By Gilbert B. Hammer

With a calm request Vidar Brekke, CEO of Social Intent called the networking group to order - all chatter ended and Vidar opened the meeting. I gather he'd be at home leading a group of 100 people as well - some people are natural organizers and leaders and Vidar strikes me as just that sort. With a background at Fortune 500 companies, Vidar was also a strategist at Ogilvy where he served IBM with sharp customer insights and analysis; as a VP of Marketing for JPMorgan Chase.

Along with partner, Vineel Shah co-founder of Social Intent they have created a social media company geared for ideation, strategy, software engineering and executive education. From my perspective on the last area many a Fortune 1000 company for that matter could use some web 2.0 integration and execution guidance, Vidar and Vineel are suited for the task.

One of the applications that caught my eye and has tremendous application is their RealTime iPhone application. It would be a simplification to just call this a Twitter application for the iPhone, I'd call it a cross between social media interaction, images and video app, with the advent of the iPad looming the larger form factor could be really compelling especially for opening websites and online video.

Initially geared for Football fans, it aggregates feeds from players who are tweeting, this along with links which are embedded in a tweet and can spawn a website. Of course there are the customary share with friends tools, this via Facebook or email. There is a nice Wikipedia entry for every player, this accessed by clicking on the players photo. Of course what would there be without the press and their analysis of the action? Its there, chatter from local reports as well as fan clubs. What is really nicely done is Blog integration of the content for bi-directional sharing and community.

So this is just a Football app? Not even close.... What is rather compelling about the platform is that Vidar and Vineel have created an open platform for use in almost any vertical from fashion to reality TV...

Think of it this way: If you look at the day-in-the-life of a teen there is a large connection with television, 3 hours or more per day. That's a lot of time to identify with their favorite contestant on American Idol. When away from home and the Boob Tube, Teens are texting and average of 96 messages per day, this is where using Social Intent's application would be compelling for a show such as Idol where young and old could follow their favorite contestants, their thoughts, fears, progress as well as links to videos of each on the Fox website - I can almost smell the advertisers salivating at the potential for this amount of brand interaction.

Maybe Realtime could also be renamed RealityTime since it would be a great use of the application. Just a quick scan of the shows I know of or have seen OTA/Online could leverage and interact with their audience in a way no one-way mobile phone voting system could ever hope to achieve, for example

• American Idol


• The Biggest Looser


• Dancing with the Stars


• Real Housewives of.....


• Project Runway

Since mobile delivery of programming in the U.S. and advertising for mobile platforms will see an upswing in the coming years, it would make sense to leverage a brand while interacting with their audience. Perhaps with the inclusion of opted-in location based GPS triangulation, moderated and open tweets on behalf of and or for brands could interact with people as they walk past a brick and mortar location, for example Starbucks, Verizon or Sports Authority?

Company Site: Social Intent

By Lynda Bauer

NJIT EDC @ 211 Warren Street, Newark, NJ

When Gilbert Hammer, Editor ipTV, suggested checking out NJIT's Enterprise Development Center, I was curious. Located in Big Pharma's back yard, NJIT has one of the country's most active technology incubators in the country. Though it regularly spawns new medical device and pharmaceutical ventures, it is by no means limited to Life Sciences. NJIT's School of Architecture and Engineering keeps green tech discovery and design flowing though while the Capstone computer lab keeps students rolling out more apps for the insatiably social.

From the first session, the process was interactive. Unlike "boot camps" offered by celebrity entrepreneurs or Ivy league corporate off-sites, NJIT's incubator goes well beyond disseminating high level contacts and workshop highs to deliver organizational behavioral change. In just four days, business owners (and 4 team members) develop, streamline and present their offering to investors for less than the cost of a room at the Plaza! The State of New Jersey through tenacious efforts of Judith Sheft, AVP, Tech Dept, wisely funds the difference.

Presented by Dr. Aron S. Spencer, Founder, InVenture, and professor with the School of Management, the incubator boot camp delivers Supercoach® Entrepreneurial Training (SET). Professor Spencer is, as Brian Spencer from Vurtego stated ".... part of a rare breed that can communicate effectively with the CEO types AND the CTO types. .."

This trait is key since you need to use CEO, CTO and CFO "speak" to get funded today. Out of the gate, in the first exercise, Dr. Spencer directs owners to focus on talking not writing. This is harder than you'd think for practiced speakers. SET rightly directs the entrepreneur to the 30 sec "spot" of broadcast communications and then tightens message to a single tweet-ready, line. This rigor focused the pitch's on the 4th day for a panel of investors.

Dr. Spencer teamed with Mary F. Howard, Principal of Design Technologies who's probing analysis across multiple industries reflected her experience in biotech, medical devices and design. Her own serial entrepreneurship brings seasoned mentoring to these young incubator companies.

