As I posted earlier, I am going to be posting my book outline in parts to my blog to get feedback and Ideas - please feel free to chime in! Except from “Revolution of Me” - A book outline by Chris Saad
MAKING COMPARISONS
In this section I will write in the voice of Media 2.0 participant. Why? Because we are all Media 2.0 Participants. I will compare and contrast the practices of old media against the expectations and demands of the participant.
OBSERVERS VS. PARTICIPANTS
Observers sit on their couch and surf channels. Participants surf the web. Observers are sampled by Neilson boxes. Participants can be carefully monitored – each and every one. They click to watch and click away just as quickly as soon as they lose interest. The act of clicking, while seemingly small, is profound. It reveals what Neilson boxes only hint at. It’s a gesture of Attention - or of being ignored.
Professional content producers think about media production in terms of creating and distributing content – usually at great cost and with high production values. We need to broaden our definition of production. Production and participation can now take the form amateur journalism (blogging), amateur radio (podcasting) and amateur video (video podcasting).
Uncomfortable? It doesn’t stop there. The definition of production is broader still. Commenting on a piece of content is an act of content creation. So is voting. So is clicking. So is browsing the web.
By an act of clicking, or linking, or sharing, participants are co-creating their media experiences. They are changing the face of their own personal front pages.
PASSIVE VS. ACTIVE
In more traditional media, broadcasters told us when to watch, and what to watch. They selected the programming and scheduled it on their own timetable. Online, we decide the schedule. We decide the format and the presentation.
We don’t want to watch it on your website; we want to watch it on ours. We don’t want to navigate your menu, we want to link to it directly. We don’t want to check back for updates, we want the content to come to us. We don’t want to use your rating system; we want to invent our own. We don’t want to listen to what we’re told; we want to tell you what we thought.
MONOLOGUE VS. DIALOGUE
Advertising was fun, for you, for a while. You made us sit there for 5 minutes at a time watching people jam messages down our throat. Most of them didn’t even apply to us. We don’t care about that sale or those shoes. We care about our own personal and individual interests. Interests that are both specific and diverse.
If you have a message to tell us, make it compelling. If you have something to say, make it worth listening to. If you have something to sell, make it worth buying. If you have something worth knowing, we will hear about it without you yelling about it. We have friends, social networks, personal profiles and search engines which will tell us what we need to know when we need to know it – our schedule – not yours.
If you want to reach us, come and find us. Talk to us, have a conversation with us. Ask us questions. Listen to our answers. Act on our answers. Empower us to share your message. Because the only person who can share your message, is us.
MAINSTREAM VS. THE LONG TAIL
Are you an editor? Do you have final say on what appears on your broadcast, on your site, in your magazine? Does your publication deal with broad categories of things? Is it for the mainstream – the masses, the lowest common denominator? You lose.
We are sick of hearing a little about everything and not really knowing anything. You constantly miss-represent or gloss over the real facts. We don’t trust you anymore. We are not the mainstream, we are individuals. We want to know things – real things – not just the things you think are worth sharing.
They call us ‘The Long Tail’. Don’t know what that is? Read the book by the same name. In short, The Long Tail is the opposite of everything the mainstream is. Amazon, eBay, Google, YouTube and many others have made a fortune by understanding how the tail works.
If you want to tell us about cars, we want to know about engines. If you want to tell us about engines, we want to know about pistons. If you want to tell us about pistons, we want to know about rivets.
Get specific or get out. Get intimate or go away.
YOUTUBE GENERATION
The YouTube generation is all this and more. YouTube caught lightening in a bottle because it allowed the audience to become the publishers. It allowed the viewers to become the editors of the front page. It allowed us to watch what we wanted when we wanted. A click was the most powerful thing around.
But YouTube is still only part of the way there. They still trap our personal profiles and content in their own data warehouses – their silos. Next up – even more user control. Control of our identities, our own profiles, our own content and our own value.
Comments, ideas and contributions welcome!