Reflection on Bill Wasik’s speech.

For Bill Wasik, Kindle is a great invention is because it allows people to download heavy books into one small device, and those who do not like it is because they like to jump frm piece to piece instead of setteling down. Paying for something like “content” is too much of commitment.

I disagree with Mr. Wasik of the “commitment phobia” theory. The reason that I haven’t purchased a Kindle and the reason that I do not purchase digital books is simply because I prefer the feeling of touching the real book and paper. Reading books from the computer monitor always give me headache ten minutes after I start it.

But I agree with that short content will eventually go free online. Actually, it is already free (if we are not talking about internet pornography). Because people tend to think short content is not as important/valuable as the long ones. Long content usually is more serious and offers more in depth. For example, people would expect to get free “joke collection” but wouldn’t think they could get a free copy of “Harry Potter” online. So I guess it leaves some interesting questions for content creators and publisher to fugure out how to make revenue from their content if they decide to join the Internet market (It’s not really possible for themto say no to online viewers now).

The length matters

In the past, we all agreed that most online video viewers watch mere seconds, rather than minutes, of a video. The notion “shorter videos work better on the web” seemed like a rule. But the rule has changed. I know more and more people watch streaming videos online, and each clip is longer than 5 minutes. Most of them watch TV shows on Internet now because they can watch them in bed.

Duration is a big factor and it sometimes decides the popularity of a video. But it also depends on the type of the video. If it is a serious discussion of a serious topic, I’d like to know deeper about the issue andI’d like to hear more people’s opinions from the interviews. But if it is a funny video shows a adorable baby or kitten, even though I love those things, I probably would not want to spend more than 2 minutes on it.

Of course it does not mean short videos are out of web soon. It only means people are getting more comfortable to watch a full-length show on Internet, even though TV is still quite irreplaceable, but people are moving and audience has more channel options.

What is a show? It is a easy question for Television industry. But for Internet, the wild-west, the answer is still hard to define. I watch “House MD” online, and I am sure that is a show, because it is a TV drama. Is “Funny dancing in our wedding” on Youtube a show? I don’t know, even it attracts millions of online viewers, I still can’t really say it is a show.

That’s why it is important to categorize online videos. So we can do more efficient measurments, we can research more Internet ecosystem on a more accurate base and marketers would have better stradegy ideas.  Sacerdoti is right, we can’t compare apples to lettuce. For TV shows, there are categories of drama, comedy, documentary, interviews…etc, so why can’t it happen on Internet? Only by classify online videos can we begin to have the discussion about the claim of the “most popular shows” on the Internet.

Where am I going?

I don’t need to repeat here about how social media has changed the internet user behavior, the advertising business, the marketing strategies, and how it connects people in a brand new way. What are we talking about in this week’s entry is what am I going to do or what do I wish to do with social media.

Being a mother, when life is occupied by diapers and an always-messy house, it is sometimes hard for me to think about myself and my goals for life now. But I take my time that I spend on study as an escape and personal vacation, and I do have things that I wish someday could be accomplished with the help of social media, maybe not just by me, but also by people who are willing to do something to brighten our children’s future.

Social media is not the answer for everything. It is true that it has opened a different direction to how to connect people, how to express ourselves and how to make influence. But so far I haven’t seen any of these social media solutions telling us how to use it to improve education. My child is three years old, he can use mouse or his finger to pick his favorite games on Internet and spend an hour on it happily. I don’t blame him for enjoying technologies, I know someday he will be one of the million Internet users who has been online since they were infants. I wish he will actually learn something from social media tools, not just chat thru the class when his teachers are yelling on the stage.

Second, I believe print media won’t vanish. It will reappear with a different image. While the citizen-jourlist will be all over the place then, the fairness and objectiveness will also be the problems of their articles. We still need trained and professional writers to give us serious and in-depth stories.

Last, it is really a dream to hope that everybody realize the importance of protecting our planet. There are already tons of social media sites try to enforce the idea, but it is not something can be solved solely by Internet. We will fugure out how to really make the connection with people who care and who DON’T care, and try our best to make our influence.

Videos on Newspapers

It’s been my daily habit to check news online ever since I had my own computer with Internet access many years ago. (It’s free and I don’t have to throw the heavy papers out every week!) Usually I don’t go for those videos because I can read same stories on the same site. Maybe that’s one of the problems those news websites need to think about. The content of those videos and the text news are overlapping, so it reduced the traffic of the video.

Recently I found an interesting newspaper website that avoids that problem. The Stranger is a weekly newspaper that covers Seattle news, politics, music, movies and events and it somehow has quite honest view about things. On its website, there is a video section where audience can see what they can’t see from its text articles such as interviews of local artists, coverages of local issues or certain subjects. I think it is a smart move for seprating video and article sections.

But The Strangers does not put its videos on a noticeable spot. Viewers have to pull the page down to almost bottom to see the video section or dig into it’s “blog” section then try to find the hiding videos.  Maybe the editors aren’t confident enough about the streaming media yet, or maybe video media is not The Strangers pays its attention on yet. Generally speaking, most newspaper websites can do a lot more than they can do today. Even with WashingtonPost.com, its homepage is predominantly words and pictures.

It would be wise for newspaper sites to offer a better mix of content formats, and cease being so word-dominated. Combining all of the aviliable media- words, video and audio, make sure each story is distinct. It also can make a site that attracts younger viewers.

Free or Not Free?

I agree with Gladwell that his friend’s business negotiation with Amazon.com was a big time rip off by the gigantic online retailer. But I also agree with Seth, we need to face it, no matter we like it or not, the free content will be the majority in the future.

It is understandable that Gladwell feels the threaten by Anderson’s prediction. For print industry, it is shirking and everyone can see it. As a professional journalist who’s been doing professional writing his whole life, it is a depressing situation now. But what Gladwell doesn’t grab from Anderson’s theory is, professional writing will still be needed. We will always see people who are willing to pay for the good, in-depth stories, high quality photos/ music/ movies, ..etc.

Anderson predicts that there will be more people who will write content for free and share their works online. At this point, Seth is right. There is no need to argue about, it is happening now. The famous Korean website, “Ohmynews.com”, has been applying this “citizen journalism” for years and it actually changed a presidential election result couple years ago. This is a un-avoidable trend that people have to face. In the digital era, people will be less willing to pay what they can get for free. Again, it doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING will be free. We will still pay for things that we can’t freely attain, especially the unique, good-quality and meaningful things.

For the storytellers in the future, they might try not to waste their time and resources to fight with online pirates, but to think about how to make revenues from other related products that people will be willing to buy. They need to be opened minded enough to embrace the technology and take Internet as a free channel for distributing their works, grab more attention and create buzz. Internet is like a super powerful weapon and can help to spread the story out globally in a minute. Such an incredible tool, should be taken more positively.