Future of Media: Opportunity or Train Wreck

  Black Crash 
  Originally uploaded by Fabien Barrau

Attending this week’s Future of Media: Summit 2008 has reinforced my belief in the emerging opportunities in digital and social media.

HOWEVER, there’s going to be a huge media train wreck and it’s heading towards those media and news organisations that are ignoring the huge social networking & media groundswell.

I’d like to make a special mention to all those Journalists who attended the event and positioned themselves as crusaders fighting against the infidels. In this case, the infidels are bloggers.

And then made themselves look silly by admitting their lack of knowledge on the subject.

However, given the quality of speakers on offer via a live simulcast conference session between Sydney and Silicon Valley, I learnt heaps.

On the other hand, I learnt a hell of a lot observing the table of social media (r)evolutionist that provide live commentary via Twitter, Summize, plurk.com, blog’s and broadcast via Ustream.com, to hundreds if not thousands of listeners.

As the Media Hunter points out: “Seriously, the technology and clever use of apps was just as impressive at our table as it was for the entire summit. I probably learned more from this than the whole event.”

These social media (r)revolutionaries were Mark Pesce, Stilgherrian, Servant of Chaos, Chris Saad, Stephen Collins  and Jed White.

You don’t need to spend millions of dollars on expensive media equipment to cover major events, all you need is a few Mac computers and an Internet connection.

The boys also gave me MAC envy. One table, five MAC’s and I had a free pen and notepad. I felt like a journalist – silly.

P.S.  I'd like to participate in some link love with Trevor Cook, a well respected blogger/PR person and possible journalist. Even though Trevor did not attend the 'Future of Media' summit, he did go out of his way to mention my article.

Trevor believes the importance of social media has been exaggerated. He has a right to have that opinion.

However, where he see exaggeration, I see many examples of entreprenuers capitalising on new emerging business models or opportunities due to social media such as Huffingtonpost, Google, Flickr, ooVoo, wikipedia,digg, ebags, Facebook,Youtube, pbwiki, zimba, Ning, Zoho, Stickytickets, upcoming, eventful, typepad, linkedin, twitter, bacn, vimeo and many, many more...

Social media is about collaboration, conversation, openness and democratisation...not control. Content is king and those who control content will make money. That's why a few journalists are getting the shits...they're losing  their monopoly on the written word.

Trevor, as a marketer its my job to look to the future...not backwards.   

Comments

[Gavin Heaton]

"Felt like a journalist" ... LOL.

It was a good event ... even just bringing a range of stakeholders together proved to be a breakthrough. Now, if we can just bridge the conversation gulf we might begin to get somewhere that is useful for our collective clients ;)

[Stephen Collins]

At least now, you can see just how easy it is. The stuff we were doing was content creation - the generation of social media. It's just as easy for brands to do it, and in just as open a way. Care taken, obviously, but totally doable.

The connection - the social networking - isn't overly complex either, but it does require careful thinking and well-considered implementation. That's where guys like me can add value to a company's work in the space.

Thanks for the shout-out and kind words.

[Bored]

Seriously, MSM don't feel particularly threatened by blogs because they don't consider them to be the same thing as news. Bloggers don't want to be called journalists and having witnessed the self-ingratiating backslapping at FOM this is clearly because they consider themselves to be superior to journalists.
From my perspective it is the 'bloggers' who are initiating this aggression because they WANT big media to feel threatened by them. Up to this point I had always considered blogs useful and completely legitimate forms of human expression, I in fact still do, but the demeanor and aggressive nature of the blogging community towards 'professional journalists' at this event was shameful and discredits their point of view. Grow up.

[Karen Walker]

The Spin Starts Here.

Reason #103 why journos with a professional rep to uphold shouldn't blog.

[Matt Wardman]

A couple of points if I may:

>there’s going to be a huge media train wreck and it’s heading towards those media and news organisations that are ignoring the huge social networking & media groundswell.

I think that's a bit apocalyptic = at least while most social media traffic is so fickle.

>blogging community

I suggest that it is a mistake to think of attendees at *any* conference, never mind one called "Future of Media", as being representative of the "Blogging Community" (if such a thing exists).

For what it's worth, I don't draw a distinction because I'm not sure if the "Professional Journalistic" skills of good writing, good research, persistence, networking, knowing the relevant parts of the law etc. are any different to those used in many other areas of work. A different area of application - yes. A unique differentiator - no.

There are real issues between blogges and MSM - story attribution being one, the number of errors made in both being another.

Rgds

Matt Wardman

[Matt Wardman]

My apologies - correcting a couple of typos.

Gordon

A couple of points if I may:

>there’s going to be a huge media train wreck and it’s heading towards those media and news organisations that are ignoring the huge social networking & media groundswell.

I think that's a bit apocalyptic, at least while most social media traffic is so fickle.

>blogging community

I suggest that it is a mistake to think of attendees at *any* conference, never mind one called "Future of Media", as being representative of the "Blogging Community" (if such a thing exists).

For what it's worth, I don't draw a distinction because I'm not sure if the "Professional Journalistic" skills of good writing, good research, persistence, networking, knowing the relevant parts of the law etc. are any different to those used in many other areas of work. A different area of application - yes. A unique differentiator - no.

There are real issues between bloggers and MSM - such as the need for the MSM to attribute stories, and the number of errors made by both being another.

Rgds

Matt Wardman