Not so fast! What happened to the previous crop of influencers? Did they all just vanish? There isn't a day that goes by without someone ranting about how blogs (and bloggers) will change the world. Blogs will change how we generate and consume media. Blogs will change PR. Blogs will change how corporations (and startups) communicate and converse. I'm very surprised that very little is being written about the history of mass media and how media in general has evolved over time.
For example, popular print media has been around for over 200 years. The idea that freedom of the press is important has been around since the 18th century even before the First Amendment when media was being funded by political parties and interest groups. The professional reporter was born in the 1830s and a focus on objective reporting started about a decade later (Associated Press helped ignite volume reporting with its formation in 1849).
Print media blossomed in the 1880s as department stores and national distribution of brands fueled advertising revenue for newspapers and magazines respectively. Weeklies and taboids became popular in the first half of the 20th century. A huge technology change came when broadcast television entered American homes. Advertising fled print media for this new technology medium. This is when trade magazines (including our beloved IT trade magazines) were born as print began to segment in order to survive. Since the technology industry was so new, the trade media that covered it was less "influencer" and more "influenced" by early pioneers in tech. Think back to Gary Kildall playing CEO of Digital Research AND co-anchor of the Computer Chronicles television show at the same time. Press and industry were best friends.
Somebody ... anybody ... take the story from here! This is where you draw the analogy between today's Internet and yesterday's broadcast media and relate both to advertising. Then, you paint the picture of how user generated content (including blogs) are likely to go through the same cycle that traditional print media underwent over the course of 200 years - except maybe an order of magnitude faster. Trade magazines start as industry backed publications to bring greater outside attention. Industry gets huge. Advertising increases. Media gets huge. Opinion-led writing gets serious and becomes more objective. Source of news (attribution) and information (balance) becomes important. Journalistic integrity is vitally important. Fact checking? Absolutely. Now, the industry gets massively huge. Consumer technology companies are now large enough but there aren't enough of them around, yet. Microsoft has a lot to do with it. Broadcast must wait for technology companies. We don't want to reach mass audiences anyway. But, wait, what's this Internet thing? Perfect timing.
Gold rush to the Internet begins as advertisers shift gears. Where there is gold, lots of prospectors and vultures flock. User generated media and new web tools enable the masses to start generating content to be consumed as news and information but, more often than not, serve as a means to express themselves or carry on private conversations in public. Some blogs are modeled after traditional media. And, others are no different than leaked diaries. Many are abusive rants. Some are enlightened missives. All are clamoring for attention ... almost at all cost, no holds barred.
A good clue for how blogs will evolve rests in the timeline of print media. A timeline that included cycles which saw interest groups,professional journalism's birth, wire services, propaganda, tabloid journalism, national brand support, intense competition (especially with dailies), new technologies, segmentation, and rebirth. All of the elements are there ... it's just a bit difficult to figure out or even understand because the Internet is changing a lot of the rules (e.g., wire services vs. RSS) and it's still pretty early.
If you're a startup, how can you figure out which blogs to reach out to versus completely ignore? Well, there are a gazillion "conversations" taking place in the blogosphere along those lines. But, we need to remind ourselves that remembering how we got "here" from "there" is probably pretty important ...
- John
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