PW2 Web Blog

Thriv’Able Thursday (I): Mixing Media

Contributed by Rick DeVan on March 4, 2010 at 5:00 am ET

Resource: Water-Cooler Effect: Internet Can Be TV’s Friend from NYTimes.com

Blogs and social Web sites like Facebook and Twitter enable an online water-cooler conversation, encouraging people to split their time between the computer screen and the big-screen TV.

Resource: The social Web is a source of news for many, study finds from LATimes.com

According to Pew, which surveyed more than 2,200 adults between December and January, 92% of Americans use multiple platforms to find their news. In fact, 46% say they go to four to six different media platforms, including TV, newspapers and the Web, to see what’s happening.

Often, our first exposure to a breaking news story is now the Trending Topics section of Twitter or a friend’s Facebook page or blog. Really, though, this is just a different form of delivery. How many times have you called a friend or family member, or been called, about a breaking new story?

It’s not new to use different information tools at once or over the course of a day or week. Television, radio, newspapers, and magazines provide different formats for receiving information depending on the circumstances. Our latest tools are just an extension of these.

Will the different methods of delivery co-exist or morph into each other? I think the answer may be “both”.

At the heart of it, though, is not the form of delivery but the quality of the content. In the Web business we hear “Content, content, content”. Maybe it should be “Quality, quality, quality”.

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Filed under Life, Work, and Society, Social Media, Thrivability

Tags used: Facebook, Internet, Television, Twitter —

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