Rise Of The Personal Media Platform

People used to say about media, ‘Did you see that?’.  Now they say, ‘Have you seen this?’.  That’s because media used to live in one place at one time.  On TV or in a newspaper with a one day lifespan or less.  If you missed the appointment, it had gone.  The contrast with 2009 is stark.  Today great content is flying around the web waiting to be picked up and pasted in the media scrapbooks that we all create, build and tweak online.  Once these scrapbooks were simple lists of favoured websites or a musty hard drive folder stuffed with random images.  Now they look more like personal media platforms holding music, video, journalism, TV, shopping, games and commerce.   And increasingly these mini-media emporiums are joined together creating a share-and-compare economy.  We share items with our social networks and enjoy what have they have to offer back.  All of which means fun for us, juicy relevance for our network and kudos for those serving up the best digital goods.  This social world used to be composed purely of gonzo media and geekery.   But not anymore.  A more powerful web has allowed mainstream media to pitch in.  However, regardless of production budgets, content without pass-it-on currency, has no value in this growing economy.  It lacks the crucial watermark of social approval. Currently, personal media platforms are messy and can feel like a geek-fest.  More bazaar than cathedral.  Many wouldn’t have it any other way but for the mainstream to join the fun they need to become more user-friendly.  Which they are.  The humble browser is one way...

...to build a personal media platform.  Internet Explorer may still have a stranglehold on the market, but its death-grip is loosening since Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome entered the fray.  Both options are accessible, powerful tools that allow people to pick from a massive pallette of apps, filters, alerts, feeds, blockers, search options, streams, plug-ins, widgets and tabs.  The tools that allow us to build personal media platforms around our unique passions and preferences.  Furthemore, as hardware turns into groovyware, these mega-scrapbooks are busting off the desktop.  Wherever you can find a screen you can summon up your own little media empire.  Be it the lounge or the local bus.  Today, wherever we go, the media mogul must follow. 

This is all tricky stuff for marketers because the reliable ratings-driven order of media markets and handy TGI behavioural information just isn’t there. Especially if you are trying to find a home for your £50m media budget.  At least in a way that your chairman will appreciate.  But to paraphrase the famous Gibson quote - the share-and-compare economy is here, it’s just unevenly distributed.  However, it's evolving quickly with plenty of brain and shekel power being invested.  Microsoft is building a platform big enough to hold all media, including our own little personal media platforms.  Google is busy trying to organise the world’s scrapbooks so that we can carry them around with us and share them with anyone who’s interested.  Open ID wants to make it easier to build a personal media portfolio from different sources.  Phorm hopes to provide the market research for the share-and-compare economy.  Apple wants to provide the grown-up content.  Twitter is hoping to be the cafe.  FriendFeed the Yellow Pages. 

So how big can the share-and-compare economy become?  RWW says it could eventually bypass Search:  “The contextual web experience is fundamentally different because there is an understanding of what the user is doing. The combination of the information on the page and the user's behavior creates the context. Once you understand the user's context, you can be more helpful.”  And that’s the crux, people like having their own personal media platforms, where they can keep anything of interest, however niche.  They also like it when they find people with similar interests so they can trade views, opinion, tips and hints.  And both are becoming easier and easier to do.

For marketeers, the challenge is simple.  Brands on their own can’t operate in the share-and-compare economy.  No one is interested in the corporate context.  The only way to gain currency is to help people do what they want to do.  And hope they have a spare space in their scrapbook for you.

Comments

[Simon Kendrick]

Amen to that.

Voting mechanisms for advertising (as seen on Facebook and Hulu) could potentially be a useful ways for brands to "learn" how to become more relevant in their hypertargeting over time (though this would work better for "interruptive" vod ads than passive display)

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Simon. Great thought. Being open to learning is a helpful quality in the share-and-compare economy. For example, a voting system would let brands learn how to be more relevant and less interruptive. Would make the awards ceremonies interesting too... ;-)