It was with that in mind that I reflected on Brian Rich's piece in Forbes, "Traditional Media's Revenge".
Mr. Rich believes that Web 2.0 companies are "even weaker than traditional media", but I think he did not address the most important point.
All media is social and the next critical inflection point for media is not traditional companies adopting Web 2.0 concepts and methods or battling them for turf. It is providing a means to eliminate the barriers between
media platforms, which will let traditional media leverage their audience to
unleash the social power it already holds.
Traditional media has always been social, just with a time lag. That is a point that is often lost in the ongoing and accelerating debate, discussion, merging of and between "traditional" media and "interactive" media (digital & mobile).
Before Facebook, Twitter and blogs, the water cooler, telephone and lunch debates represented our
social interactions around content. The core differences between these tools and our Web 2.0 tools of today are 'time' and scale. They have merely made our thoughts and opinions immediate and extended
their reach.
As a consumer, I do not care about platforms; I care about my content, information and communication. If there is a video, product or place that interests me, I should be able to acquire it as easily through SMS as my Bebo profile...and they should be connected.
Difficult? - 'Yes'; Impossible? - 'Not at all'
As William Wallace may say to all media companies (my apologies to the purists for the quote paraphrase):
Why is that impossible? You're so concerned with squabbling for the scraps from the table that you've missed your God given right to something better. There is a difference between us. You think the people online exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with FREEDOM. And I go to make sure that they have it.
The capabilities exist now to make these connections, we need only look
at the picture through the eyes of the consumer. We must.
Comments