Future of Social Media…and Media

The online media platforms of broadcasters and newspaper publishers have been integrating social media into their channels for some time now. Integration takes on many forms including offering space for comments, providing web widgets to share articles on the likes of Facebook, Twitter or del.icio.us. Recognising that people carry with them devices that can capture and distribute media in real-time, broadcasters and newspapers encourage people to send them information about events. Professional journalists have blogs and Twitter accounts. Indeed the inter-dependency between media and social media has evolved to the point that some say it is impossible to separate the two.

Media Futurist,Gerd Leonhard, describes the outlook for social networks and social media as an online operating system for individuals, for business and for government – for society generally. Whether you are communicating with people, looking for information or looking for other people or points of interest nearby, whether you are on the mobile web doing some purchasing or banking online, or some citizen journalism, whether your location enables information or advertisements about things of relevance to you to be pushed to your mobile device…you get the picture.

Portable identity tools such as Open ID, Facebook’s Facebook Connect and Google’s Friend Connect allow users to share and aggregate news and information from one web site to another. These developments are regarded as forerunners to technologies that enable portable identities creating (according to a Forrester analysis on the social web) shared social experiences – where socially connected people take their digital identities with them and interact with their social networks over the Web. Those shared experiences are more likely to be contextual situations where their reality is augmented and/or mixed through digital online technologies.

For people entering this space – possibly up to a third of the population over the next five years – content will not be king, nor will their voice calls be mainstays for the telecommunications industry. Content will remain important, but its placement will be contextualised and personalised. It will be relevant to and timely for individuals and their social networks. As Gerd Leonhard says, content will be embodied, packaged and curated in ways that offer value to people. That’s the rationale behind Google’s Social Search – this posting by Mahendra Pasule explains why. I like the terms used by Mahendra too, particularly social relevancy. I feel we will see that term becoming a mantra for social media value-adding strategies.

For more information on value generators see media Futurist Gerd Leonhard’s Future of Social Media presentation delivered at PICNIC ‘09 in Amsterdam back in September 2009. I found the 30 minute video to be time well spent.

The direction that social media/media is heading in is not cross-platform. The operating framework is as a social platform, a shared digital media space. The ‘community hub’ will not be a physical location as such, it will be a socially networked space, where content and services are socially relevant in terms of who and what people are connected to, and their context at the time.

Public Sphere in Australia

Tomorrow, 7 May, will see the launch of Public Sphere in Australia on the topic of High Bandwidth. Organised by Senator Kate Lundy, the workshop/online discussion and interaction will centre on the use of high bandwidth and not the issues around National Broadband Network (NBN)  implementation. The workshop involves short 10 minutes talks from invited speakers which will be streamed live online.

Australian netizens are encouraged to participate through the Public Sphere website or by making reference to the online interaction in blog postings, tweets (Twitter) and the like. All feedback will be summarised and put into briefing papers for distribution to relevant channels in government. 

The event marks an important milestone in Government 2.0 initiatives and has the potential to showcase the capacity of Web 2.0 as an effective and cost-efficient means to interact with stakeholders. I don’t know of anyone planning to attend the workshop at the Australian National University, but I’ll be keeping an eye on proceedings online.

Future Montage Vision

After have developed scenarios in collaboration with others, Microsoft put together an excelled video montage of our possible future lives, including at work and at home, in 2019. Drawing on long-term trends, customer challenges and emerging technologies, the montage gives examples of how current prototypes might evolve.

Check out the video here - it is less than 2 minutes! A lot easier to consume than a multi-page tech trends paper

How many emerging technologies can you pick? Here’s a few that I noted:

• augmented technology
• e-health technologies
• digital wallets
• display technologies including 3D, electronic newspapers, transparent digital walls and ultra-thin displays
• Identification management including biological 
• Location sensing and context aware technologies
• Real-time conversation translations
• Touch 
• Ubiquitous computing

I know that the montage is still a Microsoft view of the future so you take it for what it is. I’ve got to say though, based on my own horizon scanning experience the vision displayed in the montage is a reasonable one…although just how widely available is another question. Of the technologies listed above, only the transparent wall stood out as new development. I’ve been tracking developments in others for as long as seven years. 

Whatever else you may take away, can I suggest that the video is a great way to get a sense of the pace of change on the horizon.

Social media has created a new layer of influencers

Brian Solis, principal of a PR and new media agency in the Silicon Valley, coined the title of this posting in his blog on June 11, 2007: The Social Media Manifesto – integrating Social Media into Marketing Communications. I’ve only just come across it. Slug. I’m glad I did though.

Social media goes beyond the role that people have played traditionally in disseminating information, it’s much more than that. The dynamic behind the new layer of influencers is the Social Web: enabling people to create and share news and information with others through decentralised networks. The Web is a 21st century social meeting place. Like any other meeting place over the eons, people socialise, discuss politics, conduct business all in the one place.

The impact on mainstream media is significant. Mass media scale advantages do not apply to social media. Broadcaster and publisher audiences and readers now have alternatives, and they are producers as well as consumers. There are many participants…millions of people…but as Clay Shirky has observed, a few are far more active than most. It’s a pattern that Clay states is general to social media. Just a few people can be very influential.

There are ways to identify who the main influencers are. One approach is that adopted by The Advertising Age in publishing a list of the top Media and Marketing blogs in the world. Laurel Papworth identified the most ‘influential’ Australian media and marketing bloggers out of the Australian entrants on world list. Just how influential these bloggers are is unclear…but it does provide evidence of social media influence.

