I just read City Brights blogger Sara Granger's post on "What's next for media" and with interest as I wanted to know what the Women's Leadership Conference panel she was on was saying about gaining revenue from media. Unfortunately, there was nothing about how one makes money from media, like the video discussion I had with my friend Sarah Austin:
But what I have gathered in my reading and talking to people about the future of media is the amazing fragmentation there is. It seems that subgroup after subgroup is talking about how to "do" New Media, but only within and with their organizations and networks; not across different groups. In the San Francisco Bay Area there has never been a full, total, convention on this topic that was for everyone. Instead, the tech people talk to each other. Women talk to women. Minorities talk to each other. Sports marketers talk to sports marketers.
That's the problem. the best New Media model - one that calls for vast organizations of people working together to produce timely content to capture a window, a moment, in time when it's in demand - has not yet been built.
To the extent people of different groups can join together, ad dollars will not be split between media as much. But that's a pipe dream because with more blogs, video blogs, and now mobile blogging, there's more media in demand of ad dollars. Revenue from that source will shift from one hot item to the other, from organization to organization, further flattening the average revenue gain per group.
That's the future. More media but fewer revenue dollars per platform. The smart players will consolidate, but to do so means overcoming amazing cultural differences and divides.
Stay tuned.