Sustainable Competitive Advantage & Differentiation

There are a number of ways entrepreneurs can communicate opportunity to an investor the most obvious is announcing some advantage that no one else has. Best is having something that no one else ever will ever have, the original formula. Less value, but still significant is to have a unique "method of use". One of the incubator companies had defended a method-of-use patent. Having won when challenged, built credibility in the high risk high reward clinical trials marketplace.

"High-Risk High-Reward is attractive to Licensees."

To bring income into a start-up early on, high risk intellectual property companies will often pursue licensing. In this way they enter faster, fuel growth and meet projections. Other effective strategies capitalize on synergies in the "value chain"- relationships the company has from concept to market. The best is to build value for all partners in the value chain. Building value for the whole chain builds a bigger pie to feed from.

"How are you going to make me rich?

In watching the final presentations to the investors, the words of a friend in venture capital rang in my head, "entrepreneurs just want to do what they do best, whether its product development, real estate, science or technology, they don't want to have to worry about the numbers". Here despite the coaching, some presenters seemed to assume that if the market opportunity is clearly stated the payday is obvious. Wrong. In one case, a company ignored the SET rigor, presented highly technical slides and left out the time-line of payouts.

Its not all numbers, there are personal preferences too. Who doesn't like to laugh? All the judges liked the idea of a humorous dictionary. Whether it was because the development would be next to nothing, the health benefits of laughter or its universal appeal; it didn't hurt that the young presenter was natural, receptive and thoughtful in responding to questions.

Like anybody else, investors are not impressed with being talked down to. Calibrating this though can be a bit of a trick. One entrepreneur left out a key feature he thought would be too technical. The coaches assured him the investors would know the term and value so to put it in. Another entrepreneur couldn't resist putting in all the technical terms of his sector and the sustainable competitive advantage was almost lost on the panel.

Incubator participants also have access to NJIT's computer lab where tech students develop new technology to support the ventures. I encourage you to look into this and the other wealth of information and services at the Enterprise Development Center its less than 30 minutes from Manhattan. Beyond the education and pitch opportunity, the incubator connects you with other entrepreneurs. On the surface, they may seem to have nothing to do with your business. That's the very reason you might want to cultivate them...they can point out the obvious that your supportive choir isn't hearing. Successful entrepreneurs reach far and wide to form their circle of support. The NJIT's Enterprise Development Center's Venture Acceleration Bootcamp creates an intense transformation experience to share and build trust. And today trust is paramount.

By Levi Shapiro

Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia

This week, the world's fifth most popular website celebrates a birthday - Wikipedia is nine years old. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales spoke with me about the site and the transformation it has wrought in the philosophical, commercial and political spheres.

While participatory web culture has its weaknesses, it does increase the quantity and diversity of information. Wikipedia promises an internet that is more than just YouTube slapstick and viagara spam, says Wales. "We make the internet suck less."

Where else could you find articles like these:

Infinite Monkey Theory
Buttered Cat Paradox
Festivus
Bladderball

Infinite Monkeys Theory: A monkey hitting a typewriter at random for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text

Today, one third of the world's internet population accesses Wikipedia's 15 million entries, in more than 100 languages, powered by thousands of volunteer editors and thirty full-time employees. Wales, who sits on the Wikimedia Board of Trustees, acknowledges that "Wikipedia is a work in progress. We still have plenty of stuff to sort out."

Philosophically, Wikipedia's collaborative ethos now dominates web culture. This philosophy is best articulated in treatises like Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar and James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds. It is ironic that these collectivist underpinnings would have been associated with Jimmy Wales, an avowed disciple of Objectivism. This view, popularized by author Ayn Rand in the books Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, celebrates rugged individualism. Critics of Wikipedia and digital collectivism, like Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not a Gadget, argue that the wisdom of crowds should be deployed selectively and not for its own sake. "It's great that we enjoy a cooperative pop culture concordance" says Lanier, but "the individual voice has become dispensable and the collective is closer to the truth."

Have web 2.0 enthusisasts imposed a type of "Digital Maoism," suppressing the sound of individual voices? Wales and Wikipedia view truth as an absolute, and knowable. "I don't define truth for the community. Wikipedia is a means to bring free access to human knowledge," says Wales. Through Wikipedia's continuous and transparent revision process, the goal is for articles to eventually attain a "Neutral Point of View" that is a proxy for reasonable truth.

Commercially, Wikipedia's success has demonstrated the limits of collaboration. Wikipedia itself grew out of a failed business, the unsuccessful Nupedia (2000-2001). Since then, countless start-ups have attempted to leverage the global online community without imposing the necessary hierarchy and process for an improved experience over time. Referring to Knol, Google's recent attempt to replicate Wikipedia, Jimmy is dismissive. "Knol is a failure. They didn't trust their user base."

