internet Archives - Steve Sammartino

Why we need to rebuild the internet

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Steve Sammartino

In life and in business I believe in a few guiding principles. Two I like in particular are very common across cultures:

Create more value than you extract.
Treat people the way you’d like to be treated.

I imagine everyone reading this would agree. Now let’s consider this juxtaposition:

What a CEO says: “We want to build a more open and connected society”

What a CEO does: Buy the 4 houses surrounding his in order to protect his own privacy.

Someone who sells privacy for a living, often without permission and tricks his customers into giving up more than they understand, wants to protect his own. The fact that I don’t need to mention the person’s name is telling. Well, you might say it’s not a fair comparison between how someone behaves in their digital and offline lives. Fair call, but consider the fact that up until last week the person in question could delete private messages from another person’s private inbox, after the messages had been sent to and received by the other party. A privacy feature he wasn’t generous enough to give to his users. Oh, by the way, I can think of another industry where ‘dealers’ call their customers ‘users’. We both get our minds messed with in ways we can’t understand and end up addicted and worse off.

It’s a well known technological trope that data is the new gold, an entirely new class of asset. And that’s where the problem lies. This asset class is so new, few people understand it. We could liken this to the age of discovery when imperialists took control of abundant natural resources, resources which were viewed by the conquered as something no one could really own or control.

The net result is that the greatest wealth creation event in the history of humanity. The Internet has resulted in a massive centralisation and control, and spawned the era of the data imperialist. Even those who understood the power of data have far less chance of leveraging it on their own, because of the dramatic impact of network effects, and zero cost digital transfers both have in creating a winner takes all economy. To quantify: the net worth of the 4 founders of the top 3 technology companies since the dot com era have a collective net worth of $281 billion dollars as of today.

The internet needs saving.

What started out in all probability as altruism – the dream of a free web funded by advertising, has become a nightmare panopticon and it’s time we pushed back. Hard.

Technology stalwart and all round good guy Jaron Lanier says we can no longer call these companies Social Networks, but ‘Behaviour Modification Empires’. Services which use algorithms to make us stay longer by giving us sugar hits of fear, jealously and other powerful negative emotions. Lanier also says that we can’t have a society where if two people want to communicate, it can only happen if it is financed by a 3rd party or corporation selling advertising. It’s worth investing 15 minutes of your time to hear him talk about it here.

But I will add a little more to his talk… the missing piece. Personally, I hope Facebook isn’t fixed. It’s only when something stays broken that we get a chance to put something better in its place. For me that would be a social network that no one owns or controls – something funded by the people using it, without a financial corporate imperative shaping our most valued human asset – our interactions.

We need each other, Steve.

This year the internet arrives in Australia

Posted on June 10, 2017 by Steve Sammartino

We don’t really have the internet in Australia. I mean, sure we are connected to it, but we aren’t even in the top 50 countries for internet speeds. That’s a total travesty for our economic future. Some of the countries with faster internet include Kenya, Lithuania, Slovenia, Moldova and many developing economies. This is the modern day equivalent of having unpaved roads, no electricity or running water. Outside of the three S’s – Search, Social & Streaming, we barely have web services which can turn industries upside down. But some of that is about to change.

Later this year Amazon arrive in Australia and with their cheap capital (free shareholder money they don’t pay dividends on) and serious intent to dominate this new market. We will finally get, at least one part of the internet, other markets have had for years. If you think you’ve seen disruption to industry in Australia, buckle your seat belt, because we are about to see what they other half of the world already have. We’ll get to know not only what same day delivery feels like, but 2 hour delivery. We’ll get to know how great it feels for that delivery to be free and we’ll get to pay prices which will make our local retailers seem like robber barrens. It will change our consumer and business landscape because it will be an example of possibility.

I was a guest of the award winning podcast Future Sandwich episode aptly titled, Surviving Amazon. Have a listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Also be sure to check my media page for weekly interviews I’m doing on Tv & radio on all things future.

