimate only around 4 million are active, based on ratios from previous public statements). Not yet, anyway. And thank God, or the media/publishing industry would likely have a significant crisis on its hands, as opposed to one that’s somewhat in the distance still.

The reality the publishing needs to understand, though, is that Flipboard has (smartly) maneuvered itself into a powerful position. With the flick of a switch, it could deal a serious blow not only to the traditional old media but also to a variety of digital platforms – Tumblr, Flickr, WordPress, among others – as it pivots from purely curation-based interaction to one that offers users full-blown creation abilities. Indeed, this is likely its only future, since without the agreement of the major content creators, Flipboard would be little more than a collection of Tweets and blog posts.

It’s about money

Currently the ad model Flipboard is using is fine, but it’s fair to say it’s not setting anyone’s world on fire. That could change in a heartbeat, though, if the magazines Regular Joes create take off and real readerships are built. Could the next powerhouse of media come from a bedroom in Delaware?

It’s safe to assume then that the company is actively exploring revenue paths behind closed doors right now: micropayments, revenue-share or even subscriptions. Imagine consumers subscribing to read other consumer-curated magazines, or locking down content only to be opened like mag apps are now, or as in-app purchases per gaming, or even geo-location apps (Grindr). At the end of the day, though, it’s crucial to note that Flipboard has what no other publisher does: love from Apple, and quite possibly the credit card numbers that go with that love.

It’s about attention

Bless anyone in the media for not believing that this move hasn’t just made their job far harder. A reminder: You’ve just received yet another huge set of competitors vying for the same eyeballs you covet. If history is anything to go by, most people already feel quite satisfied parsing news (á la Google News) so this shift should be sending chills of terror through professional curators like editors and writers. After all, going big is likely only a creative ad campaign away for Flipboard.

Another major feature that news reports of Flipboard’s update typically neglected to mention is the bookmarklet capability. The idea is that readers don’t even have to be on Flipboard to still add content, from anywhere on the web. Awesome for users, existentially terrifying (and awesome) for the media.

Content creation is coming

So what to do? True, full-featured content creation capabilities are doubtless coming to Flipboard. How aggressive Flipboard moves in that area will be interesting, as the company obviously has to be careful about biting the hand that feeds it. (In fact several publishers have already pulled back from the partnerships, choosing instead to focus on their own apps). The only way for publishers and the media to fight back then will be to remove articles from the system, or cut a deal. However, I have said it before and I’ll say it again: No paywall will ever be truly successful unless all the competition is paywalled, too.

Either way, we have a glimpse of a possible future and it’s both beautiful and terrifying. For those unconvinced of the power and implications of what I’m talking about, take a minute to check out the custom @themediaisdying magazine that I cobbled together in precisely 33 seconds and you’ll see what I mean. Now imagine what happens when tens of millions of people start doing the same.

Paul Armstrong is owner of Digital Orange Consulting; follow him at www.paularmstrong.net or on Twitter @TheMediaIsDying.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Photo courtesy Ri han/Shutterstock.com.

Content that reacts to being read

Around 1952, computer scientist Grace Hopper introduced new thinking about compilers –machine-independent software that would translate code written in human language into computer friendly binary ones. John Von Nuemann took Dr. Hopper’s work to a new level in his unfinished masterpiece “The Computer and the Brain,” which theorized that massive versions of compilers would eventually result in computers so intelligent that no human mind could keep up with them.

In a way, books and magazines of the future will act as sort of human compilers, translating your reading desires into pure machine language that tells the publisher how to present the material for faster and more pleasurable absorption. It’s difficult to comprehend what these experiences will be like once machines themselves begin creating material for humans. The content itself will be designed to gather information about the reader, mash it up with data about others interested in related subjects, authors, or publishers, then decide what content to present to you next. This is what we mean by Intelligent Content

Curation will guide content

Some argue that readers no longer want curated content, however we believe people always have and always will look to trusted sources for guidance, and that’s where books and magazines will continue to add value. In a world where people are already inundated with information, it’s only going to get worse as we get more and more smothered by everyone else’s stream of consciousness, courtesy of Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and whatever is next.

So the short-term impact of the Intelligent Content movement will feel something like the music industry since 2000. MP3′s meant the end of curated CDs. Now, playlists are compiled and shared with the help of Pandora, Spotify or Songza. Thus magazines and books could soon become the Pandora of dynamic content, with artificial intelligence applets that choose and adapt content, then tailor it to the reader’s context and taste. We see the beginnings of this with Flipboard, but it will only get more advanced.

