Short will always be free.

After watching Bill Wasik’s “Big Think” talk about short media content, I came to the conclusion that some media will always be free. It’s called supply and demand.

Wasik believes that the up side of content on the web today is the ease of creation/use and ability to reach niche markets. He uses Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory as an example and thinks this is why YouTube is so successful. But he argues that consumers want this media so quickly that having to be delayed 30 seconds to pay for it is time wasted and enough to make someone search elsewhere. I couldn’t agree more and am willing to admit that even creating a log-in is sometimes enough to make me find my content somewhere new. 

He goes on to suggest that the Kindle may be the business model of the future. I agree and disagree with this prediction. We are led to believe that people are willing to pay for things that they find valuable – i.e. traditional media created by professionals (books, essays, music, movies, ect). But newspapers are an excellent example of how traditional media was killed by “free.” Consumers refused to pay for subscriptions to newspapers who were just regurgitating what could be read online the day before. People wanted news faster and they wanted to know about the things in their lives. So bloggers took over and filled the web with instantaneous information about everything – from your neighborhood to your favorite radio station. Newspapers can no longer turn huge profits even from their web-content. 

Digital copies of music, movies, and books are being illegally downloaded and traded everyday while amateur artists give their content away willing, increasing the consumer appetite for free. But I feel that people will still shell out money, even down the road, for extended content. HD movies, Harry Potter novels, and academic research are still worthy of being paid for. Short content, however, I feel is replaceable… and that’s the difference. A 30-second YouTube video is a dime a dozen and rarely makes history and until the short content is irreplaceable, no one will pay for it. And if someone tries to charge for it, the masses will go somewhere else…

Square peg in a round hole?

This week, our class was asked to reflect on two articles (one from the NYT and one from the Video Insider) about what defines an online show and how it’s viewership is measured. After reading both articles, I honestly thought to myself “who cares!?” but the academic in my knew that was the easy way out. 

Television spoiled producers, advertisers and viewers. The content was very controlled and went from the powerful few to the eager many. Back in television’s “glory days” everything did fit into nice little boxes. Programs were 30 or 60 minutes, commercials were 60 seconds, families scheduled their daily lives around their favorite shows, and networks knew who was watching what, where and when. Round peg, round hole.

But now producers and advertisers are trying to measure web video, web ads, live video, shared videos, on-demand television, as well as recorded and real-time television. More formats, more platforms, more variables. I think that although we want to be able to have formulas and calculated ways to analyze all of this, there is too much variation to ever produce an accurate number.

What does matter (what has always mattered) is the story. If the content is compelling, people will watch. No matter the platform, duration, or advertising. A good story sucks you in and the proof is in the pudding – or at least in the continued survival of books, theatre, and 3 hour movies. Just like every media that has come before it, web video will eventually lose it’s “newness” appeal and something even harder to analyze will replace it.

When I grow up…

The question I have been asked every day since I started grade school: what do I want to DO when I grow up?

One would think that after being in school for the majority of my life, changing my undergrad major three times, and moving to a new city to pursue a master’s in a very specific subject, that I would have a pretty good idea about what I want to do in life… but I have no idea.

This is not because I don’t have strong interests or want to contribute to society. Instead, I am trying to figure out which of the new media crazes really will stick. Should I really spend $10,000 in tuition on classes about Twitter if it will be a non-existent tool in a year or so?

Technology is developing faster than we can analyze it. And often times, social media tools end up being used the most for entirely different reasons than they were intended. Twitter is a perfect example of a business tool turned insta-news ticker fueled by the groundswell. I think that although we cannot always predict what will emerge in the future, we do know that our society expects and demands much more from media, professional or social.

An article from TechCrunch explained that users of sites like Twitter and Facebook are in a constant pursuit of “now” and that these sites are “conditioning us to expect information as it happens, whether it’s accurate or developing.” Because of this new attitude, traditional news media cannot keep up and are failing at their attempts (and opportunities) to integrate social media. But even though I fully participate in the destroying of old media, I think that newspapers and journalists have an obligation to stay traditional!

The TechCrunch article, by Brian Solis, goes on to explain that social media sites are huge communities with massive amounts of noise, which is only useful if the noise can be filtered. Sites like Facebook and Twitter act like a pebble being thrown into a lake – they create ripples (some bigger than others) which alert the mainstream media which stories need to be fully covered and verified. Social media is convenient to break the news, but we still trust a journalist’s moral code for the facts.

So where do I come into the picture? Like I said above, I don’t know… but what I do know is that now more than ever people have felt the need to communicate – with people they know, about things they know, and about things they think they should know. I want to make sure this continues to happen. Whether I am fighting for net neutrality, filming how-to videos for flip cameras, or writing blogs like this fellow MCDM’er on having a tech-friendly wedding, I still feel that I am doing my little part to push forward. I am just resistant to overly invest myself in one trend or technology because the lifespans of emerging media continue to shrink…

Getting what you pay for: the cost of free

Wired editor Chris Anderson believes our society has realized we don’t have to pay for everything and the only way to make money off this model is for businesses to accept it and be willing to change. A mini-debate broke out online between the the blogger and New Yorker writer/author Malcolm Gladwell about the issue of “free,”  causing the online community to re-evaluate the current models in place and if societal value and monetary value are one in the same.

Reading these articles reminded me of going in circles with my parents when I was younger… we could never truly understand the other one’s point of view. Of course the traditional writer/author doesn’t want to be told his profession will no longer provide him with a substantial paycheck. And then the visionary with the job title so new he had to write himself sounds like the boy who cried wolf – he is making huge predictions, but when he is asked for advice, he doesn’t the know the answers.