Don’t forget to join me for to celebrate my new book launch The Lessons School Forgot, on June 20th. Free tickets here, see you there! Steve.

A world before the World Wide Web?

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a documentary I want to see. Two families living life as it was were before the world wide web arrived. For most homes that was some time during the 1990’s. I imagine life is very different for teenagers, toddlers and parents today compared to say in 1985. We’ve all seen the documentaries comparing life in the distant past – this farming one living like it’s 1885 comes to mind. But how would today compare to just 30 years ago – 1986 to 2016?

I think we’d find it is more different than we remember or younger people expect. I’d love to see a house, school, shopping, media, politics, transport systems all set up to run the experiment with a family or two. Document it – compare it to our modern economy and boom – compelling viewing

Someone go make it – it’s a cool idea for free. I’m sure a production company or TV station would love it.

You can thank me at the award ceremony.

Love, Stevie.

Top 10 internet stocks – more than 1 trillion valuation

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

In a very short period of time, opinions of anything can change. It wasn’t so long ago that these statements were made about the internet as a commercial platform:

It’s for nerds. “Fine, you nerds can do what you want but normal people are never going to use this thing.”
It’s completely decentralized, which means you can’t trust it. No business is ever going to do anything on it because businesses won’t work on an untrusted environment. There won’t ever be any e-commerce.
There will never be any internet payments. No one will put their credit card on the internet.
It’s an open-source kind of thing so there will be no Internet companies.
It’s got all these technical deficiencies. It’s slow. It’s unreliable. It doesn’t work right. When you do a search, sometimes you get an answer back and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes when you dial in you get a busy signal.
What happen if your ISP goes out of business? Then you can’t get back online.
Once you get on the internet, even assuming you get on the internet, there’s nothing to do. There’s no content. Time magazine isn’t online, the New York Times isn’t online. It’s just a bunch of nerd stuff.

These classic soundbites come from Marc Andreessen in a recent interview while referencing those who think bitcoin will never be more than some kind of digital space oddity. While we are on the topic of economic change, it is telling to have a look at the market valuations of the top 10 internet companies. That is, companies less than 20 years old who could not have existed pre dot com. The US top 10 public companies now have an accumulated value of $1.168 trillion dollars.

Google – $585 billion
Facebook – $170 billion
Amazon – $155 billion
Ebay – $65 billion
Priceline – $65 billion
Yahoo – $36 billion
Salesforce.com – $36 billion
Twitter – $24 billion
Linkedin – $21 billion
Expedia – $11 billion

We can also add the upcoming float of Alibaba.com to this at anything between a further $120 to $200 billion.

This takes my mind directly to the potential of 3D printing, web of things and the solar energy industry. All of which are in their 1993 era. The only question remaining for entrepreneurs reading is this; What are you going to do about it?

The single truth about viral activity – It's just scenery

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

The internet is an infinite ever expanding place. We all live inside of it, move around it and want our share of attention and activity from it. The ultimate thing we all seem to want (even if secretly) is to get everyone to pay attention to our blog post, video, social feed, pithy statement of insight and all other forms of digital output. That’s the promise of something going viral. Because if we get that attention, if everyone catches on and shares our work, we’ll be on the path the greatness. We’ll have broken through the masses and be able to leverage the focus on us. Turn attention into a relationship. That’s the promise of being shared on the Verge or Buzzfeed or Viral Nova. But here’s the truth about that piece of viral marketing. It doesn’t work, it rarely has impact and is a fleeting moment, a shooting star, a moment from which the utility is the moment itself. It expires quickly.

What we need to imagine is this. The internet is a giant beach. We are all grains of sand on that beach. Some of us try to be more than a single, undifferentiated grain of sand. We agglomerate, co-ordinate and try and turn ourselves into something worth noticing. Maybe we become a beautiful sea shell. Beautiful enough for the the people walking along that beach to stop and take notice. They might see us, pick us up and inspect the sea shell. Comment on the sheer beauty, show their friend who they happen to be walking along the beach with. We get passed around, and we become the moment. They might even take the sea shell – save it – put it in the pocket and take it home, because it’s valuable – add it to their ‘favourites’. But what we must really understand is that they will keep on walking. The passer by is not there for us. Even if they are walking along the beach (the internet) to see and find interesting things, we can only ever be one of those things that makes their journey interesting. They continue on with whatever it is they are doing and onto their destination.

