ScatterBrain

That’s Social with a capital ‘S’. You know, the type that everyone’s talking about and seems to be synonymous with what people are saying is ‘the future of media’.

Case in point: I attended my first Toronto Girl Geek Dinner last night. I say ‘first’ because it won’t be my last, I really enjoyed it. However, I didn’t love the conversation that took place. The event consisted of a panel of industry veterans talking about ‘the future of media’. There was an assumption among them, as well as in the room, that this implied Social Media. Almost the entire conversation revolved around Twitter. And when the conversation wasn’t about Twitter, it was about how the education system can do a better job educating students on the digital space i.e. Twitter (ok, to be fair, Blogs were also mentioned).

Twitter (and other Social Media) are simply not the future of media. I repeat – Social Media is not the future of media. Why? For a few reasons. For one, Social Media, by it’s nature, requires investment on the part of users. Users can only be active in so many ‘Social Media’ sites before they hit overload. I think Social Media is a tool that overrides our whole media experience, not media in and of itself.

More importantly, Social Media is not the future of media because (capital S) Social Media – as we know it today – isn’t a business.

The business of Traditional Media is Dying
At this point, pretty much everyone agrees that Traditional Media (print, radio, TV) models are broken. And the reason is because ‘Display Advertising’ isn’t working. As consumers and as an audience, we’re just getting way too good at blocking out noise. I like to call this ‘interruption marketing’ ala Seth Godin. Take these Traditional Media models online and they’re even less effective. I could go on about this, but I’ll save it for another post. The point is – it’s agreed that Traditional Media models are broken because it’s easy to foresee the death of their revenue models.

The business of Social Media was never born
Now let’s look at Social Media. Let’s look at Twitter. With no business model at all. It’s success is purely defined by it’s User base – a VERY LARGE group who is questionably engaged and attentive. Let’s look at Facebook – at least they have a business model… One that only works when a VERY LARGE group of people use the service (targeted display ads, which are questionably effective). Actually, in Facebook’s case, it’s probably their free services which are of most value to advertiers/marketers, and it’s not Facebook that’s making the money there – it’s the ad agencies who are able to command six-figure rates in order to customize a FREE PRODUCT.

It’s interesting – we’re so quick to dismiss the future of Traditional Media because of the declining revenues associated with its revenue model. However, it seems like everyone (at least, everyone at the event last night) is so quick to accept the future of Media as being Social Media, in spite of its absence of any legitimate proof of an attainable/viable business model/absence of business model, in many cases.

So what is the future of media?

Regardless of it’s shape, it’s based on a successful and attainable business model for more than just the giants (i.e. Facebook, Google).

Simply, media can’t survive if it doesn’t produce revenue.

But there’s still opportunity for Ad supported models. Just not in the way we see them today. The future of media will be about finding ways to engage your audience with your advertisers in a way that’s useful to everyone (in contrast to the Traditional model, where advertisements are really just useful to the advertiser). My favourite line these days is ‘It’s about integration, not interruption’. Finding a way to be there when people are looking for you, rather than interrupt people when they’re trying to do something else (chat with their friends on Facebook, watch a video on YouTube).

This is why I’m so passionate about what we’ve done with TalentEgg.

TalentEgg is a business – it’s not social media. It leverages technology to provide a service. And really, it’s ad supported. Our business model is based on recruitment advertising. Except it has a little twist, because the ads ARE the content. Our audience comes to our site for the purpose of interacting with our advertisers. And the results show in terms of engagement and every other metric you want to throw at me.

This wasn’t my idea – it’s been going on in the UK for almost 10 years. More people should be doing this. There’s more value to advertisers, there’s more value for users, and there’s more revenue for media companies. Ultimately, this combo is the future of media.