This post is inspired by a presentation by Adobe’s Anup Murarka at South by South West. He talked about the future of Adobe Flash for the mobile platform. I’ll cover some of the highlights from Anup’s presentation but will put the topic in a different perspective, namely that of the mobile network operators.

Currently, 98% of desktop computers support Flash, but not even a tenth of mobile phones has Flash support. This is expected to change dramatically over the next couple of years though.

Smartphones are getting better, not only in capabilities, but also in hardware quality. Similar to desktops, notebooks and netbooks, a growing number of smartphones will also boast multi-core processors and graphics processors that can serve up rich media.

Adobe’s new version of Flash—version 10.1—will be cross-platform. Windows, Linux, Mac OS, Symbian, BlackBerry, Android, you name it—all will be supported by Flash 10.1.

Adobe expects to get around 10% of mobile penetration for Flash this year, but expect to grow that number to over 50% by the end of 2012.

This outlook is great for web development as it becomes possible to create and distribute rich media consistently across multiple operating systems on both mobile and desktop platforms.

Hardware manufacturers and consumers are looking to warm up to a richer mobile experience, but are network providers? With cable and telephony providers, there are many content providers (like Hulu and Netflix) that piggy-back on the infrastructure and services that are delivered by the network providers (ISPs).

Once these and other content providers expand to the mobile arena, mobile network operators will be in a similar situation. The traditional business model is already being disrupted by VoIP (applications) and WiMAX. Rich media and its content/service providers pose a threat to mobile network operators in the sense that (1) they cut into the mobile network operators’ value proposition and (2) widespread consumption of rich media could overload the network.

At the same time, the rise of rich media also presents opportunities for mobile network operators to add value to their service offering. On the one hand, mobile network operators can learn a lot from what is happening to the television landscape. On the other hand, I’d also like to see them proactively seek out partnerships that eventually add value to customers.

What do you say?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the “new” media cycle. Today, the Fundamentals series continues with the “new” media landscape. The proliferation of social media has caused changes in the traditional media landscape. In this post, I’ll talk about what I think the impact has been and what the “new” media landscape looks like.

Over 20 years ago, the Berlin wall fell. This news was mostly followed on mainstream media, i.e. television, radio and print media. In 2001, when the 9/11 disaster took place, a lot of the news about the event was also followed through mainstream media but the effect of technology was already more visible as people were talking about it on emerging media such as bulletin boards, email and instant messaging. Moreover, part of the coverage was provided by consumers themselves through photos and videos shot on mobile phones. In 2009, the effect of technology and social media was more evident. One day after the death of Michael Jackson, search engines and social sites—such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs—were inundated with news, mentions and opinions as people were looking for information or looking to express their feelings.

Social media has made news travel faster, wider and in more diverse ways. The increased diversity with which people create and consume news has had its effect on mainstream media. Whereas print media and DVDs are in decline, social media is on the rise. Newspapers in particular have been hit hard. In the US, the total estimated revenue for 2009 had almost halved compared to 2005.

Nevertheless, the rise of social media should be considered a positive for media organizations. News interest has not changed, but the way news is consumed has. Fewer people dedicate a certain amount of time to sit down and read the newspaper, because the information is now part of the continuous information stream that also contains updates from work and friends. Social media has made news consumption an integral part of people’s daily lives.

This is the basis for the “new” media landscape. It’s not about the technology itself. It’s about the characteristics related to people’s behavior. I think these characteristics are:

