Will the ABC be all spikes and no hub, or will virtual hubs rule?

Last month I blogged about innovation in media, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) move to develop widgets for users to aggregate ABC content on their social network sites. As I’ve said before, this is a smart move by the ABC. In taking this initiative, the ABC appears to have recognised the reality that social networks are the new hub for news and entertainment.

So it is interesting to contrast this strategy with the ABC’s primary vision to become Australia’s “virtual town square” – a hub for user-generated content. In May 2009, Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, described the virtual town square as “a place where Australians can come to speak and be heard, to listen and learn from one another”. By November 2009, planning had advanced to the point where the ABC is to employ digital media trainers around the country to teach Australians how to upload their own content to the ABC’s website.

What strikes me about the virtual town square idea is that conceptually it is not  a new. Local radio chat shows are a long-standing example of user-generated content in media. The town square idea also rests on media institutions continuing to provide the hub or the space for people to use.  I just wonder how congruent the strategy is with social media has it continues to grow in importance in the everyday lives of Australians.

For when it comes to creating and uploading content, people are already doing this for themselves. The emerging social media hub is a personalised place, one that is open to friends, family, coworkers and other associates in the work place and in the community. The social media hub has user-generated photos and videos, status updates and wall posts for expressing views about whatever is of interest.  It’s a place to join groups of interest and for political activism. It’s a place where users aggregate  news feeds, music and videos from third parties, updates from their other social media sites, and feeds from people they connect with. It’s a place that links data from all over the web. In Australia, that could well mean some content from the ABC. It may well mean that data is collated and shared within user-created and run virtual communities. Users doing it for themselves.

Where might social network site aggregation and sharing go? Steve Rubel has suggested that user preferences for personalised social network sites may mean that the next great media company will not have a website, they will be “all spokes and no hub”. I’d say that is a good call.  With the widget initiative, the ABC is positioning to play in the user-defined media hub space. The corporation is doing that as well as playing host to virtual town squares on its own website. It will be interesting to see how these two plays pan out over the next couple of years.

Frustration Media

I’ve been an avid reader of newspapers since I was a kid…that’s a long time now. I’ve got to say that print media is losing out to social media in terms of my attention now.

Sure, I’m finding that blogging, commenting on other blogs, subscribing to news feeds and participating in microblogging and social networking is seductive. It’s interactive. It’s social. It’s creative. The knowledge networks that I can tap into seem limitless at times.

In comparison, I’ve got to the point now that I get frustrated when reading a print article that either gets things wrong or presents a view that I want to challenge…there and then… but of course, I’m not able to.  

On Monday, 29 September there was a critque by Matthew Mclean in The Age on social media. Just the print version. The article was on page 11, somewhat ironically headed the ‘Comment & Debate’ section. 

The article starts with “In the near future the worlds of Facebook and MySpace will suddently implode”. Why? McClean states that “Trying to entwine personality, and perhaps even one’s self-esteem , to something that does not actually exist [it's a virtual world] is a depressing and dangerous thing to do”. Mclean refers to unspecified ‘cyber-space’ critics claiming social network users are “subsuming their own reality as a consequence [of spending time in a virtual world]“. 

Mclean goes on to site some ’status updates’ of his former Facebook friends as evidence of “…a lack of orginality and serious contemplation”. One example used was ‘(Name) is full after a fairly nice tuna sandwich’. So what?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Fair enough. But McClean’s article takes just one element of the Facebook experience and condems the future of social networking. That is not balanced journalism. There was no reference to other elements such as news feeds, group action (that can be social, professional, educational or political) knowledge sharing or co-creation. At a basic social level, people like being able to make connections with others. Social networking provides many opportunities for connecting with others.

According to comScore, Facebook is now the most popular social network globally. But the storey is not all about Facebook or MySpace. The data also showed that social networking activity is popular globally, attracting 580 million visitors (an increase of 25% from the year before) out of a total internet audience of 860 million in June 2008. 

Social networking has come a long way (in terms of use) very quickly. Much of it is still experimental, and still at the early stages of development. According to a survey by Synovate, some people do seem to be losing interest in social networking. Apparently, 58% of the people surveyed did not know what social networking is. These are indicators of a nascent service – Facebook only went public about two years ago.

Here is what Steve Garton, global head of media research for Synovate, had to say about users having a balanced on- and offline existence. “Most people online, regardless of culture, have a very strong appreciation of being in the real world. Their attitudes and behaviour show us that the virtual world of social networking can complement relationships, but not replace them.  There is no substitute for real life, real friends and real relationships”.  That is a far cry from users subsuming their own reality. What’s more, forty percent of survey participants agreed that online communication can be just as meaningful as face-to-face communication.

So McClean’s perspective does have some validity, but no blance. To cast down social networking on such slim evidence and virtually no analysis – under a page header of comment and debate – and with no opportunity to interact, just leaves me feeling very cool about the experience and cool toward print media. 

That kind of experience is happening to me quite often with print media. So I’ve labelled it ‘Frustration Media’. No wonder it’ s in decline.

Cloud Media

Ross Dawson has launched the Future of Media Lifecycle framework developed for the Future of Media Summit 2008. Again, I do like the imagery created by Future Exploration Network.

I like the ‘personal cloud’ imagery to capture the way people store, create and consume content. Including ‘conversation’ in the Sea of Content  helps to capture the participatory nature of social media, although ‘life streaming’ would fit just as well.

Viewing media as a personal cloud captures the way people consume and create media at work, socialising, in transit (mobile) and in the home. I agree that personalised location-specific and outdoor media may well be more interesting – i.e. of value – to people than mass-market marketing.

Reading Ross Dawson’s blog posting got me thinking (as you do). I would say there are more clouds in the media lifecycle:

• Social clouds – clouds where networked people store and share their sea of content
• Community clouds – a community sea of content, created and maintained by groups of people with shared interests, including communities that endure over time, transcending individual influences.

In other words, fundamental social elements and actors map to the Cloud. And likewise, participation is in the home and mobile. Social and community clouds – as well as personal clouds – are wherever, whatever, and however you like.