How the 7th Mass Media Channel is Similar to the 6th: the Internet

So I gave the basic analysis of why mobile is the 7th mass media channel, and put the previous six media in context. The previous six mass media are of course print, recordings, cinema, radio, TV and the internet.

As I do in the book, also on this blog I will be exploring what makes mobile similar to the previous media, in particular the internet; what are unique competitive advantages of mobile - we have seven so far; and why some often-repeated shortcomings of mobile are in fact myths, such as the small screen and tiny keypad.

In this article I will look at the similarities between the internet and mobile. And right from the start, I want to be very clear about definitions. We have a PC-based, PC-oriented and mostly fixed or only wirelessly connected internet. It is the internet as most westerners know now, in 2008. It may seem like the obvious internet that should stay forever. It has actually changed enormously over the past 15 years and will again change enormously over the next 15 years. And obviously there is a lot of convergence between the internet and mobile, from Google to the iPhone.

So lets be clear. When I talk about the internet as a mass medium, and mobile as a mass medium, these are two very distinct media channels. It is very possible to use an advanced phone like the iPhone or many other smartphones to access the "real" internet. This is not my point here. It is like using a TV set to listen to radio. Yes it can be done, but that is using the device - a mobile phone - to access a legacy media channel, the internet, for which a separate technical solution already exists ie the personal computer. It is also possible to use a mobile phone as a modem to connect a laptop to the internet. And there are millions of high speed laptop data cards and USB dongles to allow a laptop to connect via the cellular network to the internet. These all are cases of using a phone or a cellular connection to access a legacy media channel.

So we need to understand, that while mobile has many features that make it similar to the internet as a media channel, mobile is actually the newest, least-understood and yet most far-reaching mass medium. Mobile is not the dumb little brother of the internet; it is actually as different from the internet as TV is from radio.

Remember that every existing radio content in the 1950s was ported to TV, and TV took over some (drama shows, most of live sports etc), and some continue to exist on both. But TV created new media formats and concepts that capitalize on its strengths - video - and we soon had newer programs and formats that do not work on radio. For example reality TV or 24 hour live TV-game channels or music video; all do not work on radio. And very soon, mobile will be as much more far-reaching and more relevant as a media channel, as TV was to radio.

And to illustrate by a simple example. The ringing tone. It is pure mobile content, does not work (commercially) as content on the internet. We don't put ringing tones onto our PCs, but we do download them over-the-air directly to our mobile phones. The total global music industry is worth under 30 billion dollars. About 2 billion of that is all forms of paid internet music. But ringing tones are worth over 5 billion dollars. A newer music format, very lucrative, and only available on mobile.

So yes, this is a new mass media channel. It has its own opportunities, benefits, niche-markets. But there also are very significant overlaps with the internet. And we can capitalize a lot on those. So let us start with what makes the internet, the sixth mass media channel, similar to mobile the seventh.

INTERACTIVITY

As I explain in the book, the internet introduced three unique benefits as a mass media channel, and the internet had a characteristic never seen before in a "new media". The three benefits were interactivity, search, and social networking. Some might think that interactivity and social networking are automatically the same, but this is not so. Consider a banking network, the cash machines or "ATM's" (Automated Teller Machines) that we all use today to access our cash. The banking network is interactive - we can receive information on the terminals, and we can input our data and make interactions - withdraw money, make a payment etc. But the banking network is not geared to be a social networking service. We cannot build a Wikipedia or Facebook or do a blog on our bank account info, and let all others read it on the other banking terminals. The banking network is interactive, but is not enabling social networking.

The internet has both of these features, and it has search. So what do we get from interactivity? We have email, the most-used application on the internet. Similar to its predecessor, fax, email uses the telecoms network to allow written communications from one telecoms connection point to any other, wherever that person has a fax machine (or PC for email). But fax was an analog system and didn't allow any kind of electronic editing, storing, resending, copying etc of the communication. Email was soon far more widely used than fax. Today we have email addresses on our business cards - this may seem obviuous, but only 15 years ago, hardly any business cards apart from those with some techie-geeks, had an internet email address (ie the one with the @ sign).

