In today’s symposium, Elliot brought up some very interesting points, but one stood out most of all to a communications professional like myself: design fiction’s impact on the media industry. More specifically, how do these new technologies impact the way people use media? How do we, as media professionals, adapt to the evolving media landscape and milk opportunities from them?
Already, the rise of digital and social media has caused some massive shifts. The television and newspaper, who once heralded trends and dictated information flow, are now giving way to digital and social media. Social media, especially, is proving to be a real contender.
Here’s an excerpt from a Business Insider article published last August:
Bloomberg reported that Facebook, for example, is planning to charge advertisers between $US1 million and $US2.5 million dollars for 15-second video ads to play in consumers’ news feeds three times in one day.
“Every night, 88 million to 100 million people are actively using Facebook during prime-time TV hours in the United States alone,” she said during a call to investors last October.
Elliot also encouraged us to consider the role of economics in technological development. There have been social networks similar to Facebook in the past. Friendster, anyone? Myspace? Yet, none achieved the financial success Facebook has had. There are numerous factors that contribute to its success, but since we’re on the topic of economics, let’s discuss supply and demand. I reckon, Friendster and Myspace emerged at a point in time where the Internet was fairly new. They appealed to teenagers and were considerably popular social networks in their heyday. After a good few years of success, frequent Internet users had become familiar with the concept of social networks – there was demand. A great demand. So Facebook rocked up, branded itself as the cool new kid on the block and raised a storm. Facebook wasn’t a strange, foreign concept – it was simply an existing concept made much better.
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(Image: Tutor2U)
Like I’ve said, there are various factors that come into play when you consider Facebook’s success. But perhaps when you consider the role of economics, Facebook rolled into the game at a point in time where there was substantially more demand than the beginning days of Friendster and Myspace. That was perhaps a quart of the battle won already.