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Participatory Culture Foundation

Via Three Minds: Participatory Culture Foundation.

Television is the defining medium of our culture. There's now an opportunity to create a television culture that is fluid, diverse, exciting, and beautiful.  Built by people working together.

· The platform is open-source and built on open-standards. This matters because it keeps video flowing freely.  When you lock people in to closed, proprietary services, you lose everything that makes the internet work.

· Television is moving online.  Will it be the same narrow, top-down cultural stagnation that we see on traditional television?  All the major media and computer companies are clamoring to control video online.  If they succeed it will be a disaster.

· We don't have to spend years playing catch-up.  Open-source and open- standards can lead this fight for the future of video online.

Do You Drive Here Often?

Social networking websites have become an accepted (and hugely popular) way to meet an interact with people. With the massive success of MySpace, the trend will surely grow, but rather than general interest networks, the more interesting area to keep an eye on may be smaller niche networks, tightly focused around specific interests.

One such effort is Edmunds.com's new carspace.com (maybe not the most original name), built for users who wish to interact with others sharing a passion for cars.  In these kinds of more narrowly defined spaces, brands can explore various marketing opportunities, provided that they contribute something relevant and valuable to participants. Honda is already onboard with carspace, so it will be interested to see what they do in this role.

(link via ypulse)

Fly Adidas

Adidas pioneered the customization trend over twenty years ago, and now they've updated the concept with a stunning array of paints, laces, brushes etc.

(link via psfk, and check the March issue of Dazed and Confused for some great pics of designs from the pros)

The Age of Culture

A couple of recent posts on two separate weblogs discuss some cultural blindspots that are holding back fresh thinking:  Web 2.0 funding (on BubbleGeneration) and branding (via This Blog Sits At The Intersection Of Anthropology And Economics).

Umair at Bubblegeneration points to the "chasm" between Web 2.0 tools and technology and the relevant audiences that should have access to these tools, beyond the geeks (on sites like Digg, for instance). In particular, VC funding is cited as the source of this chasm:

VCs are great are crafting value propositions for enterprise software and semiconductors. They understand those industries very, very well.

But they distinctly don't understand media and culture, and so they can't craft value propositions (or build the right relationships, etc) for their portfolio companies - and that's when they invest in the right companies to begin with.

Largely, this is because the things that make VCs good at crafting value props for software and chips - alliances, the stack, efficiency, building out ops, helping slowly win big customers, investing a great deal in a small number of plays, etc - destroy more value than they create for plays at the intersection of media, www, and consumer markets.

Reading this makes it clear that there is a huge need to build bridges between technology and emerging communication tools (along with the communities, and markets connected with these tools) and wider culture and media. VC's don't understand culture in general, so they can't to the things necessary to invest in it. The potential of social media and Web 2.0 should not be contained to the worlds of programming and geekdom (have a look at many of the links of sites like Digg or even Reddit)

In the world of branding, Grant McCracken looks at Kevin Robert's Lovemarks book and concept as pretty much a shallow attempt to move branding beyond the tired, dominant economic model, into a more "nuanced" understanding reflected in the social sciences, anthropology. Indeed, Grant believes that this challenge- forging a path from rational economic models to more "behaviorilist and cultural" models is the "Northwest Passage" of our time (love the metaphor).

If we want to win mystery, sensuality and intimacy for the brand, it's going to take a system, dry, thoughtful, grounded, nuanced, and powerful.  It's going to have to be something that the people at McKinsey (or any HBS grad) can look at without sneering.  (We can just imagine how they received, "Kick the information addiction.")  The corporation has always known the brand is something more than an economic proposition.  And finding that "something more" was the ad agency's job.   The corporation used the agency to make imagination, creativity and better branding available, without having to endure it inhouse, or allowing it to interfere with the economics model.  But, in the last decade or so, branding (and the creativity and innovation it represents) has become too important to be left to the agency alone. 

Communities Dominate Bonds

Communities are staking their claim on more and more brands these days, so it should come as no surprise that a cultural icon like James Bond would get a little protective about the franchise. The new Bond, Daniel Craig, is deemed unfit for the task; he doesn't even know how to drive a stick shift! The horror!

Their website, craignotbond.com is enlisting supporters in a boycott of Casino Royale.

Tuesday Link Bin

Cheeky guerilla campaign on eBay by hebbes.be (link via adverblog)

Bandwagon? Another "Engagement Planning" unit, this time at IPG

The Future of Web Apps (via randomculture)

Grant McCracken: comments on the death of the 30 second spot

Stop Staring At My Shirt

One of the big players in the growing world of Alternate Reality Gaming is introducing a very novel concept: a T-shirt line that will contain clues embedded in the shirts themselves, as part of an evolving multi-media game. 

Sure, it's definitely geeky to wear clothes that are part of a game. However, the smart folks at Edoc Laundry have made sure that the designs stand on their own, featuring urban/skater abstract graphics.

Hip Hop Gaming League

Quick recipe for youth culture cred: bring the massive worlds of hip hop and gaming together and presto! Snoop Dogg's Hip Hop Gaming League has launched.

While the promotion (Sprite is one sponsor) seems like a good idea, I cringed at the pseudo-street lingo:

Right now, all over the world, the suits are struggling to catch up to what we have known for years. Hip-hop and video games are it.

It's a familiar arithmetic: two rejected art forms forced underground reemerge dominant. Now, everybody wants a piece. But, that ain't gonna happen. Like Paul Wall, hip hop and video games are by the people, for the people. So, get your shovel, we goin back underground.

It's the Bronx in the early 80s. We've said goodbye to disco (thank God), and there's a vacuum in black music. But, the streets are still 'broke phi broke' and hungry. Enter Kurtis Blow and Afrika Bambaataa. These and other space invaders slapped poetry and Jamaican "toasting and boasting" over an electronic beat and kick it out the door into the gutter. Hip hop was born.

Link Bin

Virgin Mobile: Phone Mother (nice thoughts from threeminds weblog)
Helio MySpace deal (late with this, but need this here)
Online shopping boom driven by broadband (via randomculture)
My TV? (Why TV?)

Pink iPod Tie

Last month, we rolled our eyes as Levis belatedly jumped on the iPod bandwagon with their new jeans.  While that seemed silly, it hardly compares to this tie from Pink, who you would think would have steered clear of this!

(via coolhunting)