Viral activity, in real terms is just scenery. And I should know. I’ve had a number of blog posts with more than 100,000 views. I’ve had 2 videos with millions of views. And I’ve been featured on all those websites mentioned at the the start of this blog post. And the over riding lesson is that people get on with their lives. Viral marketing is only effective when there is a formula for repeated impact – a business model around it, which is not easy to do. If we want the impact that we falsely believe viral marketing can create, then we’d be better off focusing on utility and frequency. That is creating something which has utility for the people beyond the moment. Utility which is worth coming back for again and again. And what that takes isn’t luck, it’s more about hard work serving others over long periods of time.

A story from Sir Tim

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

I had the good fortune this week to meet the inventor of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners Lee. He is currently touring Australia and after he gave a public lecture at Melbourne University, I was lucky enough to attend a private session thanks to the AUDA and meet him personally.

Firstly, I’d like to say he was a total gentleman, who is very humble for all that he has given us. Over drinks I asked him what seemed like the first non techie question he’d been asked all night, and his answer I found totally inspiring. The dialogue is below:

Me: “Tell me how it feels to have created something everyone loves and uses every day…. How do you cope with all the attention and adulation?”

Tim: “Well, I’m just Tim, a normal guy around campus. But, it is interesting you asked that, because I made a conscious decision to avoid the public sphere for the first 10 years after I created it. I didn’t do any interviews or make any public appearances. Mainly so it wouldn’t interfere with my family. About 10 years into the web I received a letter telling me that I was to receive the Millenium Prize in Finland. It turned out that the ceremony happened to be on my son’s birthday. So I wrote back to them saying that I couldn’t make it on that day as it was my son’s birthday. That I could come if they changed the date. They then wrote back to me saying something like… ‘You don’t understand Tim, this is like a really big thing, and the dates can’t be changed….’ And then I wrote back saying, ‘No, you don’t understand, nothing gets in the way of my family, I’m very honoured, but you’ll have to give it to someone else.’ Well – in the end they were determined that I come and suggested they fly our entire family over so that we could still celebrate his birthday as a family, and so that I could still get the prize, and that they would pay respect to my sons birthday at all the ceremony. So I asked my son Ben and he was ok with it. In fact, he really enjoyed his birthday as entire auditoriums sang him happy birthday and he had something like 5 birthday cakes while we were there.”

I thought this was cool and grounded. In fact, it’s a terrific thing when someone you respect greatly, gives you more reasons to respect them after you’ve actually met.

(A photo with Tim – He said ‘Send me a copy of the photo!‘ – but I’m sure he says that to every fan boy who asks for a picture.)

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There is no digital

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Steve Sammartino

While it is clear that the birth of the omnipresent web has changed our business infrastructure, it’s not clear that most people understand the truth about digital as it pertains to business, brand or startup strategy. Here’s a simple phrase to help remind us:

There is no digital.

There is only ‘life’. We seamlessly move between a variety of technologies in our day. As we have done since the beginning of time with all forms of technology. We don’t have a digital life and an analogue life as much as we don’t have a sitting on a chair life or a sitting on the floor life. A chair is just a piece of technology like the latest shinny thing in our pockets is. And it’s about time we started recognizing that a digital strategy is a flawed one by definition. All that exists is a strategy that makes sense – one which is technology agnostic. One that achieves objectives by considering all of the methods and tools at our disposal.

The days of digital strategy are over. Anyone who doesn’t get digital, doesn’t get strategy. We need start to think again in terms of utility for the audience – it’s only when we focus on their needs that we can ever hope to be a solution in their day.