Michael Jackson is (probably, though blurry pictures and fantastic stories suggesting otherwise keep popping up) dead. But his business is more alive than ever. He may be dead, but he is nevertheless the most modern live artist in the Expectations society.

His highly anticipated comeback-slash-farewell concert series “This is it” never materialized. And for just this reason, it has now become the biggest-grossing concert series in history.

Fueled by the alluring-almost, that is, people almost knowing and experiencing, but not quite, and fueled by the fact of a never passed release date (remember yesterday’s post?), “This is it” is the best-selling and highest-profiled concert franchise ever.

The “This is it”-behind-the-scenes-movie set new records in movie theaters, grossing a record-high 300 million plus dollars in ticket sales in just a few months. DVD and blueray sales and rentals followed suit, nearing 200 million and still ticking.

A googling of “this is it” plus “michael jackson” generates 10 million hits, which is more than any other tour of any other artist, even more than the King himself’s best-selling album through history, “thriller”.

Merchandise for the tour has generated tens of millions in sales.

And now the rumour goes, of course, there might come a sequel…

Last week, Time and Rolling Stone wound up on a collision course.

Why?

Because Time published a Rolling Stone article on their website – before Rolling Stone even published it themselves.

Here’s how it went. Monday afternoon, The Rolling Stone excitedly announced that they had a great piece about General McChrystal’s Obama critique (you know the rest, it got him fired), and they sent a copy of the article to the Associated Press (organizer of news syndication). Come Tuesday morning, it was published in its entirety on time.com.

It’s such a beautiful illustration of how things work in the world of any:

1. The very microsecond you do something, anyone, anywhere can do the same thing. You can only be unique at the exact moment (or rather, before) the release.
2. The logic becomes – as soon as a product exists, it’s anyone’s property. Thus, Time’s argument was – if Rolling Stone did not publish the article immediately, it was up for grabs. As the 2,920 times more impatient inhabitants of the world of any want things immediately, the article would have lost it’s value before Rolling Stone got to publishing it anyhow.

Right or wrong? You tell me.

I’ve written here before about minibooks, a great thing for the 2,920 times more impatient people of the new millennium, which come in the forms of cell phone text messages, and twitter and facebook updates.

Well, now, thanks to the exploding use of e-readers, we have a new form, perfectly suited for Generation Boss:

(High-)light reading.

In the e-readers, anyone can highlight parts, paragraphs, sentences, that are the most interesting in the book, for anyone else to take part of.

E-readers can then be programmed to show only the most highlighted parts, and wham! you’re able to get immediately to the juiciest parts of the book and skip the stuff that people before you had to force themselves through.

Reading has never been easier or more fun.

5.8 is nothing tomorrow! Although the general life satisfaction level is parked steadily around 5.8 on a 7-point scale in most countries, tomorrow is a major exception.

Tomorrow is Midsummer’s Eve, the happiest day of the year (at least to the Scandinavians), the life satisfaction level jumping high above 5.8. Tomorrow, we get to bask in the expectations of a long, hot, beautiful, romantic summer!

So, jump with all your might! ‘Cause you’ll probably be down on the ground by Monday again.

But let’s not think about Monday. Let’s do it the Swedish way – get drunk out of our heads and forget all about Monday. 

Jump and have fun!

A while back, I wrote about how the beautiful competition in the world of any, where anyone can apply anywhere, anytime, has led universities to “accept” up to ten times more students than can actually enroll, because all students apply to every university imaginable, so no one has any idea how many will actually show up anywhere.

Now, the world of any competition has pushed the universities one step further. Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, USA, just promised their students that they will raise everyone’s grade point average by 0.33 points, retroactively. Just like that.

Why? Because otherwise, students won’t go there, as  the grades are too low for their liking. After all, UCLA and New York University just raised their student grade levels across the board to be competitive. And now several schools are contemplating trashing all grades below C altogether.

No, I’m not kidding. I’m lovin’ it. 

What do you think?

I’ve been all over the place talking in the last few weeks, and one question keeps popping up:

“All these things, with the world of any, next operas and everything, aren’t they a typically Western thing?”

And I keep bouncing back – “no, we’re not as special and ahead of everyone else as we think”. I’ve posted a number of examples here before, like the high BPC (Blog Per Capita) rate in Iran, and the skyrocketing mobile commerce penetration in Bangladesh.

Here’s another one.  The Chinese are more avid social media users than people in both the US and the UK. Almost a third of the Chinese web users access social media sites in the cell phone, which is almost twice the rates of the Americans and the Brits. And if you think Facebook is a huge network, check out QZone and RenRen, and think again…

In the world of any, anyone, anywhere, can be a millionnaire in any way.

By matching photos of cats with funny taglines, for instance.  Which is what cat owner David Huh did. Someone took one of the photos of his cat that he had posted on his own website and published it with a funny tagline on a site called I Can Has Cheezburger.  The site linked back to David’s, and soon he noted a flood of visitors to his own site via the link.

David purchased the site, and started selling advertising space. The site, which simply compiles cat photos and allows anyone, anywhere, to add tag lines, made profit from day one, and now generates milli0ns. People from all over the world submit photos of their cats and add tag lines for free, for the fun of it, and people from all over the world stop by the site to see yet another cat photo of the day.

And now David continues his quest, with sites centering on angry-looking panda photos, bad repair job photos, misspelled sign photos. Anything.  And in the world of any, where you can reach anyone, anywhere, anytime, you can always count on attracting at least someone.

Hate to… Who am I kidding, love to say I told you so. 

Apple has provided the world with yet another example of how business is done in the Expectations society.

The iPhone4 will be released at the end of the month, but they opened up for pre-sales last Tuesday.

And counted 600,000 units sold that very first day. 600,000 units of a product that does not exist yet, not tested, not experienced, not touched by a single soul.

I rest my case.

The prestigious Guggenheim foundation, with museums in NYC, Berlin, Bilbao, Venice, and Tokyo is now entering the Expectations society. And YOU can be part of their transition.

They have now realized that the most interesting artists are no longer the ones with a history and a heritage, but the ones with a promising future, the expectity artists, and they have realized that in the world of any, there could be fantastic expectities anywhere, anytime, a world too big for the Guggenheim to keep track of themselves.

Hence:

Starting Monday, anyone, anywhere, can showcase any of their art on YouTube Play. On July 31, a jury gets to work, singling out the 200 most interesting artworks, which are then showcased on their Youtube channel. The 20 highest rated get exhibited at the Guggenheim museums from October.

Right now, the annual E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is taking place in Los Angeles. Oh, what a glorious love-child of the Expectations society it is.

In March, Nintendo created a big hype and leapt miles ahead of the competition in people’s minds by announcing that they will release a 3D hand-held device “some time later in the year”.

Now at the expo, they showed a prototype. And were immediately countered by Sony, who announced that they will launch an even more advanced 3D experience in the form of Playstation Move, available on September 19.

Which, in turn, was countered by Microsoft, informing the world that they will have an even more advanced 3D video game technology, called Kinect, available by November 4.