Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything…

That’s how Steve Jobs introduced the new Apple iPhone during his Macworld Expo 2007 keynote address. If he’s right, and this device turns out to be the first shot fired in a new mobile revolution, what will it mean for content developers?

With a projected $500 entry level price point and Apple publicly setting a goal for a %1 share of the mobile phone market in 2008, the iPhone probably won’t mean that content developers can toss our WAP browser in the digital dumpster just yet. Still, the coming opportunities this shift in the landscape may present for delivering higher quality on-demand audio and video content to a mobile audience are encouraging.

As more news for developers becomes available, one area we’ll be paying close attention to is how full featured the iPhone version of Safari will be. So far not much has been revealed in the Safari Developer Connection but got an early sneak peak at the iPhone, reports that it is a modified version of Safari. If these modifications turn out to be about adding new features and optimizations (the pinch) that make the browser work better on this platform, then that will be good news. But if the iPhone version of Safari becomes a stripped down version in the fashion of Internet Explorer Mobile then that could be a disappointment.

An early clue to see which direction this heads will be to see if Safari on the iPhone will use Flash or Flash Lite, or no Flash. Tough to tell from the keynote demo – as these pictures and this discussion indicate.

Perhaps an even more telling marker will be to see what happens when you text the iPhone a link to a third party audio or video file. Will the texted URL be hot on the iPhone so that the user can easily download the linked content, similar to how it works today with some carriers and devices? Or will the link be inactive, as how it currently appears to work with other carriers and devices? And what will the file size limitation be on third party content delivered this way? From our tests regarding the delivery of on-demand 3GP video and MP3 audio content to mobile devices via SMS, iPhone partner Cingular AT&T ranked among the more open carriers regarding this aspect of third party mobile content delivery. Let’s urge them to continue down that path.

ContentDeveloper.com will be tracking these three issues in particular because when you combine the potential upside of the browser, plug-in, and SMS possibilities with the desktop type feature set and OSX foundation of the iPhone, the result could provide fresh fuel for the democracy of distribution to take on new shapes as the mobile audience becomes empowered with tools that allow them to more easily bypass gatekeepers who want to control access to third party content. In other words…

If the iPhone can help topple another set of Walled Gardeners it will be a welcomed ally to independent content developers everywhere.

For developers focused on delivering content that requires full 3G mobile broadband to create a satisfying user experience, Apple’s decision to arm the iPhone with 2.75G EDGE rather than UMTS may be a something of a letdown. But with the iPhone’s built in 802.11b/g WiFi, it’s a letdown that’s relatively easy to forgive. It’s worth noting here that RIM made the same choice going with EDGE over UMTS with their recent launch of the Blackberry Pearl.

Also, it might have been nice to have an unlocked version of the iPhone available so the mobile services consumer could have at least some freedom to select the wireless provider that works best for them. Apple’s reported multi year exclusive contract with T is bad news for those hoping a version for fellow GSM based provider TMobile might be on the horizon. But again it will be somewhat easy to forgive here if the payoff is the delivery of more new provider integrated services like visual voicemail.

And for those focused on creating rather than consuming multimedia content with their mobile device, perhaps the Nokia N93i offers some things to think about.

Overall though it’s hard to watch that keynote demo and not come away optimistic about the impact the iPhone could have on content developers who want to connect with a mobile audience. By raising the bar on what is possible, the iPhone might just raise the mobile audience’s expectations about what features should be part of their mobile device, regardless of the manufacturer. Let’s hope Apple’s friendly wake up call to Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Sanyo, Samsung, Palm, Sprint, Verizon, Motorola, et al. can inspire everyone working in the mobile space, content developers included, to up their game.

Even after such a buzz inducing introduction to the public, the iPhone does have its skeptics though. And that’s probably a good thing. From contrarians worrying about possible Apple arrogance to those simply concerned that a certain scandal could evolve into something that might eventually distract those in charge of executing strategy, these storylines should hopefully help keep any pending irrational exuberance about Apple in check.

My favorite dose of pessimism could be this brilliantly succinct and rather earthy perspective spotted in a comment on this Engadget Mobile blog post about the iPhone not being a smartphone:

…a high priced phone for hippies.

Peace out.

