All those paper, ink and distribution costs saved by digital apps disappear before they reach a magazine publisher’s pocket, according to David Link, creative director of a design firm, The Wonderfactory. Jeff Bercovi, writing for Forbes, reports that Link told him the problem is bandwidth. And, even when bandwidth costs come down, app-based publishing, like print, will be a cost-heavy, money-losing proposition, Bercovi predicts. That’s because app-publishers are already teaching consumers to expect digital magazines to be rich with photos, videos and interactive graphics, for free!
And, if you are asking what role Facebook, Twitter, Google, You Tube, XBox, and the like will play in the communications chain that delivers your content, Joe Marchese, writing for Online Spin, says they will become a new Media OS layer – the interface through which people create, discover, consume and purchase media. . . . Or, your content could become part of a videogame. (like “Car Dreams” “Truck Luck” etc.) Media Digest reports that Ian Bogost, writing for New Scientist, suggests that “the best journalism of the future might not be read, but played.” Bogost claims that videogames ability to “simulate rather than describe the world…reinvent journalistic principles, through their design, using current events, infographics, puzzles, community action, and more.” He points to Burger Tycoon and Escapade from Woomera as examples of exposing corruption and investigative journalism and argues that videogames amplify “the how instead of the who…offering models of how the world works and how it might be improved, rather than skin-deep stories about what ails it.”
As fast as Facebook has grown and is growing, generating one-fourth of all of the Web pages viewed in the U.S., it is still only one-fifth the size of our largest TV network. Dave Morgan reports in Mediapost News, that CBS viewers spent 210 billion minutes in front of the screen in October while Facebook visitors spent just 42 billion minutes on the site during the same month. . . . . A new browser is closer to making a dire prediction in last month’s AWCom Newsletter come true. Christened “RockMelt,” the browser offers an Orwellian prospect of mashing Search and Social capabilities. For example, readers could be funneled news based on their and their friends’ likes and dislikes. They would not know it is from an echo chamber designed by Facebook’s feed algorithm.
