…There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.

Steve Ballmer in the Washington Post, Thursday June 5, 2008

It never ceases to amaze me how many otherwise smart people simply don’t understand the history of media. New media NEVER kill off old media, they just change the role of the media that came before.

People still go see and hear live music despite the existence of records and CDs. People still go to the theatre despite the existence of movies. People still go to movies despite the existence of TV and DVD players. People will still read newspapers and magazines despite the existence of computers and the Internet… for a very, VERY long time to come.

Thinking about how digital will change the role of traditional offline media is a worthy and interesting pursuit. Proclaiming them dead is just intellectual laziness.

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Listening today to last week’s Media Bulleye roundtable podcast (in particular their discussion of “social media burnout”) got me to thinking about the status of various technologies relative to our dear old friend the “fishbowl” a.k.a. the echo chamber a.k.a. are we all just a bunch of nerds talking to ourselves?

This list is by no means exhaustive, (not even close!) nor are the statuses I assign going to necessarily be correct next week (or by the time I hit the publish button for that matter) but here’s my current take on some of the most familiar names in Web 2.0-osity as relates to how they are seen by those inside and outside the mythic Bowl…

Facebook
Fishbowl Status: OUT

Facebook is arguably the poster child for a social media technology that has broken through to the mainstream. That’s been good and bad for it. Most of my friends from high school seem to be on Facebook, but many of them wouldn’t know a blog if it hit them in the head. In the meantime bloggers like Neville Hobson have turned up their noses at Facebook — personally I’m still not sure if I consider this elitist or an excellent mental health preservation tactic, but I do find it funny how success with the masses often breeds contempt with the pioneers and early adopters.

Twitter
Fishbowl Status: ON IT’S WAY OUT (?)

It seems like Twitter has been getting a lot of press and attention lately. The Toronto Star published yet another Twitter article this past weekend, which is usually a sign in this country at least that something has broken through to the general consciousness. Personally I’m still not sure if Twitter really has a place in the lives of most people — for the connectors and mavens of the world it plays a clear role, but will the vast majority of people find real value in a stream of Tweets? (And that’s assuming the service is up when they check, a dubious prospect these days at best!)

Myspace
Fishbowl Status: WAY, WAY OUT

Myspace is all but forgotten among the social media elite, but it’s important to remember that it still has larger overall traffic than Facebook or Twitter. As Christopher Penn pointed out in a blog post last year “Myspace is over its Dip.” It may not be relivant to those interested in the cutting edge, but for marketers, musicians and others, there’s still juice to be had in Myspace-land.

Second Life
Fishbowl Status: WAS OUT, NOW BACK IN

A little while back I blogged about how Second Life was and is a concept just a little bit ahead of its time. Since then, there seems to be some renewed interest in last year’s media darling. Part of the reason seems to be the installation of Mark Kingdon as the new CEO for Second Life parent company Linden Lab. That Kingdon comes from an agency background is particularly interesting — it’s useful to remember that Linden never really marketed Second Life, nor did they directly engage with most of the companies who created presences there. Putting Kingdon at the top seems to indicate that they are actually ready to partner and promote what remains a virtual world with amazing potential.

Blogs
Fishbowl Status: READING, OUT. WRITING, IN.

I think there’s a common perception inside the social media fishbowl that everyone has their own blog. It’s not true. It’s really, REALLY not true. For example, I work at a digital marketing agency. Everyone who works there, by definition, has a higher-than-average expertise and understanding of online technology. They are, again by definition, all involved at some level in marketing, design and programming, which are three of the most common blogging topic areas. They are also all pretty darn smart. I would estimate 5-10% have a blog. 15%, absolute tops. Pretty low, all things considered. That said, many of them read blogs of one kind or another. But it’s that old 1% rule at play… a small minority create, the rest consume.