Making changes in Knol is an onerous task. Each Knol, or entry, is controlled by the author. Therefore, edits require first getting hold of the author, which is no easy task. Then you need to persuade them that their entry was wrong (good luck) and that the author should adopt your edit suggestions. Knol has had difficulty building an audience.

Allowing anyone to edit means that vandals and wackos leave their input as well. Despite notable exceptions, such as the purported death of Steve Jobs, the community of volunteer editors maintains a reasonable standard of quality. A study by the University of Minnesota places the probability of defaced entries at just one in 140, and most of these are corrected within 3 minutes. Of course, that has not prevented Wikipedia's accuracy problems from being parodied by the likes of Stephen Colbert and The Onion.

Accoring to Jimmy, "we continue to depend very critically on reliable sources and traditional media." To ensure greater accuracy, for several years he has been calling upon the Wikipedia community to adopt "Flagged Revisions." This would introduce a two-stage process for editing profiles of living people, requiring the approval of a senior editor. Although the German Wikipedia (the second largest language on Wikipedia with one million entries) adopted "Flagged Revisions" last February, the English Wikipedia community has continued to resist this imposition of external hierarchy.

Perhaps the greatest impact from Wikipedia is political - empowering people everywhere with information to have an informed debate. Jimmy cites linguistic diversity as the key long-term focus for Wikipedia. Only 20% of articles are currently written in English. "We are a non-profit and want to help people find their voice in their own language." For example, the Hebrew Wikipedia surpassed 100,000 entries this month. Similarly, the Woloff language in Senegal recently achieved its 1,000th entry. "We don't want to be Facebook or another social networking site. We want to give every single person on the planet free access to the sum of all human knowledge." Wales recounts the story of meeting a Ladino singer recently in New York. "She was stunned to learn we have Ladino Wikipedia. People who know languages can find a home on Wikipedia."

Wales fiercely defends the importance of the neutral point of view. "For us, it's not about political activism. We're there to provide the basic information not only from today, but from throughout history."

Currently, many authoritarian countries block Wikipedia, notably China from 2004-2008. As a result, local competitor Hudong has over 3 million entries while Chinese Wikipedia has less than 1/10th of that number. In Cuba, government filters block access to the 550,000 Spanish Wikipedia entries. This month, American social worker Alan Gross was arrested in Havana and branded a spy for helping local Jewish organizations access Wikipedia. In Iran, until last year's disputed elections, the Farsi Wikipedia was the 10th most visited website with 90,000 entries, including politically sensitive articles. Since the election, government censors have begun to severely impact the neutrality of the site.

In the US, Wikipedia also has political ramifications. "If I had five minutes with Obama, I would argue for a more balanced approach to copyright law. The government only hears from people who can afford to hire lobbyists. I am concerned that in the interest of combating piracy, we may end up hurting people doing legitimate things."

The cultural, philosophical and political changes from Wikipedia over these last 9 years are only beginning. "I have no intention of scaling back" my role, says Wales. "I'm doing what I love."

No, this is not kitchen stadium but two sides are batteling it out for viewers hearts and minds, if not stomach's. All information avaiable to the public comes from either side Cablevision side;

"We are sorry that Scripps current financial difficulties are making it impossible for them to continue our relationship under terms that are fair to everyone. However, it is clear that they have dramatically changed their approach to working with distributors who carry these channels."

or from Scripps which has launched two consumer sites: ilovefoodnetwork.com and ilovehgtv.com to get viewers to pressure the MSO to negotiate more favorable terms.

While Ad income has been slashed, by 2008 cable-only producers took in about 39 percent of TV ad revenue, which broadcasters used to keep. The networks are very dependent on license fees since the 1994 law governing fees went into effect.

As for the law itself, there is an interesting passage in the 1994 network rules which states;

"Provided further that the subscriber shall not be forced to buy more than the channel(s), of his choice through the mechanism of discounted pricing and by grouping of channels in such a way as to render the choice of individual pay channels offered, an illusory one."

"Choice", "discounted pricing", these are illusory - its time for decoupling, or à la carte programming which I believe will actually benefit both producers and MSO's in the long run by allowing successful programming to rise while less sucessful programming may fall to the wayside, a more democratic process. The notion floated by cable that à la carte would lead to fewer hours of television watched is I think no longer valid with the emmergence of iTV and more specifically mobile TV which will only flurish in the coming years, if anything this represents a new revenue stream for MSO's.

As for regulation, there have been new calls for oversight however, these have been broached for years with little or no positive releif for the consumer.

"I think there needs to be some sort of government oversight over the cable industry," Mindy Spatt, spokeswoman for The Utility Reform Network, a San Francisco consumer advocacy group, said Saturday. "There's a danger for consumers that the price is just going to keep rising with no end in sight."

Aside from the posturing with ads and websites, the consumer is once again the casualty, guys remember the consumer? Perhaps there is a role for government to take a fresh look at à la carte programming or at least to hold hearings which may get both sides back to the kitchen table...