If you have lived or passed through New York, you might have heard radio blaring, “give us ten minutes, and we will give you the world.” (Or something like that!) That line pretty much sums up the whole blogging phenomenon. What began as short (or not) irreverent personal musings over a decade ago, has now become a new kind of news medium, one that fits nicely the post-Internet, 4-lattes-a-day fueled, sleep deprived, time-compressed modern lives.
Our whole lives are about doing more in less time, trying to cram everything into 24 hours, in a day that is filled with constant interruptions. Instant messages, emails, and the constant chirping of cell phones have surely and slowly squeezed our attention spans. We have responded this to customizing the digital world according to how lifestyles.
We have TiVo to personalize our television, watching only what we want. We plug in our iPods, using playlists, instead of listening to the radio waiting for our favorite tune. Like TiVo and iPod, the web allows us to customize what we want to read. Blogs offer short bursts of information in an easy to digest format that fits nicely with this socio-culture change happening around us.
Blogs, also have the ability to focus on niche topics, allow almost anyone to publish, and then have it distributed over high-speed Internet connections instantly is what can be summed up in two words: “Immediate Media.”
This immediate media is information simply adapting to the new methods of distribution. At the turn of the last century, telegraph was used to spread the news. Telephone technologies gave newspapers a new sense of urgency and made distant events a weekly, and for some a daily affair. Radio broadcasts made news more real-time, making it part of our daily life. TV brought news into the living room, made it more personal. Cable and the birth of CNN made news a 24/7 phenomenon.
The Internet in its early version upped the tempo, and with the rise of high speed, always on connections, information is now an unending stream. If you follow that thread, then with can easily see that with each transformation, technology compressed the news cycle a little, and made distribution a bit more efficient. The more we connect, the more we want to know but in less time. Blogs are a reflection of our time-deprived times.
If you dig deeper, the growth of blogs can be mirrored in the growth of broadband adoption. Faster connections make checking out a blog, say TMZ, five times a day is much easier compared to ten years ago when you had to dial-up to get your information fix.
Broadband has also enabled non-text tools – video and photos – to become part of this immediate media movement. We have videos of news events being uploaded to YouTube, almost in real time. Photographs of news events find their way from our mobile phones to Flickr and on to the web pages.
Twitter and Pownce are fast transforming into news-alert services, where short bursts of information say it all. A link and a few words are all it takes to describe what could mean news to an audience of one (or a million). Here is to next ten years!
WOW, I’m speechless! You read my mind!
This post is having issues under Firefox 2. The text on the left is chopped off.
It’s definitely coming down to the personal market of one. Where you really can funnel and be targeted to as a pure individual and not a mass consumer. The choices available now (media-wise) days can be very simply refined down to what interests and applies to just you. There’s almost no such thing as a freak these days, just a niche 🙂 ..and there’s something out there for everybody. (and broadband’s mostly made it possible)
Outstanding post. With this particular genie now decidedly out of the bottle, the old methods of information distribution will soon be relegated to the background noise we have on while we surf, as they are for most Internet users already.
http://mikeelliottsblog.wordpress.com
I read it again, I rarely do that to posts. This is one excellent piece of writing. Thank you.
Striking !!
Great text. You seem to know me well. My music is only electronic music podcasts, regularily updated by my favourite DJs. I watch TV only selectively from my harddisc recorder. Only my favourite shows. My lecture are hightech blogs, while this morning’s newspaper is still unread at midnight. I spent some hours today updating my niche blog about VoIP and mobile communication.
Well, maybe this wasn’t so intelligent and I should concentrate more on my paid articles. But the niche is so interesting!
Good post, but you’re getting hounded by the grammar nazi’s on digg:
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/The_Immediate_Media_Age_Of_Broadband_Blogs
Rock on – makes sense to me =).
Awesome post! Keep up the great work from your friends @ http://www.asktheadmin.com
You are right there in capturing the trend.. Guess the stats that almost 60% of the time spent over Net by people is occupied in going through personalized media shows how much credibity people place in personalized communication.. The trend sure is one on one communication!
great post
nytimes today…“Publishers are saying: Instead of spending $15 million or $20 million on one PS3 game, come back to me with five or six Wii pitches,”
nimbleness is the new mode for content, from widgets to consoles!
Great insight Om. I love the graphic too… HA. Having said that, I definitely think micro-blogging has a huge future on the net. Shorter, more frequent messages eliminate thinking and time restraints. My take is that we are seeing a divergence in the blogosphere. I posted my thoughts here:
http://www.mappingtheweb.com/2007/07/16/divergence-blogs/
Let me know what you think.
Cheers,
Aidan
http://www.MappingTheWeb.com
Outstanding post!
p.s: Graphic is really nice