digital vs physical media: purchase drivers
Why I buy digital media (books, music, movies)
- the content
- instant gratification
- searchability
- zero physical storage needed
- ‘feels’ less like acquiring something
- device portability
- ease of use
- minimal barriers to purchase
Why I buy physical media (books, music, movies)
- the content
- ‘feels’ more like I own something
- physical enjoyment of the packaging
- beautiful design
- relatively few technical requirements
- zero reliance on electricity (certain cases)
- ability to display ownership (badge theory?)
If there is only one point of overlap, as to the reasons I purchase media, why is this constantly being treated as a binary choice?
Downloading a book isn’t the same as buying it in a bookstore. Downloading a record isn’t the same as buying it in a record store. Watching a movie on my computer or store isn’t the same as seeing it in the theatre. Same with a concert vs a ‘live’ record.
The assumption that the consumption experience doesn’t come with its own set of purchase drivers is beyond counter-intuitive, but it’s apparently the accepted wisdom. So we have release windows, and absurd copy protection, and region locking - all of which damage the consumption experience, in the name of preserving the content.
How’s that going so far?
I’m expanding the definition of illiteracy.
We use the literacy rate of countries or cities as a short-hand for how developed they are. In other words, we consider the ability to read and write as a kind of bare minimum for participation in the present; anyone who doesn’t have that qualification is arguably trapped in the past.
With that said, literacy in reference to reading and writing is not the only kind of literacy that’s becoming a bare minimum. Wired made this argument recently in regard to statistical literacy: far too many people can’t look at a stat and critically think about what it means, and how the collection method or criteria impact that meaning.
Some other literacies I’m proposing we start considering key performance indicators for our society.
Media Literacy: can you judge the validity of a source of information? Can you tell when facts are being manipulated? Can you analyze the information being provided to you, and make valuable conclusions?
Digital Media Literacy: do you know how to use tools available for search? For publishing? For communication? Can you control and customize your experiences online? Can you make use of and/or modify standard technology and services? Do you know what level of control and management is possible in your various online accounts and/or identities?
If I was being fair, I’d probably throw ‘Code Literacy’ in there as well, but given my skill set, I don’t feel qualified to define what the line is there. I can get google analytics or disqus working on a blog (the current theme on AI had them integrated automatically, though) but I wouldn’t consider myself code literate. This is actually one of my biggest issues with my skill set, and reflects what I consider a hole in the education system.
We’re entering a new phase of human culture, and the shift is as big as the printing press making literacy a key requirement in participating in humanity’s advancement.
We need some new bare minimums. What are yours?
Long comments are blog posts, right?
[The following is a comment I made in regard to Spencer Fry’s blog post “Down with Social.”]
I think you’ve made a false (but interesting) divide between what is and isn’t ‘social’.
If you’re arguing that companies don’t need someone tweeting and using facebook exclusively, sure, you may have a point. But the assumption that CRM through email is measurably more valuable than CRM via twitter, facebook, or blog comments doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
If an email response is your definition of ‘measureable’ (even though 1 of your 2 criteria, ‘thorough’ is a qual judgement) then simply counting replies to mentions is the same version of measurable. Twitter is people talking. Facebook is people talking.
If email isn’t people talking, I’ve been using it wrong for 13 years.
The core issue seems to be your definition - you’re argument makes perfect sense if, asLaporte said, social media is exclusively an echo chamber to talk about yourself.
Laporte’s argument was that no one noticed when his tweets weren’t sending, him included. That tells me he was using a conversation tool as a broadcast tool, and probably shouldn’t be calling his use of twitter ‘social’.
”pumping content into the void”? I’d argue that someone who considers a social channel a place to ‘pump content’ isn’t the voice of reason, here.
Anyway, you’re obviously entitled to your opinion, and I may just be misunderstanding your argument. Thanks for sharing.
Print Deathwatch: Closing the design gap.
Using the Reeder for iPad application this morning (it’s brilliant) I started thinking about the value and profit chain surrounding the free content I read from blogs. The short version is, Reeder filled the final gap in that chain, and combined with the iPad, upgraded the content consumption experience with reference to blogging.
Let me expand on that.
A blogger writes to gain a voice, gain an audience, create a store of ideas, or to establish credibility or expertise. Some of these pursuits are motivated by personal needs, but others directly feed to business or monetary needs. “Establishing credibility or expertise” has an unmistakable ROI - and if you told coworkers you were spending an hour a day doing that, no one would question you. At this top level, the value (monetary and otherwise) should be clear.
