David has an excellent rumination (with good comments) on what happens when we shift to digital media, where all the other stuff normally associated with media delivery, such as advertisements, links to other media, and so on, are gone (quote and link below). David realizes that as we get down to the consumption of pure media, we might be losing the channels for finding other media.
This is an issue that is even more pressing in the mobile domain. Since the beginning, finding content has been very difficult, mostly because there is little room on the mobile for extra pointers to new content. Indeed, much of the effort by operators has been one of marketing marketing marketing, to get folks to know that a) something exists, b) how it can be accessed, c) that it can be done on a phone.
As much as it leaves a sour taste in my mouth, I must say that Jamba’s ‘success’ has been tightly tied to its intense carpet-bombing of popular media outlets*. And, others who have been in the industry have said to me that the quality of the marketing – that is, getting folks to know the abcs of the mobile media – is the make-or-break of a popular mobile media service.
My take is that the next wave of the Web will be in the form of aggregators and services, which will increase the energy of finding something new or unexpected. We have some separate standing services, like Pandora or digg, but the real kick will happen when, as David says, the discovery is in line with the consumption.
That’s where I think aggregators will come in. Aggregators will be able to have their finger on multiple pulses and be able to make things rise to the top, to the attention of the user, in line with normal use.
Right now, word-of-mouth works because it is in line with consumption – you read a blog, hear a podcast, or watch a video and there is a recommendation embedded there (isn’t that the seed of the blogosphere?). Yet, to some extent, word-of-mouth is slow and inefficient, since it requires one to have a connection to that ‘mouth’. At some point, there needs to be some serendipitous event that connects to something new at a higher frequency than just knowing a ‘mouth’.
Read up on the full article. There is some good discussion in the commentary, too.
Link: Genuine VC: Discovery vs. Consumption.
One thing that I’ve been noticing recently is the distinction between the venue for the discovery of media content and the consumption of it. It’s notable to explore, as media distribution dramatically changes, not only is the consumption of content shifting, but also the discovery is as well. And those shifts are not always parallel.
How do you think the uncoupling of discovery and consumption makes it hard for us to do media on mobiles? How can we take advantage of the mobile lifestyle to improve on media discovery in a way that boring fixed PCs can’t match?
