Guagua Pública

Aren't markets conversations?

In a new study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and The George Washington University. The study addresses questions about how news outlets use the social media tool to share, gather and curate information.

Analysis

One of the most counter-intuitive findings was that news organizations were much similar in the focus of their Twitter activity. The vast majority of the postings promoted the organizations' own work and sent users back to their websites. On the main news feeds studied, fully 93% of the postings over the course of the week offered a link to a news story on the organization's own website.

Is this trend caused by the addition of a News or Media base? I believe that those "labels" (keywords) causes people to act in the opposite of what they do with companies that aren't News or Media. Aren't markets conversations? How can there be a conversation if one party of the conversation talks 93% of the time?

The difference between a start-up do it all yourself publisher has become nearly indistinguishable from a major publisher. eBooks have made selling on the Internet a data and IT race. Independent authors and publishers, like Mis Tribus, have only to build their reputation. It's all downhill from here for major publishers, as the price & reputation races to 0 (zero). If publishers don't become bigdata companies, around customer information given by permission; publishers will see there revenues drop like a Led Zeppelin.

With enough data, patterns will appear


I've been lecturing lately about the infinite complexity of the Internet and the needle in a haystack search for your fans. I was reminded of chaos theory, when I was friending Jose Alvarado on Facebook.  I met him, while trying to simplify the complexity of the Internet into 15 minutes. Quite a challenge, and even more so in Spanish.

Equally challenging, Jose was the master of ceremonies for the educational track at expoCaguas last week. When I saw some pictures of him on Facebook, I was reminded of my explorations of the chaotic nature of a blizzard from my childhood in Indiana. It was always a race outside after the pass of a big storm.  What treasures lay hidden in the miles of snow around us?  Had the wind conspired with the snow to create instant forts, trenches, sometimes even the rare tunnel? Winter can truly be a wonderland.

Chaos Theory


Chaos theory describes for us the observation that even random generations and mutations tend to form an organization and structure (super-structure) when you have enough data. We have the exact same problem when trying to connect with our fans over the Internet. Given enough data, we should be able to detect patterns that we can use to predict which points of contact to focus our responses within the infinite marketplace.

That means data, and lot's of it. Big data, data that might not be ours, but is easily attainable over the Internet. The more data we can collect, the closer we will come to seeing the super patterns appear. This truly is our only hope of improving our chances. If we are left to guess work, it will pull all down all effectivity, as we iterate through unknown repetitions narrowing down our guesses.

Transmedia requires a maximum strategy.

I've spent so long in the bowels of relationship analysis within social networks that I almost forgot how transmedia fit-in to my theories. Tonight, I remembered how using max-n channels, you exponentially increase your chances of finding new fans.Which brings me full-circle, transmedia is the distribution of a story using multiple mediums.

Wow, it's been a long year. What started out with a curious fascination in transmedia lead me to culture convergence. Transmedia uses a fundamental relational structure. So it is easy to understand the multi-dimensionality required by pursuing social engagement.

Transmeida is the structured division of a coherent story using multiple mediums. The ability to manage this level of complexity is only possible through automation. Especially when many of those mediums has many strong channels with an engaged user base.

If you're going to produce one element of a transmedia arc using online video, which site do you use? Of do you use as money as is feasibly possible? What if you could synchronize the distribution to 10 video sites with only one upload?