Placeshifting Walmart

One of the buzzwords of late is Placeshifting. Seems natural, as we have been bound by space and time, then we have Tivo and now we want that concept everywhere. Timeshifting lets us turn flows into stocks, the ultimate in convenient consumption. Sony, Sling Media all fit this mold and the meme accelerated at CES. It presents an interesting quandary for vertically integrated Cable, which is granted legal monopolies according to geography and intellectual property. The convenient consumption of Placeshifting well serves our increasingly nomadic lifestyle, global tribes, the ethnic networks that span the globe. Even in the context of Moroccans consuming homeland media 24/7 while living on the dole in Germany, destined for cultural isolation. Now I personally think this is a good thing, as odds are there is more cross-cultural exchange than if everyone stayed in their homeland, but regardless people and cultures will continue to be on the move. But lets extend this concept. Say you are a business traveller stranded in Starbucks, Lunch at Walmart Paradox today, in which suppliers long for choice beyond the short tail. The answer is to tell Walmart to go away. Toy companies are beginning to discover that they can't win this game. The answer is to find a new and better and more consistently profitable way to launch the remarkable stuff. But you are still stuck in Witchita wanting to consume something brands. Leading brands don't blog, or encourage their employees to blog, as the perception is a loss of control is not worth risking convenient consistency. But they are listening, even to posts like these. So the big question, in my humble opinion, is what happens when brands owned by a network are worth more than the brand of a single firm? When choice in placeshifting, for example, is as easy as choices in your own neighborhood. Wouldn't you want your employees to be part of these conversations, just like they are when they come in your stores? Socialtext, an emerging provider of Enterprise Social Software that dramatically increases group productivity and develops a group memory.