by Josh Bernoff

I don't normally write about gaming. But I've known Steve Perlman for 13 years now, and his latest announcement has the potential to change an awful lot about how the Internet works and what you can do with it. So I'm going to write about it, since the Groundswell audience ought to find that interesting.

Steve demonstrated his latest brainchild, OnLive, to me about a month ago. In fact, I think I was the first person in the press and analyst community to see it. Here are the basic facts about the announcement.

1. OnLive has a bunch of servers on the net, running Windows. Soon some will be running Linux.

2. On these servers are running a bunch of games. OnLive has agreements with all the biggest third-party game makers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Take-Two, and Warner.

3. Because of arrangements OnLive has made with many of the biggest broadband providers, these games can be streamed to most of the US.

4. This means you can play the games on any PC or Mac or with a small and presumably cheap controller, on your TV or HDTV. No console.

The secret sauce here is very low-latency delivery of compressed, fast-motion, regular or high-definition video from those servers to whatever screen you have in your house. The business model for this gaming service has not been announced yet, only the technology, but it's reasonable to assume that the publishers will allow you to rent time on games or subscribe to them.

No console. This goes right to any screen in your house.

Since this is not a gaming blog, why am I writing about this? Because by putting all the hardware in the cloud and streaming the video down to your TV (or PC), OnLive means hardware doesn't matter any more. Gaming is the hardest app to do this with, because of the demands on the processor and the fast action. If you can do it with games, you can do it with anything.

Because the hardware is gone, OnLive will include features like spectating (watch your favorite players play) and "BragClips" (push a button to save and then share your last 15 seconds of play). Not a problem, since it's only video you're seeing, all the crunching is taking place somewhere else.

But, as Morpheus said, free your mind. If they can do this for games, imagine for a moment that you can get access to cheap computing power in the cloud (just as you can get cheap storage now -- thanks YouTube) and then stream the results down to any screen, PC or TV. What could happen?

• You could put your whole PC life on a server and then access it from any TV or PC or Mac. Just carry a little adapter with you and plug it into the local broadband and TV screen.

• If you feel like it, carry with you a laptop that's just a big flat screen, a keyboard, and enough processor power to decode the streaming codec. Except for sharper screens or longer battery life, not much need to upgrade. Oops, sorry Intel.

• Watch airlines and 3G vendors vying to give you connectivity, to make those low-powered laptops useful everywhere.

Or maybe forget the laptop -- wherever you go, they'll have one. In a world like this, all you really need to carry with you is your identity, and you can carry that in your brain. This compression and streaming is a big step forward in cloud computing.

Go ahead, tell me this won't happen. Microsoft won't license its applications for streaming. Broadband won't be broad enough. All the hardware makers will line up against it. I know, I know. But do you see the way the tide is flowing?

OnLive needs to deliver on its promise. The powers that make the computing world will find this very threatening, and for now, expect OnLive to concentrate on gaming. But stay tuned, this new world could look very different.

by Josh Bernoff

Last year, we surveyed interactive marketers and found a strong desire to continue investing in social applications, even with a recession looming. Now the recession is here. What are they saying now?

Based on a more recent survey from December of 2008, they still will maintain or increase their social media investments. The full statistics are in a new report by my colleague Jeremiah Owyang called "Social Media Playtime Is Over." Remember, in late '08 the recession was nearly as gloomy as how it looks now. And yet:

1. More than half of interactive marketers plan increases in their social technology spending. (These stats are from 114 marketers currently using social media, out of the 145 interactive marketers we surveyed.) Only 5% plan decreases. Go ahead, name another marketing investment that's anywhere near this strong in recessionary times.

2. The most rapidly growing categories are social networking, blogging, and user-generated content.

3. Remember that the base of this growth is small. While the marketers in this sample all come from companies with at least 250 people, three quarters of them are still spending $100,000 or less on these social technology projects. This is a drop in the bucket compared to other marketing expenditures.

This has reinforced what I'm hearing out there anecdotally, which is an awful lot of marketers asking for (and paying for) advice on this topic.

What's driving this? As the executive summary of the report says:

These inexpensive tools can quickly get marketing messages out through interactive discussion and rapid word of mouth, and properly managed, can deliver measurable results.

The report includes recommendations for marketers. Here are some for my blog readers:

• If you are a marketer interested in social media, use these stats to get a realistic budget, then concentrate on measuring the results of your efforts to prove they work. Don't dabble; dabblers will see their budgets cut. Social media playtime is over.

• If you are a consultant or recently laid off person, yes, this is a growth area. But it is one in which there are already an awful lot of experts. To become successful, concentrate on developing expertise in implementation, management, moderation, or measurement of social media efforts; that's where the need appears to be, from the companies I speak with. In other words, social media playtime is over.

• If you are a technology vendor, case studies with proof of value will be far more effective than features, functions, and technology claims. If you can offer a consultative sale and handholding service, you'll be a lot more likely to win clients and thrive in this space. Say it with me, now. Social media playtime is over.

Got it? What do you think? Is the recession halting social media efforts at your company, or encouraging them?