Social Media Revolution - Marketplaces, Conversations and Exchanges
A series of articles in Fortune magazine examines the rise of new media and contends that we are entering a media revolution of the same scale as the one launched by Gutenberg and his printing press. Here are few excerpts from some of the articles:It's the Links Stupid! - Blogging is just another word for having conversations gets to the heart of what makes blogs distinct from "journals". One is inherently social and the other was typically private.
Traditionally, journals were private or even secret affairs, and were http://www.flicknever linked to other journals. Peeking into the diary of one's big sister typically led to a skirmish. Blogs, by contrast, are social by nature, whether they are open to the public as a whole or only to a small select group.
"Compose yourself" explores the rise of citizen journalism and the decline, perhaps transformation?, of newspaper industry.
But increasingly, newspaper barons, not content to preside over slow decline, want to embrace the revolution. One of them is Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, one of the largest newspaper publishers in the English-speaking world. Last year he told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that “as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably, complacent”. Young readers, Mr Murdoch said, “don't want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what's important. And to carry the religion analogy a bit further, they certainly don't want news presented as gospel.” So what do newspapers need to do online to adjust? Their websites, Mr Murdoch said, “have to become the place for conversation. The digital native doesn't send a letter to the editor any more. She goes online and starts a blog. We need to be the destination for those bloggers.” Soon after this speech, Mr Murdoch bought MySpace, an online blogging and social-networking site wildly popular with young people.
This article tops off the series: The gazillion-dollar question - So what is a media company?
Terry Sempel became the boss of Yahoo! in 2001 and "had the amibtion to turn Yahoo! into the archetypal “21st-century media company”, but suddenly he was no longer so clear on what that meant."
The internet “is a much larger change than the coming of television” in the 20th century, says Mr Semel. In the past, “someone decided that the news goes on at 11 o'clock at night; people like my wife never even saw the news, because she never stayed up that late. We all grew up when somebody else was the programmer; now the user is the programmer.” That is change number one.
Change number two, says Mr Semel, is that—unlike in television, say—“you don't need hits”. Many small audiences are as good for advertisers as few large audiences, and indeed may be better.
Exchanges become necessary because people need help navigating around this huge continuum of content. In the present century, says Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future, “you get large by allowing the many and small to gather on your lawn.”
Tags: new media | social media | socialmedia