Experimenting outside the print paradigm

Massive waves of disruption always bring opportunity. Publishers like Hearst and Conde Nast continue to experiment with and push the boundaries of enhanced reading experiences on tablets, but many other publishers still obey the rules of printed media, requiring you to “flip” through virtual pages as the primary mode of navigation. WordPress and Tumblr appear to be closest to offering an always-on and continuously updated experience based on analytics about the reader. The flexibility and customization they offer provide a glimpse into how written and visual content will eventually be continuously reconfigured and redesigned by the moment to accommodate data gathered about what you like to read.

Our future might be filled with mash-ups of video, audio, real-time updates, new navigation interfaces and even content that interacts with a reader’s environment (such as augmented reality). Digital publishers can experiment with new hyper-responsive designs as well as back-end databases that mine your other web activities to determine what you’ll like. For example, Quartz (qz.com), a digital only news site launched in September last year, uses WordPress and responsive design to customize the reader’s experience on a device level. Companies such as Gravity, Contextly and Sailthru offer digital publishers new tools to create more personalized experiences based on a visitor’s profile and previous reading behavior.

The algorithm will be the new editor

In the long term, the algorithm will likely replace the editor and curator. Quick and automatic branding and positioning of the book or magazine on a glowing electronic slab will become more important than the most sage human editor. For focused, long-form content, algorithms will sort out content discovery, delivery and presentation. Google already conquered discovery with algorithms, and now content aggregators such as Zite and Prismatic offer readers an elegant, gated magazine-like design using data from the reader’s social networking profiles, past reading habits and current location.

Using big data to create content on demand

Intelligent Content can also help publishers create content in a more cost-efficient way. One of the main challenges publishers face is predicting which content will be popular. Analyzing the big data that comes from reading and search behavior will help them predict which articles will bring in a much-needed audience.

Recently, researchers at MIT developed an algorithm that can predict topics that will be trending on Twitter hours in advance. Similarly, startups such as Content Fleet and Parse.ly use algorithms to identify emerging popular topics on search engines. This way, a publisher will be able to create content with almost a certain return on investment.

Publishers who recognize the design- and data-driven future of Intelligent Content will have a head start. They can experiment now with new ways to deliver content and measure how its readers engage with it. That data in turn can help them deliver even more engaging content experiences, ultimately preparing them for a future of Intelligent Content.

Roger Wood is a product designer and statistician, and founder of the (Art+Data) Institute.  Evelyn Robbrecht is a Content Design Fellow at the Institute; previously she helped launch the mobile and new media department of Sanoma Media Belgium. 

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Photo courtesy of Viorel Sima/Shutterstock.com.

Great UX, thwarted by walled gardens

Readmill is a great reading environment. That their designers obsess on visceral user experience makes it a true pleasure to use. It may very well be the best “feeling” ereader application out there. This is a critical attribute for an environment in which you can spend hours a day.

But it suffers from the thing that any book-related company or product or startup that is not a Kindle suffers from: It’s a slog to get content into it.

This is a discussion less about DRM (although, it is that, too) and more about seamless user experience. Sure, you can hunt down a copy of “Gone Girl” on a website you’ve never bought a book from before. Enter your credit-card information. Download it. Then upload it to your Readmill account. Or, you can click “Buy now with 1-Click” on Amazon.com and have it on all your devices in 10 seconds, ready to be read in the Kindle reading application. You have to be really persuasive to beat that kind of convenience.

Since Amazon would never allow its library to be accessed by reading applications other than Kindle, this is a non-trivial problem for a startup like Readmill to surmount.

A community to challenge Amazon

Goodreads has always been a bit of an enigma. Truth be told, I’ve never been an avid user. There’s a number of reasons why, but the biggest is simply that the distance between my books — and the activity that happens within them — and Goodreads has always seemed ginormous. That is, updating reading statuses for books on a website always felt odd and forced. It felt odd in 2007 when I was mainly reading physical books, and it feels odder still in 2013, where I’m mainly reading Kindle books. That said, 16 million people clearly don’t agree with me.

