The level of interest in personalization combined with rich media is really bubbling up. It is nice to think one is riding a on the crest of a wave – and not in a ‘race towards an early grave’ (prizes for the band and the song;-). Recently Dan Rosensweig introduced the concept of the Four Pillars of the future reported in MediaPost. If you know who Dan is then you have some context and it seems that there is a great deal of correlation going on at the moment with the larger ‘channels’ of the future. This was from a talk on Tuesday at the Museum of Radio and Television (who are they kidding – still I can see a Museum of the pre-Internet 2.0 not far away!). Anyway here are the said ‘pillars’ in my recommended and preferred order:
Personalization: Features like “My Yahoo!,” which Rosensweig says 60 million people use globally, and “My Media,” are about what he calls “discoverability.” Personalization and customization features are what will ultimately help marketers build relevant and engaging messages. “We will know more about consumers, not less,” through these types of features, Rosensweig says. In addition, automatic synchronization, which is the synchronizing of all devices across multiple platforms, will enable the steamlining of all information, including consumers’ dislikes and likes.
Content: Tools and resources for enabling consumers and businesses to find, create, use, watch, listen to, buy, enhance, manipulate, and share content. Basically, this is Yahoo!’s way of saying, “We want to help you do something with content — anything you want.”
Community: Functions and features to help people connect with one another via groups, instant messaging, and more. There are currently 100 million Yahoo! IM users, by the way. The feature “My Web” reveals what fellow community members read and enjoy. The community, in essence, becomes a filter for preferences, and helps us navigate our way through what Peter Weedfald, Samsung’s head of marketing, calls the “ADD [attention deficit disorder] economy.”
Search: Tools for finding, organizing, displaying, and publishing relevant content, information, and images. These include mobile, video, desktop, TV search functions and more.
They all resonate strongly with my posts of the past two weeks especially the themes of synchronized personalization across platforms, tools for rich media tagging and of course collaborative filtering.
“In addition, automatic synchronization, which is the synchronizing of all devices across multiple platforms, will enable the steamlining of all information, including consumers’ dislikes and likes. ”
One of those “but-I-was-just-talking-about-that-moments” see my “be what I expect you to be” from a couple of days ago. Personalized cross-platform. There must be ‘something in the air’ (name the year and artist). The journey is of course also about new content or media types which is an area I am currently exploring from ground-up, again in a series of blogs over the next few weeks. Trying to look at it from a back-to-basics (after conversations with those who are just getting it). Another cycle for me – “Round like a circle in a spiral like a wheel within a wheel. Never ending…” But that’s another song.
PS: Well I still have you. Do I? Dan talked also about the fact that the world has a population of 6.5 billion while only 1 billion can access the internet. Not exactly ubiquitous or fair – is that about to change? A little at least. For those who have not caught up with NASA and Googles plans for the developing world – link here.
Posted by Gary Hayes©2005