Podcasts
Fishbowl Status: STILL IN. (SIGH…)

I hate to say it, but podcasting may be doomed to be the ham radio of the new millennium. The only podcasts that seem to have much notice by the public at large are those created by traditional media outlets or celebrities. The fact that the CBC or Ricky Gervais can have popular podcasts is great I suppose, but it’s not exactly been the breakthrough medium many of us had hoped.

YouTube
Fishbowl Status: LIKE, TOTALLY OUT

While podcasting seems to have faltered, media producers trying to reach a mass audience do have YouTube as a place to publish. You’ll be up against everything from John Stewart to cats on tricycles, but at least you won’t have to explain to anyone how it works.

FriendFeed
Fishbowl Status: SEEMS TO EXIST TO BE IN

FriendFeed’s primary use is to take all the feeds from all the other networks you use and put them into FriendFeed. Until all its content sources are out of the fishbowl, can FriendFeed itself every truly be out?

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“Back-channel” conversation in online chat rooms and Twitter is becoming increasingly commonplace at many conferences. Does this detract from the conference experience, or does it enhance it?

Mentioned in this episode:

• Podcasters Across Borders
• From Mass to Grass: CMA Word of Mouth Marketing
• Mass to Grass singing hamster video
• Stevie Z
• Dave Delaney

 

 Episode #15 - Conference Back-Channel Chatter: Is it Good or Bad?: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Years ago when I was in university, it was my good fortune to do an internship with the company Tambre Productions. Tambre president and creative director Marvin Dolgay was and is one of Canada’s top commercial music composers. Marvin said something to me once that I’ve always remembered: he said he would tell his clients “don’t talk to me about music. Talk to me about what you want the music to DO.”

I’ve been thinking about this in context of a song called “Make the Logo Bigger” which I’ve been listening to quite a bit recently. It’s a common joke among designers, particularly at agencies, that clients always ask for the logo to be bigger on their creative. While this sounds like a reasonable request, many folks who do not come from a design background don’t seem to understand the need for balance and whitespace in design, and moreover they forget that making one element bigger invariability means making something smaller. Often, that “something” is the special offer or call-to-action that the creative is being designed to communicate in the first place. So, that seemingly simple request can cause more harm than good.

If you are working with an agency, what you need to help your agency partners understand is WHAT you want to accomplish, not HOW they should do it. The trained designers, copywriters, programmers, etc. will do what they do best to make sure the execution achieves your goals. That’s what you pay them for.

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I’ve been using TubeMogul for a few weeks. Most recently, I’ve used it to upload and track views for “Mass To Grass,” the video I created to help promote the Canadian Marketing Association’s Word-of-Mouth Marketing conference on June 12.

One of the nifty features TubeMogul offers is the ability to embed their tracking reports in other sites — like this one:

TubeMogul also has a great uploader tool that allows you send you video to multiple sites at once. And perhaps most interesting of all, you can track ANY video on YouTube or other videos sites, regardless of who put it online. If you got clients or competitors with videos out there you want to track, you can start doing it today. Imagine — video statistics stalking!

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Bloggers like C.C. Chapman and Michael Arrington complain in Twitter about the service they get from Comcast, a big cable company. Comcast responds and fixes their problem.

This is great, right? Comcast is listening and responding to the new media conversation. But is there a flip side to this? Is there a danger of those consumers who are not in the conversation becoming more disenfranchised.

Will the best customer service be reserved for those on the soapboxes?
Mentioned in this episode:

• Comcast Wins With Twitter on C.C. Chapman’s Managing The Gray
• Comcast, Twitter and the Chicken on Techcrunch
• Comcast on Twitter
• Technorati
• Google Alerts

 

 Episode #14 - The (Noisy) Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth?: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Chris Anderson is a smart guy, but he has clearly been running a big magazine too long to understand the new social realities of media.

In their latest episode of For Immediate Release, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz spoke about the article “The Micro Threat to Big Social Networks” on the PC Magazine site. In it, Anderson (Wired Magazine editor-in-chief and author of The Long Tail) claims “the problem with the social-networking destinations like Facebook and MySpace is that they’re not about anything—they’re about Facebook and MySpace.”

