Stephen Lawson reports here on BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker’s comments about net neutrality regulation at the eComm conference yesterday. Klinker used the word “regulation” to mean a couple different things in his remarks, but nothing he said justifies the headline PC World gave the story.

Here’s Lawson reporting Klinker’s comments:

“There is no ambiguity. There is not going to be, at least in the near term, a strong regulator for broadband,” Klinker told the eComm conference in Burlingame, California. Instead, it is the public that will pass judgment on how service and application providers behave, Klinker said. “The public is our regulator.”

“The public is our regulator.” But PC World ran the story under this headline:

“Broadband Has No Regulator, BitTorrent CEO Says.”

It will not be a government regulator; it will be the public. Perhaps Klinker regards the public as a weak regulator, but PC World takes the public to be no regulator at all. Stupendous.

Even the strongest skeptic of markets believes that the public has some influence on businesses’ decisions and actions. With inaccurate headlines like this, PC World could stand to learn what market regulation is like when readers stop reading and advertisers stop advertising.

It’s worth noting that Klinker almost certainly helped incite and organize public reaction to the Comcast Kerfuffle, enjoying a PR coup that is still paying his company dividends. Klinker knows a little bit about how markets regulate.

I really appreciate the venture capitalists (VCs) in Silicon Valley subsidizing my soapbox at Twitter.  Seriously, it is an absolutely awesome platform for getting a message out to the masses.  But at some point I worry that the gravy train will come to an end and that users will have to start picking up part of the tab.  After all, will those VCs continue to subsidize Twitter if it never turns a profit?  According to the Wikipedia entry about Twitter:

In total, Twitter has raised over US$57 million from venture capitalists. The exact amounts of funding have not been publicly released. Twitter’s first round of funding was for an undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between $1 million and $5 million. Its B round of funding in 2008 was for $22 million and its C round of funding in 2009 was for $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from other investors including Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital^. Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.

Again, thank you VCs!  But, like them, I do wonder when and how Twitter will bring in some cash.  Is there a “freemium” model that could work?  Perhaps.  “Pro” or corporate accounts have been rumored to be in the works.  Getting someone else to pick up the tab that way might bring in enough cash for Twitter to allow the free ride to continue for the rest of us.  But what about advertising?  It’s been the “mother’s milk” of most online media and platforms for some time now, and Twitter seems perfectly suited to insert a few banner ads or contextual ads here and there.  It could be happening sooner than you think. Austin Modine of The Register notes in a new piece, “Twitter ‘Leaves Door Open’ for Targeted Ads,” that:

Twitter has always been reluctant to commit to serving advertisements as a revenue model – the way most web start-ups today stay afloat. In the past, the website has expressed more interest in developing add-on tools and services for companies and professionals. Yet [Twitter cofounder Biz Stone] … has never ruled out the possibility.

Modine reports that Twitter recently changed its Terms of Service in such a way that makes this more likely.  Here is what the new Terms of Service say:

The Services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the Content or information on the Services, queries made through the Services, or other information. The types and extent of advertising by Twitter on the Services are subject to change. In consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Twitter and its third party providers and partners may place such advertising on the Services or in connection with the display of Content or information from the Services whether submitted by you or others.

As Tony Bradley of PC World argues:

Why not? Advertising is the grease that keeps the Internet revenue engine running smoothly. Its tried and true. Internet entities like Google have grown from the embryo stage to technology behemoth primarily by feasting on a steady diet of ad revenue.

Absolutely correct.  Of course, that probably won’t stop some people — especially the privacy zealots — from whining about commercial exploitation, mind manipulation, and so on — especially if Twitter really does make their ads highly targeted.  But that’s the natural evolution of things for Twitter and similar sites, and it’s very pro-consumer because it supports the continued provision of service at no charge to the vast majority of users. That’s especially important for a communications platform like Twitter, which carries a massive amount of non-commercial speech, as Berin Szoka and I pointed out in our papers, “Online Advertising & User Privacy: Principles to Guide the Debate,” and “Targeted Online Advertising: What’s the Harm & Where Are We Heading?  It’s essential that policymakers not interfere with the evolution of business models that could support speech-enhancing platforms like Twitter going forward.  This is why we always point out the relationship between economic regulation and speech regulation. Burdensome regulation could stifle the “technologies of freedom” like Twitter and diminish our speech opportunities in the process.

As Berin and I have noted here before (here and here), there seems to be no shortage of competition and innovation in the mobile operating system (OS) space. We’ve got:

1. Apple’s iPhone platform,
2. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile,
3. Symbian,
4. Google’s Android,
5. BlackBerry,
6. Palm OS (+ Palm’s new WebOS),
7. the LiMo platform, and
8. OpenMoko.

