Tuesday, July 03, 2012

We're sooo busy...

For as long as I can remember, people have been complaining about how much technology is ruining their lives. "It's too awesome and addictive, so I can't stop using it." These complaints are getting tired. The most recent one in the NY Times Opinionator makes many great points. How do you get offline to start to actually do things?

Facebook, twitter, tumblr, any other social media is addictive. The amount of content on the web is nearly infinite and still expanding at an ever increasing rate. We will never consume it all, no matter how we try. Interestingly, we also will never see every movie and tv show ever made. We wil never read every book written. The complaints about technology infiltrating our lives are many. But, it's on us as users of the internet to decide if we want to pull back and sequester ourselves in Walden Pond or sequester ourselves in facebook's walled garden.

For marketers, there are more and more places to reach people. Almost every consumer facing business starting now wants to be ad-supported. Advertisers are the patrons of the web. This raises a whole host of issues around creation of content and editorial. Advertisers want to reach broad audiences, but the web is trending towards niches. Everyone creating their own echo chamber. It provides opportunity for advertisers to customize their messages to each group, while still reaching a large number of people. There's a lot of opportunity there.

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