Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

Guest Post by Jessica Fyles

Technology and social media enables us to be more connected than ever before in our human history.  It’s pretty amazing how we can communicate with multiple people at once through a multitude tools.  On the iPhone alone one can talk, text, Tweet, and Facebook virtually all at the same time (and hopefully not while driving).  I worry, with the abundance in technology and online social interaction, that we are losing our vital ability to connect human to human.

Empathy is our capability to share our and understand other people’s emotions and feelings.  “Put yourself in their shoes” or “use your words” are phrases children often hear from parents who are teaching them empathy.  It’s very difficult to have a relationship with another person if we (or they) are unable to express emotions or understand what the other person is feeling.  We’ve all known people who can’t express themselves very well, if at all, and how challenging it is to get along with them.

Much of what I see going on in the world today leads me to believe we are becoming less empathetic as a society.  Children who kill their parents or classmates. Workplace violence. Road rage and aggressive driving.  Bullying. Discrimination.  The inability of our government leaders to work together on behalf of the American people. The personal attacks in negative political campaigns.  Legislation that limits the rights and personal freedoms of another human being. The disrespectful and violent language used by media. And the list goes on.

Technology and social media may not be primarily to blame for violence or partisanship, but they are contributing factors.  I wonder how this world would be different if all of us could use our words to express our feelings or if we put ourselves in other people’s shoes more often.  Maybe a child wouldn’t bring a gun to school to express their anger.  Maybe our government leaders would be more open to compromise to do what is best for all citizens.

We learn and practice empathy by interacting with other human beings in person.  All of the five senses are engaged when doing so.  Instead, we are spending more time interacting with a screen.  A January 2012 report from market research firm comScore found that the average American spends 36 hours on the internet per week.  Nielsen.com reports “Americans spend more than 33 hours per week watching video across the screens,” according to their latest Nielsen Cross-Platform Report. Undocumented sources on the web say we Americans spend an average of 13 hours per week playing video games.  That’s a lot of screen time.

With us consuming so much screen time, there is a strong desire to learn empathy in our society.  An internet search will result in a multitude of school lesson plans, books, blogs and videos on the topic.  Oprah demonstrates and conveys empathy through her multimedia empire.  However, we need more examples and role models of empathy in our everyday lives.

The long-term effects of our technology and social media consumption, both good and bad, remain to be seen.   Both are probably best practiced, as with everything else in life, in moderation.

Protecting your mobile device from the elements is critical, especially for marketers glued to them.

I’m just like you, and my iPhone 4S probably wants to tap out like a beaten UFC fighter.

But boring, old cases don’t cut it for the fun professional on the go.

For the holidays this year, my wife got me the BEST cover for my phone – one that makes the phone look like a classic cassette tape! Yes, my iPhone now looks like a middle school mix tape! (See below)

What is your favorite phone cover?

For decades, the phone book was a staple of American households.

Need a carpenter? Look ‘em up!

Want a florist? Look ‘em up?

Like businesses that start with a lot of A’s? Won’t be hard to find those!

I remember being fascinated by the 10-pound tome of contact information for individuals and businesses.

As an adult, though, not so much.

Yesterday, I received the 2012 Yellow Pages at my doorstep.

My first reaction was “Why??”

I have a Google machine, I have a smartphone – I can look up anything whenever I want wherever I am. (Except during take-off and landing, of course.)

That’s why, I deduced, that the Yellow Pages were irrelevant.  Brilliant, right?

Wrong.

Our society has undergone a massive shift in the digital age. So radical is this shift, it takes us back to the earliest days of man.

We are now a crowd-sourced culture. It doesn’t matter what YOU want me to think about your business because my opinion of you will come from others.

“Hey, Sal! You know a good plumber?”

“Well, I know two crappy ones and one great one! Let me get you his number!”

The two plumbers Sal didn’t like don’t ever appear in your consideration set anymore, because Sal didn’t like them.

Instead of fierce independence that seemed to categorize the 1980s and 1990s, we now strongly rely on those we know to be our plugged-in community.

I’m sure there is a segment of the population that still uses the old-fashioned phone book every day for reasons other than table stability.

But the majority of us have crowd-sourced our Yellow Pages.

It’s official! The Internet is for porn!

The people that decide these things have decided that in addition to .com, .gov, .org and all the other dots in our world, there needs to be .xxx. For porn.

This completely backs-up the claim from the Broadway smash “Avenue Q” that the internet is for porn.

Or at least one section of it.

The .xxx domain is for all adult-oriented content, as a way of better organizing the internet.

It’s stupid.

Switching to the .xxx world is not mandatory. And even if were, who decides what’s .xxx vs. .com?

One benefit could be a reduction of spam, as .xxx will “verify” smutty content – but that won’t last long. Hmmm…bad choice of words.

Some could argue that there is a very negative connotation to having anyone “different” self-identify in a public way that could lead to persecution. I don’t want to fully equate this to the Nazis requiring Jews to wear gold stars on their clothes, but is it really all THAT different?

It isn’t a major logical leap to see .xxx sites targeted by lawmakers, shutting down legal business on the basis of “religious morals.” I’ll be honest, it’s been a long, long time since I perused sites that could be classified .xxx, but I can see the major implications in .xxx-ing them all.

But…as a parent, I think knowing where the Internet’s naughty bits are isn’t the worst thing ever.

What do you think? Is the .xxx domain a positive event in the online security world?

UPDATE: I just had a long chat with my friend Chuck Sapienza, Director of Programming for ESPN980.  He outlined the situation and this is my take:

ESPN980 is trying to pay the bills.  Media is fragmenting and getting a larger share, in order to charge more for ads, is very important.

