[Sigia-l] The Time magazine person of the year is YOU

[Olly Wright]

On MondayDec 18, at 10:14 PM, Andrew Boyd wrote:

> What will change, with the death of traditional scattergun
> (non-targeted) advertising, is the value-adding to try and drag
> interested readers deeper into the rabbit hole - not to "make Time my
> home page" (ewww!) but control more RSS feedspace. I believe that the
> high-level business model (write/gather content, sell advertising,
> sell content) will not change

Perhaps. Personally I hate targeted advertising only a little less  
than I hate non-targeted advertising. Attaching ads to RSS feeds, or  
requiring me to view a commercial to 'read more of the article' is  
just going to push me towards ad-free content.

Last night whilst trying to watch online video and skip the ads I had  
a wish for a new application. A plugin for your browser that connects  
to your video player(s). It watches any streamed video and if it  
finds you're watching an ad it removes it, either by fast-forwarding  
(usually not possible) or by replacing it / covering it up. Perhaps  
it's possible using some central ad-database. If we can recognize  
songs from 3 seconds of audio, we should be able to recognize ads  
from 3 seconds of video. My fingers are crossed that some geeks are  
working this somewhere out there. Rather like our virus definition  
files, but 'ad definition files' instead.

No idea if this is even a good idea, but I don't think its going to  
be hard for next-gen ad-blockers to filter out more and more.  
Especially since many consumers will like this very much.


On MondayDec 18, at 11:20 PM, Will Parker wrote:
> As Big Daddy McLuhan pointed out, new media forms neither invalidate
> nor replace old media forms, though they *do* tend to force the old
> media to shift emphasis.

Is that really what he says? It is certainly the case that old media  
can become very marginalised by new media, especially when the new  
media can deliver that old media. As he says, the content of one  
medium can be another medium. This is what is going on: the 'web' is  
swallowing everything else, and in turn imposing its qualities on  
each of those media as it does. The new opportunities created by web  
distribution of content are becoming applicable to all most all of  
our mainstream media channels, and as this happens, the rules for  
each of these media change.


On MondayDec 18, at 10:52 PM, Skot Nelson wrote:
> They (Time Warner etc...) have more money than god. They can  
> transform themselves.
>
> It will happen slowly, and over time...but they will transform  
> themselves.

True they have a lot of money, but then they have shareholders.  
Shareholders that will jump ship if they see profits falling and no  
good plan to stop the rot. Public companies are a lot less resilient  
than their cash reserves would appear to make them. The stock market  
only cares about the next quarter, and these dinosaurs score very low  
on manoeuvrability.

Personally I'd like nothing better than to see a radical shake up of  
the large media companies. The direction taken in the last few  
decades of mergers and increased concentration of power is bad for  
democracy. It's also bad for our culture, bad for our values, bad for  
our children and bad for our planet. About the only thing it is good  
for is increasing short term profits, strengthening the relationship  
between big business and special interest politics, and feeding  
invasive advertising into our psyches. It reminds me very much of the  
concentration of power that happened in the US in the early 20th  
century prior to the great depression, except hopefully this time it  
won't take a collapse of the economy to affect change. The public  
enthusiasm for Roosevelt and his radical ideas came as a reaction to  
this prior era of excess. One wonders what the reaction will be to  
the current era of excess that we live in. And when, and even if,  
that will happen.

Olly Wright