The change was enormous and global. There have been very few such total changes in society, as the rapid adoption of email over the past 15 years. It goes far beyond any initial assumptions of being a "business communication" method, as obviously 1.2 billion people of the 1.3 billion who use the internet, have an email account. We are at the cross-over point in 2008, when there will be more email accounts as there are fixed landline phones in the world.

The impact of interactivity is that for the first time, a mass media could "engage" with audiences. The more a media channel (or brand, company, product or service) gains engagement, the more the audience (or customer) becomes involved and usually emotionally attached to that media (or brand, company, product or service). So while a movie or TV show or magazine would be produced, and then "sent out" to the audience, it would be a matter of luck, the loyalty of the viewership or readership, and various marketing activities (signing Brad Pitt to star in the movie, or putting Angelina Jolie on the cover of the magazine, etc), which would drive the success. With interactivity, suddenly the audience is activated. Just allowing interactivity brings more loyalty; but clever media companies will learn from the audience feedback and develop their media titles to be more what the audience really wants.. This is a very powerful new attribute for a media channel.

And to be clear, the first five mass media did not have a viable mass-market interactive channel (built-in) when the internet emerged. Yes, we could write a letter to the editor of the newspaper, but this was a very rare chance of being "heard" and used by very few in society. Some radio stations and TV stations do sometimes take an opinion from an audience member, perhaps read a letter or have a caller phone into the radio show etc, but cinema and recordings had no viable interactive means, and on print, radio and TV the interactivity was practically non-existent; certainly within the overall volume of content provided and by the extremely tiny percentage of audience that ever participated. So for the internet, interactivity was a dramatic upheaval of how a media channel would engage with audiences; today almost all major news sources publish email addresses or provide feedback forms or discussion forums to allow audience participation and interaction.

SEARCH

As to search, this is the second enormous change in society that the internet has brought about. While email seems to have peaked in its total reach and use, search is still growing strong so we will probably continue to see its influence growing for years to come. Search has helped make the internet accessable to non-technical people. Search has helped kill off many categories of information specialists, think of the card catalog management of libraries for example. After search appeared on the internet, there was really no point in a traditional card catalog at a library. A far more powerful means was a personal computer that library visitors could use for searching, and an electronic catalog of which book titles were carried by that library branch.

Like email, search started as a business application, and today all major researchers, from the research houses to government intelligence gathering services, all start any new search, with a google (or similar) search engine (well, except perhaps the digital dinosaurs, like Senator McCain who does not Google, as I discussed in my blog at Communities Dominate blog). The modern work environment would seem impossible for most who work in an office, if all search engines were suddenly removed from our lives..  And again, this service crossed over to the residential customer side, and today 7 year old kids know how to google when they want to discover a videogame or a song on the internet.

Again, for a media company, search is magic. It brings the "Long Tail" concept to the content. It allows individual audience members to discover that media content; it allows very tiny "streams" of audiences to be aggregated; and it brings all of the legacy content into play. A current issue of a celebrity magazine may have a story about Paris Hilton and her latest exploits. Most of her fans may want to read about that. But someone may want to read about Paris's trip to jail, which happened quite a while ago. That same celebrity magazine probably discussed that jail trip as well, but its no longer newsworthy. Today's reader won't be offered that angle to Paris's life. But searching offers easy access to other stories about Paris, in that media channel, from times gone by. All previous articles, pictures etc become valid content today, through search. The longer the "back-catalog" of a given media channel's digital presence, the more it can capture those searching older stories. This is partly why major news sources from the NY Times to the Economist to the Guardian are working hard to get all back issues into digital forms and searchable.

