Technology Futures

Passafire is a Savannah, Georgia based band with some roots on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Their most recent album, Start from Scratch, has zoomed to the top of the iTunes reggae charts to take the number two spot behind perennial number one Bob Marley. What is interesting about this is that the band does not have a contract with a major record label (and "record" is an anachronism these days). Passafire has their own Web site, sells CDs online, but relies primarily on iTunes for their music sales. Oh, yes, and they actually play music in affordable venues. In short, these guys love music, and are able to make a living doing it, because the middle man, the record labels, have been cut out.

Even ten years ago, the members of Passafire would all have been working day jobs and loading a beat up van on Friday and Saturday nights to play a few local gigs. It is only Apple, with its visionary iTunes music store, that has allowed the band to connect with millions of fans in a way that was impossible just a few years ago.

And while some moan about the loss of jobs due to disintermediation, what the whiners forget is that iTunes has created tens of thousands of new jobs, and I would bet that the net jobs in the music industry has increased, and is spread far more equitably around the country, starting with what must surely be thousands of jobs at Apple just running the iTunes store. Then you have all the musicians that can actually market to a worldwide audience via iTunes, increasing their income and for some of them, turning their love of music into a full time job.

Bring the disintermediation on; it creates more opportunity by decentralizing economic power. Next up: the disintermediation of the TV and telephone industries.

Executives at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta are probably breaking out the bubbly (2 liter bottles of Coke) and toasting themselves. No longer will the New Coke be considered the dumbest, most asinine product roll out in history. Netflix will now be a source of business case studies in MBA programs for the foreseeable future.

Not only did Netflix hike prices dramatically without warning customers or explaining their rationale in any, um, rational way. To "fix" the problem they created with the price hikes, the president of Netflix, Reed Hastings, wrote the most condescending letter in the history of commerce, managing simultaneously to look stupid, imply that his customers are stupid, AND make the problem much much worse by splitting Netflix in half and creating two completely separate services (Netflix for streaming, Qwikster for DVDs through the mail).

The split of Netflix into two completely separate companies requires customers to now have two bills, maintain two accounts, and completely destroys one of the best things about Netflix--the ability to browse the entire Netflix TV and movie catalogue and effortlessly move titles back and forth between your streaming queue and your DVD queue.

But I say, "Good for Netflix." Netflix has been the 800 pound gorilla in the living room of video on demand, and they just shot themselves, not in the foot, but in the head. Customers are already fleeing for the exits, and new video companies suddenly have marketplace opportunities that did not exist two weeks ago. Competition is a wonderful thing. We will all benefit with better service options, better pricing options, and more choice.

This infographic highlights the huge current and future impact that broadband is having and will continue to have on job creation and economic development. This should be sent to every elected leader.

Rich Swier of Startup Florida has a nice short article on Google+ and why he thinks it is a big improvement over Facebook. Google+ is still mostly a geek/early adopter phenomenon, but is probably the only competing service that has any chance of unseating Facebook.

Swier makes the point (and I agree) that a key advantage of Google+ is the ability to designate certain content only for certain folks in your network--the "circles" concept. You can create circles and put friends and family in them, and then when you post stuff, you can tag which circle or circles it is for. So instead of blasting everything to everyone (the Facebook approach), Google+ allows targeted posting and cuts down on the dreck.