The rest of Doc Searl's title is "Reading some writing on the web's wall". Here's a side observation, while we wait for the ending keynote - there are a lot of Mac's here, a truly disproportionate share. An awful lot of "thought leaders" are - and have been - moving to them. There's something Microsoft should pay attention to.

The title reflects something Doc's been writing about for awhile on his blog. By showing a Google search for "syndicate", he says that search isn't dead, it just isn't live. However - a search for "syndicateNY" turns up a lot better results... ). There are live searches on Yahoo and Google, but they aren't primary (and Doc calls them hidden). Hey, my blog shows up near the top on that Yahoo search :)

So Technorati is the "live" web as far as Doc is concerned - their default search results are the live stuff. I don't know - the main problem with the example, to my mind, is the term "syndicate" - it's way to general, so the results are likely to suck. The point is good, but it's a bad example. Anyway, back to Doc - he's stating that Google and Yahoo search the whole haystack, as opposed to just syndicated feeds ([ed] although - those two are converging, and that convergence will only grow).

"On the Live Web, the demand side is supplying itself". He's relating this to the growth of Linux (Torvalds and open sourcers supplying the demand and the supply). Umm, no, not so much. The real growth started when IBM and a few other old line firms started tossing real money at it. It's a blind spot that fools a lot of people. Including the Sun executive team, but I repeat myself.

Back to the presentation. "The best blogging is provisional, not finished. It's about rolling snowballs downhill". You can watch that rollout on sites like techmeme. You can be be an "alpha blogger" by being quotable. I like this - there's no "new economy" - it's the same one, but networked. The power isn't redistributed, it's re-originated. The most connected will be those taking advantage of the Live Web.

"The value chain is being replaced by the value constellation". The wide open space around the constellations is freedom. Heh - with apologies to Gillmor, he says that we it's more about intention than attention. The intention? It's about customers who are ready to buy. To Doc's mind, a lot of marketers, PR people (etc, etc) are back in the original web bubble - trying to get eyeballs and attention to sell to. His notion is that people are now coming with intention - ready to buy - and they need to find a willing seller. So he wants vendors to come to the customers, not vice-versa.

An example - renting a car without shopping around.

The Live Web exposes many of advertising's flaws. Zapped by mute and fast forward, inattention to the message, etc. etc. Top-down advertising is just noise, and it's very inefficient. AdSense is a start at fixing the problem, but it's not done. Doc thinks money will be spent fast in the intention economy, because it matches willing buyers and sellers quickly. He also thinks that the stuff that Gillmor is talking about plays into this, as a way of getting that matching built up.

Large vendors are going to have to adapt, and resist the urge to build silos. Consumers are coming in educated about what they want to buy already. So some more stuff:

A free market is not "your choice of silo" - a great example being the various carriers that want to ditch net neutrality and let the ISP's build out their own silos. Another: "no one wants an experience". People want to make, find, understand, or buy stuff. They don't want crap. Another: "The Consumer" is a relic of the industrial economy. We need to gag when we say "consumer" rather than "customer" - or "listener" or "viewer". More: The net is not a place where "consumers" "access" "content". For instance, I'm producing right now...

"Branding is for cattle, not for products or people". Playing into this, everything and everyone is being unbundled. This is impacting local TV already. The current distribution mechanisms are outdated - we need a la carte, but as we design it, not as "they" design it. TV as we think we know it is already dead. One in three teens cannot identify the top four networks. Meanwhile, the FCC is busy mandating HDTV and moving the existing channels off the air.

"Clear Channel killed Radio. Listeners are resurrecting it". The same thing happened to newspapers, as they standardized and stopped being local. Doc says that Podcasting is bringing back local radio. Hi-Def TV will be cheap and available by the end of the year. Neither cable nor satellite can carry (much) of it. Neither can ISPs, who have left the last mile for delivery only. However, you can buy cheap production tools for it (cameras, etc). [ed] - I don't see a small timer putting together something like "Battlestar Galactica" anytime soon though.

"Email marketing is creepy. So is SEO" - I heartily agree with that.

The "livest" part of the web is on mobile phones (etc). Everyone is now an influencer, or can be.

"Closed Formats are Doomed" - Heh - he thinks that the majority of desktops and Laptops will run Linux in 5 years. he's very wrong about that, for reasons I've blogged about before. Hand a Linux box to any nearby non-technical person, and watch them try to get audio and video (or printing) working. I don't see any of that being fixed, either - none of the outfits promoting Linux are interested in that stuff at all, and - to be blunt - uncompensated developers don't do that kind of "finishing" work. None of which has anything to do with stability or safety, btw.

"The net should be as fast as your hard drive" - and he says someday it will be, although the carriers will fight it. People want real bandwidth, and will fight for it. The funny thing is, Verizon is laying fiber in my neighborhood, and they charge $45 for the 15mbits connection - and $145 for the 30 mbit one. Which means, they'll sell very little of the latter, and will have to drop that price. Who knows - this one, the market will sort out. What will likely happen - anyone who can convince their company to pay for the upper end connection will get it, and anyone who can't, won't.

Question: What social changes do you see? The end of the couch potato (not sure of that one). Education will change, as it's now on an old style industrial model. I hope he's right about that, but there are a lot of people standing in the way of real change (regardless of how you define real change) in that field.

And that's it - end of the show.