The Future of Media: Like Fred Wilson Said
Fred Wilson shared some observations on his blog today about his teenage kids and the future of media in light of a Goldman Sachs research report.
Other than the fact that his children read books outside of school and mine don’t, his observations are in line with my own. Yes, a small sample size, but nonetheless, the consistency between the media behavior of his kids and my kids is pretty amazing. Besides books,
.TV on DVD
. Games
. Internet
. IPod not radio in the car; music is online.
. Magazines not newspapers
The almost single minded devotion to gaming is old news at my house, especially with my 15 year old. I have no doubt that if the ship was going down he would not count his PS3 as excess baggage to be thrown overboard but would consider it life sustaining.
What is relatively new and something I find kind of surprising here is the purchasing of TV shows on DVD (Fred’s #1) . If we count time in requested Christmas presents (well, it is that time of year), it seems to me that it was two Christmases ago that my now 17 year old son was interested in Jerry Seinfeld DVDs.
I found his fondness for Seinfeld curious but did not regard it as a media trend. Just something we could enjoy watching together. However, over the next 18 months I did begin to observe a trend….boxed sets of TV shows not only being purchased but being borrowed and loaned out to classmates. Last year, Steve Gillmor pronounced that TV was dead.
Is it? Or just being consumed differently? Darren Herman notes that content consumption has become device agnostic. He writes, “Television is evolving into people’s lifestyles contrary to when people had to create their lifestyle around television.” TV content is not dead.
Fred is writing from an investment perspective and because I have 2 teenage sons, I can’t afford an investment perspective; but from my advertising/media perspective which is what supports their consumption diet, last years media consumption diet meme initiated by Jeremiah seemed to confirm the death of TV, at least amongst the early adopters.
Chris Saad confessed to being a TV junkie but said he didn’t inhale in the traditional manner.
Peter Kim noted that the early adopters were engaging mostly with media without advertising, “an inverse relationship to the amount of advertising money being spent therein. In other words, they’re spending the most time where the least amount of advertising dollars are focused….
Of course this is bad news for advertisers and no doubt this relationship is a future trend.
This year as TV moves to the web and “web video” replaces “plastics” as synonymous for the future, there may be something in those teenage TV shows on DVD purchases. We finally have DVR and it looks like what is being recorded is about 1/3 sports, 1/3 movies and 1/3 TV. But when they want it bad and it bigger chunks, they have boxed sets for The Office, Seinfeld, Arrested Development, SNL and I am not sure what else.
Yes, they know its available online, but they prefer the comfort of the sofa, that big screen and maybe even a respite from online.
Maybe, a year later, we should update the media consumption diet meme .
Happy Holidays!
Wishing a happy holiday to all!
Love when you can
Cry when you have to
Be who you must
That’s a part of the plan
Await your arrival with simple survival
And one day we’ll all understand
One day we’ll all understand
One day we’ll all understand
Dan Folgelberg
1951-2007
Forrester Consumer Forum, The Transformation Was Live
This year’s Forrester Consumer Forum personified at least part of the conference theme, Transformed by Social Technologies. Indeed the transformation was everywhere.
I say this based upon both the Forrester analysts, invited speakers and panelists who provided enough rock solid data, how-to’s, best practices, advice and experience to forever kill that sacred cow….
but also because of the Creators who not only live blogged, but Twittered, streamed, and drove the Groundswell into living rooms and offices around the Globe. This is the future in real time, this is permanent Beta.
Think that the Critical Mass Beta Cam was cool enough where it was?
It was, until David Armano pushed the innovation curve a little further and took it live live. Mo’ live?
photo Deb Schultz
What’s live live?
As Henry Jenkins noted, “in a world of media convergence, every story gets told’….and in a culture of participation, not everyone is at the top of the ladder. 
At this conference though, the creators never stopped…..
If you are a marketer and understand that the world has been transformed by social technologies and are not participating, start your climb up the ladder….you can’t win, if you don’t climb.
More posts forthcoming….
The Nikon D80 Blogger Program and My Canon EOS 30D
Photo taken with Canon EOS 30D
Picture This, I have had a long term relationship with Nikon. It seems now that it was one-sided. An elaborate invitation for a Nikon D80 did not arrive in my mailbox last April. I was not on the Nikon D80 Blogger Outreach dance card.
A Nikon D80 is a very nice camera….and I really needed a new camera.
So as I read some of my favorite bloggers write about their loaners, well I kind of wondered, what if…But like Peter Kim, cool has not chased me for anything more than expensive than a book.
But, it did make me start thinking…Now, CK did a great job articulating all of those blogger relations/blogger outreach and just blogger issues; credibility, transparency, incentives, even community building. And lots of smart, credible, community builders wrote thoughtful comments on her post.
It was just that I was thinking about my relationship with the Nikon Brand.
My very first SLR camera purchased shortly after college graduation was a Nikormat.My recollection is that I saved for quite some time to accumulate enough cash to make that camera my own.
As the years passed, I accumulated quite a collection of Nikons; even the lenses from the Nikormat found a home on my last film camera, the Nikon ProneaS. My first digital camera was a very large CoolPix990. The remnants of my Nikon graveyard is memorialized above.
I had been using a Nikon 7600 basic point and shoot when I began my pursuit of something more. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that from the time that I bought the Nikormat, that I had purchased a camera that wasn’t a Nikon. It seems to me that the D80 Blogger Outreach program changed my beliefs about Nikon.