Naturally, parts of me resonated in both articles. I do believe that our society is beyond paying for material that is widely available: news, video, music, ect. Blogger Seth Godin, in defense of Anderson wrote, ” in world where there is room for anyone to present their work, anyone will present their work.” He continued to talk about web as a limitless resource and as long as it continues to be, every genre, community, and niche will be served.

I found myself in agreement most with Mark Cuban, author of blog maverick, who was much more concerned about the distribution of content rather the price of the content. He uses the music industry as an example of how this model can work. Artists should allow listeners to download their songs for free, but only though regulated mediums, like the artists’ website, where at the very minimum an email is collected. He summarizes his article with the following: “[Businesses] should  distribute their content for free where they believe it maximizes return, but should do everything possible to keep it from being distributed freely.”

What I have learned so far from this program (and it keeps affirming itself daily) is that our world is changing and growing at a constant rate. The more flexible you are, the more likely you will be to adapt and adopt the new things thrown at you daily.

Topic for Class Project: public transportation

Public transportation has been a source of much discussion, change, and complaint in the Seattle area recently. With big projects like the Viaduct and Light Rail in the works, along with the crisis of the environment, Seattle residents and commuters are concerned with how their daily lives will change.

Even though this topic would be Seattle-area specific, I believe there would be many facets a story could explore. One could look at the current issues with the metro system like safety, confusion of use, and promotion of ridership. Others could look future solutions in the works like the light rail, social media integration, and the cost of riding the bus vs the cost of driving. Even more topics include how difficult tourists find the transportation system, severe weather protocols, and how other countries use public transportation.

Ultimately Seattle is a liberal, passionate metropolitan city and our public transportation system does not adequately serve the people. Our class should explore why this is and put forth potential solutions.

Walkman to iPod: Powerpoint

Presentation Reflection

With 4 articles to choose from, what are the odds of having 4 out of 5 presenters pick the same one? Apparently pretty good, because this was the case on Tuesday. This left me feeling slightly more nervous than usual because I didn’t want my presentation to sound so similar to my fellow presenters (or like a bad song on repeat). Who would want to hear the same thing 4 times? However, I was really relieved to hear from my classmates how different the presentations were and that they actually did learn something new! In this scenario it was beneficial to present the same material from different perspectives because we all interpreted what the bottom line was differently.

Naturally, it was much easier to do the presentation for a second time. I got my jitters out in the first one, plus the second group was already kind of “briefed” for me by the previous presentation.

Almost everyone who commented on my presentation post was curious in some way about how economic factors affect the adoption model. It was something I hadn’t thought about before the presentation, but after it was brought up I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Although price is a very important factor in adoption, I believe the theory was said to be applied to early adopters who are less price conscious and more interested in the content. 

So after reading the article, putting together the presentation, and then presenting it twice, I am fully convinced that Kathy’s method of teaching (and the learning pyramid) really is the best way to get students to retain information.

 

Presentation

Yung, J., Perez-Mira, B., & Wiley-Patton, S. (2009). Consumer adoption of mobile TV: Examining psychological flow and media content. Computers in Human Behavior 25(1).

In this study, the authors test the technology adoption model (or TAM) on the growing culture of mobile TV. They begin by introducing us to a slew of new terms including:

technology adoption model (TAM): a theory that models how users come to accept and use a technology, involving the integration of the following four terms.

perceived use (PU): the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance.

perceived ease of use (PEOU): the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free from effort.

content: the textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience. It may include, among other things: text, images, sounds, videos and animations.

concentration: the ability to exercise exclusive attention to one object.

According to the study, all of these terms influence how quickly, if ever, a new technology will be adopted. 

Reflection – Tragedy of the Commons

In his 1968 piece, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Garrett Hardin took the time to address a slew of issues he felt have “no technical solutions.” It quickly becomes apparent that Hardin is most concerned with overpopulation, but he also discusses a group of problems that he believes cannot be solved with technological advances alone (i.e. pollution, resource depletion).

The most popular depiction of the “commons” is a story about a group of villagers who all graze their cows on a common pasture. If one villager added one more cow, he would gain the full income that cow provided. The damage caused by one cow too many grazing the pasture would be a fraction compared to his personal gain. Of course, the entire community would suffer from the damage. Consequently, every member of the village becomes motivated to keep adding cows. The tragedy is that, to preserve the commons, the personal freedom of the villagers had to be curtailed. Hardin illustrates this concept clearly when applying it to tangible resources (like pastures, oceans, and natural parks) but can the tragedy of the commons affect the Internet?

The Victorian Internet

Standage, Tom (1998). The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers. Berkley Trade, NY.

 

Quite sometime before the dot-com era, there was a network of wires that connected continents, carried communications, and changed the way we did business. The Victorian Internet, by Tom Standage, is an entertaining and historical look at the origins, development, and impact of the telegraph – a technology as revolutionary for its era as the Internet has been for ours.

Standage begins with a rough image of what long distance communication was like before the telegraph. Messages were hand-delivered; victories, battles, and entire wars hinged on the delivery (or loss) of a message. Therefore, “optical telegraphs” were created as a form of short-distance communication to send messages faster than man could travel. Even thought these messages (crafted from lanterns, flags, and reflective sunlight) could be sent faster than man or horse, they had many drawbacks. Weather, privacy, and cost quickly ruled out “optical telegraphy” as a long-term technology.