(Source: aries-fairy, via seattle-gadgets)

(Source: thesmithian)

futuristgerd:

Just as Tumblr seems to be trying to imitate a mainstream media entity by hiring bloggers to cover political conventions, traditional media outlets are trying to become more Tumblr-like by adopting animated GIFs and other tools as a way of making their content more viral.

theatlantic:

Why the Internet Is About to Replace TV as the Most Important Source of News

The headline conclusion of Pew’s latest monster survey of the media landscape was the demise of TV news. “There are now signs that television news is increasingly vulnerable,” the authors wrote, “as it may be losing its hold on the next generation of news consumers.”

But the larger story is the rise of the Web, which has surpassed newspapers and radio to become the second most popular source of news for Americans, after TV. 

Read more. [Image: Pew]

luke-pearson:

Illustration for The Manual

This is sooooo brilliantly illustrates how we consume different types of media in our day-to-day life. BTW, when it comes to how we consume media, we no longer live in a “linear” world.

If there was no TV commercials…

trifunkalicious:

Rasmussen College’s infograph on multitasking is fantastic.

One of the mainstream media’s favorite criticisms about Google News has been that the excerpts the company includes — which News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch and others have described as theft of their content — are often enough for most readers who just want a summary of what is happening in the world, and therefore rob media websites of traffic. If someone can watch a video or read a summary inside Twitter expansion or a media pane, will they click through to the original or not? And will companies like the New York Times be satisfied to get those readers even if they don’t click through?

One of Dave Winer’s points about the new feature is that it creates an uneven playing field, since Twitter will only be providing the enhanced-content option to a select group of providers — but his other point, I think, is that even those companies who choose to take advantage of the option are striking a kind of Faustian bargain, just as they have with Facebook’s “social sharing” apps. Such a deal may increase the distribution of your content, but who ultimately gets the benefit? If you are a content creator, are you working for yourself, or are you working for Twitter?

(Source: courtenaybird)

Twitter’s most recent partnership with the NASCAR auto-racing circuit: Off to the races with #NASCAR in which (twitter.com/#NASCAR) you can “discover the best Tweets, photos and perspectives from NASCAR drivers and their families, crews, commentators, celebrities and fans – all in a single timeline.” So, should the mainstream media see Twitter as competition? As Mathew Ingram puts it over at GigaOM »

Until recently, Twitter was just a platform that provided easy access to this real-time content created by others. But deals like the NASCAR partnership — and offerings like the email summary powered by its Summify acquisition — are pushing Twitter further and further into the “curation” business, and that is essentially an editorial function. […] Selecting tweets and photos about a car race might not seem like journalism, but what Twitter is doing is very similar to what a site like Huffington Post or even a newspaper or sports site might do with an event like NASCAR.

underpaidgenius:

State of the News Media 2012 - Pew Research Center

This year’s study also includes special reports on the impact of mobile technology and social media on news. Those reports, which feature new survey data, finds that rather than replacing media consumption on digital devices, people who go mobile are getting news on all their devices. They also appear to be getting it more often, and reading for longer periods of time. For example, about a third, 34%, of desktop/laptop news consumers now also get news on a smartphone. About a quarter, 27%, of smartphone news consumers also get news on a tablet. These digital news omnivores are also a large percentage of the smart phone/tablet population. And most of those individuals (78%) still get news on the desktop or laptop as well.

A PEJ survey of more than 3,000 adults also finds that the reputation or brand of a news organization, a very traditional idea, is the most important factor in determining where consumers go for news, and that is even truer on mobile devices than on laptops or desktops. Indeed, despite the explosion in social media use through the likes of Facebook and Twitter, recommendations from friends are not a major factor yet in steering news consumption.

In the post-PC present, we have news up the ying, exploding out of all our devices like volcanic magma. But the Pew verbiage about who profits misses an essential point — typified by the ‘news consumption’ viewpoint they still espouse — we have moved away from audience-centered media to experience-centered media. The experience is what matters, so that’s why the value shifts to the tools we use to use information shaped by the news form factor. Using information is not equivalent to ‘consuming media’, but the media companies don’t get it.

The new media folks desperately want to write for some hypothetical audience, one they can find the center of. They are like border collies, wired to herd sheep and frantic if they can’t find any.

Read the full report.

(via underpaidgenius)

(via courtenaybird)

theatlantic:

This Graph Is Disastrous for Print and Great for Facebook—or the Opposite!

If you work anywhere near media, you’ll want to take a long look at this graph. It tells you where Americans direct our attention (in BLUE) and where advertisers pay money to capture our attention (in RED). 

• Takeaway #1: We still love TV. 
• Takeaway #2: Advertisers still love print.
• Takeaway #3: Audiences move faster than advertisers.

According to this chart — adapted from a Mary Meeker slideshow excerpted by Bill Gross — we spend more time engaging with mobile devices than reading print. But print publications still get 25-times more ad money than mobile. Either the eyeballs are moving faster than the advertisers, who will eventually stop paying for print … or the ad teams don’t think a minute spent around mobile ads is worth a minute spend around print ads. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.

We can take this chart in a lot of directions. Could print see another mass exodus of money? Is mobile advertising about to explode?

Read more.

courtenaybird:

By the time network news broke into programming 21 minutes after Urbahn’s initial tweet, 80% of tweets discussing bin Laden’s death had been written as fact or in certain terms, according to the study.

“We believe Twitter was so quick to trust the rumors because of who sent the first few tweets… They came from reputable sources. It’s unlikely that a CBS News producer or a New York Times reporter would spread rumors of something so important and risk jeopardizing their reputation. Twitter saw their credentials and quickly believed the news was true.”

After the initial reports and confirmations, however, something interesting happened: Celebrities became the key connectors in spreading news about bin Laden’s death. Within a half-hour of the first television reports, a group of 100 “elite users,” including comedian Steve Martin and reality stars Kim Kardashian and Paul “DJ Pauly D” DelVecchio of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” had surpassed the traditional media’s reach in spreading the news by Twitter.

Brains wired up by Twitter feeds!