If you’re a member of the creative class who’s busy building interesting things in the digital world – a blogger, vlogger, podcastser, journalist, filmmaker, animator, broadcaster, talk show host, game developer, ad agency creative, author, show runner, educator, etc…

…are you really a Content Developer, but for some reason have never really thought of yourself that way?

And while we’re on the subject, just what exactly is content anyway?

Defining content may be one of those Potter Stewart I know it when I see it type questions. We can see that challenge in action when we take a look at some excerpts from the Wikipedia entry for content:

In narrative art such as many novels and movies, content is often the subject of the plot or the events and characters contained within. In this and in more abstract art such as some painting and music content is also the details or stuff that make up the form or structure…In publishing and media, content is information and experiences created by individuals, institutions and technology to benefit audiences in venues that they value. On a webpage, content is material of interest, put there and changed frequently in order to encourage visits to that page, possibly producing income.

Keeping in mind the different purposes of an encyclopedia and a dictionary, the Wiktionary definition of content delivers something a little leaner. Content is…

Published information such as many novels, movies, music, game, webpages, etc…

There’s good work in both those approaches, but are there also potential long term weaknesses in trying to provide a comprehensive list of types of content out there and using that as the basis for our understanding?

What if rather than trying to explain content by listing specific examples we seek out a definition that can organically evolve with the fast moving changes that the content industry is experiencing without the need for circular references or an ever expanding list?

What if we approach the definition of content by increasing our focus on the audience over the developer or designer?

When it’s not taken so far as to dilute the artist’s original vision, a certain level of focus on the audience can sometimes lead to more satisfying content. Can a focus on the user also help lead us to a more satisfying definition of content?

More about that in a minute, but first let’s take a look at the current Wikipedia entry for Content Development:

Content development is the process of researching, writing, gathering, organizing, and editing information for publication on web sites. Web site content may consist of prose, graphics, pictures, recordings, movies or other media assets that could be distributed by a hypertext transfer protocol server, and viewed by a web browser…Content developers are specialized web site developers who have mastered content generation skills. They can integrate content into new or existing web sites, but they may not have skills such as script language programming, database programming and graphic design. Content developers may also be search engine optimization specialists, or Internet marketing professionals.

Does this definition concentrate a bit too much on the corporate web? I guess we shouldn’t really be surprised by that as the job title of Content Developer in the corporate world is turning into someone usually involved in maintaining a business or organization’s website.

That’s unfortunate in some ways. While being part of a corporate web team can be one role for a Content Developer, and a fulfilling role at that, if we accept these current characterizations of content and content development our view of the work and the worker may be at risk of getting out of sync once our perspective grows beyond the world of the large corporate structure.

And in the Department of Redundancy Department, does having distribution via http protocol as a requirement for being a Content Developer feel almost, well…redundant? Isn’t everyone’s work going to be on the web, if it isn’t there already? Being defined by your distribution channel feels so 20 years ago.

So with these challenges and opportunities serving as the foundation and motivation, I want to offer you the first draft of an alternative view of what defines the Content Developer.

The ContentDeveloper.com definition of a Content Developer:

A Content Developer is a member of the creative class involved in the creation, aggregation, or distribution of intellectual property designed to inspire, educate, persuade, entertain or inform the user.

Like most first drafts you’ll likely spot some potential holes. One portion that troubles me is whether the use of “intellectual property” here is too broad to be used in this context. Am also concerned that the “creative class” reference may be too trendy, self serving and ultimately unnecessary. One might also argue that the whole thing is just too abstract to be of much benefit at all. Working out issues like these are what first drafts are for though and hopefully this alternative view at a minimum serves as a first step in helping expand the collective understanding of the role of the Content Developer.

From the person supporting the contents of a corporate website, to the entrepreneur creating original entertainment programming for mobile devices, to the educator creating a new curriculum and all those artists, geeks and business persons in between, this definition gives all types of Content Developers room to breathe under the common umbrella of how content can impact the user.

As building your personal brand becomes increasingly more important, being known as a Content Developer as defined by these terms may be a title that proves to be as creative and flexible as you are.

Update: For a look at one company’s innovative job description for a Content Developer be sure and check out the post Recruiting a Content Developer.

After seeing Alan mention in SATechBlog that AT&T had a U-verse demo set up at their Cingular Sonterra store here in San Antonio, I decide to drop by one day recently to get a closer look.

