How social media is redefining broadcasting
May 1, 2010 12:00 PM, By Rob Van Den Dam
The Internet, broadband and social media are revolutionizing the traditional roles of media.
With the convergence of broadband, broadcasting and information technology, different networks now support all forms of communication and media, such as voice, video, computing and games. Connectivity and communication tools and devices are increasingly available and affordable for a large audience; as a result, control of communication media is shifting away from the domain of the media and communication companies and toward the more open Internet communication platform. All this has placed production of media such as images, words, video and audio in the hands of a significant fraction of the world's population. It's a fundamental shift in human communication behavior toward participating and sharing — the great switch from push to pull.
Introduction
Figure 1. The future media landscape is shaped by shifts in communication control
and patterns.
Select figure to enlarge.
Most of the media over the last decade was produced by professionals and transmitted from a tower, distributed over a cable system, or beamed directly from satellite. It was a world in which conversations took place with just one other person, or with a group, by broadcasting the same message to everyone in the group. Those days are over, never to return.
The media landscape as we knew it, where large organizations were controlling the channels, is increasingly slipping away. This trend is related to the widespread social media phenomenon, which is a reflection in two long-term underlying trends in communication:
- A shift in the control of communication media, from the proprietary domain of the traditional providers to the open Internet; and
- A shift in communication patterns, from one-to-one and one-to-many to many-to-many, collaborative communication. This entails sharing videos, photos and other multimedia contents that substantially enrich the user experience.
Shift in communication media control
The shift in the control of communication media is the result of communication becoming increasingly digital. All media gets digitized, and the Internet increasingly becomes the mode of carriage for all media. Phone calls, magazines, movies and the like are all migrating to the Internet. Media is increasingly becoming ubiquitous and a means of coordinating information, whether it's news, opinions, thoughts, audio, images or video, because everyone can share information via the Internet.
Figure 2. Relative contributions of models/services to revenues over the next five
to 10 years. Revenue expectations from IPTV are relatively low.
Select figure to enlarge.
More and more people are becoming connected. The majority of households in developed countries have Internet access, and the number of Internet users in emerging economies is growing rapidly. At the same time, data connectivity speeds have increased significantly, while the costs of connectivity and storage have declined drastically. With better, cheaper technologies and multimedia tools, availability of Web 2.0 software, and greater use of broadband and wireless networks, social media are becoming ever-more viable platforms for communication and media services, and consumers are responding eagerly.
Shift in communication patterns
Figure 3. Global users interested in online video ad-supported vs. paid content
online
Select figure to enlarge.
Traditional broadcasting and interpersonal communication, usually via the telephone, do not provide collaborative group capabilities. The availability and convergence of mobile communication and the Internet are now creating a platform that enables group communication encompassing many participants through shared spaces in virtually any geographic location. The Internet is the first medium in history that has native support for groups and conversation at the same time and gives us the many-to-many pattern.
Media has become a mass of conversations, based on two-way communication, not on traditional one-way information push models. And the viral distribution of information is fast and on a large scale. In addition, the members of the former audience can now also be producers, not only consumers, because the same equipment — computers, phones and the like — enables everyone to both consume and produce. This is a huge change in the media landscape we are used to, and a fundamental shift in the way we communicate and organize media.
The emerging media landscape
The combination of shifts in communications control and patterns is redefining the competitive landscape, giving rise to new business models. (See Figure 1.) In contrast with traditional models, emerging models are based on open platforms that support many-to-many and collaborative patterns.
Traditional broadcasting
The traditional broadcasting space, characterized by one-way information push models, has been the domain of broadcasters and cable operators. It is the largest segment in terms of revenue and subscribers, but is showing signs of slow growth, or even decline, as other models take hold. While these providers claim the largest number of subscribers, the users of open Internet platforms are growing at significantly faster rates.
Many telecom operators are also focusing on offering TV and video services. Most of them are investing in IPTV, where video content is transmitted using the Internet Protocol (IP) over the closed network of an IPTV provider who has configured it so that viewers can receive only the provider's TV channels. Until now, many operators have focused on offering the same TV channels and the same type of content as their competitors offer. But some telecom companies have taken it further, for example by competing on exclusive content, or offering ease of use by providing features such as an electronic program guide (EPG), which allows individual users in the household to set up a personalized TV guide with favorite programs and settings.
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