Another Industry Embraces Technology
While listening to my daily NPR stories I head one that really caught my attention. The subject, the changing face of traditional media. It was only last year that such large battles occurred with television networks about their shows being placed on the internet on sites like YouTube, but as DVRs and Tivos began to threaten ad revenues, it finally occurred to them to embrace this new medium and new sites like Hulu (funded by NBC Universal) have networks voluntarily putting up their shows on the web and only using 15 sec ads once or twice for a 30 min show. But this is not the focus on this post. What caught my attention was an idea called a wovel.
In todays web based society, much of our time is spent reading websites, blogs, emails, with little time left to sit back and read a paper and ink book. But what makes this interesting to me is that embraces the user interaction of the internet. Every monday a chapter is posted on their website, but when you get done reading it you can then choose from a few options on how you would like to see the plot go. The one with the most votes wins and from Thurs - Sunday authors write a new chapter based on how the audience voted.
I am so happy to finally see all these industries that were once threatened by advancement in technology have now begun to get creative in the ways they offer their services.
3 Comments
January 12, 2009 at 1:01 AM
That sounds like a new generation of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, except you can't cheat and read all of the endings first! I definitely had a few of the Goosebumps ones growing up.
January 13, 2009 at 8:55 PM
Companies are getting creative, but still completely out of the loop. Take Live Nation for example. LN has spent the past year inking 360's with established artist, but hasn't put one cent, or brain cell into figuring out how to develop or break new artists. Which is mind boggling, because the live music industry is in the hands of future acts, not the old.
So what does LN do??? Concentrate on physical product in an industry and an economy that can't support physical anymore. They sign a deal with Blockbuster. When was the last time anyone has been to a Blockbuster to rent a movie???? They really think that the 50 year olds that still go to Blockbuster are going to want to buy Kanye tickets when they rent The Notebook!! If LN was smart and innovative they would have hooked up with Hulu, Xbox Live, Youtube to sell concert tickets. They would have gone where the consumers actually go, because you are right, most of our time is now spent online.
So, I agree with you Grant that companies are expanding their wings so to say when in comes to technology. But, unfortunately, most are still stuck in the stone age....
January 13, 2009 at 11:30 PM
Every episode of It's always sunny in Philadelphia I've watched on Hulu. TV I believe is declining though I don't know the exact stats. Soon, instead of TV's folks are going to have large computer monitors.
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