I have been thinking a lot about 'Media 2.0' lately. So I quickly wrote up a roadmap from the distant past media landscape to our near future opportunities. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Distant Past (Local Radio Stations)
- Distribution: Costly, via radio towers and dedicated ‘wireless’ receivers
- Content: Local news and radio plays
- Advertising: Local sponsors
Past (National Radio Networks and TV Networks)
- Distribution: Costly (via radio and TV towers, TVs and Radios)
- Content: National shows targeted at demographic groups
- Production: Costly
- Audience: One way broadcast from the top to the masses
- Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by editors) is on the air – segmented by broad demographics
- Advertising: Local and National sponsors
Recent Past (Internet – Web 1.0)
- Distribution: Cheaper (via modems and PCs – unstructured content in HTML)
- Production: Costly (in terms of time and skills)
- Audience: One way broadcast from the top to the masses – now also on the web
- Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the editors) is on the air – segmented by more niche demographics
- Interaction: Interest groups and communities trapped in silos
- Advertising: Local and National advertisers splitting revenue across web, tv, radio.
Now (Internet – Web 2.0)
- Distribution: Mostly Cheap (existing TV, Radio towers and across multiple devices using the Internet – structured content via RSS)
- Production: Cheap (just click publish on your blog)
- Audience: Two way participation within the audience (‘the bottom’) with democratic editorial control in the grassroots
- Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the audience) as measured using services like Technorati, TechMeme and Digg etc. Segmentation in the mainstream continues by more thinly sliced Demographics)
- Interaction: Interest groups unbound by silos (due to RSS)
- Advertising: Context sensitive Ads targeted at the page – served by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft
Coming (Media 2.0)
- Distribution: Cheap (across multiple devices using the internet as the ‘universal pipe’ – structured content via RSS). Aggregation is the main user interface.
- Production: Cheap (just click publish on your camcorder and mobile phone)
- Audience: The audience is gone, only participants are left: Two way participation with all stakeholders and democratic editorial control of what’s on the web and what’s on the air
- Content: ‘What’s popular’ (as decided by the participants and measured by services like Technorati, TechMeme and Digg) is played on air. Segmentation by niche interest groups.
- Relevancy: With hyperchoice, ‘What’s personally relevant’ becomes far more interesting that 'What's popular' – Audiences of one.
- Advertising: Ads targeted at the individual – served by aggregators