Grant Owens who's a friend of mine at Razorfish and a planner wrote a piece titled, "Looking for a Pulse Online in 2009." He's a planner who believes that there's a lot we can learn from radio. In his language, radio holds the pulse because unlike the iPods it keeps us alive, and connects us to our communities and the world around us. It's not a lonely device.
Interestingly, he explores that concept to put forth the notion that in 2009 it is technologies that have a pulse that will succeed. Those are technologies that are social but instantly reactive too. For him the technologies that have a pulse include activity feeds, micro-blogging, distributed sampling, live streaming media, data centric media devices and real time analytics. He asks companies to focus on pulse taking products this year.
I like the concept but what I find most interesting is that the first two technologies that he mentions are social applications - activity feeds and micro-blogging. Arguably, some of the others like distributed sampling also leverage crowd-sourcing an inherent social concept too. I feel that the most pulse taking technologies are the ones that are social - we're interested in each other pulses (to use that language). That's what drove the social media explosion. Something else for us to consider. Philosophies around social will take many different forms in 2009 and may not be instantly recognizable as being tied to social. That's a good thing too. What do you think?
For the other Slant articles that cover microblogging, cookies, online video advertising and email marketing click here.
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Shiv -
I'd have to disagree with the iPod/radio distinction. Radio is a top-down, controlled dissemination of culture, with marketers/corporate media driving the conversation much more than consumers. Although morning shows etc. do create some sense of community (not to mention community radio stations....), the top-down nature of corporate old-media doesn't really allow for the kinds of expression we see in social media.
As for iPod culture, I think Grant is ignoring all the things _around_ the mp3 player. The experience is way more than just putting on headphones and shutting out the world: consider last.fm, mp3 blogs, music reviews sites, etc. Fans can connect with fans, independent artists can reach potential millions, and whole conversations are happening online - all without going through radio.
Sure radio feeds into the same pipeline, but on the other hand everything described above (for me at least) completely supplants radio. Why try to force new-media into an old model? Remember print media?
Maybe the emerging social aspects of music consumption online grew out of radio in the first place, but I think we need to be looking elsewhere in web2.0, not backwards, for inspiration.
Great take Shiv... The fundamental idea here is a social behavior, first and foremost. I would compare my point of view to the old saying that 90% of communication is non-verbal. We tend to focus our social media insights on the verbal part, but there is so many more non-explicate things going on within the pulse that we have the opportunity harvest and understand.
And Mike I agree with the human interactions happening online surrounding digital media. By no means should we revert back to a one-way model. As you point out, there are qualities of radio that aren’t worth carrying over. We shouldn't have to pick one or the other - the pulse is additive. What I hope we see in 2009 is the "immediacy and proximity" layers added to the digital communities we've formed.