Now, I am fairly brand loyal….I don’t get why anyone but Heinz or Hellman’s even bothers to make catsup or mayonnaise respectively; and no Pepsi is not an acceptable substitute for Coke. (Full disclosure, Heinz has been a client) But then again, after three Volvo’s, the last one was so awful I would not make any brand based assumptions in considering a future purchase.
And for me, Nikon meant camera. I started with the brand and then decided which one. Before the D80 Blogger Program that is.
I thought the Nikon Flickr program was inspired….sending D80’s to Flickr users and letting them experience the camera by creating content to upload on Flickr, that became brand advertising. The program was a kind of community mash-up that linked Flickr, photographers and the Nikon D80, engaging to all.
The D80 Blogger program was not built on exactly the same principles…and I am talking about the principles of designing the context for users to experience a brand, create content and let the content and the users market the brand, not anyone’s personal principles.
Joseph Jaffe, a D80 participant, seems to have something else altogether going on with his podcast for iPhones and more, and certainly is generating lots of opinions as John Moore points out.
All that aside, what theD80 program and the discussion that followed did for me was to point out that despite my years of Nikon brand loyalty that there were bloggers who perhaps had never spent a single cent on a Nikon product, who maybe didn’t even take many pictures or ever blog about anything photo related who were going to get a really awesome and expensive camera for f-r-e-e.
The Sprint Ambassador program evoked similar thoughts….Lots of bloggers I knew had free Sprint phones and free calls. I was a paying customer.
I had been a Sprint customer for years but for the past several had issues ranging from product quality to service quality, to billing and customer service. I not only couldn’t get my problems solved, when asked at the end of one of the many marathon customer service sessions if there was anything else they could do to for me and I mentioned that I could use a new phone, the rep said that they just weren’t able to do that anymore for customers. Guess all the phones were going to all those Ambassadors.
So, as I went into serious search for new camera mode, instead of evaluating Nikon cameras only, I looked at other Brands. I found my way to Canon and eventually to the 30D, purchased in July. I love it. I am still in learning mode and it will be a while before I can commit to Canon brand loyalty. That takes time and positive experience.
Aside, I read yesterday that the new Canon 40D is due out next month. Did I move too soon?
Skype: The Single Bullet Theory
“On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted …”
OK, well it just sort of had that familiar sound to it….
Other more authoritative and/or reverent opinions run the gamut from not buying it(O’Reilly Emerging Technology) , just passing it along (ZDNet, TechCrunch), call PR (ValleyWag), call Darwin (Stowe Boyd), you get what you pay for (Businessweek ).
Techmeme , Google if you need to know more.
Ob la di Ob la daworks for me. Or is it Hakuna Matata. Whatever
Goodbye Typepad…Hello Wordpress (Beta)
UPDATE: RSS Feeds are currently being fixed and are expected to be fully working by 12am CST tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience.
UPDATE: Most links to this site are now correctly routed. There may still be a few posts that don’t forward correctly so please just search for them on the new blog.
Asking Typepad support for help is like trying to see the Major in Catch-22; you are lead around in big circle but the question is never answered. The Major is never quite in.
The latest: A series of error messages that asked that I report what I was doing when the error occurred. I deligently informed them what I had been doing via the little box provided and just as diligently I would get a response from Typepad support asking what I was doing when the error occurred. At first, what I was doing was not important. On Friday, what I was doing was trying to publish a post. So after filling out the little “tell us what you were doing” form several times, I opened up a help ticket that said “I cannot publish a post.” Thus the all too familiar circle game began.
What were you doing? What was I doing when I couldn’t publish a post? Clicking on publish….
Eventually, I got a semblance of an answer. Something to do with Technorati code. Technorati and my blog are another one of life’s unsolved mysteries. Despite many email responses from Technorati’s Janice Myint I still don’t get their link count and try to ignore it. I have been talking about a move to Word Press for over a year….this seemed like an idea whose time had come.
I have never understood why Typepad provides such poor tech support; but then again, why does anyone?
Stowe Boyd recently blogged Typepad Headache 506 and Typepad Headache 507. I am glad someone is keeping count.
So, thanks to Chris I have made the move and so far so good. For awhile though, this blog design will be a work in process; a beta, perhaps, like the rest of life.
Toby Bloomberg’s Diva Marketing Talks: Tonight Blog Analytics
Toby Bloomberg’s live internet radio show at BlogTalk Radio will be discussing blog analytics with Peter Kim, Forrester Research and myself.
As Toby writes, “Tonight Diva Marketing Talks focuses on social space analytics. We’re calling this one Blog Analytics A Step Towards Credibility?? Social media is fast taking its place at the grown-up marketing strategy table. With the respect, as a credible strategy, comes things like keeping elbows off the table and Accountability and the “M Word” - Measurement.”
Toby has had some fantastic shows, first with Jeneane Sessum and Wayne Hulbert on Social Media Ethics and next with CB Whittemore and Paul Chaney on B2B Social Media. If you missed the live shows, you can still listen up here. I am sure Toby has some exciting things planned for the future, so you might want to subscribe to the feed.
I am looking forward to chatting with Peter and Toby…here are the specifics if you want to join in the conversation.
Time: 6:30 - 7PM Eastern Time
Call-in Guest Number: 718.508.9924
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