Here is a good essay written by a daily newspaper reader who recently canceled her subscription of 37 years. In her life the value of the newspaper has declined to a point where it no longer has a useful role. It is a great example of how a stale media became a victim of cultural change.

I have no time to read in the morning anyway. I have to get to work. I have to load the dishwasher, feed the cats, get the bills together to mail. The Today Show can chatter away in the background while I’m running around and let me know if there’s a terrorist attack before I get on the interstate.

There is one definite outcome from the YouTube acquisition: The collision of modern consumer media consumption and the content business models of the past century quickens. YouTube was a startup who would never been able to go to court for copyright infringements but Google could. Every media company has been rather waiting to see what happens with YouTube than sue and bankrupt them. We can expect several media companies who have difficulties of understanding where the new media consumer behaviour is headed to or is looking into creating profit content regardless of destructive nature of such actions.

Media companies should take advantage and embrace the changing culture and recreate business for the content they have created over the years. The alternative is to let that content slip into obscurity with no revenues. If content is the King then the discussion about the content must be the God. Consumers will find new ways to dig and be a fan or they will find new content. It is best be loved and shared than being unwanted.

UPDATE: It has started here and here.

As social interaction is becoming more commonly accepted through online activities by more people there it has also become more urgent for individuals to find appropriate tools that can define their personal identity. In the physical world we have numerous choices for building up identity through appearance, behaviour and how we show support to popular art or seek bond with brand icons that tell a great deal to strangers about our life style. The similar tools are sorely lacking when interacting online. Examples of identity use is promoting a personal blog address or a Myspace page with correspondence on message boards or chat profiles.

For marketers and the media the lack of a social media strategy is a lost opportunity as the brand association will either be limited or take place online without interaction with the customers. Both the brands and the media are in a position to create spaces for the customers to engage the public with unique value when compared to generic social media sites. The only reason why the enthusiastic customers gather on generic sites is the lack of space that creates value in context.

The generic sites typically host fan communities but they exist mostly to support digital identity of users. By joining these community groups individuals communicate their preferences within popular culture. You are bound to find the same communities register on multiple sites simply because the same people associate their digital identity across the online space. But how loyal are these people to these sites that act as a facilitator only? What if the methods of refining identity would converge by adopting new social conventions? Myspace pages are becoming the standard choice for digital identity. If media wants to take part in the online they need to act before such conventions are adopted in their specific local markets.

The entertainment industry is taking steps towards understanding the value of the online digital media and communities. Recently ABC (owned by Disney) announced the availability of free viewing of their hit shows ‘Lost’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’ starting May 1st. They clearly understand the value of creating media viruses and allowing people to freely express their love for the content online in numerous fan blogs and discussion forums.

It did not take long before Fox followed by announcing a similar move. Apparently such popular shows as 24 and American Idol become available for free viewing.

BBC made announcements for total revamping of their online presence to accommodate Social Media on their web site. As a part of the revamp they are also making content available online and welcoming their viewers and listeners to participate with the content and the brands by rolling out what seems like a BBC flavored MySpace.

On top of this, you can read what Disney executives think of the online culture at the Milken Institute’s Ninth Annual Global Conference.

“I think anyone who loses is anyone who tries to protect their traditional business. I think you’ve got a bad 10 to 15 years ahead of you if you try to do that,” Chernin told conference-goers.

Lawrence Lessig has posted a video presentation of his talk at New York Public Library that describes very accurately how the new copyright laws are killing the 21st century creativity before it gets a chance to discover the full potential. For the first time in the history technology is being forced to match the law. In tradition the law has always been written after we’ve fully understood the potential.

How do we better understand how developing technology is changing culture? Less lawyers, lobbyists and lessigs. We need the artists to tell us how they create and stop writing laws that regulate creativity.

Chevrolet rolled out a marketing campaign where they invited visitors of their web site to create their own ad for their cars. Since shooting actual ads takes a lot of work and skills it was limited to selecting segments of video and music and adding your own text. Perhaps not very surprisingly large portion of these ads were either humorous or created by people who dislike the enormous gas guzzlers featured on the site.