Obviuosly none of the five legacy media, print, recordings, cinema, radio or TV, had any form of search built-in to their media. A decade ago, major print titles like Time, the Economist etc, would release an end-or-year index issue, which would provide a listing of all articles of the year, to help in finding that one story that might be of interest. That is a far cry from search. Some recording artists (pop and rock stars) would include a listing of the previous record albums in the liner notes, when a new album was released, but again, this was only a list and totally not dynamic. TV, radio and cinema had no kind of search aids whatsoever. They relied on another media - print - to provide "listings" of what was going to play this week on a given TV or radio channel, or the nearby movie theaters.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

The third of the unique benefits that the internet introduced, was social networking. This was mostly under the radar until 2005, when all kinds of social networking (or digital community or "web 2.0" services) broke into the mainstream from Wikipedia to blogging, from Myspace to YouTube, from Habbo Hotel to World of Warcraft. Obviously my fourth book, Communities Dominate Brands, with Alan Moore, was the first book to discuss this phenomenon across its full spectrum and its impacts to business and marketing. There had been books about blogging or multiplayer gaming etc, but nothing that looked at social networking and digital communities prior to our book. I'm happy to see that book is still considered a must-read today three years later and gaining new fans continously..

But yes, so first, this was an innovation. For the first time in the media space, audiences could interact not with the media company, but with each other, within the context of the media content. A fan club, an expert collaboration, citizen journalism, etc. At my other blog, Communities Dominate Blogs, we've discussed everything from the very serious like Ohmy News, to the frivolous like the Tohato snacks brand's multiplayer wargame in Japan as a free viral advergame.

So take the YouTube. One of the world's most-watched individual TV shows annually is the Superbowl in America, with about 60 million live viewers. Top YouTube content has attracted over 50 million viewers. Its not the same as broadcast TV obviously, but very rapidly user-generated video content on YouTube has become a very serious video entertainment rival to television. The internet cannibalizing TV viewing. The point with YouTube is user-generated content, that is shared, linked to, commented and rated. Five stars, I gotta watch that...

The same with citizen journalism. Now CNN is asking viewers to send I-Report videos and pictures from any breaking news stories. The first time a major global news story featured citizen-generated video content was the Boxing Day Tsunami, and that was 3 years ago. Today all major news channels invite viewers to send in videos and pictures. For a media channel, this is at least as radical, as the shift from the typewriter to the PC and its word processor was to classic print journalists. Citizen journalism will not replace traditional journalism, but it will drastically alter journalism. The web 2.0 revolution is coming. We have only seen the very early elements of it so far.

As to the legacy media channels, they could not offer social networking via a daily newspaper or the books in our bookshelf. Movies, TV and radio did not allow building a community, nor did our records, cassette tapes or videocassettes in the early days of recordings. This was a radical innovation by the internet, and as it only broke into the mainstream in 2005, being on the covers of the Economist and Business Week (and the Time Person-of-the-Year issue in 2006), this is a change in media that we have barely started to observe so far. Its impact will be enormous into the next decade.

INHERENT THREAT

The internet had three unique benefits, compared to the five legacy mass media. The internet also had a characteristic which made it a danger to all legacy media. The internet was the first time a new media was also an "inherent threat" media. To explain, recordings were the second media after print. You can do some print content on a recording, such as "talking books" when some celebrity would read a book. But a newspaper could not be delivered via the record or cassette tape. The mere production process, and distribution process, of making a record or cassette tape, was so lengthy, that today's newspaper would be much past yesterday's news. A recording could cannibalize some print, but not all print. In fact all of the first five media could not cannibalize all of their predecessors. You cannot sell a record "through" a cinema screen (yes, you could sell a record in the lobby of the cinema theater, but that is selling 2nd media in the theater, not using 3rd media to cannibalize the 2nd). You cannot show a movie on radio. You cannot read books through broadcast TV, etc. None of the first five media could cannibalize all of their predecessors.

