5th of 5 Reasons why printed media will evolve
Note: This is the fifth and last part of my week-long series of posting 5 reasons why I think the printed media will have to evolve and what I think it should evolve to. The steps will be posted daily starting on Monday, and ending today, on Friday.
If you missed the first part “Time is of the essence”, you can find it here.
The second part “Advertising dollars are being spent elsewhere” is here.
The third, expected part “Ecology and global warming” is here.
The fourth part “Less news for more money” is here.
And now, the thrilling conclusion of the series and tonight’s topic is (drum roll):
5. The penetration of the Internet
If you’ve been reading the previous parts of this series, you’ve noticed that we have been talking more of the bottlenecks and problems with the current printed media, but in this post we will be looking towards how the web enables us to read media better, faster and easier.
With Web 2.0 the web has become three things:
- A lot more social as the users produce a large part of the content on sites nowadays
- A lot more result-oriented and measurable thanks mostly to Google setting the example
- A lot bigger, but much, much more personal thanks to semantic improvements
Why has it become more personal even though it’s got bigger? Well, previously the web was a much like a library. You had a massive collection of information, but the only tool you had was the 1980′s computer that had a similarly aged software for browsing a catalog of thousands of books. Usually the search terms were logical and easy stuff like ISBN numbers (we all know those), author and title searching and that was pretty much it.
If we would think of a web 2.0 library, it would have a very big screen on the new computer that would remember what I’ve borrowed earlier and my feedback on whether I liked them or not. It would allow me to search for books with genres, related authors, my friend’s recommendations, most popular and naturally have some exclusive content from specialists who would suggest me books they think would interest me.
How Web2.0 differs from the old 1.0
Since computers are not sentient enough to actually make semantic links between photographs and bits of text, we have to crowd-source the information from people and web 2.0 has made that work very easy. Take Last.fm for example. I’ve been using the service to scrobble my music for over four years now, and it has a collection of nearly 50 thousand song plays. Now take 500 people like me and you can build a grid of “if-you-like-this-you-might-like-this-as-well” because 500 people also do so. Quite simple.
RSS was the tool to come and break barriers from a publishing point of view. In the 1.0 approach to web, you had a single entity creating all the content and since even then most of it was syndicated from the big agencies no one had much originality.
With Web 2.0 your content comes from several sources. Naturally the entity still rules the pack, but then you have related sites, visitors and other contributors and this has also changed the way people read information on the site.
So, with blogs and specialist sites I can order a RSS feed that will suit my needs. I can have just the content, just the comments or both. In most modern sites you can subscribe to the feed from a category that interests you, not the whole thing. That is if the site has actually different categories, not like for example this site you are reading right now.
That leads us to the question whether printed media is ever going to be able to provide information in this way. I’m guessing that personalization for them is very hard and expensive, although Babylon 5 – the noted scifi space drama has an interesting glimpse to the future by having machines, that print a newspaper according to web 2.0 rules. It remembers what the user wanted the last time and will provide more information on the subjects that interest the reader more.
I’m sure we could do a few reader archetypes and build newspapers according to that. Say my sports and technology loving father would do with well a less detailed information on the Hollywood gossip section or agricultural information, when he would love to see more detailed information on the subjects he loves and political information that affects those areas.
My mother however likes the softer things in life, so her newspaper archetype would be more of the gossip tabloid with food and beauty related news done in detail and the tech and car stuff could be just quick mentions.
The size of the paper would stay the same, but the weighing of the information would be different between different archetypes. This could be based on several categories such as location, household income, background, sex, age or any other factor that allows us to create a last.fm kind of experience.
Of course, when electronic ink comes along, we can honestly have a web2.0 experience – but then again we’re not talking about printed anything anymore.
I think the sales people look like this.
There’s actually a funny story regarding this matter. I grew up reading Helsingin Sanomat, the main newspaper in Finland and it was something of a morning ritual (and so was carrying the massive loads of old newspapers to the recycling) to me. When I moved out of Finland, my subscription naturally ended but that didn’t stop the paper salespeople calling me. Every time the conversation is the same:
Sales Person: “Would you like to subscribe to Helsingin Sanomat again?”
Me: “Yes, if you can get it to me the same day it’s published.”
SP: “Where do you live?”
Me: “300 kilometers South in a different country.” (Finland is 1200 kilometers long btw)
SP: “I’m sorry, we can get you the paper a day late.”
Me: “Then the news would be two days old.”
SP: “Yes, but that’s how it goes. Can’t help you.”
Me: “Talk to you again in two months.”
Always the same story. And people wonder why I don’t read newspapers anymore. Even so, being a person that does not watch television or read newspapers, I would still say I consume information much more than most people.
Still, I’m curious to see what’s going to happen in the near future and how many newspapers will go bust or online.
And if any of them will actually change.
Related posts:
- Euphemisms of Markus
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