So why did Amazon buy Goodreads? Well, the promise of a collaboration between Goodreads and a great reading platform (like Readmill) loomed large. A combination like that had the chance of being the Last Great Stand against Amazon. Goodreads is many things but most defensibly it is a community. A strong community. An engaged community. (And now, a slightly enraged community.) Sixteen million users is nothing to dismiss. It’s not Facebook or Instagram levels, but 16 million excited people is a firehose to be reckoned with. What Goodreads didn’t have was a reading application.

It also should be noted that publishers love Goodreads. No surprise there; it’s just as one would imagine. Goodreads is an amazing platform for promoting books to an avid, core readership. So if Goodreads were to develop a reading application, it doesn’t take much imagination to see them signing up the catalogs of the big five and launching a Goodreads store for the Goodreads reader. And were that reading application to plug seamlessly into the Goodreads ecosystem — the community — then getting those 16 million users to switch from Kindle to Goodreads Reader would have been one of the easier platform sells in publishing.

Goodreads users already want to hang out at Goodreads. If they could read there too — in an app — I suspect many would.

Kindle flaws present opportunity

Despite the maturity of the market, the tablet reading space is still weirdly under-polished. Kindle reading environments have hardly changed in the last three years. The Kindle app has seen some improvement — mainly in support for complex KF8 formatted titles — but the polish around the reading experience, that visceral component, for novels and other mass-market books has remained largely unchanged. Books in the Kindle applications still don’t hyphenate. And page slides still stutter ever so slightly. These are small details that add up.

Certain polish aside, Kindle’s strengths are manifold. It has a vast catalog and transactional trust. It has all our credit-card information, making purchasing seamless. It is also supremely good at cloud data — consistent and reliable storage and retrieval of our books across devices. What it doesn’t have — and no inkling or iota of — is community.

What might have been

So you can see, there was a combo here. A curious matchup. Take one of the most polished, most satisfying digital book reading applications and merge it with one of the most engaged reading-specific communities. A marketplace could have developed that might have been the first real competition against Kindle. Not one built around competing with Kindle toe-to-toe as Barnes & Noble and Kobo have attempted (and failed at), but competing on ground on which Amazon has no footing: community.

It’s a certainty that Amazon, too, saw this. Which is why the sale this week comes as little surprise. I’ve always imagined that secretly, deep down in the murky stacks of Amazon headquarters, they had a crackerjack team making kindle.amazon.com the best social reading network in the world. Maybe they did. Or maybe they just realized it would be easier to buy the one that already existed.

Craig Mod is an independent writer, designer and publisher focused on publishing and storytelling. You can follow him on Twitter @craigmod.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to PaidContent or GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Photo courtesy Vitchanan Photography/Shutterstock.com.

Businesses or individuals that communicate regularly about their industries, local happenings, or public policy – or that take any sort of stand on any of these matters – can find themselves facing defamation lawsuits that are intended simply to intimidate and silence a voice. Such suits are common enough to have a moniker: “SLAPP” suits, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.

Easy to file, and easier still to threaten, it’s difficult to get even the most frivolous case dismissed without incurring serious time, cost and stress.  And as each side bears its own costs in most civil litigation in the U.S., a deep-pocketed opponent can use the threat of financial ruin to get a less-well-heeled opponent to fold in the face of even a completely meritless defamation case. It’s time that the Federal government join states in taking action to protect individuals and businesses from this unnecessary threat.

A clear cut case

The time spent consuming information and entertainment goods is an important element of the overall satisfaction (or, as economists call it, utility) they provide. So while consumers may not use a calculator each time they go to the movies, buy a book, or subscribe to a magazine,  the calculation of utility is implicit in every transaction, despite any obstacles in comparing media across platforms.

In our increasingly digital world, the challenge for consumers in determining a given product’s value or utility will continue to shrink, creating an environment where consumers will explicitly consider “Cost Per Hour,” or CPH, when buying content. Likewise, providers will have the tools to measure CPH and the ability to influence it. The result is that providers who embrace CPH as a metric will have greater opportunities and success for charging consumers for their content.

How we currently consume

With analog channels, consumers associate value with the plastic, celluloid, and newsprint that are mere containers for the content itself. (The value of television programming, too, is clouded by distribution considerations.  If the cost of the “dumb pipe” is stripped out, video content fees would become transparent.) Consumers will have an easier time making CPH calculations when they pay for zeros and ones separate from paper and pipes.

The chart below shows a few sample CPH calculations for selected channels for U.S. consumers (figures taken from a variety of sources and are meant as illustration).

