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By Domenic Venuto, SVP/Head of the Media and Entertainment Practice, New York office, Razorfish
Satisfying a need that is ingrained in human behavior, connected consumers are starting to feel the pulse of the community around them.
With the exception of the rising social media landscape, digital media is best described as prerecorded, prepackaged and downloaded. Internet servers are teeming with on-demand information, but have lacked the immediacy you receive by listening to your radio, watching on-location broadcast news or listening to the buzz all around.
Take radio as an example. At Razorfish we recently worked on a couple of radio-related projects, and we were surprised by the durability of terrestrial radio. Although radio is completely surrounded by other hot media channels, all competing for a tiny share of each consumer’s time, it persists as an important medium.
During our research, consumers professed their love for the iPod, swore by satellite radio’s bazillion stations and described “drive time,” terrestrial radio’s last bastion, as the perfect time to chat on their mobile phones. These same early adopters also had a trusted radio station, with a hard and fast opinion for their preferred morning show. As a result, “passé” radio continues to strike a chord with self-described Web2.0ers.
What radio has that keeps its essence strong is a pulse. Radio feels alive and keeps us connected to the world around us.
For comparison, the iPod is an inherently lonely device. You place your ear buds in, close yourself off to the world around you and listen to music that hasn’t changed since it was recorded. If something newsworthy happened in your community, your iPod wouldn’t alert you. It’s a closed circuit of your interests repetitively fed, sometimes shuffled and rarely benefiting from external influences.
However, digital media and all of this closed-circuitry is about to break free from these restrictions. In 2009, the whole of the Web will become more live and alive. Not only will the Web become more social, it will also become instantly reactive.
The online consumer audience will graduate from simply tapping into digital resources, to seeing what digital resources are crowded, who is tapping them and anything else they should consider consuming.
The technologies that carry the pulse are spread among start-ups and existing services.
Examples include:
Activity feeds: Facebook’s Live Feed isn’t just populated with periodic and explicate status updates, it posts any user activity. Keep an eye on start-ups like groupspeak.com that are attempting to tap into real-time online conversations and feed user commentary based on personal affinities and preferences.
Micro-blogging: Twitter remains the poster child for micro-blogging and up-to-date information feeds, but the idea has more implications. As an example, technology and media entrepreneur John Battelle created a unique experience for the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival. He encouraged festival goers to submit camera-phone pictures, handheld digital video recordings, blog posts and Twitter tweets while at the event. This information feed created a "database of experiences" so non-attendees could see near real-time activity.
Distributed sampling: The pulse is shared, quite literally, using efforts like Stanford University’s “quake catcher” network in which seismic activity is measured by tapping into the sensors found in laptops. If a certain number of laptops in one area sense movement an alert is sounded. Other examples of distributed sampling include the logistics of gathering traffic patterns. Traffic data companies often place beacons on vehicles and track the pace of their flow. These implications can go beyond traffic detours; imagine comparing restaurants with the longest wait time, versus how long it might take you to get to one with a shorter wait.
Live streaming media: YouTube recently hosted the first YouTube Live event. This simple streaming business model has been wildly successful for groups such as Major League Baseball with MLB.TV, CBS’ March Madness and traffic cams.
Data-centric mobile devices: With the iPhone being a key catalyst, wireless carriers are pushing unlimited data plans like never before. Smartphones, GPS and geo-location apps within phones such as Loopt act as nodes for sharing and receiving the pulse.
Real-time site analytics: As an example of advanced user data, take a look at Woopra—an analytics tool that allows live tracking of Web site traffic. Instead of waiting to see usage results, site owners and, potentially, users themselves can get an instant snapshot of content that is hot and not. Digital media companies should consider a practice of letting users see the usage analytics that are normally behind the firewall. Everyone could benefit from seeing a heat map of activity.
If you are a publisher, tapping into the pulse could be very meaningful to you in three ways:
Create a pulse-taking product: Develop a feature that becomes as ritualistic for users as Twitter or Facebook’s Live Feed, and the ad dollars will follow.
Optimization or R&D: The pulse contains key insights into consumer perceptions. Provide marketers with real-time feedback on campaigns that are resonating and those that need revisions. Content creators can even seed ideas and then see if they have legs.
Foresee consumer trends and capitalize on them: A perennial example of value in trending data comes from Wall Street. Having your finger on trends can mean the difference between profit and loss.
The author gratefully acknowledges Grant Owens, director of account planning for the New York City office of Razorfish, who contributed to this column.
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