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October 09, 2005
The Mobile Media Era (With exciting InfoGraphic below!)
I have a Nokia N90 I am using to test an upcoming version of our platform. This is the device I have been waiting for to mark the beginning of the revolution in media devices. I put a similar bookmark in the history of media after the London subway bombings when the first and most compelling content came from survivor Adam Stacey, who filmed, from his mobile phone, himself and several others escaping from the subway following the explosion. That was the moment that officially began the shift in media in general to the future paradigm of media: The LMNO. But I have been waiting for the device to increase in quality to the point where “broadcast quality” and “amateur footage” are indistinguishable. The N90, while not amazing, achieves that by being good enough.
My generation’s children will ask their parents some funny questions:
“Daddy, why did you use linear optical storage media?”
“Well, honey, we didn’t yet know how to insert magnetized particles inside a globule of ferritin protein and assemble them in arrays.”
“Daddy, why did you rely on the finite fossilized remains of dinosaurs to power inefficiently distributed power plants to produce electricity at the cost of the planet’s environment and my potential future?”
“Heh heh, well sweetheart, we didn’t yet know how to make solar cells inexpensively enough and efficiently enough to create clean energy to distribute power locally, or make it portable.”
“Daddy, why did you rely on a non-free-market oligopsony of media distributors to provide network-scheduled formulaic, homogenous content in release windows over which you had no control with no personalization or participation and with no active market-determined value of said content?”
“Well pumpkin, we just didn’t know how to distribute personal media via a series of overlapping personal networks, empower people as producers, enable them on a location-aware grid and redefine media from something that is produced and pushed to consumers in a series of monetization windows to something that is discovered, added to, borrowed from, shared, redistributed and discovered again all to the benefit of millions of people with mobile-connected Personal Media Devices in their pockets.”
“And your mobile phones were just for voice communication?”
“Pretty much.”
“Yours was a dark era.”
“Yes it was, darling. Yes it was.”
Kids say the darndest things.
My Nokia N90 takes high-quality pictures and video. When connected wirelessly wherever I am to a platform that acts as a media marketplace, I become a distributed on-location media production node. Add in my PIM and I also become a media distribution node. Consider that there are other producers and distributors in the marketplace, and I become a media consumer, too. All from the same device. In two years, every digital camera will have a DO or UMTS chip in it - they are all going to have to connect to a platform that provides a marketplace for storing, sharing and more widely distributing content.
The links on the value chain required to build a fully distributed edge-of-network media paradigm that have been missing are now materializing. The device was a big step, connectedness is being solved before our eyes, and distribution paradigms are being built now by several companies that see the whole chain clearly. What this means is that we are entering an entirely new media era.
I made a table for you to explain what I mean. I call it “Shawn Conahan’s Media Eras Infographic.” Our company is about sharing media so feel free to use it in your powerpoint, change it if you think its incomplete, etc., but really take a critical look at it.
I broke the media eras down into TV, CABLE, INTERNET and MOBILE. Before TV there was Radio and Print. I also left out Town Criers, Papyrus and Smoke Signals, but I hope the Shawn Conahan's Media Eras Infographic is illustrative enough. My basic approach was to look at various dimensions of media and the business of media production, delivery and participation and illustrate how they differ from era to era. I pointed out the key differences between eras by highlighting them. As paradigms shift, they are the pivot points that are most responsible for unlocking the value of each era.
TV
The golden age of radio from 1935 to 1950 gave way to a new medium, TV. The big innovation with TV when it killed the radio star was that you could actually Watch it. At the time that was a big deal. Compared to radio, the value proposition to consumers was higher because TV offered content of comparatively higher production value.
CABLE
The post-war golden age of television eventually gave way to the Golden Age of Cable, sparked on October 1st, 1975 when HBO aired the Thrilla In Manilla. With Cable, the production value wasn’t necessarily higher than television, but the cost structure was such that it ushered in the era of Vertical Programming, and the most successful brands of that era (CNN, MTV, ESPN, TCM, even the Weather Channel) were built upon the simple notion of “all [whatever] all the time.” That plus an increased number of channels unlocked a huge amount of value. Still, the business model didn’t change from “Pushing” media, firehose-style this time, to consumers.
INTERNET
The internet changed that. The only business model the internet understands is “Broker.” All of a sudden, disintermediation became the basis of the new economy and the value to the consumer was a bookstore that carried every book and was open 24 hours a day. The simple notion of the hyperlink changed consumer participation from “Watch” to “Surf,” and the Pushed media model simply didn’t work. The cost structure of distributed media obviated the need to produce and distribute content from the center of the network because there was no economy of scale required. Notably, it blurred the lines separating “media” from “interactivity,” and competition for peoples’ attention came not just from other pushed media sources. For this reason, I would argue that the Golden Age of the Internet started when Napster (the first, cool Napster) launched and is now coming to an end in a flurry of lawsuits and regulation. Napster showed what the internet can be - a massive P2P media collective. Business models and other issues aside, Napster showed us there is huge demand for combining communication and media.
MOBILE
And now we are entering the Mobile Media Era. The business model is changing again, this time with an emphasis on people and communication, not just commerce and entertainment. “Broker” takes a backseat to the more personal “Connect” as the main value driver for consumers. Notably, it is the first time in the history of media that people have been walking around with both media consumption and production devices, making them active participants in the creation and distribution of media. No longer Watching or Surfing, people are co-creating, mashing, blogging and networking together a media fabric that threatens the status quo in a significant way. Media is being more widely distributed farther away from the center of the network, this time right to the furthest edge – the pocket of ever man, woman and child with a mobile-connected Personal Media Device. I find it most interesting that low production value MMS is often more compelling than slick, high-production quality television because it is personalized and serves a purpose very different from TV. I would like to state clearly that, while it is an important link on the value chain, the definition of “Mobile Media” is not “TV on your mobile phone.”
