My freshman year Introduction to Communication class showed this video in October 2007. Since then, so much in the media world has changed. I thought it might be interesting to reflect back on the video to see where and to what extent its predictions came true.
Correct
Judging by the current trends—and online media has changed a lot since this video came out—let’s take a look at what it got right.
Newsbotster – Although it hasn’t grown into the massive media force the video predicted, the idea that news is social and what your friends care about has certainly been adopted in the past couple of years. Facebook’s Newsfeed is essentially….well, news! The video says, “News is more relevant than ever before.”
Amazon – The video labels Amazon as “the standard for internet sales” and it continues hold that status mostly because of the personalized recommendations the site encourages. Chris Anderson’s 2009 book “The Long Tail” constantly cites Amazon as an example of how unlimited shelf space eliminates scarcity and reshapes our ideas about the economics of supply and demand.
Personalization – The video refers many times to how influential the element of personalized media is. RSS and Twitter feeds dominate our online experience. To use a personal example: I don’t have cable; I get just about all of my news from my Google Reader account by subscribing to blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds.
Mobility – The end of the video touches briefly on how personalized media will become mobile. This bit is coming true to a much larger extent. The iPhone and BlackBerry have changed they way we think about phones. There are now pocket laptops capable of just about anything. We can now consumer just about any kind of media anywhere we go, says Edelman’s Steve Rubel in a recent blog post.
Incorrect
Tradiational media organizations are an “afterthought” – Not so! With the increasing number of bloggers and Twitterers disseminating information online, traditional media organizations will serve as a fact check. Blogs are, as David Meerman Scott says, the voices in the barroom. The opinions they express should be given no more credibility than would a stranger’s in a bar. Traditional media organizations are necessary for truth, and they must keep that in mind as they struggle to survive in the free-information online world.
No monopolies – Here is where, I think, the video goes entirely askew. Combining Google and Amazon may be a possibility, but there will always be competition among online media organizations. The spirit of competition and free enterprise that built this country will once again come into play in the digital world. Take a look at what Apple is doing allowing third-party developers to use the same software its developers use to make iPhone apps.
“Much of consumer created content is untrue” – The average Britannica page contains 3 errors, while the average Wikipedia page contains only 4. Is consumer-created content really “much” less reputable?
Finally, the video misses how much of media today is socially driven. We are constantly connected not only to information through media but information and people through media.
I’d like to see what The Museum of Media History would put in a video today considering the emergence of sites like Facebook Marketplace and Twitter. It’s almost impossible to predict accurately the future of online media, because by the time you finish a prediction, the future is already here and changing.