Direct income from blogging usually comes down to advertising or sponsored content. The options range from Google AdWords, or networks like Federated Media (who I am quite intrigued by), to full on branded content, where posts are created in the “publication voice” to draw attention to an upcoming product. This isn’t “save the content industry” money, but it’s another economy within the chain, supporting the urge and inclination to create free content.
What I’m interested in this morning is the monetization of the design gap, between content published and aggregated online, and a fully designed print publication. I was floored by the beauty and interface of the Wired ipad application, because it felt like a digital magazine. I’m having the same reaction to the Reeder application, which interests me - this is a design solution for my personal collection of RSS feeds, a curated list of blogs which represent my interests. Constantly updating, and now designed in a consistent and fluid manner.
What I’m saying is: Reeder for iPad is the first piece of software that made my blog / RSS reading seem a direct competitor for my magazine reading.
A paid piece of software, adding another micro economy to the blogging process. And it has me thinking that maybe the “print is dead” crowd has a point. Maybe the era of the content creation leading directly to the pay cheque is over. As glossed over above, direct pay for content creation is probably going to be supplemental in a lot of cases. The money comes from leveraging what you and others have created, whether it be reputation you’ve built via your writing, filling the design gap, or creating the best device to consume that content from.
We’ve watched the music industry collapse due to the same disconnect - creating content does not flow directly into making money. Selling words is like selling music, it’s based on a fundamental failure to understand what digital means.
Put another way: I’m reading free content through a $5 application that runs on my tablet. And it’s hitting a point where the advantage in targeting, plus the closing gap in experience, is trumping the thin lead in quality that some print outlets still have.
The Digital Content Paradox
Please explain the following contradiction:
Copyright / Free Culture advocates / activists (myself included) often decry the absurdity of assuming the logic and rules of physical goods and objects apply to digital goods and objects. At the same time, the same activist / advocate groups often insist than rights and concepts of physical ownership on the consumer end, should apply to digital ownership.
If it’s insane for companies to apply pre-digital concepts to their digital products, it’s insane for us to apply pre-digital concepts of ownership to the same products.
Books that made me, #2: Brian Wood’s Channel Zero was a massive influence on me. About media, communication, and the essential and sometimes futile act of creating an opposing voice, this was one of the key factors in forming my opinion that media is a weapon.
I’ve long been frustrated by the inability of big media sites to have a real two-way communication with the readers. I mean, reading Newsweek (or any other old media property) online is pretty much the same experience you have in print: We put out a story, you come and look at it. Comments sort of improve on this, in that now you can at least discuss a story in that space, but they don’t work all that well as a communications channel with the publication, because a) they’re nearly always crammed into a little, lesser comment ghetto on the page, which few readers, and even fewer writers and editors, ever look at and b) our staffers don’t have an easy way to join into the conversation.
My thought with Tumblr is, mainly, that there’s a lot of really interesting, creative things being done/talked about on Tumblr, and we want to be in on that. What I’d love someday is for every bit of Newsweek’s content to be easily rebloggable, and for readers to be able to experience the site not just as some static thing we program for them, but as a conversation they have with the Newsweek staffers they choose to follow.
Newsweek: Interview with Mark Coatney of Newsweek Magazine’s tumblr (via meaghano) (via tanya77)
Getting It.
the only 3 strategies for modern news organizations
- speed (TMZ, Drudge Report, etc.)
- deep (includes Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc.l )
- spin (includes Daily Show, Fox News, ect.)
There are some organizations that try to be a hybrid of two or three the most successful usually focus only on one.
I’d add a fourth - Analytical.
It’s different than deep, IMHO, because depth is a matter of detail, whereas analysis is a matter of turning information into opinion and conclusion. A great example of this is the Economist, one of the few print publications that seems to be weathering the storm quite well.
Another great example is Nate Silver from fivethirtyeight.com - a great example of a new and old media success that is based entirely on analysis, rather than reporting. The downside is that good analysis requires expertise in a subject (even if that subject is data analysis) rather than expertise in writing or reporting. Meaning, more expensive to scale / expand coverage.
One of the internet's most important legacies is its absolute destruction of credentialism.
(via peterfeld)
Quite right. I’ll never forget when I started getting traffic for my political / war blog. I had no credentials. I was an eighteen year old (seventeen year old?) high school drop-out. But people read. Eventually millions of them. Even people in the White House and DoD and ODCI. And the New York Times never would have given me an inch of column space. All I needed was a $20 virtual host and a MovableType installation.
If you remember this, you’re (sadly) ahead of about 90% of media’s ‘ruling class’.
Just stumbled across this fascinating chart while researching for a big presentation tomorrow.
Very interesting, but actually slower growth than I expected.