Am pleased to report that I received a very nice demo. The sales rep working the U-verse area at that time had a lot of patience and spent a lot of time delivering good quality personal attention. Couldn’t really ask for a much better effort from the rep, but I decided to take Alan’s advice that the best way to experience the product is to just grab the remote and play. So I did. It wasn’t busy and the rep let me bang on it for as long as I wanted.

A chance to try out a product with a lot of buzz combined with an opportunity to get some insight from a quality sales representative (AT&T should be proud) left me with the impression that the visit was time well spent. I recommend it if you are in or around San Antonio and interested in U-verse.

As I was mentally revisiting my in store experience later that evening I thought that perhaps it would be something that others outside of San Antonio would like to share in without having to physically make the trip. There’s a decent Flash demo of an imaginary U-verse home on the U-verse site, but I could never find any video of the actual U-verse TV experience so I decided to go back the next day with my trusty Sony DSR PDX 10 and see if I could jack in to the video out of the STB and record the U-verse GUI in action to DVCAM.

Upon arrival that next day I saw that the rep working this time was the same one I met the day before. The rep recognized me and after a friendly greeting I explained that I would like to share my U-verse experience with friends and family outside of San Antonio who might be interested in what U-verse is really all about. In other words, capture to tape uncut and unedited something similar to the same experimentation that I was able to do the day before.

The rep wasn’t sure if this was even technically possible given their current in store setup so I pulled out the U-verse STB from against the wall to take a look at where I might be able to plug in to. The receiver they were using was one of their DVR‘s and after a quick examination I found that there was a S-video jack feeding one of their very nice plasmas mounted on the wall. Since there is no HD yet (due for this fall), their S-video setup made some sense. Didn’t easily see an available (or any) 1394 jack on the box, but there was an available composite out so I hooked in to there.

Presto, U-verse video to the deck.

While I was doing this my rep and another that was working that day had a short conversation and informed me that they better ask permission first before I went any further. I cringed slightly when I heard this — the mind quickly filling with scenes of the soul crushing maze of bureaucracy that could possibly be a part of any official approval process. Still, AT&T is signing their check so putting their company’s interests first was likely a smart move on their part. In the sometimes peculiar world of large corporations risk taking employees on the front lines have been known to be shown the door on occasion as part of a quickly unfolding CYA chain of events. Stuff happens. And it does roll downhill. And if any of it got on these conscientious and courteous U-verse representatives it could take me a couple lifetimes to work off any bad karma associated with getting them canned over such an unimportant little video. So, no worries. Please clear it with whoever you need to.

My rep produced a cell phone and thus began our approval adventure.

After a couple calls and callbacks a person unidentified to me relayed to the rep that they couldn’t let me plug in to the STB because if something happened to my Sony AT&T didn’t want to be liable. I said I understand but am willing to waive any claim to any damage that might happen to my equipment. Not to mention the fact that I had already plugged in to the STB and U-verse video was feeding the deck with no apparent smoke, shorts or brown outs in the neighborhood.

Something to think about here — it probably sounded good at the time but the person behind this response might want to tweak it just a smidge. One of the primary functions of that composite video jack on the back of many set top boxes is to send video to other devices, just like my Sony. Should consumers really be alarmed that connecting to the composite jack of their U-verse STB may damage their equipment? Of course not. It was likely just a very nice, spur of the moment, political way of telling me to go away. Pretty smooth actually. Kudos to the higher up who got blindsided with the request and pulled that response out of the air…or somewhere close to there.

But I wasn’t quite ready to give up so easy.

With my concession and a friendly request, my very cool rep made another phone call…then another phone call that led to…well, you get the idea. The rep was traveling that metaphoric maze, each turn sucking a little more passion out of the experience. Finally a gentleman in business casual attire emerged from the back of the building somewhere with the official word that they couldn’t let me record my U-verse experience.

I politely asked why not and he said something to the effect of, and I am paraphrasing here, that they weren’t going to let a video out there that they didn’t control. His response was well crafted and graciously delivered, making some good points along the way. I suggested that I understood that mindset when they had people under NDA‘s before rollout, but now that U-verse is in the stores, being shown at local neighborhood U-verse parties, and being installed in people’s homes nothing we were going to share on tape straight out of the box was anything people couldn’t freely see elsewhere. The key point here being we were taking the feed straight out of the box. Not like we were trying to shoot a cheesy, low budget demo with some poor lighting and shaky camera work. Just raw, boring to most normal people, video of the U-verse GUI as the user experiences it. Think of it as a virtual U-verse party for the global neighborhood.

