Blog: Barry Devlin

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The changing face of the media

I'll have the privelege of being part of IBM's Global Innovation Outlook (GIO) 3.0 project this year when I get to attend the deep dive on Nedia and Content in Helsinki in the middle of this month. I'll report back after that, but as I prepare for the session, I've been doing a little bit of reading about the topic, and wanted to share with you my amazement at the changes that are going on in that business. There's an excellent point-of-view from the IBM Institute of Business Value - "Navigating the Media Divide" that's well worth a read.

The increasing role of Joe or Jane Citizen in producing content is proving to be very disruptive to the traditional media businesses, and reflects a deep change in the relationship between "consumers" and "producers" in today's society. Who would have thought only a few years ago that people would choose to view personally-produced videos over professional ones. Yet that's what appears to be happening with the growing populatity of YouTube. The same shift can be seen in Wikipedia - an encyclopedia written by non-professionals, in Amazon with every Joe Bloggs writing book reviews; not to mention the explosion of blogging itself.

I'm only posing the question here, because I don't have the answer, but how is this power shift going to play out in other business areas, in govenrment and in education? What are the implications for the way software develops? And what's the knock-on effect on business intelligence when everybody wants to have their say on the business trends?

I'd say we're in for a sea-change. Hold tight to the rails. And follow the blog on the GIO website above to see how the thinking is developing.

Posted by Barry Devlin on Friday, 13 April 2007 | Permalink