d Blog

Welcome to d blog, also known as Dan's rant. The content herein is essentially comprised of miscellaneous ramblings and random thoughts on the nature of contemporary existence.

"Brave New World"

Digital information wants to be FREE. Not free of cost necessarily, but free of constraints to appear ubiquitously. Simultaneously, the audience is rapidly splintering and the new connectivity is making it easier to reach qualified target markets. Now you can do for a few dollars what it used to take thousands to accomplish. No one is immune and there is no escape.
To wit;
CNN has adjusted it’s portfolio to engage both viewers and advertisers--with the relaunch of its new CNN Mobile service. The network's first free ad-supported mobile site offers breaking news, SMS text alerts and a searchable news archive. It will also include an "In the Field" blog with contributions by global correspondents and a made-for-mobile hourly video update, "World News Now." CNN's parent, plans to launch new mobile sites for the Cartoon Network and other media properties in 2007.

USATODAY relaunched its website with a parade of new features that will add social networking functions.

Dan Scheinman, the mergers and acquisition chief who led Cisco’s purchases of Linksys now runs a new division called the Media Solutions Group, which has been responsible for the acquisitions of Five Across and Tribe.net. Mr. Scheinman said in an interview that Americans were quickly changing their media consumption habits. He said his new group would let Cisco help its media customers, like TV networks and cable companies, develop their sites and move more of their content onto the Web. “Part of our job is to form a relationship with media companies and deliver technologies and services to them, so consumers can consume what they want online,” he said.

The new connectivity releases information to flow freely over the connections between people, between websites, between the internet and mobile worlds, between buyers and sellers.

The splintering of large mass media into hundreds of cable channels, multi screen movie houses and the veritable plethora of blogs, podcasts and videos, feeding a splintered audience that has evolved into scads of small communities who each in their own way can find and support the kind of content they want.

Since the underlying technologies are so affordable, artists and creators no longer feel the pressure to justify their work in terms of the number of eyeballs who will see it. For most bloggers, podcasters and video posters, reaching a few people is enough and if costs have to be met it’s easy enough to find just enough advertisers or they can just add a Paypal link.

Advertisers and marketers shouldn’t worry about reaching the largest audience possible. With the new narrowcasting enabled by the new media and Internet, they can more easily find just the people who would be inclined to give a look.

Revenue models are elusive in this new landscape. Hell, leveraging 30 minute network TV shows and the entire newspaper business into this new age is painful and seems nigh unto impossible. Certainly it is excruciating to watch old media flailing about in an effort to adapt.

We live in the post bigtime, the era of the longtail and global viral communication. Old media is running scared of the hundreds of cable channels and infinite space and reach available online, for which there’s no shortage of content. Some content might be appealing, some of dubious quality. Some might even be inaccessible and crappy, but you can be sure there’s an audience watching, Just Ask A Ninja, but at any rate you had better take notice

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