Sep 09
14
How Facebook Is Changing Media
People talk about the phenomenal growth of Facebook. But rarely do I read or hear discussion about how Facebook's technology and social functionality
is changing other media.
Tom and I had a discussion about this yesterday that I think
is worth sharing:
There is a facility that you can use on your browser to
“share a story” with your Facebook friends. You just click the button and the
story gets inserted into the stream of stories that your friends can see.
And if you are one of my Facebook friends reading this you
came across it because I pasted it into that stream.
The stats on my Perceptric blog are quite interesting.
Currently 27.5% of total visits to Perceptric.com were preceded by a visit to
Facebook.
Tom has been cross-posting stories on his Facebook stream
for several weeks as he has been deconstructing the market importance of
Farmville, the game, and the incredible growth in value of its parent company
Zynga.
Imagine the memetic value that has been created by this
Facebook stream for digitally created content.
Of course a lot of the content that finds its way into the
stream is from mainstream media cross linked by people who want to share
information with their friends and peers. But there is also a huge amount that
is distinctly personal.
Since discretionary hours are ultimately finite, there is
potential here for some serious impact to take place onto mainstream media.
That has to be a real headache for the traditional media barons who fund their
businesses from share placements built on the hype that in spite of continuing
corporate losses, ultimately they are going to be in a position to dominate all
media. (You can figure out who I am talking about, I’m sure).
So the promise of a totally socialized media that was
hypothesized years ago looks like it is actually happening. Disruption on a
grand scale is taking place.
And as some of those media owners sit, chewing their nails,
and thinking about whether they can move to a subscription model, I wonder if
they are considering what absolute suicide that would be…
As you share pages of information with your friends, using
Facebook, think about the way that you are accelerating the transfer of the
meme. Not only the story that you are spreading, but the change that you are
promoting.
This change in media is going to herald truly turbulent
times as far as human thought and actions go.