That changed with the internet. The internet was the first "inherent threat" media. We can very easily offer any book as an ebook. We can offer any magazine or newspaper content via the PC screen. We can offer any recordings, music (MP3 files), videogames, computer programs through the internet. We can download and watch movies on the PC screen. We can listen to podcasts and internet radio stations. We can watch IP TV stations as well as TV content on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Print, recordings, cinema, radio and TV can all be replicated very efficiently on the internet. And viable commercial models exist to do that. The internet was the first inherent-threat mass media channel. It has the potential to cannibalize each of the legacy media.

When adding the three unique benefits of the internet, interactivity, search and social networking, any legacy media experience can be potentially better on the internet, than on the five legacy mass media channels. This is why the music industry was so devasted by Napster, and why the cinema industry is chasing internet piracy today; and why most print media seek an internet strategy.

MOBILE IS SEVENTH MEDIA

So what of mobile? Mobile is newer than the internet, and the seventh of the mass media. Do we have interactivity on mobile? Yes we do. Do we have search on mobile. Yes. And do we have social networking, you bet. Lets look at these briefly.

SMS TEXTING

Even though mobile is far younger than the internet, the first data application on mobile - SMS text messaging - grew explosively and became larger than email back in 2001. Today there are twice as many active users of SMS text messaging than there are users of email worldwide!

Hold that thought. Email is the most used application on the internet. Mobile is younger (as a mass media channel) than the internet. Interactivity was one of the powerful agents of change for media on the web. Today, mobile interactivity - SMS text messaging - is used by twice as many people on the planet. This is an enormous disruption.

Where do we see it today? Look at reality TV voting. American Idol. My friend Alan Moore released a white paper with his company SMLXL that discussed American Idol in 2007. The paper said that for 3 billion viewings of any Pop Idol/American Idol (and regional variants such as Australian Idol, British X-Factor, Germany's Deutschland Sucht Der Superstar and France's Neuvelle Star etc) they had generated almost 2 billion SMS text votes. Wow. Each of those was a premium rate vote, and they generated approximately 600 million dollars of bonus revenues for Fremantle the producer of the Idols format and their partners.

We could have done reality TV voting on email, but the PC is not at our TV set, and connected, 24 hours a day, in all households. (yes, some geeks do sit at the TV set with a PC and broadband connection, I reluctantly admit to this myself..) But every economically viable person on the planet has a mobile phone. Anyone who owns a TV set has a mobile phone. And that phone is there, within arm's reach, when we watch TV. The ideal interactive method.

I want to stress this. Interactivity revolutionized mass media consumption on the internet, for all five legacy media. Yet mobile is BETTER at interactivity, than the internet. This is power..

MOBILE SEARCH

The second internet innovation was search. We have search on our phones, on most networks around the world. It is not as widely used yet - but at about 10% of all phone subscribers using it, mobile search has some 350 million active users already. That is not in the scale of the internet search (yet) but growing fast. And to put a media metric for context, the total worldwide newspaper daily circulation is 439 million. Soon as many people will use search on a mobile phone, as buy a newspaper. Note that newspaper circulations are declining and obviously all mobile application uses are growing strong. We may see this cross-over point this year or next.

But here I want to make a convenience argument. We sometimes have a search need while we are on the PC, doing work or playing. But that is not all of our life. We also get often google-urges while we are about town, and not connected. I often google people for their backgrounds, in my work as a consultant, I meet up with new people all the time. So why wait until I'm back at the hotel at the broadband connection. I can google on the spot, when the urge emerges, using my phone. Or at the nearest moment that it is convenient. So for example, I get a new business card. We sit at a restaurant. My colleague takes a calls, and during that call, I take out my smartphone, do a quick Google search of his name. A-ha, he's also written a book and was just speaking at a conference, etc..  The power of search is there in our pocket, but most of us are not yet used to using it this way. And obviously, not all mobile data plans (prices) are friendly to support this. But that will change. Mark my words, within a couple of years, more people will search on mobile than on the PC based internet.