From listening to bundle bashers, cord cutters,and over-the-top enthusiasts, one would assume consumers suffer from an astronomical pay TV CPH, yet it turns out it’s a serious bargain. And if  you were to adjust for the average 2.6 persons per U.S. household, pay TV’s CPH drops to a mere 23 cents! (But similar adjustments apply to Netflix, the most economical option among the listed channels.) Newspapers and magazines, which tend to count pass-along readers, deserve a CPH adjustment, too.

Digital media will help solve the valuation problem associated with multiple users. The future promises greater use of personal consumption devices like smartphones and tablets, as well as greater personalization of shared screens (be they computers or TVs) such as with Netflix’s planned personal profiles feature.

Future generations will know only digital information goods. So their value calculations, unlike ours, won’t be rooted in analog versions or clouded by digital-analog bundles. Instead they will be keenly aware of a product’s value proposition based on CPH.

Opportunities for content providers

For media companies, the difficulty of measuring time spent with analog content is well known. Time magazine is unaware if a subscriber has read an issue cover-to-cover or simply deposited it, unread, in the recycle bin. Likewise, Nielsen certainly provides insights into TV viewership, but today’s television ratings are a blunt instrument compared with the possibilities afforded by digital platforms.

Digital content providers, informed by enhanced analytics, are starting to have a growing tool set to positively impact CPH. As an example, the Wall Street Journal Online offers readers 76 newsletters and alerts and maintains 26 Twitter accounts to encourage them to engage more with its product. These digital methods for pushing content to readers and drawing them back to the main property increases engagement, which results in a real drop in CPH.

As an example of a company that has long understood the impact of the principles of CPH, Netflix famously offered a $1 million Netflix Prize to anyone who could create a better prediction algorithm for accurately matching its viewers with content they’d like. As Netflix clearly understands, better content discovery translates into more viewership and smaller CPH – and in turn lower churn, as customers find value in the product.

The media and entertainment business grows more complex as consumers increasingly expect any content, any time, any place, on any platform. Concurrently, consumers migrating from analog to digital platforms will become more sensitive to the relation between price and consumption time. CPH is an actionable metric for an industry seeking profitable models for charging consumers.

David Justus is a principal at contentcurrents.com, a digital media consultancy. Follow him on Twitter @ContentCurrents.

Photo courtesy of discpicture/Shutterstock.com.

Of note, just before the end of the year the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office temporarily invalidated Apple’s vaunted “pinch-to-zoom” patent, one of several found to be infringed by Samsung in August – generating a $1.05 billion damages award for Apple. On the same day, Kodak sold its imaging patent portfolio for $525 million to a consortium of 12 buyers (including none other than Apple and Samsung, along with HTC, Faceboook, Amazon, Fujifilm, RIM, Huawei, Adobe and Shutterfly).

In the coming year it’s a safe bet that global patent litigation and multi-billion dollar transactions will continue unabated, but here are a few other key trends we can expect to influence and shape the global IP marketplace.

The rush to the patent office begins

March 16, 2013, will mark the first day that the U.S. switches from a “First to Invent” to a “First (inventor) to File” system, under the America Invents Act (better known as U.S. patent reform). Whereas U.S. patent laws previously attributed priority rights to the first documented inventor, it is now largely the case that the first party to file a patent application will get the patent. Thus we can expect a rush to the patent office by companies large and small – adding to the already huge backlog at the USPTO of some 600,000 patent applications. Small businesses with limited legal budgets likely will be negatively impacted by the change, as it puts them at a pronounced disadvantage to their larger, better funded competitors.

Trolls will invade the cloud

With the number of patent lawsuits increasing every year – more than 3,000 were filed in the U.S. last year – there’s no reason to expect the pace to slow. Much of this litigation is fueled by so-called non-practicing entities, more popularly known as “patent trolls,” that base their entire business model on the use of patent enforcement, typically against multiple defendants.

Patent litigation in general, and troll litigation in particular, thrives in markets where the patent landscape is ambiguous, where there are complex products with multiple features, and where markets experience periods of explosive economic growth. The mobile market has seen its share of litigation frenzy over the last several years, and while the cloud computing market is clearly fertile ground, it will be at least five years before we see the type of  full-blown war mobile is now enduring. That said, the first signs of troll litigation are already emerging, such as CloudingIP, an NPE that filed patent lawsuits against RackSpace and several other defendants last year.

