Thursday, February 18, 2010

4 Trends in New Digital Media Development


Quick, very quick these days.

As the months go by, 4 trends are emerging in the new digital social space in terms of what, how and where media is being presented to consumers and how interactions are taking place.

1) New Behavior: From Individual Consumption to Social Sharing
Reading and keeping up to date with news around you is mandated - like a daily coffee fix, especially in today's world where information flows go by in a flurry.  News from print and radio are old.  And so there are digital versions of newspapers and radio made into apps.  To keep up with the changing digital generations, these apps have evolved from standalone features to contain social sharing capabilities.

2) New Evolving Business Models: From Per Download to Metering or Freemium or Social Currencies
One off pay per download digital contents start to lose their luster from a business point of view.  We start to see experimentations in metering, getting freemiums into play or developing social games where social currencies are the in-thing for today's world.

3) New Touchpoint/Access: From Few to Multiple Appliance Readers
The age-old radio, TV and Movie Theaters are set to be replaced or a revamp, as we see new multimedia and internet capabilities come to mobile phones, e-book readers, netbooks etc.

4) New Reach: From Global to Hyperlocal and vice versa
The search for location specific information is hot.  Because the immediacy to satisfy your contextual needs is deemed relevant.

I will be making associated observations and looking to provide examples of how the above trends are impacting our behaviors in this day and age of new media consumption.  Do feel free to share your thoughts and experiences.


Talk soon,
Nelson Wee
@nelsonwee

Photo credit: ryersondmz / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

2 comments:

MobileYogi said...

1. Social sharing in itself seems to be following two paths - simplistic/textual Twitter like experience and richer Facebook-style multimedia sharing and social gaming. Mobile social networks, such as the recently announced Facebook Zero, should further make this distinction.

2.There several business models - subscription, installments, hybrid (ads and payment), virtual currencies. 'Tryforfree' tried some of these models with some success in certain countries. EA recently acquired a social gaming company, Playfish, after its immense success on Facebook.

3. This opens up opportunities for syncrhonisation services. I still haven't come across a service where I can share my contacts and calendar with a group of friends/family so that all changes can remain synchronized. (There are many backup services but none that make the core phonebook and calendar 'always-synchronized' with others in our contact list)

4.Lots of iPhone apps by Singaporean startups in this space - buuk.com, hungrygowhere.com,foyage.com. I also conducted my own research with universities here and they want to see mobile ads as long as they are non-intrusive and very targeted.

Nelson Wee said...

Hi Nitin,

Many thanks for your inputs and views. Convergence is certainly upon us in terms of how we view, share, pay for, access to view and download media and its associated contents. Very dynamic, uncertain yet exhilarating!

Nelson