Even distribution

The per second and per character billing wars happening in the Indian mobile space now, made me consider whether its beyond a price thing – a need for consumers to slice and splice until they get exactly what they need. I see a parallel in the flow of content too, something I discussed earlier.

Which explains why I tweeted that I was still watching with great interest, the results of Murdoch’s arachnophobia, though it will take months. (despite having some fun with irobot.txt, and Walled Street Journal 😉 ) Now that’s a subject on which everyone’s had an opinion, so I’ll refrain. (though I’ll share the interesting Bing Theory) The other part of his announcement, where he wants to be paid for content, will obviously depend on the quality of content he can give, and whether it can be found elsewhere for free.

Meanwhile, as a believer of the link economy, I should’ve logically said that News Corpse was the future, but I refrained. The reason was that for me, the complete mechanics of content distribution is still in an evolution stage. I wrote about brand content distribution last week, and I’m exploring similar thoughts on information in general, especially when i see studies on sharing trends like these (via Social Media Explorer), which I still think is a good indicator despite the inherent skews in sample/methodology it might have. The specific part that interested me being the low shares of Google channels and Twitter, and the larger understanding (reminder) that the web is much bigger than the social media savvy crowd. While Google News has become a great aggregator, there might be other distribution mechanisms that can be developed, keeping a paid model in mind.

Media has long served as a distribution platform for brand communication, so its obvious that any effect on media would also force brands to think differently from what they’ve done so far. It means seeking and understanding various smaller ecosystems that are bound to develop, where media itself would be different from what we see now. In essence, brands would have to slice and splice their content to reach various audiences. Again, one can’t completely rule out the possibilities for Murdoch with niche specific audiences.

Meanwhile, I had a good debate recently with Surekha on social media’s usage by brands- product/brand centric vs communication centric approaches. This great post (via Surekha) sums it up quite well. My contention was that ‘buzz’ (for lack of a better term) could be generated without a communication centric agenda, if brands/products were serious about social media and approached it from a business design perspective. Communication centric approaches would tend to see networks as broadcast platforms and the focus would be on ideas and execution, which may quite often be platform centric, with less thought on how sustainable it is in the long run,  especially if all parts of the organisation are not aligned to a different way of working that’s required. Also, in addition to the spurious ROI methods which are evolving, my issue with communication – centric approach is best described by Godin in Hammer Time (every function (PR/Advertising all bring their own hammers to nail social media) and Rex in “If Advertising is your middle name, your surveys will always suggest the solution is….

(Update: Thanks Dina, for sharing this)

It led me to wonder if brands’ usage of  FB, Twitter etc as broadcast platforms, also contributes to the way these platforms are evolving – from the concept of digital sub-prime crisis that Umair Haque has written about recently to the kind of hiring that brands do. (In this context, the Ad Contrarian’s 3 Distinctions post is also worth reading) Taking it further, is that why (simplistically put) instead of collaboration and easy interoperability, there is the scenario that Tom Reilly very interestingly describes in ‘The War for the Web‘ – war between natural monopolies  (search, social networking, classifieds etc) for adjacent areas.

I’m hoping that like with all things web 2.0, the community will turn both the fights in a direction that is beneficial to itself, and we won’t be left replacing one system with another that develops with the same principles.

until next time, choosing sides 🙂

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