Is Your Audience A Bunch Of Users?

Last year, I was told by a grand fromage at Microsoft that an important part of the company's shift from software to media was changing its view of customers - from many users to a single audience.  Historically, MS has sold software to individuals who use it for their own disparate needs.  However, now the web has joined all these people together they can be seen as one big group.  And when you put it like that, advertisers are interested and branding bucks follow.  What struck me at the time was that while MS was moving from users to audience, Big Media was going in the opposite direction.  Murdoch & Co are trying to coax their audiences into a more active relationship by giving them tools to voice their views.  To become users of media in fact.  So what's going on?  Are we an audience?  Or is everyone a user now?  Of course, the truth is somewhere in between and everyone needs to find their own place along the spectrum.  For instance, it's perfectly possible to have an audience and users at the same time.  There will be occasions where your ability to serve users will create an audience that in turn pays the bills.  For instance, you can launch a few free web tools, wait for the network effect to kick in, crank-up the ad server and hoover up those AdWord dollars.  The Big Daddy of this model is Search but Mail is in there too.  But even here, some hard lessons are being learnt.  For instance, if you launch tools where everybody is a user, such as social networking, it's difficult to move along to the audience end of the spectrum where the ad revenues live.  (Unless you can persuade someone else to pay up front for the inventory).  In fact, the audience-user debate is a bit like the open-closed discussion.  If you go too open it can be bad, and if you go too closed it can be bad.  But if you are prepared to just keep on trying different recipes, you might hit the sweetspot.  For example, if you create tools which let users find their own audience, you can kick back and let the Ooomph Factor build you a super-community that drives operations elsewhere.  So, in reality, the audience isn't only users, and the users aren't an audience.  They're all people.  Which is where it gets complicated.

Comments

[Roland Harwood]

All sounds perfectly simple to me ;) the tools allow a more distributed network where the value is widely spread and widely distributed. I think well networked intermediaries/agregators are the new oil barons.

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Roland, certainly Google's revenues makes the oil baron notion look about right... ;-)

The metaphor I keep coming back to on this is Folk Music. However, this is dangerous since I have moved from the south east to Cornwall and run the risk of being accused of having my brain addled by sea air and pasties.

If you look at an open mic session, the "audience" turns up and sometimes, somepeople join in. People start by foot tapping, after a few ales they might pick up the courage to play an instrument, sing along at a table or even grab the mic. The boundary between audience and artist is practically non-existent. They are also playing, improvising and "remixing" copyright free music. Most importantly, you don't have to do anything, just by being there you feel as if you are participating.

I'm not suggesting that we all start a Credence Clearwater Revival revival or rush to iTunes to buy some Nick Drake, it is the culture "people's music". Internet participation and the movement from audience to user is creating a new "folk" or "people's" culture. I realise this is a very unfashionable and middle aged metaphor and I don't even like folk music that much, but having been to watch friends and then been dragged in, it is a very strong metaphor. Certainly it is better than the usual hip-hop/dance music metaphor where whilst it is open, there is still a strong focus on copyright and lets be honest, only a tiny minority get involved in the actual music.

"Wer's mi Scrumpy & gimmi a banjo"

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks anon, I think that's a very good metaphor. 'For the people by the people' is exactly what peer-to-peer technology is allowing. The world is congregating around a billion passions - be they football, cars, horses or scrumpy! It may all sound a bit hippy-dippy - but it's just what people do! ;-)

[Brad Bell]

"certainly it is better than the usual hip-hop/dance music metaphor where whilst it is open, there is still a strong focus on copyright"

Sorry -- I have to take issue with the characterization of hip hop. In the context of the discussion, hip hop *was* the new 'folk' or 'peoples culture.' The "strong focus on copyright" came from the lawyers of giant music corporations that effectively killed hip hop with copyright. (You bastards!)

The attitude amongst hip hop artists was similar to folk musicians or jazz musicians reworking traditional standards. Hip hop also had a kind of DIY Web 2.0 cut-and-paste conversational aesthetic. Some tracks have so many quotes and musical and cultural references they'd make Denis Miller's head explode -- and more samples than any accountant could imaginably bill for. Public Enemy was using *hundreds* of samples per track. That's not abnormal or difficult. And *that* was the problem. This is why since the early 90s we have heard pseudo-hip hop where the music is simply 2 bars of a pop song from 10 years ago, looped. It's just rap over pop. Real hip hop died in a lawsuit.

For more, read this excellent interview with Chuck D and Hank Shocklee about "How Copyright Law [DESTROYED] Hip Hop."
http://www.alternet.org/story/18830/

Record company lawyers killed hip hop with a copyright law that suits their traditional business model; copyright law also suits their image of a passive audience of consumers. But it is a branch of law governing limited term monopolies which is incompatible with appropriative, sharing, conversational, digital user culture: sampling, cut-and-paste, personal computers, digital reproduction, conversational media, folk, punk, hip hop, the former audience... and so on.

But that's our new emerging culture. Corporations can't just sue it out of existence.

Don't worry, there's a new solution for users -- Team ACTA: World Police! (You bastards!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

[Rory]

Hey Brad, James tipped me off that you were "taking offence at my description of hip-hop".

"You will become ever hearing but never understanding: you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused" ISAIAH (6:9:10) & a mantra of the 'Stop R&B killing hip-hop movement'.

I will avoid the temptation to now write lots of Westwood Stylee whiteboy street slang, and just say that agree with you entirely. Hip-hop and dance culture could be so much more than it has so far become. But if, as you say, it is the giant music corporations who have done this, let hope that their increasing superfluity will allow free culture to reign.

I actually agree with people's rights to maintain copyright if they want (the GPL maintains 'copyright'), but I hope that music culture shifts to reflect what a tragic thing this to do and that copyleft eventually wins out.

Thanks for the alternet link - really interesting interview.