TheWaterRat

This post is the continuation of my previous post Media in the maelstrom (part 1). I realized that the structure presented in the first post wasn’t right and would not allow me to present my considerations in a coherent way going forward. I have therefore slightly modified part 1 and here is its follow up.

I Media, You Media.

In the last few years we have moved quickly and randomly into User Generated Media (UGM). People, everybody, have started producing their own content: blogs, videos, music, and spreading it fast and widely through the internet.

This phenomenon has caused many changes in the way media are generated, distributed and used:

- Technology has made it easier and cheaper to produce written content, music and videos so there is much more of it;

-  Because more people are making content, the average quality of content out there has decreased;  

-  Content is spreading faster and getting consumed faster;

-  Content is being copied, changed and re-generated more and more. Fast;

Contrary perhaps to superficial perception, I think these effects of the media revolution are potentially positive for traditional media companies as long as they understand them and embrace them instead of trying to stop them.

Traditional media cannot stop this shift. They can only control the people (to a certain degree) that are on their payroll; but cannot control millions of people that every day are making, hacking, sharing and spreading content across the globe

Check this for an incredible example of what UGM is doing: http://www.thru-you.com.

Yesterday, I was reading a very interesting post from John Borthwick (Distribution … now). Referring to the now web he says that we should think in terms of streams, and not anymore in terms of pages. He’s talking in general about content, with reference to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and the like: A stream. A real time, flowing, dynamic stream of  information — that we as users and participants can dip in and out of and whether we participate in them or simply observe we are a part of this flow.

Or, as Om Malik puts it: More and more people are publishing more and more “social objects” and sharing them online.

We are observing here that the real time web means real time media, it means that everybody is participating to the creation and distribution of content. It means that there is a stream of content (and we are part of it) that doesn’t belong to anyone anymore and that cannot be controlled.

So, if the production barriers have fallen and the distribution barriers have also been shattered, how do we as users take advantage of this situation? There’s a lot more content but there’s also a lot more noise. How do we pick all that is interesting for us? And only what is interesting for us? How do we make sure that professional content is fairly monetized so that it can continue to be produced? What do you do when the so called pirates are at the same time your best customers and your best sales people?

To be continued