The Next Big Thing - Controlling The Message

I'm often asked - "What's the Next Big Thing, then?" Most of the time I wish I knew - it would be a great way to make money. Most of the time the Next Big Thing has already been thought of or developed - but just hasn't made its way into the public domain.

There are two sorts of Next Big Thing - one for the Industry - the other for the audience. For the audience there are often great advantages - the Internet makes life easier sometimes - but more often than not it can make life more complex. Increasingly the Internet Next Big Thing leads to something else for us as Professional Communicators. The Next Big Thing - often carries The Next Big Threat. Because even the biggest and most powerful communications organisations have real difficulty in managing the message on the Internet. And the Next Big Threat that we face is losing control of "The Message" and our "Content".

I want to start from the audience's perspective - that's all about taking control of the Message and personalisation of Content. Then I'll outline the difficulties the content owners have in keeping control. As control of media shifts away from the producer and to the consumer, the role of the Communications Professional is challenged and if you don't understand the mechanisms of New Media, you have less power over how to control The Message.

So called "New Media" has freed us - that's us the audience - to watch TV or movies or listen to the radio whenever we want and often where ever we want. It allows us to read the New York Times in the morning rather than the London Times - or the Times of India, for that matter. That's about competition across borders - and the time I spend reading the New York Times is time not spent reading any other UK newspaper.

We can chose to read - copy and redistribute that content as we want to. So my first Next Big Thing in Personalisation.

It's not all that long ago when you had only one choice about personalising broadcast media. You could either watch a TV programme when the broadcast Scheduler decided you should watch it, or you could record in on VHS and play it back when you wanted. But that was a cumbersome task. More often than not you would already be at home in front of the TV pressing the record button while you watched something on the "Other Channel".

And things would go wrong. If you set up your VCR on a timer to record, programmes might over run and your timing would be thrown out - you might record the wrong channel.

There were only a few channels. Both choice and personalisation were very limited.

Not much changed for 10 or 15 years. With the growth in sales of Video recorders, video libraries sprung up - that did bring some choice even if the range of films available was small. Change in choice, availability and personalisation was slow for a very long time.

In recent two or three years there have been incredible changes.

New Media, New Platforms, Cheaper Technology and better informed consumers have come along and the power of the scheduler leached away toward the consumer/viewer. There are some big changes beginning to happen

The first is time shifting - watching a programme whenever you want using something like Sky +

The second is viewers and users coming together in the virtual world to help decide what to watch and find programmes

Another - and a more fundamental change - is using the Internet to distribute programmes - both legally and illegally.

As more and more real choice emerges, we need to develop more sophisticated ways for finding the stuff we want to watch.

Personalisation, recommendation, social navigation

There is nothing much new about getting media content when ever you want. Missed the movie? Then get the video; but you'll need to wait for up to 12 months after the theatre release. And even though there are shops and libraries, you couldn't get just anything you want:-

that TV programme broadcast last night -
that classic 1950's movie
a new CD of that really old vinyl LP you've had for years but has been played thin

There were and still are - a bunch of reasons for that restricted choice.

International Exploitation Rights,
Creative Rights - particularly for older programmes,
UK broadcast rights.
The profit - will enough people buy the DVD to make a release commercially viable?

One of the main reasons why Videos and later DVDs of programmes were not made available was the cost of Storage:

It was the cost of buying an item which might not be sold for weeks, or months even years. The cost of storage in the shop, in the distributor’s warehouse, in the factory. So not every movie or TV programme was available in a shop just when you want it.

We are moving from storing Atoms to storing Digits. There are still successful record shops that sell CDs - but we don't need them any more. They sell digital media on plastic - atoms. But that is an incredibly inefficient way of distributing digital media.

It doesn't matter whether you are downloading Music, a TV programme, a Film, - it's just digits.

But back to TV itself - or what used to be called TV.

The point is watching your TV programmes when you want to - not when a scheduler says.

One way is SKy+ . It will record the programmes you have told it too, but it will also learn your tastes and offer you programmes you might not have thought about. Programmes are recorded on hard disc. Big Media are still in Control of available content - you are in charge of timing.

In the Wild West Internet there's Kazza, Lime Wire, Torrents. You can be in control of both.

They allow us to share our media over the Internet. They even allow us to watch TV programmes that are not broadcast in our territory. Unsurprisingly - this is not legal.

With the arrival of file sharing - where ordinary individuals could put recordings on the Internet and share them with anyone - the programme makers and the music industry cried foul. They we losing the power over the programme distribution. people were watching when they wanted; but there was no advertising, people were watching in countries where they were not supposed to see the programmes. The broadcasters and the distributors weren't getting the financial returns they were due.

Just about a year ago Bit Torrent - one of the first file sharing networks went legal when it struck a deal with Warner Bros. to make some films and shows legally available online.

Currently my favourite programme is "30 Rock" from NBC. You can buy it in the States off iTunes - but not yet in the UK. So if I want to see it --- I turn to Torrents.

And to find that programme I go to sites that help me find them, they rate them, the have social navigation so I can make contact with other people who like the programme - and they can suggest other programmes that I might like.

Programme Broadcasters and Film makers also noticed that this was a new way to distribute programmes. And keep tighter control while offering the audience a much greater range.

First off the mark was 4OD - Channel 4's On Demand Service where you can buy individual episodes of current programmes, some archive - or even get some free.

ITV announced ITV.com for release on 1 May - no sign of that yet but this . This is not a simple thing to do.

There's Joost - which is sort of multichannel TV on your PC

The BBC has been given formal go ahead for the iPLayer.

iPlayer aspires to make all BBC transmitted programmes available to view when it suits you. There are several legal restrictions and some copyright restrictions. Some programmes will have rights protection - usually always Sports programmes. The BBC also transmits an awful lot of programmes - so they all aren't all going to be available on the first public release which is looking like September - the infrastructure will need to be enormous. And then there is the BBC Archive.