The TV is being replaced by the Personal Media Device. The set top box is being replaced by the SIM chip. The MSO is being replaced by the wireless carrier. I wonder if John Malone sees the similarities.
The last row in the table is “Messaging Hub.” I find it interesting that during the TV era, the state-of-the-art messaging control center for most people was an answering machine connected to one phone line. It was a totally separate island that did little more than act as net to catch the result of a failed attempt to communicate. During the Cable era, we mostly switched to voicemail, which provided some flexibility, but personal communication was still a totally separate environment from media consumption. During the Internet era, Email took over as the primary messaging hub for most people, and it was more closely integrated with the media people consume. Interestingly, it still retained the basic functionality of a voice answering system, (to leave a message to be returned later) but this time the timeshifting was intentional. This led to presence: The overt availability to communicate is displayed in your AIM buddy list.
Now we are seeing convergence create a two-way web that integrates our media such that you have a channel on which you create, consume and share your media. “Find me on Xanga” or “Did you see my post about that?” are illustrations of how our very own “channels” are increasingly the hub of our media and social lives. The Personal Media Device elegantly converges those functions and puts them in your pocket. Put very simply, this is "Channel You." The mobile applications that enable people to do that more are the winners in this new media era.
At its simplest level, Channel You acts as your value-added messaging hub. "Get my favorite song off my channel," or "check out my TravelPod from my trip" are present-day examples. As more content is added to Channel You, it will become more valuable. Think of how many times your friends call you to ask for a restaurant recommendation. That will be on your channel. So will your availability to communicate and the automatic routing to your preferred mode of communication.
Now consider that there are millions of other people with their own create/consume channels, too. Plug them into a location-aware grid and enable them to transact their content in real time. Whether you are there when a tidal wave crashes through your resort or you simply snap a pic at the World Series or your kid's little league game, when plugged into a marketplace of other creator/consumers, you become an active part of the media conversation. Upstream Media is the key.
So which kind of media company is going to win the future? Will it be an incumbent media company that sticks to the media conventions a past media era, pushing repackaged broadcast content to passive consumers on their mobile phones? Or will it be one that fully engages the distributed mass of consumers as participants, enabling them to transact their own content and adding value to the individual and the whole by providing produced content as well?
More simply put, do you believe democratization of media at the edge of the network wins in the long run? do you believe Flickr is a better, disruptive and potentially larger user-generated version of Corbis? Do you believe Craigslist is a better approach to classifieds that will end up supplanting the very notion of the local newspaper? Do you believe a million people around the world with mobile-connected camcorders and a place to transact their content is a threat to Reuters?
Imagine a reporter at the New York Times looking at a map of the world on her computer with little dots representing media being generated by ordinary people like you and me. Then all of a sudden a bunch of red dots show up, all clustered around Banda Aceh. Click and zoom to a list of pictures uploaded instantly by people on the scene of a massive tidal wave. One second later, that content is inserted into the editorial process and they are first to the story. Or that same image might be on your mobile device and you get to cut out the middle man entirely, or better yet - write your own story about it and syndicate it.
All this to me means we are entering a new media era. It also means massive upside in the mobile media space for those companies that are focused on accelerating this new era. Now go capitalize on this paradigm shift.
Posted by Shawn Conahan at October 9, 2005 11:10 AM
Comments
Absolutely intriguing. You bring up a lot of good points in that the internet has really changed how media is viewed in the world. Now it's not just television and newspapers it's blogs and podcasts. People are becoming more and more connected and with that information is being shared faster, proliferated at a higher speed and is generally, much better, and sometimes less biased. The Web 2.0 isn't just a web technology in my opinion though...much like what Intercasting Corp and Rabble are trying to do, it's proving that the Web 2.0 isn't a milestone, or a platform even, it's a whole change in lifestyle and mindset. It's user controlled content, user generated ideas and mechanisms that change the way content is viewed, shared and found. I'm beginning to think that we're on the verge of a revolution in not only media, but the entire world of technology...
-Matt
Posted by: Matt Galligan at October 9, 2005 12:37 PM
Right on, Matt. All the signs point to nothing less than a new media era, and the Web 2.0 is not a small contributor to that. It is the DNA that will be woven into every aspect of media and communication as the paradigm shifts.
Posted by: Shawn Conahan at October 9, 2005 09:09 PM
Endless potential beyond media reporting.... Seems there would be a huge b2b demand to use rabble to perform remote diagnostics. Especially in dealing with electronics or manufacturing equipment. Eg. X-ray machine in Gunnison is down. Repair tech is in Denver. Rabble channel is used to relay video of exactly what is wrong. Tech consults colleagues across the country who view the same video, relays troubleshooting video for orc repair.
Everybody with a sales force and an intranet site could benefit as well. Intracasting????
Posted by: Mike at November 4, 2005 10:08 PM
Interesting article. But when every mobile holder will become a producer, distributor and consumer of information at the same time, what will happen to the information economy? Will it be distroyed? What will happen to the large groups like CNN, NBC, CBS as all will have nothing to do in the mobile media era.
Posted by: ranjan Srivastava at November 15, 2005 03:29 AM
Remember that in the mobile media era, the end user does not necessarily REPLACE the current media aggregator. Rather, they could be complementary in that media will shift from something that is created at the center and consumed at the edge to something that is participatory across multiple distribution channels. CNN, NBC and CBS could view the ordinary rabble of the world as input points to their editorial process. They could "auction" stories, gathering media from various sources instead of just one and then package it along with their vetted research and distribute it via other channels. Furthermore, in a world of increasing media choice, there is room for vertical aggregators with editorial control that some users may favor.
Posted by: Shawn Conahan at November 15, 2005 10:05 AM