Future of Media, Video WTF

Two quick notes on media:

1. Paul Gillin: “The Future of Media is: Small, Aggregated, Inclusive, Community-driven, Conversational, Fast, Flexible, Experimental.”

2. New from the PCF: Video WTF?

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It’s Not [Just] About Your Site: Managing Your Digital Footprint

One of the core aspects of the assembled web is the concept that brands and all companies need to think more broadly about their presence. It isn’t just their web site, or even their network of 10, 20, or 200 sites for various products, services, and brands.

It’s about your digital footprint: the sum total of all the interactions your customers, prospective customers, fans, antagonists, employees, suppliers, and partners have with your content and services throughout the entire Internet.
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OMMA Global Day Two: Content Has To Be Everywhere

Yesterday was day two of OMMA Global, and I think the theme(s) of the day were Innovation and Distribution.
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OMMA Global Day One: The Year the Media Died

Highlight of OMMA Global day one for me was Terence Kawaja of GCA Savvian, whose presentation included a verse by verse playing and discussion of his own satirical song “Mad Avenue Blues” (sung to the tune of “American Pie,” with the refrain changed to “The Year the Media Died”).

Like the original, it’s long (9:21 in this case) and as Kawaja said in presenting it, lends itself to the elegiac mode – he wouldn’t quite say media is dead but it’s hard to write a catchy lyric about the era in which large mainstream media companies faced downward revenue pressure:

Interesting video for the luncheon keynote at a conference on online media, marketing, and advertising – but it hits on much of the industry’s current malaise.

The good news, such as it is, is that John Battelle challenged Kawaja to write an upbeat song on the state of the media – send your suggestions to @tkawaja.

See Also: Wall Street Journal coverage of the song

Being Interesting is Not Enough: Be Useful

How to Be Useful (Photo by Robert Banh, cc-by license)

I used to be fond of saying that the best advice for content-centric businesses on the web was a simple commandment:

Above all, be interesting – everything else will follow from that

Being interesting is still necessary, of course – if you’re trying to create a content-centric business and your content isn’t interesting, you’re in big trouble.

But is being interesting sufficient? In an attention economy, where interesting content is ubiquitous, and what’s truly rare is the users’ attention? In an era where every company is a media company?

In the era of the Assembled Web, where consumers expect to find content, community, and commerce pervasively and persistently throughout their online experience, is it enough to just be interesting?
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