Copyright will take center stage

While patents have been all the rage in the IP marketplace over the last decade, content-related IP such as trademarks and copyrights are moving front and center with the proliferation of digital media and online content. Organizations such as Creative Commons have taken the lead in creating an infrastructure for the sharing of creative content online, giving the creator broad control over terms for sharing it.

The still-brewing debate over the ownership of Instagram photos, though, highlights another alternative to the creator-ownership approach – one that gives control over content to the platform that hosts it. The question moving forward is whether the copyright ownership of digital content will remain with creators or will be transferred to the platforms that host them

IP strategy is moving to the early phase

The Yahoo patent lawsuit against Facebook, filed on the eve of the Facebook IPO, highlights the need for startups to have a strategy around building a strong IP portfolio. While Facebook is no typical startup, it solved the problem in a non-typical way, by spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying patents from Microsoft to quickly increase its arsenal and defend against future litigation.

Obviously, few startups can afford a quick and expensive rebound like that, and therefore one lesson learned in today’s highly litigious marketplace is that any IP strategy needs to start from day one, even for cash-starved startups. Patent litigation against successful startups is picking up, and it is against this backdrop that IP strategy in the early phase is expected to become an absolute necessity for startups that wish to “cross the chasm” successfully.

Competition will go global

A recently published report by the World IP Organization (WIPO) revealed that in 2011, the number of patent applications filed in China exceeded those filed in the U.S. for the first time. That should come as no surprise to anyone following the pace of patent filing in China, an activity that has been prioritized by the Chinese government with the ambitious goal of reaching 2 million patent applications a year by 2015. Another noteworthy trend:  Of the list of the top-50 companies that received U.S. patents in 2011, the vast majority are foreign.

Both trends suggest the continued and increased involvement of foreign companies in U.S. patent litigation (as the mobile patent wars demonstrated), as well as the increased enforcement of IP rights overseas, and, in particular, in Asia.

Efrat Kasznik is president of Foresight Valuation Group, a Silicon-Valley based IP consulting firm, and is also a lecturer on IP strategy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. You can find her on LinkedIn.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Globalization of professional content

The act of taking premium content across borders to reach new audiences has proven to be a boon: It generates meaningful incremental digital dollars through subscription services;  it legitimizes a content experience that previously had been dominated by online piracy; and it builds momentum for content and brand equity for the coming years.

Ironically, it is the home market that sometimes moves the slowest. While not all territories are equally profitable, content is traditionally sold in a segmented manner siloed by language and country. Being able to slowly unfragment these rights through global expansion provides scale and future upside that is worth investing in today; this de-fragmentation will continue the efforts to globalize more professional content at an increased pace.

Monetization via subscription

Subscription will continue to be the dominant business model. Viewers have demonstrated that they recognize significant value in having access to premium content across their continuingly connected digital lifestyle – and are much more willing to pay for convenience of access on devices. This month’s retail activity showed all-time highs in consumer spending towards a personal device experience. Monolithic subscription services such as NetFlix and Hulu, which generate $8 ARPU per month, will be challenged in a market where DirecTV and DISH generate on average $80 ARPU per month.

What hasn’t changed is the demand for professionally produced content, which still costs just as much to create. Today’s market data has proven that users are willing to pay top dollar for traditional Hollywood quality content – but a mere $8 a month simply isn’t enough to support creating it in the same volume as we do now. One of the ways to reach a happy medium then is through targeted channels of in-depth content.

Channels of in-depth content

Channels will become much more targeted and personalized. Over 60 years ago, broadcast television introduced channels 1-10 in the U.S., and, furthering this momentum, channelization provided channels 11-1,000 via cable and satellite in the 1980s. As this decade is earmarked by seismic technology and media changes, the next few years will be laser-focused on creating the next 100,000 channels – delivered across a mix of broadcast, cable, mobile and smart TV apps – each tailored for a set of unique lifestyles.

Do you enjoy fly-fishing, building replica battleships, or perfecting your Portuguese? The next 100k channels are all about delivering a deep and targeted experience that was previously not possible, because the audience was fragmented geographically, the high fixed costs of creating a new cable channel were prohibitive, or the behavioral targeting was not possible. Viewers of highly targeted and in-depth content experiences are more than willing to dive in and pay.  These experiences are much more than simple online video delivery and make up a unique social and lifestyle experience.