Online listening, to put it mildly, doesn’t pay the bills.  So the station is attempting to make a move that will help generate revenue that will keep the programs on-air.

The problem isn’t with the station – it’s with the radio industry as a whole which has, to this point, given VERY little value to the online audience.  And advertisers like buying ads in local markets.  Sorry, Internet Listeners, you don’t count nearly as much as a listener in the station’s local market.  It sucks and it’s unfair…but there is no real alternative.

So instead of trashing the station and Chuck, let’s use this space to come up with solutions.  What’s your suggestion?

I spent a massive chunk of my career working in the sports and entertainment PR world before shifting into purely digital over the last few years.

What few people know is that upon college graduation, I weighed two job offers: one with a PR company and one with the entity that is now ESPN980 in Washington, DC.

Sports radio was – and still is – a passion of mine…just not something I want to do for a living.  I’ve got boxes full of tapes from my college broadcasting career, if you’re interested!

And over my sports PR career, I loved working with the folks at SportsTalk 980, which was purchased by Red Zebra Broadcasting and rebranded as ESPN980 a few years back.  Absolutely loved it.

Now, it pains me to see them delaying their podcasts by 24 hours, as discussed by Dan Steinberg’s Washington Post Sports Bog. As stated above, they HAVE to try something different.

The station’s director of programming, Chuck Sapienza (whom I’ve worked with and talked to countless times and really, really, really like and still do after our conversation today), cited the need to keep the focus on their core product – radio.  The radio station supports the podcasts, so everything should be done to protect it.

It appears to be a money decision, as anything that could increase live radio listening is a positive and anything that reduces live radio listening is a negative.  This is because radio stations set their billing rates by Arbitron ratings, that don’t count podcasts. Yes.  This is the heart of the matter.

That makes sense.

However, this is where the station industry needs to evolve.

We are in a media age where people want infotainment (and if sports radio isn’t infotainment, I don’t know what is) on-demand.  We want what we want when we want it, not a moment sooner or a moment later.  Let’s also remember that in the digital age, radio has gone from hyper-local to global.  Content rules all.

The station’s line-up features the nationally-popular Tony Kornheiser.  And people want to listen to Tony.

Thankfully, technology makes these demands completely realistic.

What the station appears to be doing is attempting to turn back time to a point where you HAD to listen to the radio live. True.  Because the podcasts, and ads generated from podcasts, aren’t paying the bills.

But those days are over.

People’s listening habits have irrevocably changed.

Delaying podcasts of popular shows won’t increase the audience.  People listen to podcasts to time-shift.  They are at work, meetings, appointments, vacations, whatever and CAN’T listen live.  Or people outside the media market tune-in because they just like your programming.  Downloading a podcast allows them to consume the programming you want them to consume at a time when they can consume it.

One would hope that a media outlet would find a way to capitalize on this advancement.  ESPN980 The radio industry, sadly, is just shunning it.

Here are just a few ways that a radio station could take advantage of podcasting:

- Sell more expensive ads on the web page where the podcasts can be downloaded.

- Have exclusive online-only ads. Thanks to federal guidelines, this doesn’t seem too feasible.

- Sell naming rights for the podcast.  (“The Joe Smith Podcast Presented by [Brand X]“)

- Set-up audio pre-rolls before popular podcasts begin. See above.

- Create a podcast-only branded segment heard at the end of the show.

My basic point is this: We are not going to get any LESS digital.  Radio stations will need to diversify their “core product” in order to survive.

Sadly, ESPN980  the radio industry seems to be thinking backwards instead of forwards.

When a new technology comes out, consumers tend to be somewhere along the spectrum between “really effin’ excited” and “really effin’ skeptical.”

Such is the case with the latest prettiest TV cool thing on the block, 3DTV.

I first encountered 3DTV a few years back at the Consumer Electronics Show and I was “really effin’ skeptical.”

The TVs required you to buy expensive glasses (which prevented big viewing parties), cable providers had limited options and the new sets were astronomically expensive.  Plus, I don’t really enjoy the 3D effect.  Maybe it’s the way my eyes perceive color, but it comes across as a jumbled mess.

This Memorial Day weekend, as my wife and I looked to upgrade from our 47-inch HD Sony Bravia when we move to our new house in a few weeks, we ventured over to The Big Screen Store in Ellicott City, MD.

Normally, I’m not in the business of plugging stores, but that was one of the best decisions we could have made.  The store manager, walked us through every detail of all the sets we were considering.

And he dropped this nugget on us:

Apparently, TV manufacturers miscalculated when positioning their line of 3DTVs in 2010.  They made the 3D feature the #1 thing to consider, when the consumer market was more skeptical than excited about it.  “Come get a new 3DTV!  They’re awesome!”

For 2011, they flipped the paradigm, putting the emphasis back on features the market wanted.  “Come get a new massive flat panel HDTV!  And it’s 3D-capable, if you want it.  No biggie.”  And in 2011, cnet estimates 3DTV sales will double. I don’t see that as a major coincidence.

This is a brilliant case study in brand positioning.

At the end of the day, an expensive new product must solve the customer’s problems for them to purchase it.  Because there is very little 3D content available, pushing that capability as the main feature seemed to backfire slightly.  I mean, in that cnet article linked above, they announced that 3DTVs are being adopted at a higher rate than HDTVs were, so they didn’t TOTALLY mess it up.

However, when they repositioned the TV as a top-line set for today that’s ready for the next generation of content, it suddenly becomes a much more attractive product.  Who doesn’t want to buy one TV today that’s ready for the next 5-7 years?

The positioning works and in just a few weeks, you can come see the giant shiny 65-inch Panasonic HDTV (ready for 3D, naturally, even though I’m still skeptical of it) in our new house.  Super Bowl party, anyone??