I am missing any? I don’t think so. Even if I have, this is really an astonishing degree of platform competition for a network-based industry. Network industries are typically characterized by platform consolidation over time as both application developers and consumers flock to just a couple of standards — and sometimes just one — while others gradually fade away. But that has not yet been the case for mobile operating systems.  I just can’t see it lasting, however. As I argued in my essay on “Too Much Platform Competition?,” I would think that many application providers would be clamoring for consolidation to make it easier to develop and roll out new services.  Some are, and yet we still have more than a half-dozen mobile OS platforms on the market.

Regardless, the currently level of platform competition also seems to run counter to the thesis set forth by Jonathan Zittrain and others who fear the impending decline or death of digital “generativity.” That is, technologies or networks that invite or allow tinkering and all sorts of creative uses are supposedly “dying” or on the decline because companies are trying to exert more control over proprietary or closed systems. You will recall that in his book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, Zittrain casts the iPhone as the enemy of generativity and suggests that more and more devices will look like it in the future. (Ignore the fact that the iPhone becomes more open to 3rd party apps with each passing day and that Apple’s latest iPhone OS was cracked in a matter of hours after release). Zittrain and many others have been beating this gloomy ‘generativity-is-dying’ drum now for awhile, so you would think that they would have some substantive evidence to point to in defense of their thesis.

But today’s mobile OS market certainly doesn’t seem to help them make their case — whether we are talking about OS-level competition or innovation at the applications level by third parties. Indeed, take a look at the latest PC World magazine in which Harry McCracken conducts a “Smart Phone OS Smackdown” to see how the the current mobile operating systems stack up and what they offer consumers in terms of both built-in functionality and third-party add-ons. It’s the third-party stuff that is most of interest to our inquiry here regarding the Zittrain-ian fear of declining mobile generativity. Here’s what PC World reports about the third-party apps available for 5 major mobile OS platforms:

Apple iPhone: “Just months after Apple opened up the iPhone to other developers, thousands of programs are available, and downloading them directly via the App Store is a cakewalk.”

Windows Mobile: “The best thing about this OS is the sheer variety of available applications in every category. Utilities such as Lakeridge Software’s WisBar Advance let you tweak the interface’s look, feel, and functionality, compensating for some of its deficiencies. But you get no built-in app store à la iPhone OS and Android.”

Google Android: “Developers are just beginning to hop on the Android bandwagon. The iPhone-like Market service lets you download apps directly to the phone from Google; unlike with the iPhone, you can also snag programs from third-party merchants such as Handango. …   Android’s potential is gigantic, especially if it winds up on scads of phones.”

BlackBerry: “Once upon a time, users didn’t have many BlackBerry programs to choose from, but recently the market has boomed–thousands, from productivity apps to games, are available now. Windows Mobile and S60 have even more bountiful selections, though. Currently BlackBerry has no over-the-air storefront comparable to Apple’s App Store or Android Market. RIM’s BlackBerry storefront is expected to launch in March 2009.”

Symbian: “A profusion of useful S60-compatible applications is available at sites such as Handango–one of the deepest libraries for any platform, thanks to Symbian’s long life span and wide usage.”

Importantly, McCracken didn’t even take a look at the Palm OS or Palm’s aftermarket offerings, and he failed to mention the significant “home brew” market for hacks and add-ons that countless people like me take advantage of through sites like PPC Geeks and Howard’s Forums. Regardless, as the PC World article illustrates, there’s lots of innovation and generativity out there in the mobile space today. Of course, it’s true that Apple’s iPhone isn’t quite as open as the rest of the platforms out there.  As McCracken notes of the iPhone:

But the limitations that Apple puts on third-party apps–they can’t run in the background or access data other than their own–place major obstacles in the way of everything from instant messengers to office suites. And Apple, the sole distributor of iPhone software, has declined to make available some useful applications that developers have submitted.

But as I have said before, there is a simple solution to that: Just buy a different phone!!  No one has any sort of God-given right to a perfectly “open” OS. You know what you’re getting when you buy an iPhone and realize that it may not be perfectly open to all third-party apps or hacks. But hey, it’s still a pretty damn spectacular phone. Apparently it’s even good enough for the generativity-worshiping Jonathan Zittrain, who I outed at this New America Foundation debate as an iPhone user himself!

Bottom line: Generativity in the mobile marketplace is alive and well. And, contrary to what worrywarts like Zittrain and other critics claim, the trend is clearly in the direction of MORE openness and generativity over time, not less.

Update: I just caught Tim Lee’s post on “The Perpetual Peril of Open Platforms” over at Freedom to Tinker. Worth reading if you are interested in more on this subject.