What a strange statement! I wasn’t aware there was a new rule that popular and successful websites were now required to be “about” something specific. Someone better tell Google…

I guess Mr. Anderson, as the editor of an old media publication (albeit a forward-looking one) hasn’t yet clued into the fact that the world is no longer defined exclusively by a small group of editors-in-chief. Increasing it is defined by our social connections with people and information.

Facebook and MySpace are about their members. Unlike a magazine, where content is the focus, social networks don’t need an editorial point-of-view. People define their experience based on who they connect to and how they use the service.

When I go to the “home page” of Facebook, my experience is different from anyone else’s. My Facebook News Feed presents updates from my friends on the site. Sometimes I see that one of my friends has joined a group that I wish to join. Sometimes I see that they have posted some photos I’d like to see, or have RSVPed to an event I’d like to attend. THAT’S what Facebook and other general social networks are about.

In the PC Magazine article, Anderson goes on to talk about niche social networks, like his own DIY Drones. I think niches are useful and important, but personally I don’t see niche sites replacing general social networks. Niche sites are, well, niche. If you want to create a dinner invitation exclusively for people who are into unmanned aerial vehicles, I guess Anderson’s DIY Drones is the place to go. If you want to create a dinner invitation for a group of friends and family who’s only common trait is their relationship with you, you’re probably still better to set it up in Facebook or MySpace.

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I’ve talked in the past about the fact that I read the Toronto Star — yup, the actual paper version. In fact, my wife and I get the Star delivered to our house every morning, and although I usually don’t get a whole lot of time to check it out on weekdays, Saturday and Sunday I usually dive pretty deep into at least a few stories in the top news, world, sports, entertainment and other other sections while I sip my coffee.

An article that caught my eye this morning (actually my wife spotted it first and handed it to me immediately, realizing it was right up my alley) was about a new Toronto music store called Musideum which features instruments of various shapes and sizes from around the world. From the description it sounds a lot like the great Seattle store Lark in the Morning, and I was not only very excited to check out, but also excited to share the news with a particular group of friends — my musical colleagues in the all acoustic eighties band The McFlies. If you’ve never seen The McFlies play, I can tell you that we’re very much into, well, unusual instruments, at least for North America pop/folk music — ukuleles, melodicas, glockenspiels and cojones are just some of the things you’ll see onstage at a McFlies show. With this in mind, I definitely wanted to share the news of this new store with my fellow McFlies, so I looked up the article online to forward on.

I was EXTRAORDINARILY pleased to find, not just the article but a terrific accompanying video, complete with the store owner demonstrating many of the instruments! What a perfect extension to the text of this story, and what a great way to take advantage of what both the new and old media do best. I checked back to the original story in the paper edition and noticed that they had mentioned the video at the bottom of the story as well — missed that the first time, apparently I still need more coffee!

One thing I did think could have been added was the ability to embed the video directly here on the blog or other sites. YouTube has shown how allowing your content to be taken offsite extends your brand and ultimately your content. I would think the Star and other traditional media companies would benefit greatly from providing this kind of functionality. But at least they appear to be on the right track.

I realize a lot of newspapers and other traditional media outlets are doing similar things, but to me it just highlights the fact that different media continue to have different strengths, and should be thought of as complementary. I’ve said before that I believe newspapers will survive, but they will clearly have to change their business model to continue to thrive. I feel that new business model MUST recognize that different people will continue to consume their news in different ways, and that simply putting a text story on the web is not going to cut it.

Examples like what the Star has done here are just one small example of how old media companies can leverage new media channels. Any others you’ve seen lately that you found interesting or impressive? Leave a comment!

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A little video to promote “From Mass To Grass”, the Canadian Marketing Association’s Word of Mouth Marketing conference. Enjoy!

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There are only two ways you can monetize content.

Unless you can think of more…

If so, let me know!

 

 Episode #13 - Monetizing Content: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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