We live in a world where content is king and those who have the best combination of rich media content, (website content, social media content, video, networking skills, etc.) will be the top influencers and leaders of this new shift in paradigms. It is most noticeable in the marketing and advertising industries as it applies to the traditional media outlets (newspaper, TV, and radio). These traditional gatekeepers no longer have control over the content. The thing is it didn’t happen overnight and I would trace it back to the deregulation of communications and telecommunications industries (#), or as I put it, big companies getting bigger. The problem with this is you kill off competition and when you do this you kill off original thought and innovation to some degree. Then when you are so top heavy and have no room for growth you start to cannibalize your company and even more importantly your industry. The product or service tends to lose value because the R&D budget stays the same and the marketing budget is increased. Companies like Viacom, AOL Time Warner, Clear Channel, AT&T, Bell, etc. who have created mega conglomerates were so focused on getting to the top of Everest that their product and customer service started to suffer. In turn their customers tuned them out and looked elsewhere to new entrants in the industry. In the case of communications, new channels/mediums and business models like social media.

Viacom’s MTV became an early leader and adopter of Social Media by incorporating and allowing shared rich media between community members of their site, but like a lot of other early innovators in the industry (i.e – MySpace) they failed to be sustainable and evolve in terms of technology and user experience.(#) Granted they are very good at retaining their core target audience of teenagers with shows like The Hills, thus killing off actual music videos that a bigger audience downloads/streams off of Youtube. Like video killing the radio star, Social Media has killed the TV, radio, movie, and newspaper star. Movie and rock stars will still have a hardcore following, but not compared to pre web 2.0. Instead you will have naturally grown Youtube stars like Fred making appearances on shows like iCarly (#) or gossip bloggers like Perez Hilton being your new internet celebrities making the transition to traditional media with a bigger platform in which to be seen and heard.(#) Popularity is fleeting and has become so fragmented that it is marginalized.

The funny thing is traditional media could have prevented their current death, as we have come to know it in its current form, by learning lessons from Shawn Fanning (Napster) and the music industry. What Shawn did was deemed illegal, but his business model was right and forced the industry to change theirs.(#) Itunes and other online business models is proof of that. It was a silent consumer revolt that told the music industry they were tired of paying $20 for an entire CD with maybe one or two songs on it by a “factory” artist. Music industry executives’ and lawyers’ excuse was that it cost a lot of money to produce the artists. The consumers responded by saying, “How about spending the money on the artists you do have rather than the next big thing.” Sometimes change is gradual and sometimes it is almost overnight. No longer do you see the quality put into long lasting artists like The Beatles, Queen, The Rolling Stones, U2, and so on. It is the lip syncing pop tarts like Britney Spears, Ashley Simpson, and company. Sex and controversy sells and so does the show, but at the end of the day is it a lasting brand? Studies show that the attention span of the average viewer is seven seconds. Your 15 minutes of fame is down to 15 seconds. If done right social media is a way for a brand to extend their engagement with the customer and target audience.

I also credit portable devices and 3rd party applications like the Blackberry and iPhone for facilitating this change. President Barack Obama is the first sitting President of the United States to ever be allowed to keep his Blackberry (#). LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have changed the way we receive our news and information. It has put the control into the hands of the user to customize their media to their liking. If we don’t like what we see we tune out, but if we see something that peaks our interest and benefits us in some way our attention span is extended. In my eyes I think the final nail in the coffin, with regards to traditional media goes, was the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike.(#) The user has also become the content provider in that they are the executive producer, the director, the writer, the cameraman, the audio engineer, the lighting director, the set designer, and ultimately the on-air talent. (#)

This has forced traditional media outlets to play catch up. Some are getting it and others are dragging their feet. However, a great quote that I always hold close is from the business guru, Dr. Stephen Covey, who said, “The only constant in business is change.(#) This is not a new concept, but it is amazing how many businesses tend to make the same mistake over and over again. What Dr. Covey basically is saying is that, “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” I think the biggest problems top heavy organizations have with understanding social media is one they aren’t educated about it, and two they sometimes wait for new technology to become more mainstream at which point they are behind the curve rather then in front of it. This is understandable though, because they get used to trying to quantify everything, are Return On Investment (ROI) driven and then not every new technology pans out. (#) The ones that “get it” have gotten past the age old problem of a gap between form (marketing) and function (creative services), or as I like to put it, the left part of the brain is not talking to the right part of the brain. I think it was a good thing I went to a graduate school where they taught Ned Hermmann’s philosophy of whole brain thinking. (#)

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