Intro to Online Communities 1/11/10

Our first class kicked off with a fantastic speaker, Jeff Cole, Director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg.

He communicated a lot of info in a relatively short period of time about the evolution of mainstream media and what to expect in the near- and mid-term future.

Topics included:

• Traditional media falling apart due to its delayed schedule and lack of options
• Music business changing greatly, from year’s most popular albums selling 30 million copies down to just 3 million today
• Dying platforms requiring advertising changes
• The effect internet penetration and bandwidth access have on TV and print media viewing
• Evolution of popular social networks in the 2000′s
• Impending consolidation of print media
• Possible future of radio and education
• Significance of branding, addressability and privacy in modern advertisement
• The power of mass word-of-mouth through Twitter and other social networks

Interesting facts and questions included:

• Consumers now demand updates every 30-60 seconds
• Is a bundle of 12 tracks still the best way to market music?
• Walter Annenberg sold TV Guide to Rupert Murdock in 1990 for $3 billion (and we in the class directly benefit)
• In 1975 90% of viewing was on 3 TV channels
• Now 90% of viewing is on 15 websites
• Teens today are more interested in news than ever before
• Indian internet penetration is only 9% so newspapers are still booming
• When penetration reaches 30% newspaper sales will plummet
• PVR (e.g. Tivo) is used by 30% of Americans; how can you still engage PVR users in advertisements?
• Not much difference between internet use by dial-up users and people with no internet, but a huge difference between dial-up and broadband
• Teens don’t want to be on the same social network as their parents
• Biggest group of social network users are aged 60-70 (though I highly doubt this stat)
• In 2008 55% of young people said their online communities are as important as ones IRL (in real life)
• In the near future students will learn intro level college subjects from the best professors in the world via digital courses
• If the digital advertising model fails we’ll have to pay for digital content in the future

We heard about clicker.com to find TV shows on the web and Telepresence for life-size video conferencing. We also heard from APOC grads about twiistup.com and kasamamedia.com.