Redefining e-commerce

There will be significant progress made towards a new monetization model beyond the traditional ad-supported and subscription service ones. The American household spends, on average, nearly five hours per day watching video content. As such it is one of the best methods we know for generating product interest.

However, the one-way push model also happens to be grossly inefficient. Online streaming has the opportunity to revolutionize the way products accompany content, and are ultimately introduced to viewers. The opportunities are boundless when one thinks of how awesome an experience it would be if we can realize the full potential of combining streaming video and e-commerce – a next-generation Home Shopping Network layered on top of any content. After all, what is video but a medium for the aspiration of product, lifestyles and experiences?

Kun Gao is CEO and co-founder of Crunchyroll, Inc., a global video network for Japanese anime and Asian media.

To be clear, this isn’t about finality or absolutes, and we should especially not think in that fashion in a field such as digital media and its technologies – a field that is forever transforming. We should, however, consider the subject of maturity in its relative sense, in comparison to points of reference: a time, a sector, a different pace, perspectives that always evolve.

Media, as a segment, has always been unique (and fortunate) in its public relations. After all, it’s perhaps the only sector that reports on itself. The challenge then is to sift through the noise and vested interest. To help us out, we can rely on the cold, disinterested financial markets.

Here’s what we have observed:

(1) There has been venture capital consolidation, leading to fewer individual points with bigger and possibly less adventurous pools to deploy.

(2) There is an increased emphasis on revenues and earnings (as distinct from pure potential and option value), accentuated by post-IPO flagship properties that have been penalized as the operation has not kept up with the optionality.

(3) A significant portion of M&A activity has consisted of smallish “acqui-hires“ that take out the upside of willing sellers before the startup has hit its theoretical stride.

(4) Cash accumulation by some of the largest competitors continues, and sometimes the cash is even sent back to shareholders through dividends or buybacks.

(5) Many of the sector leaders have underperformed relative to analyst growth expectations in the latest reporting period.

With this backdrop, a number of predictions are in order. Think of these as New Year’s forecasts if you like, considering the season, but more truly they’re observations for the visible future.

• With maturation in the underlying assets, look for maturation in the way these are funded. As we climb up from small and early venture equity to mid-stage to late-stage to growth equity, buyout finance, and even debt capital, look for all of these follow-on pieces to increase in prominence and traffic. Some of the sector linchpins are already tapping the bond markets and securing debt ratings, which reminds us that media was at one time a borrowing sector (when it was old enough).

• Look for greater business emphasis on volume, capabilities and capitalization. While it pays to be small, nimble, and agile – able to navigate sharp turns in periods of high volatility and find plenty of new openings into which to dive – when the terrain is calmer and the openings narrower, this value proposition can start to lose its charm. Look for dominance (if not survival) to overtake iteration as buzzword of choice in our vernacular.

• In the strategic community, look for M&A activity to take place based on the integration of disparate parts. We have already observed the confluence of media and commerce, of finance and technology, of media and finance, and obviously media and technology. Look for these combinations to continue and for strategic directions to be set on an increasingly integrated field, where the distinctions will be blurrier between retailer and media outlet, between hardware and software company, and, most notably, between information and money flows.

• In keeping with the motifs of size, capital and integration, look for hardware to assume a more central place in the imagination of founders and the strike zones of buyers and investors. In comparison to software, this realm is more capital intensive, longer cycled, and difficult to “pivot” – which is alright when the turbulence is diminished and the money is perhaps more patient.

• Lastly, look for traditional media to garner increased attention from new media. This sub-segment that was at one time the only segment had been of late forgotten. As the breathlessness for novelty subsides and competition for market share and revenue intensifies, traditional media will be revisited and its audience and communities recognized for untapped value.

There are two overarching themes in these assorted observations and the handful of forecasts presented: On one hand, convergence and overlap (of sectors as well as capital sources); and, on the other, a progression from an era that was arguably defined by its financial ventures to one that is more highly strategic in nature.

Seeing these parallel patterns from another angle still, we note a transition from the more or less speculative gambit to a market that is structured, calculated, and framed within a narrower band of potential outcomes. We are seeing, in short, that digital media is verging on adulthood at last.

Dan Ramsden is founder and partner at CoRise. He blogs at discourseandnotes.com; follow him on Twitter @d_ramsden.