I saw two pieces of news today that illustrated how consumers are dictating content delivery. The Internet continues to accelerate the move to personalized media consumption, when and where the consumer wants it. This trend has decimated the b2b magazine space, and now video usage is rapidly going mass market.
In January Ziff Davis will become the first b2b publisher to cease publishing print issues altogether. I’ve written previously on this blog about how hard the Internet has hit the business model of technology magazines like Ziff Davis pubs eWeek and CIO Insight. The company claims that it will publish more frequently online than it did in print and that no layoffs will result from the move. But the publishing business model that worked in the past hasn’t followed reader eyeballs online, and until a new one is discovered revenue will be a challenge.
The other news was a post from GigaOm reporting how mobile video consumption is exploding due to the increased power of mobile devices and the availability of true mobile broadband. The theme of the post is the strain on mobile carrier networks, but the numbers are impressive. Every day 17% of laptop users access video, 11% of iPhone and 7% of Android users. The survey doesn’t identify a number for tablets, but that has to be a big number and one increasing rapidly.
These numbers really reinforce the concept that consumers are now in the drivers seat. Free market advocates love to talk about the creative destruction brought about by disruptive technologies, but businesses can be awfully slow to adapt. It’s amazing how much faster the Internet has remade the media landscape than earlier advances like radio and television.
Consumers want their content delivered digitally, and increasingly they want it sent to mobile devices. It will be up to publishers and carriers to devise new business plans that account for the age of personalized media.
Nice concise take on some complex phenomena, Chris!