The Engaged Consumer

At yesterday’s Social Media Breakfast in Austin, Tim Walker had us revisit the past to help us see the present and future more clearly (read or listen to his talk – you’ll enjoy it). In what had to be the most entertaining history lesson I’ve had in many years, he reminded us that the changes social media has brought to the way we connect and communicate aren’t the first of their kind. Almost 500 years ago Martin Luther utilized “new media” (aka words printed on the printing press) to fan the flames of his reformation. Thanks to this new-fangled print media, information was more readily-available and it changed the way people thought about, discussed, and impacted the world around them. This technology opened the doors for a much larger group of content creators to tell their story and publications were no longer under the control of a select few with the knowledge and funds to publish. Today’s social media tools have very much paralleled the impact the printing press had on society – albeit much more quickly. We’re in the midst of the same kind of information evolution that Luther so deftly leveraged to change the course of history.

In the midst of Tim’s excellent trip to times past, I started to think about how the printing press changed its audience and, conversely, how the new audience for works spun from the printing press directly impacted what was written and printed. The audience and the content were inexorably tied. With more books to read, more people had a reason to learn how to read. With a much more diverse audience to serve, the subject matter of books changed greatly and many more publishers emerged to serve the new demand for information both fact and fiction. Before the printing press the audience for books was largely the clergy and the extremely wealthy and the books of those times were for those audiences. After the printing press, the audience grew to include all classes and multiple vocations. The diversification of a previously homogeneous audience completely drove what was written and printed – but without the printing press, that audience would never have existed.

Following this tangential mental activity, I realized that social media technology and its audience have the same relationship that the printing press and its audience did so many centuries ago. When the Web first emerged, publishing was limited to those who understood the technology required to put up a site and who could afford to host a site. The message was completely controlled by the publisher and the audience was fairly homogenous and small. With the emergence of simple, free, and socially-focused tools for publishing everything from the written word to images and pictures, a new group of publishers was born. Immediately thereafter, a new audience was born. When the total number of available web pages was smaller and the content heavily guided by the publishers, the audiences for those pages were smaller and less-diverse. The population in general simply didn’t have a compelling reason to be online regularly for any extended period of time. As soon as that audience could read the works of those they cared about most – friends, family, and interesting content creators who might not otherwise have been published – they found their reason. And just as the printing press drove an increase in literacy, so did the social web drive an increase in technology literacy and connectivity (both physical and virtual). And just as the new literate audience drove the evolution of what was printed on the printing presses, the new social web audience is now actively driving what is created on the web. The circle has been joined and the web hasn’t been the same since.

So what does the history of the printing press and its audience tells us about the possible future of the social web? A few things come to mind:

• Many publishers will emerge but not all will remain. While cheap publishing means more people can publish, in the end, the audience cares about quality content that is relevant to them and will be the drivers of which publishers are successful. While the number of Web publishers is significantly larger the number of people who have ever been published in print, over time web publishers will see attrition just as print publishers did. In the case of print publishers lack of revenue largely drove attrition, whereas on the web lack of readership (and possibly revenue) will be the culprit. And then there’s the fact that publishing quality content on a regular basis does take a reasonable amount of energy and when your content isn’t monetized there’s the pesky issue of the day-job to consider. There are only so many hours in the day that people will devote to taking in content – and over time the best content will rise to the top. The publishers that will find success are the ones that can stay focused on their audience and what that audience cares about.
• While the audience may not drive the initial innovation of a technology, they will impact its evolution and its uses. Had you asked the pre-printing press world how they would feel about a printing press, many wouldn’t have even known how to respond. But once they experienced the results of the innovation – inexpensive and easily available books — they had a direct impact on the evolution of the printing press. The audience favored certain printed formats and disliked others, helping shape the world of print over time. The same is already true of social web technologies – from blogs to rich media sharing and micro blogging. While a pre-twitter world wouldn’t have known how to feel about Twitter, now that micro-blogging is real, there are many opinions driving its growth and evolution. Once exposed to a technology or an application of it, audiences will start to impact its future direction, even if you don’t necessarily want them to. Those who respond well and show agility will be successful.
• New forms of media will emerge. For many years print was the best game in town. Then internet came along and changed everything. Granted, it took a few hundred years between the two innovations, but chances are we won’t have the luxury of that kind of time before new media types emerge that make the Web look old school. Will you be ready when the next printing press comes along?

My single biggest take away from today was to re-remember my favorite Cicero quote: “Not to know what happened before you were born is always to be a child”. While we are all blazing new trails and innovating, we should never forget that there are good lessons from the past that can provide valuable guidance in our current endeavors.