BBC are also about to release 1000 hours of content from the archive with the very long ambition of making the whole archive available to the public.

So there are still restrictions to what you can have.

So in Big or Main Stream Media there is a struggle to keep control of the message and what is the property of the broadcaster.

Broadcasters try to control what they own - but with illegal file sharing that control is almost impossible to exercise completely. And not just file sharing.

You Tube is full of clips from TV programme and many many full programmes - even though users promise not to breach copyright when they sign up for a You Tube account. Big Media does not like that. There are three approaches

Leave it alone - it's really not that harmful
Join in - but create special content for You Tube to promote programmes or brand
Take 'em to court

Wednesday May 2, 2007
The Guardian

"The media conglomerate Viacom is threatening the basic principles of information exchange on the Internet through a lawsuit demanding that YouTube filters its content for television clips, the popular video-sharing website complained yesterday. "

There is so much stuff out there - the two challenges are controlling the content - if you own it, and Finding it - if you are the audience.

Which brings me to The Next Next Big Thing - Social Navigation:

The Internet is full of content, both legal and illegal. Not only video and audio, but great stories, blogs, news items. People can build up libraries of content, find new stuff and more importantly miss some great stuff too.

So suddenly we have all this content available to us - Video, Audio, recent TV, archive - and that's just from broadcasters. Video and Audio (until recently known as TV and radio) are no longer the sole responsibility of Broadcasters. IN Northern Ireland both Belfast Telegraph and News offer streamed videos of news to your computer. Newspapers produce video, magazines produce audio and millions of individuals produce their own podcasts, vodcasts, text news. Boarders are meaningless. I can chose to read the New York Times in the morning rather than the London Times.

The challenge of creating and distributing content has been settled. There are two new challenges - for the consumer "How to Find It", for the content maker - "how to control it".

I know this will astound you - I've said that there is lots of great stuff out there - but as it turns out that there is a lot of crap out there, too.

How do we find what's good?

We like a programme - we make a note to watch it again.

A Friend likes a programme - we tend to like what they like - we try it.

We trust a reviewer in a magazine in a newspaper who says "watch the programme" - we watch it, we like it, we tell a friend who makes a note to watch it again because they enjoyed it.

Think of that write large across the Internet. It's called social navigation = people who like the things that you do share what they have found.

You probably experienced a form of Social Navigation for the first time when you first went to Amazon.com. Someone - another user just like you - will have a reviewed a book. You can rate the review to say whether it was any good. After you have decided to buy something, the site will tell you that people who bought that bought this. And after you have made a few purchases Amazon starts building a profile of the sort of stuff it thinks you might like.

There are many many sites where people come together to recommend content to other people. I'm not going to spend much time on Social Navigation - that's a whole new session.

So to recap - and also to make relevant to us all here.

Where Big Media tends to get upset is when it starts to lose control. When clips of programmes are posted to You Tube or similar sites there is one argument which says that viewers have loved those programmes so much that they want to share them with the world. Broadcasters and producers should be happy with this tribute.

The other argument is that Broadcasters and producers have to sole right to exploit their programmes. Different producers take different views.

If the programme is on a sharing site people rate it comment on it and distribute it. But it’s not their property. Here we are on the edge of the Wild West of the Internet.

So major broadcasting organisations and programme makers with massive budgets and legions of lawyers have enormous difficulty controlling their property - controlling their message - on the Internet. So how can you?

Most of the people here work for or represent organisations and help manage the public face of those businesses.

Anyone can put anything on the Internet; there is no control. There is no accountability, there is anonymity. These are often good things. I’m not presenting them as negatives. But there are potential negative outcomes.

In MSM (Mainstream media) there is control, anonymity is rare, accountability varies – but at the most basic there is legal accountability.

Here's the scenario. You work in the press office or PR representing a client. A newspaper, TV or radio programme publishes something inaccurate, untrue, unfair, malicious, you have a pretty good idea what to do. You lift the phone to the editor, drop by for a conversation because you heard a rumour the paper was going to print something, send a solicitors letter to get the record straight.

What happens in the Wild West of the Internet? What do you do if an anonymous Internet rumour starts? How do you manage it? What if someone starts posting blogs with malicious information about your business or about the head of the company? What if the rumours and postings are taken up and shared among others. How do you manage that? How can the message be controlled within anarchy?

It doesn’t have to be taken up globally to be detrimental or effective.

What if you search your business name on Google? The first result is your company and it’s just right. But right underneath that there is a second result also with the name of your company but the slug text is really really not something you want your customers or competitors to read?

How do you deal with that? What tools do you have at your disposal? You don’t know the editor, there isn’t one – there is no means of communication. Apparently there is no way to fight it. No way to set the record straight.

New Media is not all that new anymore. It's Now Media. We - and I include most of the people in this room, are traditional media people. We know how newspapers and magazines work we know how to influence radio and television. It's as natural to us to lift the Belfast Telegraph in the evening or switch on Good Morning Ulster in the morning as it is to breath.

But what is your relationship with the Internet, with Websites - and I don't mean BBC's or Belfast Telegraph's web site. Do you know how to use Social Navigation to your and your business advantage. Do you understand Search Engine Optimisation and Google Bombs? These aren't teckkie things - these are tools in Internet communications.

To deal with the Next Big Thing - or the Next Big Threat you need to understand the Internet as you do traditional media - yes as a consumer, but also an influencer. Your relationship with the Internet needs to be as comfortable as your relationship with traditional media. And you can't say that is for kids or young people. You probably noticed - I'm not a teenager.