Did someone say "mobile is the next internet"? Oh, yeah, that was Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google of course. So I'm not exactly out on a limb on this. Anyone looking at the iPhone, and then thinking that in 3 years that iPhone is the hand-me-down toy to the 11 year old son or daughter, sees how quickly this turns from a vision of a mobile guru to a pocket reality..

MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING

We started running the short course on mobile social networking at Oxford University two years ago with Steve Jones the CEO of the3GPortal.com and Alan Moore my co-author and co-blogger at Communities Dominate. I told you about social networking (on the internet) breaking through in 2005. The origins of internet-based social networking are in the mid 1990s and their forefathers were BBS's ie Bulletin-Board Systems, a sort of walled garden pre-internet web service for sharing (and social networking).

The first mobile social networking service was Cyworld's mobile variant in South Korea in 2003. Since then we've seen all kinds of enormous successes from Itsmy to Flirtomatic to MyNuMo. But now the truly amazing  statistic. The total value of social networking on the internet was about 2 billion dollars last year (mostly from multiplayer gaming like World of Warcraft etc). A very impressive number, generated in over a decade. But - the value of mobile social networking - in 2007 - was 6.5 billion dollars (according to Informa, 2008). From zero to 6.5 billion in four years, this is by far the fastest-growing billion-dollar industry in the economic history of mankind.

If you think that YouTube is amazing, you have to understand SeeMeTV, one of the mobile user-generated video sites. After learning of SeeMeTV - and its amazing revenue-sharing scheme with content producers - YouTube is so yesterday's news. If you like Facebook or MySpace (or Flickr or Ebay) you have to learn about Mobile Cyworld. It is like five years into the future for MySpace. If you like an online dating service, and ponder how sustainable it is as an economic model - if is very successful the current customer base find each other and stop paying.. - but check out Flirtomatic, perhaps the most innovative mobile social networking site of them all. It makes so much money on mobile, it discontinued its monthly fee as unnecessary.

So yes, there are similarities with the 6th Mass Media channel and the 7th Mass Media channel, but already here, there tends to be significant advantages to mobile rather than the internet.

MOBILE ALSO INHERENT THREAT

And I told you the internet was the first inherent threat media channel. Well, now mobile is the second inherent threat mass medium. Yes, you can read magazines, newspapers and books on mobile (don't laugh, in Japan they sell 82 million dollars worth of books directly to mobile phones). You can download music, games, etc (recordings). You can watch movies (again don't laugh, think iPhone and iTunes which already sells movies). You can listen to radio (via an FM tuner like in so many modern phones today, but that is using a phone to access the 4th mass media) but you can also listen to podcasts and web radio on a phone. You can watch TV (again, either on a built-in TV tuner, or on various mobile TV services from video downloads to video streaming). And yes - you can access the full internet on a phone, including email (think Blackberry) to search to mobile social networking.

Mobile can cannibalize all of the SIX legacy mass media. But the opposite is not true. Even the internet, cannot cannibalize mobile. I gave the example of ringing tones. We don't install ringing tones to our laptops. There are many such mobile-unique services already. We don't do American Idol SMS-votes using our laptop and the internet. SeeMeTV which rewards video creators for original content every time they are viewed (and pays the typical person creating an average video, not a highly watched video 14 UK Pounds/21 Euro/27 USD - well over half the typical monthly phone bill of a UK youth customer), does not work on the internet.

The mobile, as the 7th mass media channel, can cannibalize all six previous media. But the internet, as the 6th mass media channel, while able to cannibalize the older 5 legacy media, is unable to cannibalize mobile.

Which way is the future headed. I think its very clear. Even if mobile had zero unique benefits, it is already holding the upper hand in the media battles of the future.

But actually, mobile does have unique benefits. Internet had 3. Mobile can do far better than that. Mobile has 7 unique benefits. I will discuss these in an upcoming article. (if you are in a hurry, send me an email and I'll send you the pdf of the 30 page excerpt of my new book, and you can read what the 7 unique benefits are. Send me email at  tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com and I'll send you the Thought Piece by return email.