The Future Media Mix

I’ve been listening to the Gillmor Gang in spurts this morning and stumbled upon a part of the conversation that was quite salient as regards the future of SocialRoots. In Part III of the Harpo Gang (can I contest this multi-part thing formally here). I think it’s Mike Vizzard (but I could be mistaken) that brings up the topic of IT publications changing media topology.

As explained, recently a conference for IT publishers, the acknowledged and increasingly accepted content mix of the future was something like this:

• One-third staff content
• One-third user content
• One-third vendor content

This is a really interesting admission, for a couple of reasons. Vendor contributed content has traditionally been frowned upon or quickly thrown into the Advertorial Bin for most traditional publications. User-contributed content has often been relegated to Letters to the Editor and other pre/post-roll commentary (geographically associated with the "Corrections"). Increasing the diversity of content creators can, potentially, increase the breadth of the writing itself. Additionally, the expansion seems to include other forms of media like audio and video that serve to enhance the experience of that information.

Aside from the change in the landscape, another area that seems worth considering is who the new leaders in this generation of publications will be. It stands to reason that entities like CNet and ZDNet are well prepared as they have established channels to collect this information from all three sources. Social media entities like pure-play blogs, like TechCrunch, already reap a tremendous amount of knowledge from the interactive nature of blogging and commentary. Of course, that still leaves the traditional publications (mainstream media, if you will). Perhaps Gannett is out front with their crowdsourcing efforts, but it seems to reason that all the “regular folks” out there still need to be aware that the conversation is now bi-directional. It is, isn’t it?

One point that was raised during the podcast was that vendors would actually, and most likely, pay for this content to be created with the hopes of getting their name, and potentially message, in front of the audience they most desire.  This point inspired this post.

SocialRoots (which I am happy to say is back on the tracks and steaming forward) has been developing the marketplace that will make this sort of activity frictionless by bringing the vendors and the creators together.  As an entrepreneur, it’s always nice to hear affirmation of your beliefs.  It also looks good on slides during investor presentations ;)