The Writer As Digital Immigrant | Patrick Collings 2009

the writer asdigital immigrant

patrick collings25 August 2009

creative writing master class

former foreign correspondent pioneer in the south african internet partner in sagacite brand agency working both the business and creative side of branding author of the brand architect blog recipient of brand leadership award i am a digital immigrant

image by tim morgan

image by bernardo borghetti

image by trey ratcliff

the digital landscapethe digital landscapethe digital landscape

let’s set the scene

Note: Video of Digital Mad Men

Photo by Stig Nygaard

web 2web 3.0

Note: Video highlighting the growth of social media

image by jeff turner

the flow, not the contoursNote: The following slides indicate how changing applications serve similar digital needs over time

photo by glado trouchky

must understand our own landscape

1.5bn | 0.3%

Note: South Africa’s share of global internet connectivity is .3% of 1.5 billion

51m | 10%

Note: South Africa accounts for 10% of Africa’s connectivity

12m | 0.03%

Note: The number of active blogs and the percentage from South Africa

340m | 0.5%

Note: Readers of blogs and the percentage who read South African blogs

9.5% | 96%

Note: Internet connectivity in South Africa versus percentage of adults owning a cell phone

some final observations on the landscape

Photo by Trey Ratcliff

Note: Internet a combination of the big and the small

Note: Video of Faris Yakob talking about recombinant culture

photo by Oliver Wilke

crowdsourcing

Photo by Akbar Simonse

smaller, more mature

camera, actionPhoto by Wen Zhang

as a society we are becoming more visual

“video beats pictures beats text” - trendwatching.com 2008 report

what sort of numbers are we talking about

five billionvideos serves each month by youtube

44 percentof all online video consumption

in the U.S.A.

Cisco: By 2013 Video Will Be 90 Percent of All Consumer IP Traffic and 64 Percent of Mobile

a digital lubricant

today, everyone can be a director

video clip of user generated polo “commercial”

But it is notonly the directorswho are going to

what we need to consider now are the communication channels and models

available to brand managers

increasingly becoming a home to branded entertainment

but not everyoneis happy with theconcept of brandedentertainment

Photo by Darwin Bell

what about the news media

monetize it

TV Ads

“Google is not the first company to confuse a large audience with an

attractive business model”

Financial Times, 20 August 2009

user generated and premium contentwill that increasingly be the model?

stop the presses

Photo by Ed Schipul

years from now, people will look at the new media business model and say it “happened” in

the recession of 2008 / 2009

what started as a trickle

Photo by Vanessa Pike-Russell

Ad Declines in Mass Media Seen as More Than Just

Economic

Hearst Shuts Down a Seattle Paper

Rocky Mountain News Folds Amid Ad Slump

Washington Post Net Plunges

When newspapers fold

Seattle Paper Advances Plans to Turn Into Online-Only

Publication

Hearst Plans to Slash, Sell or Shut Paper in Bay Area

New York Times Will Cut Salaries; Washington Post to

Offer Buyouts

US newspaper crisis deepens

Gannett slashing dividend to preserve cash

Cincinnati Post folds

New York Sun closes aft years

Christian Science Monitor abandons print edition

Miami Herald into third restructuring

Blender Magazine to GoOnline Only

not only in the US, and not only newspapers

those abandoning print either headed to...

Photo by Kirk

not coming back

great expense in returning to traditional print model2

1 the print business model was already under long-term threat from digital

“recessionary push” will lead to changed habits and rituals3

abandoning print saves 50% costs, but ...

online advertising not enough to sustain

traditional news operations

?defining questions

“it is possible to charge for content”

©that’s my copyright

the rise of the bloggersthe rise of the bloggers

photo by D Barefoot

Photo by Jacob Botter

America’snewest profession

1,700,000

Note: Number of people in US making money from blogging

452,000

Note: Number of people in US earning their primary income from blogging

100,000 = $75,000

Note: Rule of thumb that 100,000 users translates into annual ad income of USD 75,000

$75 - $200

Note: What people are charging for writing a blog

$45,000 - $90,000

Note: What people are earning for blogging for a corporate

1% >$200,000

Note: One percent of bloggers earning more than USD 200,000

bloggers

journalists

photo by matthew bradley

Note: rise of bloggers, drop of journalists in Washington

is trust the new slingshot

photo by Jennifer Hayes

Note: People increasingly trusting blogs rather than media organizations

business model changing offline, not only online

perhapsthe internetis not sucha safe placefor traditionalprint mediaescaping therecessionphoto by Kyriakos

digital doesn’t just mean the web

Photo by Rienk Jan Schurer

the kindle isn’t alone

new business models are rapidly emerging

expect to see early adoption by higher eduction

what can history teach us

remember when cell phones phoned

before text messages

before they took pictures

before they recorded video

before the applications

do you remember before

?similar path for the e-reader

subscription models

the new textbook

colour is coming

so is video

and competitors

prices are falling

new ad models are emerging

“I find it hard to believe that the primary way of reading newspapers 10-plus years from now is going to

be on printed paper.”

our virtual reality

virtuality is increasingly our present and future

Photo by Jerry Charlotte Miller

we have been preparing for virtuality for some time

Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007)

in ourphilosophy

in our literature & films

our children brought virtuality homeour children brought virtuality home

we trade incurrenciesthat we neveractually hold

we immerseourselves inthe game

second lifeintroducedthe reality of virtual worlds tomany adults

video clip of sony home virtual world

video clip of sony home virtual world

virtual worlds were the next evolution of the internet

800!000

14!000!000

from september 2006 to june 2008, the number of second life members grew from 800,000 to 14,000,000

they came

10!000

80!000

from september 2006 to february 2009, the number of simultaneous second life users grew from 10,000 to 80,000

they played

in the space of 42 months the average value of transactions per month on second life went from $15m to nearly $35m

they paid

15!000!000

35!000!000

44!600

64!000

in february 2009 over 64,000 people had a positive linden dollar flow, up from 44,600 in september 2007

they profited

32 | 45average age % female

great virtual land rushphilips c|net adidas mercedes

bmw dell mazda microsoft reuters sony bmg vodafone l’oreal ibm mtv

what went wrong?

limited understanding + flawed strategy + rushed implementation is always going to end in tears

goes on

3to take out

original, evolving, crowdsourced stories

Note: Video promoting Wagner James Au’s book

virtual stories with real consequences

the rise of the avatar

some are detailed

of 26 million and counting

unique avatars and within games

Ray Winstone

John Malkovich Anthony Hopkins Angelina Jolie

avatars are child’s play

unique US visitors in Sept 07, in millions

0 1,5 3,0 4,5 6,0

6,0

4,7

4,4

3,6

2,4

1,8

1,3

0,6

0,6

0,6

0,5

barbiegirls

webkinz

clubpenguin

zwinky

neopets

imvu

second life

gaia

habbo

redlightcenter

kaneva

look east...

340m i l l i o na c c o u n t s

Photo by Chad Nicholson

virtuality is a third of transmotionvirtuality is a third of transmotion

the secondis transmedia

the third is augmented reality

Note: Augmented reality campaign in South Africa

“One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we

distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will

become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn’t cyberspace is going to be unimaginable”

William Gibson

Patrick Collingspatrick@sagacite.co.za+27 (0)83 616 0967