Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Internet killed the TV star

It seems that content from TV is finding its way on the internet. Personally, I rely on the internet for TV. We have a 46” flat screen TV that we connect to a laptop to watch TV from. There is no need to invest in DVR technology when content is readily available and FREE on the internet. Some sites I use are: hulu.com (which I use to watch House) and Joost.com (which I use to watch How I Met Your Mom).

Since many sites feature similar content, if not the exact same, sites have to battle for users. In order to differentiate themselves from each other, sites seem to default to offering social networking features. They are even relying on the facebook connect platform in order to allow users to connect to friends.

Interestingly, TV content websites are having similar struggles as Pandora (as Arlyn blogged) in monetizing their ventures. However, they are including social networking aspects in the websites and creating communities with hopes of generating “consumer loyalty”.

In the long run they hope “consumer loyalty” will provide a reliable medium by which advertisers can reach a targeted audience based on the data mined through these websites. I agree with the article above that the data will be more accurate than what Neilson’s provides since we can leverage existing networking data (i.e. age, gender, interest, etc. data).

I feel like this is just goes to show how powerful the internet is becoming in that it is slowly replacing all other forms of media (in this case, TV). Especially with corporations taking their content online, they are essentially approving and buying into this concept. They may have to for their own survival and to reach their user base more efficiently.

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