keep the broadcast model for a broadcast medium.

There are limitations to how many people you can read about, learn about, and conduct conversations with.

If you are willing to deal with a fragmented, less social experience, you can increase that number, with drawbacks occurring as the number of people you intend to interact with increases.

  

At some point, you will no longer be able to respond to every question or comment directed at you.  At a later point, you will no longer be able to read every question or comment directed at you.  

After a certain level of growth, you will no longer be able to read enough of the volume of comments or questions to build an understanding of the individuals you are attempting to interact with - you may recognise names, but be unable to have a profile of the person filed away in your head.

At a final point, you will no longer be able to recognise the sub-groups, factions or cliques, within your following.  You will merely have a mass of people who have offered to give you their attention.  This is massively powerful, but it's not the same as building a lasting social interaction with someone (or several someones).

We have platforms that work well for mass non-social outreach.  Broadcast media, and the broadcast model, do this absurdly well, and features such as confining a message of this type to a certain object, or a certain time, help to build a community experience despite the disconnected nature of the messaging.

Why do I keep seeing experts try to use social media for the broadcast model of communication?  Ten thousand people fighting to speak with you via Twitter and being ignored isn't better than the same ten thousand getting a video podcast or one-way mailing list - it's worse, because Twitter comes with an expectation of conversation.

Ignoring the realities of the form, and thinking that more is better in a medium that is optimized for, and defined by social interaction, doesn't help anyone.

I'm not trying to discourage celebrities, thought-leaders, and experts from interacting with social media.  I'm just arguing that they aren't experiencing social media, because social media is about developing conversations and connections that don't play well with fame.

Play to the strengths of the medium.  Or find a medium that plays well with your strengths.

social media still needs the broadcast model.

It all comes from somewhere.  People want buzz in social media, and generally they think the obvious solution is to 'go Viral', as though this is something predictable or simple to replicate.  Social media is supposed to bread the broadcast model, but what we keep forgetting is that social media, in the large scale sense that communications pros and companies want, is based on the broadcast model.

The big blogs are either original works or commentary.  They disseminate to smaller blogs, and to sites like Digg and Reddit, generally the same way Newspapers would disseminate into real world conversations.  Many of the things that become comment peices are linkblogged from larger, more established sources.  Sure, the timing is faster, but it works the same as it always did - sources with the biggest audience generally trickle down into the sources with smaller audiences.

There are major differences and advantages in the results - blog and Digg coverage results in a fast online paper trail, google results, more impressions, etc.  For the reader, trickling down into blogs results in stories being approached from more varied and specific viewpoints.  But, if you want blog coverage, if you want social media relevance, the major ingredient beyond having a topic that is relevant to social media, is targeting and getting covered by the big boys.

This is what amuses me to no end about being told, constantly, that PR is dead, is useless, is irrelevant.  Half the time someone will say this, and within a week, link a story from the New York Times, or Marketing Magazine, or Fast Company, or a youtube clip from MSNBC.  Cognitive dissonance is an odd thing to watch writ large.

Social media has changed the game, certainly.  And approaching large entities online that operate on the broadcast model is not the same as contacting traditional media outlets.  But assuming that things that reach the largest number of people are less important at a time when things are breaking down into smaller, more specific conversations forgets the key element of having a topic.

And topics come from shared experience.

time and space bias, dead and dying

chartreuse examines time bias, or more bluntly, declares time dead.

I agree, but was kinda hoping this much was obvious by now. Then again, watching most media outlets makes it clear that obvious doesn't really mean a change in operations. I'm more interested in space bias - and the idea that most content owners have, that owning something in one form, shouldn't justify ownership in several formats, each suited to a location (meaning, a device, a file format, and a set of permissions and interactions tooled to that medium).

Time bias is more or less dead, and all it took was storage, compression and bandwidth. Space bias falling apart will be more of a cultural shift, and an eventual understanding that consumers are only willing to pay for something useful. Useful, very soon, is going to be defined as unilaterally useful. In other words, people might be willing to spent 15 bucks for an album again if it means they can get a physical copy, get a digital copy, and get enough context with it that the experience is tailored to each tool they use to enjoy it, from ipod to computer to car.

on the obvious.

Very, very often, and depressingly, I run into an article that sounds very interesting, but end up finishing it with the thought 'and...?'

This piece, though written well enough, left me with that feeling.

Maybe it's because I'm one of the 20-something university students the article deals with, but it can basically be summarised as 'new methods of distribution change the way people interact with content.' This is, to someone of my generation, similar to a news bulletin that reads 'eating found to reduce hunger', and I hope most people would get the same response.

The article does make the comparison to DVD content, and the difference of experience that comes with watching a story in succession, rather than parceled out by the creators or corporations. Technology is about control, and being able to determine when and how you watch a TV show is worth 1.99 an episode, or 25 bucks a season.

"What will be interesting to see is how the iTunes model will eventually affect these 20-somethings’ viewing habits as they get older. [...] Whether through the “low-tech”method of waiting for DVD box sets to be released, or the instant gratification of the iTunes Store, it looks like viewing habits are being molded."

What's actually interesting, in my opinion, is not just the changing of viewing habits, but the changing of the model of communication, and the alteration of the social experience. Television creates cultural moments because it creates a situation where a large number of people are watching the same thing at the same time. In the 20-somethings of today, you can rarely have a conversation about the episode of heroes that aired last night, because three people are still downloading it.

The article mentions convenience, and scheduling, but misses the larger point. The target audience of many television shows is now unwilling to be told how to watch, when to watch, and even less willing to watch only once. We're used to having control over our entertainment and information, and television is a blip on the otherwise consistent evolution of entertainment content; where, at least to a point, the user decided how and when things will be done. When you see a play or a movie, you pick which showing, fitting it into your life. With a book, you read how ever much you want, whenever you want.

Television networks and cable companies have created a system that works well for them, and that model doesn't shift well. Content on demand means that product placement can't be supplementary television advertising, it means that you won't get viewers for crap just by placing it before or after something of high quality.

It's not that viewing habits are being molded. The issue now is whether the television business model will continue to be adapted to the way people interact with TV shows now, or if they will fall into an embarrassing strategy of harassing consumers to ignore technologies they don't approve of, like another industry based on entertainment content.

[Short commentary on end link: Is this happening? This is beyond idiocy, and far past the border into self-parody. I'd post on it at length, but I don't think I could do it without my head hurting.]