At this point it was becoming clear that the project was only seconds away from a complete crash and burn so I tried a couple more desperate stabs at persuasion by strategically dropping buzzwords like Viral, but that may have made matters worse only serving to increase the negative momentum spiral that now engulfed the video.

Ultimately, my charm (or lack of it) proved to be ineffective.

Let me stop here for a moment to stress the fact that everyone I encountered at the store was extremely friendly, professional, laid back and frankly pretty cool in their handling of the situation. The corporate brass apparently just didn’t dig the idea. I understand and am not sure I really blame them. If I’m in their shoes, maybe I take the same position. I would like to think I am braver than that, but until it is your job on the line and you get hit with a request like this from an unidentified guy in a t-shirt and shorts with his camera you can’t really say for sure how you would handle it.

The only thing is, do you really have to be that brave anymore to go viral? Seems smart and relatively safe with little downside. If the video did mutate into some kind of monstrosity in a popular mashup somewhere, most people are smart enough to figure out official corporate communications from some guy on the Internet.

The head scratching irony of this whole affair is that the only reason I was in the store in the first place was because of the open, social and viral aspect of Alan’s blog and not the result of any official corporate commercials or other traditional media placements AT&T may have made. I don’t even need my HP 12C to calculate their ROI on what they had to spend to get me in their store.

In the end though, nobody wanted to be the designated fall guy for this video so I thanked the representatives for their time and patience and we parted with genuine smiles and friendly handshakes. I really like San Antonio and the way people do business here.

I have some thoughts to share on the U-verse product, but that is for another post. In the meantime though, I can’t help but think that when someone with U-verse in their home, or heaven forbid even AT&T itself, puts a U-verse GUI video on YouTube or Blip.tv or their own website, there might just be some out of town early adopters, geeks and industry people who would be interested in viewing.

But, then again, how would you control it?

tags: IPTV; Viral Video; Marketing; Blogs; Advertising;

Thought Jonathan Gurwitz in his Op-Ed, Resignation vs. Brutality , in Sunday’s San Antonio Express-News did a nice job of helping his readers turn on the theater of the mind to create some powerful imagery in support of his argument. Politics aside, if you’re an aspiring opinion writer looking for solid examples of persuasive writing to inspire you, I think you’ll find his work to be worth the read.

Does Senator McCain‘s new Consumers Having Options in Cable Entertainment CHOICE A La Carte bill give hometown AT&T another opportunity to create a distinct competitive advantage over their cable and satellite competition?

While the entrenched cable and satellite TV providers continue to fight ala carte programming almost out what appears to be a reflex now, AT&T is starting with a clean slate in this market and thus an opportunity to create some new rules. By embracing this bill and offering a la carte as part of U-Verse AT&T could create at least two key advantages.

One, from a marketing standpoint, a la carte creates the opportunity to position U-verse in the consumer mind with a clear and distinct difference over the cable company programming packages. Build the U-verse brand by telling the consumer they really can order only the channels they want and save a bundle on their cable tv bill.

Remember, it is supposed to be Your world. Delivered. Right? Not The best bundle of programming AT&T could negotiate. Delivered.. Consumers should have the power to shape their television world the way they want it. The unique competitive advantage and clear choice between an a la carte U-verse service and existing satellite and cable choices might just create a viral force in the marketplace that would be hard for the cable companies to beat back.

Right now the packages available from cable, satellite and now U-verse might be perceived as really not all that different in the eyes of the average consumers. Though it is nice, does the average consumer really care all that much whether channels change a half second faster or that the GUI is a little slicker? Some do, for sure. But when a company offers real savings and total choice, a large block of consumers will choose those options first every time.

Another real advantage to the provider that adopts a la carte is that it may help solve looming capacity issues. If the provider doesn’t need to allocate bandwidth to deliver a bundle of channels, most of which the consumer doesn’t want, wouldn’t that then free up some capacity that would allow the provider to make available a sizeable number of new programming options that the consumer can choose from?

