A new era for specialist media

A new era for specialist mediaDavid Cushman, MDNinety10group.com

10-Nov-09
2
Who am I?
20+ years in media, advertising, marketing and organisational change
Author of The Power of the Network
Blog ranked world No7 for publishing, UK’s top 20 for marketing/advertising
Invited to speak on the impact of social tech from New York to San Francisco (the valley, too) Cannes to Canada
Helped Bauer/emap, Honda, Phillips, Sony-Ericsson, Gatwick Airport, Edge, UKBA, CWDC, DfT, Grey (London), MCBD, Digitas, RIOT/180, ThirdeyeT, Band&Brown, Gambling Compliance, The Met Police et al
Trustee of UK charity Citizens Online
MD of social tech consultancy 90:10

10-Nov-09
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Context

What’s changed? How to respond
Content production, distribution and user experience is now in the hands of everyone. What does that mean for those who used to control all that – publishers.
Why the internet-powered long tail of demand is a disaster for traditional broad mass media models but a huge opportunity for specialists.
How fragmentation means you can never hope to target all emerging niche communities – and what you can do to engage them
When nobody wants to pay for content and no one clicks on the ads why thinking of specialist content as 'social objects' can reveal where the ROI comes from.

Out of control
How content production, distribution and user experience is now in the hands of everyone - and what that means for publishers

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A huge shift. From one - to many
Image?

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Everybody’s Media: Social Media
Digitally enabled peer-to-peer networks
From email and sms to Facebook and Twitter
Distribution is by people to people
Content is by people to be shared with other people

10-Nov-09
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Everybody’s Media: Social Media
Digitally enabled peer-to-peer networks
From email and sms to Facebook and Twitter
Distribution is by people to people
Content is by people to be shared with other people
POWER!

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Power?
Every hotel
Every restaurant
Every shop
Everywhere…
Filled with published critics

We’re all publishers now

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We’re all publishers now
300m blogs globally
73% of web users read blogs
Facebook members now over 300m (from 120m a yr ago)
Twitter has now exceeded 50m – up 49m in a year! (overtaken myspace in UK)
More video added to YouTube in last year than broadcast by TV EVER!
The revolution is speeding up...

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Peer to peer interaction
The most powerful behaviour changer there is
We do what others like us do
Social media brings us together with people like us
Social media helps people like us act together

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All publishers, advertisers & marketers now
Friend-recommendation is responsible for 70%+ of all purchase decisions
34% write about products and brands on their blogs
20% of all tweets are brand related
23% of social network users have added applications
18% of bloggers install widgets
Image by Melissa Gray

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How do we adapt?

The internet-powered long tail of demand is a disaster for traditional broad mass media models
But it’s a huge opportunity for specialists.
A disaster and an opportunity

The user is the destination now

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Hits are worth(-)less in a networked world
The long tail...
The idea that the majority is made up of people who don’t want the thing that the largest single group do.
Twitter Trends, the charts and often elections – surface the largest single group – not, by a long way, the majority

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The science bit
Three laws describe how value growsand is distributed in networks…

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Sarnoff’s Law – the red line
The value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers/listeners:
Eg TV, Radio, Cinema

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Metcalfe’s Law: the yellow line
The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system (n² growth):
Fax machines, telephones, one-to-one communications.

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Reed’s Law: the green line
The value of large networks, particularly social networks, grows exponentially with the size of the network.(2n)
Because: The number of possible sub-groups of network participants grows faster than either the number of participants, ‘N’ (Sarnoff’s Law), or the number of possible pairs (Metcalfe's law) (N squared)

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How does this reveal the value of a broad, ‘lowest common denominator’ hit in the networked world?

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Flip the graphs to find the demand curve
…and we discover why the long tail succeeds in the group forming (Reed’s Law) world of social networks that IS the internet.

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Hits take more of the available valuein a broadcast world

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Hits were worth more in broadcast world
Shaded area shows hits account for a greater proportion of the available demand and total value in Sarnoff’s broadcast world and in Metcalfe’sworld of one-to-one communications.
The biggest single group = the majority in a broadcast world but a small minority in the networked world

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Hits are still worth having… but
They have less proportional value compared to the overall economics of the networked world.
In a broadcast world the hit was where MOST of the value resided
The opposite is true in a networked world.
Narrowcasting serves a greater number of people. All those tiny niches are bigger in total than the largest of your lowest-common-denominator single groups.
So if you're really about scale - you know what to do… or at least try to do

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Caution: Snakes
Long tail is getting longer…

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Frightening Fragmentation
Q: How can we reach deep into and along the ever-elongating long tail?
A: Understand how messages/ideas and conversations evolve in the networked world

You can’t target – they can
Fragmentation means you can never hope to target all emerging niche communities
So what you can do to engage them?