Brian Solis’s message to PR & marketing professionals was that “…focusing on important markets and influencers will have a far greater impact than trying to reach the masses with any one message or tool”.

Back in 2006 The Future Exploration Network(FEN) described a symbiosis taking place between social media and mainstream media (eg. TV stars setting up profiles on social networking sites). Solis’s message and the FEN media symbiosis are just two indicators of the growing nexus between social and commercial elements of the Social Web.

Solis pointed out that understanding social media is more about sociology and less about technology. Perhaps another way to describe this is to take a socio-technical perspective. This is an important issue – it means that anticipating the future of communications and media is more about understanding social developments and less about technology.

Social media is being employed by corporates. Mashable has identified 35 examples of corporate social media in action. To paraphrase Brian Solis, understanding the nexus between social media and commerce is more about socio-economics and less about economics.

What all this means is the need to go deeper into the social and cultural transformation taking place.

Over the last couple of months I have become aware of many researchers and consultants blogging, presenting and twittering on the subject of social media and social networking. There are social media start-ups in Australia, such as Norg Media - people powered news. Read about the first robot with living brain tissue. 3eep is a social networking come social media enterprise for sporting enthusiasts.

Earlier this month Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas created The Conversation Prism graphic that charts online conversations between people that populate communities as well as networks that connect the Social Web.

The graphic is an excellent visual representation of rapidly evolving and pervasive extent of the Social Web.

The 20th century is known for massive advances in technology. It is not surprising that so much attention has been paid to technology trends in keeping pace with media developments. At this point in the 21st century however, social developments rate as being of more significance as drivers of change.

Media and Advertising Trends, United States

One of the most viewed postings on Media Post this week was this one on the shift in advertising from traditional to digital media. This posting provides an overview and I delve somewhat further into the reasons and implications.

Key points are that the low growth rate for the first quarter 2008 of 0.6% is only partly attributable to the cyclical economic downturn. Another contributing factor is the accelerating shift of advertising budgets from the ” expensive and highly inefficient” traditional media to the more cost-effective digital media.

There are some useful stats in the posting:

• TV + 1.7%
• Magazines +0.8%
• Newspapers -5.2%
• Radio -4.5%
• Internet Display +8.5%

The outlook seems particularly bleak for newspapers and radio. The positive result for TV is largely due to subscription TV (+4.1%). Overall, advertising revenue growth rates are forecast to lie in the 0 – 3% range, down from the 3 – 5% level the industry is used to.

Why is the Internet more efficient? Let me ‘count the ways’ as it were:

1. Search is the obvious starter here (and as noted in the Media Post article). On the horizon is sophisticated location-based marketing enabled by the geospatial web and the integration of GPS and mobile broadband and other forms of pervasive computing and advances in display technologies
2. Even more important to grasp though is in understanding and using the huge scale and reach of the Internet
3. Distribution costs are negligible
4. Behavioural targeting/data mining/profiling: particularly the connections between people and their interests
5. Participation – customers can do their own thing, whether that is branded TV or video, interacting with consumers via social networking or blogs or other Web 2.0 style interaction
6. New applications are being developed for video search and interpretation
7. Strategies and campaigns can be revised or amended speedily and at low cost

Not an exhaustive list I’m sure, but enough to start with.

Now to the implications. Traditional techniques, strategies and skills suited to mass marketing do not map neatly to the digital migration. So there is an adjustment period…but one that may be shorter-lived than some expect.

From what I can see, a similar trend is underway in Australia in the formation and implementation of digital media strategies by newspaper, radio and television operators – but it is not so noticeable as the US situation. However, the current economic downturn might accelerate the shift to the more cost-effective digital media.

Top Six Trends Communications and Media Technology, Applications and Services

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has identified six major technology trends it believes will have a significant impact on regulation of the media and communications sector over the next five to ten years.

The top six trends are:

• an accelerating pace of change, driven by overlapping developments in technology and the resulting increase in connections between people, databases and objects;
• diversity in the development of physical infrastructure, including broadband, digital broadcasting, smart radio systems, sensor networks, mesh-networks, efficiency techniques in multi-media transmission, location sensing and context aware technologies, intelligent transport systems and satellite services;
• the continuing spread of distributed connectivity, through the integration of information processing beyond the desk-top into everyday objects and activities;
• enhanced content and network management capabilities driven by developments in deep packet inspection and content filtering technologies, coupled with the need to improve e-security, identity management, intellectual property protection and energy efficiency;
• the emerging Social Web, acting both as a platform and database, enabling innovation and creativity by users and service providers; and
• continuing scientific and technological innovation that are, in combination, driving advances in computing power, display technologies, artificial intelligence and nanotechnology.

ACMA’s report, Top Six Trends in Communications and Media Technologies, Applications and Services – Possible Implications provides a concise overview of the trends in technology, applications and services over the next five to ten years and identifies the potential impact these trends may have on ACMA’s functions and responsibilities.

‘Regulatory pressure created by developing technologies is starting to bite into core legislative concepts and definitions, creating strained or ‘broken concepts’. Ultimately, their ‘elasticity’ will expire at which time they will no longer function efficiently or effectively in a converged environment.’ said Chris Chapman, ACMA Chairman.