• Innovation With each cycle of innovation, barriers to entry are lowered and the number of possibilities has increased.
• Convergence Consumers are moving into the territory of established content publishers and vice versa. In addition, content is being reproduced, remixed/mashed up or responded to.
• Ubiquity Technology and the consumption of information has become an integrated part of people’s lives.
• Relevance The new media landscape makes it possible for consumers to acquire or (re)create the content that is most relevant and thus valuable to them.
• Global Network The new media landscape is interconnected on various relationship levels, ranging from intimate to mass-scale, from one-to-one to many-to-many and from local to global. Natural borders form little obstruction to the flow of information and people—media organizations and consumers—can control the extent of the flow.
• Contemporary The speed and extent of technological advancement have been adopted by the current generation of young people. However, their skills, experience and level of media usage differs greatly from the previous generation(s). This trend is likely to continue with each generation becoming craftier and savvier.
• Disparity The technological developments have created an environment that is not necessarily equal to all. Those who participate in it can develop knowledge, authority and power. On the other hand, those who do not have the knowledge, skills or resources to access the technology are left behind or, worse yet, rendered invisible.

It is up to media organizations to find their way into the consumer’s information stream, not the other way around. To achieve that, media organizations need to join the social media movement to be relevant again.

Your contributions are, as always, welcome.

This post is a response to a post by Lauren Fernandez where she argues that there’s no point in having “traditional media” and “new media” square off against each other. I agree, but this would be my shortest blog post ever if I kept it at that.

Instead, I’d like to focus on what the true relation is between various media. First of all, I don’t want to distinguish between “traditional media” and “new media” much–and as Lauren pointed out, they influence each other–but there are some clarifications needed that help set up the framework:

• Traditional Media Television, radio, newspapers, et cetera. The relationship between these media and their consumers is mostly uni-directional, they send, you receive.
• New Media Blogs, social bookmarking sites, video websites, et cetera. The relationship between these media and their consumers is mostly bi-directional or even multi-directional. They send, you reply or you send and they publish.
• Reach This is not significantly different between either “traditional media” or “new media”. Whether it’s circulation, RSS readers, followers, fans or ratings, media has reach.
• Distribution This is a similar story to Reach, where the first-degree consumers are able to distribute the content from the media source to second-degree consumers–and second-degree consumers can pass it on to third-degree consumers and so on–regardless of which type of media we’re talking about. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a retweet, an email forward or a mention of “Have you read today’s headline?” or “Did you watch the 8 o’clock news last night?” at the water cooler.

As a result, I’d like to argue that media contribution and dissemination doesn’t rely on a directional pattern but more of a cyclical pattern consisting of four stages:

1. Media Source This is the original piece of content.
2. Media Consumption The content is consumed by first-degree consumers.
3. Media Distribution The content is spread.
4. Media Community This consists of everyone involved in the content creation process, e.g. journalists, news organizations, bloggers and PR professionals. Here they collect news, data, ideas/inspiration and feedback that they need to produce new content.

The image below illustrates this “new” media cycle:

The media cycle doesn’t make a distinction between “traditional media” and “new media”, because it doesn’t have to. And because it shouldn’t. And–I agree with Lauren–neither should the Media Community. The Media Community should be free and sensible about selecting and using which tools give them the best chance to succeed in each phase of the cycle.

I leave the consumption, distribution, feedback and other further creation to you.

To me, it looks an awful lot like the crackdown procedures of the MPAA and the RIAA on the movie and music piracy scene. It does signal the perilous situation in which these organizations and their business models are. They are looking to make money from a changed world in a way that only worked in the old world. They’re trying to change the world instead of changing their business model.

Copying of content, piracy of audio and video, and music services on the web are not bad. It’s even a form of flattery. Apparently, it’s worth using and consuming. Attacking these practices and services is essentially also attacking the one they should be aiming for, consumption. They’re running their business into the ground while under the impression that they’re saving it.

Protecting the future by killing the now doesn’t work.

Traditional media, such as TV stations and print publishers, are seeing consumption decline as consumers choose consume their content from a more diverse set of channels. Traditional media agencies, such as advertising agencies and PR agencies, are scrambling to keep up and justify their value/existence/involvement. Sometimes, the old business models won’t work in this new day and age, sometimes the talent isn’t available to deal with new media forms or the current regime is reluctant to change or in denial about the consequences. None of these are good reasons to continue “business as usual”. The world is changing and it requires a new approach.

Start preparing yourself to cope with the evolution of content.