Life was good before the internet came along. TV and Magazine media outlets had clearly defined audiences and reached millions around the globe every single day. Audience insights were limited but so were audience’s media choices. Everyone was happy, and the publishers could reach massive audiences that generated large, steadily growing advertising revenues for decades.
Most of the Americans got their news from newspapers and magazines in the 19th and early 20th centuries, electronic journalism, particularly TV journalism, has now become dominant in the last 50 years. Today, advances in technology are blurring the distinction between the print and broadcast media. It’s easy to see that humanity is changing and that how we use the Internet is changing in parallel, but perhaps the more logical assumption is that social media is changing us.
The Internet makes information available that is also published in newspapers and magazines or presented over the radio and TV. It also provides political parties and their candidates, interest groups, and individuals an outlet for their own political content.
It also provides political parties and their candidates, interest groups, and individuals an outlet for their own political content. Social media is altering not only the way we interact with technology, but also the way we work, consume and possibly even the way we think.
In less than two decades, audience have gone from only consuming media published by a few major networks and publishers to relying on hundreds of publishers for content they can access at work, home and everywhere in between. And that content has become incredibly niche. The Internet makes information available that is also published in newspapers and magazines or presented over the radio and TV.
In destroying the traditional publishing model, the rise of digital video has challenged marketers to reach highly fragmented audiences that are difficult to identify, profile and target. Now you can not only keep in touch with faraway people easily, but also share so regularly and so intimately that it feels like there’s no distance between you. The downside is that online interactions lack the context and the physical closeness that make it difficult to be rude and easier to forgive.
We check Facebook more than we check email. Search, which used to be on top, doesn’t even get close – more people are watching kitten videos than using Google. Now as a publisher, one has to compete with thousands of ever growing new digital publishers, bloggers, tweeters, constant inflow of infomercials, apps editors and online video channels. Most definitely it’s a blessing for consumers, only if it all can be absorbed in a limited life span.
We can find out what is happening anywhere in the world at lightning fast speeds but we’re losing our credulity as a result of our self-imposed information isolation. People aren’t fact checkers and we’re reading tweets and blog posts like newspaper articles.
On one hand, these are communications tools that enable collaboration and telecommuting. On the other, fewer face-to-face interactions could mean fewer opportunities for the kind of brainstorming that leads to innovative ideas.
The rise of digital online video has been nothing if not amazing. Global internet traffic is expected to hit the highest ever. And over two billion people will be consuming internet via video by 2017. The explosive proliferation, six billion hours of video watched each month on You Tube alone, has made video inventory a plentiful and ever cheaper commodity.
The most rational conclusion is that the influence social media is having on humanity is both positive and potentially negative, but in either case there’s no avoiding it. It’s up to each of us to look thoughtfully at how we use social platforms in our personal and business lives and determine how we can make the best use of the tools present today and those that will become available tomorrow.