The internet is for people.

The internet is for people. For people to form groups

The internet is for people. For people to form groupsGroups with sharedpurposes

The internet is for people. For people to form groupsGroups with shared purposesGroups of people that can form at little or no cost

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That changes everything
http://flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/

Three key disruptions
Who gets to create content?
Who gets to distribute content?
Who controls the user experience?

Three keydisruptions
Who gets to create content?
Any and everyone
Who gets to distribute content?
Any and everyone
Who controls the user experience?
The user is the destination now, they control their own A-to-anywhere journey

You can’t target every community of purpose
They can
Here’s how
http://flickr.com/photos/caribb/

You can’t target every community of purpose
They can
Here’s how

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THE STAGE
Message broadcast at audience
Scale = audience = where the eyeballs have gone

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THE STAGE
But in the networked world the broadcast message doesn’t arrive

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They aren’t looking
at The Stage.
They are looking
at each other
Scale = lots of communities of purpose = where the eyeballs are focused

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They share messages among
their groups.
They adapt them to suit their groups
They make the message theirs
We share what we think is cool with people who (we think) will think its cool, too

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The groups are not fixed (adhoc).
The message spreads when the
groups reform around a new purpose
Users select what they think is cool (has utility) to take with them on their journey

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Participants adapt
the message
to suit the group
they wish to share it with
The people best-placed to adapt the message are in the group, not on the stage

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And so it continues;
the message evolving to
survive. Or it dies out
We share what we think is cool. That which we co-create, we embrace

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They aren’t your groups
they are theirs
They aren’t your messages
they are theirs
Communication is not done to them, it is done by them

8th Mass Media
WE are the distribution,
WE are the content,
WE are the 'user journey',
WE are how messages are transmitted.
WE are the medium and the media carried by it
WE are the connections.
and how the connections are made.

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Same as it ever was?

Strategies for success in the 8th Mass Media
We need to think of specialist content as 'social objects'
This will reveal the new revenues in a world where nobody wants to pay for content and no one clicks on the ads.

What’s a social object?
You and your friend, Joe, like to go bowling every Tuesday. The bowling is the Social Object.
Hugh Macleod – GapingVoid.com
It is the interesting thing that brings people together to talk/interact/do stuff
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Give them something interesting to do together (social objects)
Make it easy for people who care to connect and interact
People who care, act
Action creates value (makes change)
Their actions attract more people to the purpose by amplifying and sustaining the conversation

The value is in the community interaction
Nursery Rules: Distribution vs Contribution
CompareMyRadio, Synth Britannia, Mixcloud: why the long tail wins
The publisher’s role in discovery: the value of keeping the silo open

Lessons from the network
Publishing is The Great Reminder. It has real potential to be the social object around which peer-to-peer interaction happens. And the real magic happens in those peer-to-peer interactions. This is where the purchase reminders and recommendations happen in the main.
Getting your share: It is therefore where the greater revenue opportunities lay. Your click-to-buy model (or it's equivalent) therefore has to be portable so peers can take it with them on their journeys.
Narrowcasting serves a greater number of people. All those tiny niches are bigger in total than the largest of your lowest-common-denominator single groups. So if you're really about scale - you know what to do.
Discovery = community curated content ONLY where communities are fuzzy-edged. Bear that in mind when you consider whose communities we are talking about - and where they reside.

Monetising the interactions requires:
Tracking from source of inspiration
Portability (goes with the user)
Agreements on revenue shares (with platform providers and/or users, too?)

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The networked journey
Listening to and responding to the network requires and drives cultural change within the organisation itself.
It raises and answers big questions about ownership and control to make your brand or organisation a better fit with the demands of the networked world.
It is your safe passage to the future

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Remember: Something’s got to give
If the world outside is changing faster than the world inside, something is going to tear
It won’t be the world outside

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Remember: There’s more help outside than in
The people who can make the biggest difference to your company - who can help you most - don't work for it.
Adapting to the network means they can.

10-Nov-09
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Remember: The great disruption has only just begun
Brian Eno 1991

David Cushman
Ninety10group.com
FasterFuture.blogspot.com
twitter.com/davidcushman
davidpcushman@gmail.com
david@ninety10group.com
Call or text +447736 353590
10-Nov-09
59

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A new era for specialist media

by david cushman on Nov 16, 2009

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A new era for specialist media — Presentation Transcript