social media

There are several reasons why the print editions of newspapers and magazines will continue for a while longer in there current forms before evolving into something new to survive alongside the increasingly dominent internet and mobile content networks.

But the serendipity argument isn’t one of them, despite the fact it’s so often wheeled out. Unfortunately, when you spend some time thinking about it, it becomes clear that the argument is based on a load of old cobblers.

The argument is that by reading a newspaper or magazine you’ll find things you didn’t realise you would enjoy reading or needed to know.

Which is true.

But the flipside of using this argument as a justification for print publications is that using the internet/mobile to find content will only give you exactly what you want, the majority of the time.

Which isn’t true.

It’s a reasonable assertion if you only consider search as the mechanism for finding content on the internet/mobile.  Given a reasonably accurate search string, Google et al will generally give me a reasonably accurate list of returns for the thing I want.

But I don’t just use search. In fact, I’m using it less and less.

The assertion falls down as soon as you use any social tools for the simple reason that humans are not powered by algorithms. Despite the reasonable assumption that the majority of people will share content because it is relevant/appropriate to the recipient, the judgement of relevance/appropriateness is a subjective one on behalf of the sender – which means you can end up with all sorts of stuff.

And that’s only the active senders – now add in the network that shares links on social networks as a broadcast because they found it interesting, and someone in their network might be interested, but they don’t know who, or can’t be bothered to target it individually.

Then add in the lucky dips of social bookmarking tools, RSS feeds, and the entire linking ecosystem.

And it’s always been the case offline:

Think about birthdays and Christmas. Close family and friends might send you incredibly relevant, thoughtful presents, but as the distance grows between you and the sender, the random factor increases exponentially, so you can end up with all sorts of good and bad presents.

That’s the random discovery of things you never knew you’d like, by your network – not by a brand of ‘taste makers’ and distributed by a publication.

And it means basing your survival on the following assumptions:

1. People will have the time and desire for something outside of their interests when there’s a huge abundance of highly relevant material taking up their limited time.

2. People will want something outside of their interests which hasn’t be supplied by friends, family, colleagues, acquintances, or the Stumble! button.

3. Anyone who enjoys this discovery will find it engaging enough to pay before discovering whether or not it’s worthwhile, and will then find it enjoyable enough to keep paying, and perhaps engage with the surrounding monetisation – usually advertising.

Really?

There is a future for providing services which allow for assisted discovery of content – whether by human means or computers (e.g ‘related items’ or ‘things you might like’). But the days of being able to charge purely for those services are rapidly disapearing.