SxSW 09, nationalization and free web shrinkage

SxSW this year was fantastic, the attendance for interactive blew away attendance for music registrations (up 30% over last year) and – even though the weather sucked at the beginning – the end of conference was a stunning 85F sun-fest of BBQ, free booze and lots of good conversations. Trends I detected:

• mobile -ize everything. Everyone does it on their phones now. Why don’t you?
• twitter it. Yeah. Everyone was on twitter all f’n day. It was the fastest and most comprehensive way to learn about anything with buzz. 2nd place goes to the BB for constant email checking by those who don’t get the twitter thing. yet.
• Facebook‘n. Almost like twitter but limited to talking with the peeps. A weird balance of free spew and NSFW mentality, depending on how many work colleagues you’ve friended.
• The public sense of entitlement to free wifi. Seriously. There’s going to be a battle here.
• More cloud services, but they aren’t cheap enough yet. Sorry. Also, not reliable enough. Still, they talked a good game there.
• Marketing and PR in social media are a given, but it’s reaching spam proportions. I’m looking for intelligence and conversation in what I read, not more promo. If you don’t/can’t put it there and have more followers than is necessary, I will unfollow.
• Oh, and the Mex food was delicious, but not as good as California. Sorry.

Now then, back to the economy. Geithner’s plan is not surprisingly trashed on release. Not surprising because he essentially ran all the verbiage for the Bush plan previously. Which was built to protect all the Wall Street buddies. As I said many times, here and on FriendFeed, solutions are not going to come from the parties that created this mess. It was an idealogy that got us here, and it will be an idealogy that gets us out of it. Nationalization of key industries is required, with currency controls until debt vs. capital levels reach greater parity.Krugman had delicious things to say, and he should be heeded.

Obama also has been underwhelming. In his zeal to appear centrist, he reaches across the table too many times, and finds his political strength weakening as a result. His enormous populist support may be eroding faster and greater than Axelrod thinks. Unfortunately, the moment to act decisively on banks and investment firms appears to have past. Now he will merely be playing catchup, ceding the mindshare to others.

One key result from all of this skrinkage is that the “freeness” of web services and access appears to be changing before our eyes. As newspapers close and go bankrupt, sources of information online are scrambling to attach a business model to anything they do. Meaning you will soon be paying for that BusinessWeek/RollingStone/AP original source. In one way or another.

Experimentation with donation through PayPal to Tip’d to micropayments for ongoing subscribers has yielded some market data on what the threshold is for information consumers. At some point, I fully expect Google Apps to embrace all Google services like Reader and News and offer premium charge for it, just like Microsoft has done for decades with Office. MS and Yahoo are following suit.

Don’t think you’ll pony up the cash for something you’ve been getting for free for almost 15 years now? What will your alternative be? Tell me in the comments, I’m interested.

Moreover, I see the ISPs inching towards a cable model where services will be tacked on and fees included in monthly billing. Soon, “basic” internet will include fees to use Google, NetFlix, YouTube and more. Don’t think the discussions are not already underway.

Now that you’re hooked, you will pay. OR you could unplug and take a walk. Enjoy the weekend!

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