The NCTA responds that a la carte means Fewer Choices, Less Diversity, Higher Prices. Some would argue that the exact opposite is actually true. The consumer would receive more choice because a la carte gives the provider more capacity to make more programming options available and that in effect also leads to more diversity. The higher price argument is true if you look at the per channel charge to the consumer. So if I get charged $3 a month for ESPN as part of a bundle, maybe I end up paying $4 for ESPN a la carte. Volume discounts are a normal part of doing business and a trade off consumers would likely understand and embrace. If you buy five channels your cost per channel will be more than if you buy 500 channels. True. But your total cable bill may be much lower. And if a la carte really was going to make cable bills larger would the cable companies be fighting it so aggressively?

The real test would be to give the consumer the option to choose both. Huge channel packages with 1000 channels will make sense for some consumers and they can buy them. But they don’t make sense for many other consumers, and currently this group has no option.

Perhaps some irony is on the horizon as it appears that broadband distribution and IPTV may settle this a la carte debate in the marketplace. If those whose mission it is to deliver these services to the consumer got out in front and embraced consumer choice wouldn’t they be serving their consumers and their shareholders better in the long term?

related post: An open letter to Ed Whitacre – November 2005.

Forrester technology analyst Charline Li hits the nail on the head in her post yesterday about the challenge of Calculating the ROI of blogs.

For those armed with the desire, tools and techniques to build traditional valuation models (analysts), finding a solid set of metrics on which to create a surefire way to measure the ROI of a corporate blogging investment can be elusive. While difficult to measure in exact numbers though, my personal experience with the corporate blog has made me a devout believer and evangelist that some of the returns are indeed tangible.

For example, after doing a pseudo blog for a couple of years on my old corporate website (the site looked like a blog but I was just building it by writing my own html for each entry, only updated a couple times a quarter)I started this real blog in February of 2005 on the Movable Type platform.

During my journey with this blogging tool so far the biggest measurable performance increase from making a blog the foundation of my online corporate presence has without a doubt been the steady and measurable increase in traffic. Though the total audience for ContentDeveloper.com is relatively small, the rate of growth in audience is worth a look for a small business, or large business for that matter, looking for cost effective and easy to implement ways to get traction for their message.

I haven’t bought any google adwords to promote ContentDeveloper.com, been featured in any news articles or issued any press releases promoting this site (those can all be effective and smart things to do, I just haven’t done them or earned them), so one could reasonably argue that this growth can most likely be attributed primarily to a form of organic SEO.

One might argue that as the web audience grows the audience for just about any website will grow as well — the rising tide lifts all boats theory. That argument has some appeal to me, but as I look at the relative slow growth/flat traffic patterns for some other non blog sites I have access to audience data on, this argument begins to lose weight with me. This is confirmed when I spend some time combing my own access log and see the primary ways people are getting to this site. The logs reveal the source of this organic SEO has been a nice mix of traffic originating from links from other sites, referrals from next generation search tools like technorati, icerocket and pubsub along with search results from traditional search and new blogsearch tools from mainstream search names like google, yahoo and msn search.

Seeing the huge variety of search terms that lead people to this site is educational indeed. Those people just wouldn’t find me with my old corporate brochure style site. Add to this the still small but increasing portion of the web audience who consume the majority of their content via RSS readers and the case is only made stronger for the blog. This portion of the audience create some new challenges for measuring their activity, but fortunately tools like Feedburner have quickly added tools and services that are making it easier.

Though only anecdotal, my conversations with other bloggers reveal their experience to be the same. Some of them are more effective bloggers than me and get more activity and greater relevancy from links from other sites, but the general point is consistent. For organic SEO alone, there is a strong case to be made that corporate blogging is more than worth the investment in time. And that is really what the investment is, time. Infrastructure and tools can be had now for literally nothing.

Add in those other even more difficult to measure but important factors like the value of creating new conversations with new people and the unique impact of open dialogue over manufactured message and it becomes difficult to make a case that there is currently another more effective route to take for a corporate web presence.

There will always be a need for some traditional brochure style items needed to communicate what your brand is all about, but the time may have arrived where those blunt marketing instruments should be subordinated to the opportunity to establish a direct connection between your company and your customer.

And, to close on a local corporate blogging side note, this just arrived in an email from the San Antonio Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

—snip from iabc email—-

Tuesday, June 27