This reminds me of another less ingenious idea ‘Wikitorial’ from LA Times. People were invited to anonymously write the newspapers editorial online that soon got filled with porn and obsceneties.

These concepts are doomed to failure when they are created from the marketer perspective. A lot of assumptions are made that your brand or product has so large and religious following that it would stifle basic human nature of poking immature fun at the subject. Better judgment and understanding of how people perceive your product is needed and if you uncertain just assume there are a lot of people who won’t miss out the opportunity for a good prank. Having a good product and great brand experience does help but you still have to deal with unexpected creativity.

Most important factor is remembering it is about people. Having such a product centric approach is simply traditional marketing pretending to be sincere love from customers. Marketers rarely get this since they have been doing their business that way for past 100 years. Social Media is not about force feeding the marketing spam in a new way. It should be about people and their needs, creativity and above all their fun. The value of it all comes down to having a great brand experience without the product focus.

Try understanding your own brand. What does it represent for customers? Why should they care? Who are they? If you are in the business of ski equipment allow people to be creative in something that actually matters to them. The fun ski trip story, picture and video might be worth sharing with friends.

Here is an article by Michael Geist who takes a look at Canadian Record Industry Association’s report on p2p music sharing. Could it be p2p actually works as a word of mouth marketing tool for music? People who download illegal copies of music are the same people who end up buying the actual CDs.

CRIA’s own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders’ computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services.

Joseph Jaffe shares a presentation he gave at Boston Ad Club Symposium which I feel is relevant reading for anyone in the business of advertising and marketing. Check out David Weinberger’s notes as well. For those who work in media that gets their income from advertising this is even more relevant. As the 30 second spot is becoming less and less paid attention to marketers have to start finding other ways to do their job. Those ways may not rely entirely on traditional advertising which means the media has to be able to offer appealing alternatives to stay in the business.

Broadcast and print media not only should reconsider their business model but also understand why people are reading or watching their content. For most media the really important factor is how the brand they represent connects people. Many people could go get their news at numerous other sources but often select a source that represents values they like to identify with.

Watching shows on television is not valuable only for the simple entertainment value. For most people the entertainment has a strong social aspect to it. It’s the media virus. It’s the water cooler effect. Media needs to provide value to the readers and their other customers – the advertisers and marketers – will follow.

Red Tail Media will create new participatory cross-media formats together with leading broadcasting and digital media on the finnish market. These formats allow MTV3 and SubTV viewers build online identity, interact and participate with friends, broadcast and online content and the brands.

Danah Boyd’s study Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace is good reading for anyone trying to understand the appeal of the digital communication. What I find interesting here is what the large scale might add to niches and subcultures that already exist. More people now have an extended reach and get exposed to thoughts and ideas they can identify with.

Youth are not creating digital publics to scare parents – they are doing so because they need youth space, a place to gather and see and be seen by peers. Publics are critical to the coming-of-age narrative because they provide the framework for building cultural knowledge. Restricting youth to controlled spaces typically results in rebellion and the destruction of trust. Of course, for a parent, letting go and allowing youth to navigate risks is terrifying. Unfortunately, it’s necessary for youth to mature.

What we’re seeing right now is a cultural shift due to the introduction of a new medium and the emergence of greater restrictions on youth mobility and access. The long-term implications of this are unclear. Regardless of what will come, youth are doing what they’ve always done – repurposing new mediums in order to learn about social culture.

Technology will have an effect because the underlying architecture and the opportunities afforded are fundamentally different. But youth will continue to work out identity issues, hang out and create spaces that are their own, regardless of what technologies are available.

The findings suggest that youth behaviour has not really changed. Youth has always behaved this way but they are simply now finding new forms of interaction and building identities. This is not limited to youth anymore as people who have accustomed to digital forms of interaction will continue doing so as they grow up.

The social media has always existed in different forms throughout the ages. The digital forms of human communication and interaction just provides wider reach for individuals who are no longer limited to interacting with their peers in the real world. In a sense the people now have more choice of what they identify with and this leads to ‘The Long Tail’ effect on subcultures. The niches may always have been there but they are now much more approachable.