Blog
Forum
StatusComparing Print, Television vs the Internet
Looking at growing websites like digg or new start-ups like Friendfeed, it struck me how active those communities can be, with their users apparently plugged in 24 hours a day, and submitting a never-ending flow of information, and users challenging each other to bring new witty comments or content. Trend-setters have dubbed these websites as the future of the Internet, so I have taken the opportunity to analyze why these services are growing and generating interest from their users.
We can see at the same time legacy media empires like the Tribune or the New York Times having trouble converting their business models to the Internet. They are converting their content to a web format, but they have trouble getting enough revenues comparable to their print business.
Here’s a comparison of different media, their format, and their uniqueness:
| Television | The Internet | ||
| Engagement | High engagement. Readers spend hours & possibly days to read a piece written by an author | Very low | Medium, users are welcomed to create an account and personalize their experience |
| Practicality | Very High Practicality. Paper is the most practical medium, built to last for centuries. It doesn’t need batteries, has no compatibility problems, and can be brought by anyone anywhere | Very low | Medium. the Internet can be accessed on a variety of devices, with a variety of formats (audio, video, text, multimedia etc.). However, it doesn’t have the practical advantages of the paper |
| Ease of Consumption | Difficult. Newspapers and books need significant investments from their readers | Very easy use of consumption. Viewing is passive and requires no efforts | Easy. |
| Interactivity | none | very low | Very high interactivity, with complete personalization of content |
| Speed | Print does not compete on speed, with magazines or books referring to a month-old or year-old stories | fast | Real-time delivery of information |
| Size of Information | Sizeable amount of information | Medium amount of information. | Very Small. Tidbits of informations such as blog posts, tweets, activity stream are highly visible on the Internet |
| Collaboration | None | None. | Very High Collaboration. Users can communicate, collaborate and work with each other. Think about emails, forums, or “social media” |
| Business models | Sales of a physical object. Business models are known. | Advertising, or pay-per-view | Advertising, hosting, SaaS, and other models yet to be discovered |
| Barriers of Entry | medium to high | very high | Low Barriers of entry |
As you can see, each kind of medium has its pros and cons. The strength of print (newspapers and books), and television are known, it’s just now that we are completely aware of the advantages of the Internet. Summed up from the table, the Internet has very high interactivity, real-time delivery of information, small tidbits of information, very high collaboration potential, and low barriers of entry. One aspect of the Internet that is still being dealt with is the design of sustainable business models.
In practice, Wordpress, friendfeed, youtube, facebook, RSS feeds are direct implementations of the characteristics described in the previous paragraph. This is what the internet is for, and ultimately, we will see more of these services in the future. If you are running a website, you should have a close look at those, and try to get advantage of the Internet’s uniqueness.
In the same way that web site designers must spend time to design sites which take advantage of the Internet’s uniqueness and its strengths, web entrepreneurs should also take the time to design new business models, native to the web, which take advantage of the the Internet’s strenths.
(2 votes)Comments
Leave a comment
Promotion
Highest Rated
- iWeb again in the top 10 ten of most reliable networks in November
- Top 9 Reasons why Web Hosting is Awesome
- An overview of RAID technology
- Who has the coolest costume?
- 4 Tools to Create A Website Quickly & Easily
- Season’s Greetings from iWeb!
- Securing Wordpress against hackers and bots
- Beware of the squirrel!
- iWeb on site for HostingCon 2009 in Washington DC
- iWeb Time Contest
January 5th, 2009 1:31 pm
Great post. I will read your posts frequently. Added you to the RSS reader.
January 5th, 2009 2:14 pm
Glad you liked it, Jeff
January 5th, 2009 10:22 pm
[...] Comparison between print, television and the Internet at the iWeb blog [...]
January 6th, 2009 1:13 pm
[...] Many of you will say, well it depends of the project it self and the public target. It’s true… Still, it’s always very important to know what are the forces of those media. iWeb, my hosting company released a good article on this subject. [...]
January 7th, 2009 4:17 pm
It is interesting to note that print and television media are paying big sums for websites that have a synegies and high volume of traffic or membership. For example, discovery channel have payed recently $10 million for treehugger and $20 million for a similar site.
I think it is a big learning curve for traditional media to enter the web and not fully understand how it operates. Take Digg for example. This site would have 10 million + members, but do a search and you will find it is considered nothing more than a spam site. Most of the articles posted on these type of sites are webmasters trying to promote their own websites and have multiple memberships in the 100’s to digg their article and get traffic. You can even purchase scripts to ‘Digg’ your article hundreds of times. The higher the number of ‘Diggs’, the bigger chance of making Digg’s front page and getting a burst of traffic.
I can see large media operators getting their fingers burnt in the future, but eventually the web will be owned by the likes of them.
January 7th, 2009 9:48 pm
Richard, great point, the transition from print/tv to the Internet is not smooth at all.
You mention discovery channel, the New York Times is also one of the traditional media houses who cannot convert their business models to the web. Many analysts wrote that a media power house should buy digg, and in essence buy traffic, but as you say, the value of digg in itself is not clear, and that’s probably why the website didn’t find any acquirer so far.
And also for the first time in years, Internet advertising growth has stopped … which means the traditional media need to re-invent the business model, bring new kinds of interactions and new kinds of values to their readers.
This is an area I am following, so stick around, there will be an update soon.
September 18th, 2009 9:35 am
[...] like print media has suffered from the Internet and its social media platforms, do you agree with me that television is suffering [...]
November 11th, 2009 11:24 am
Question: Have you ever used the Internebs before? I’m sorry, but when I read someone scoring the Internet “medium” for Engagement and “low” for Size of Information, it makes me think that your use of the Internet is very limited. If you want to see “engagement” check out some popular message boards where users interact with each other for years. If you want to see ’size of information”, I invite you to view Amazon or Google books.
Web/internet marketing is far superior to print or tv, and will push them to obsolescence in time.