Talking about an earlier piece this month by Andy Kessler, Mike at Techdirt comments that the conclusion he draws from Andy's posting is that there is no longer any distinction between the two.
"Any media company now needs to be a technology company, and any technology company really needs to be a media company. That means that the rules that govern one now apply to the other. While that may make things tough for some who are used to doing things "the old way," it also means that there's a pretty clear roadmap for how things play out. What happened to IBM and AT&T in the past is now happening to the media companies."
With writing both about the Internet marketing world and the show business marketing world, I find this conclusion to be true. When I look for interesting stuff to talk about, you can no longer just look at one world versus another; they are almost without distinction anymore.
I could write about one and it could just as easily relate to the other.
Now what will this mean for all the companies it affects? I think that it will be easier for technology companies to adapt and flourish than it will be for media companies. The media companies just can't get past thinking in terms of "mass" when it comes to media. I think this is going to be tremendously challenging for them to overcome in the years ahead.
The thing tech companies will need to watch is the same temptation to try to become a mass-media outlet as well. While MySpace and YouTube may seem to be potential mass-media outlets, in reality they are far from it. Many people don't know it but the market has been fragmented for years, ever since cable took off. The networks still talk of it as the golden era and how they wish it was still like that. It never will be.
The world of technology and media are already converging; the question will simply be who emerges from this blending, and what will they look like. One thing I'm sure of, it's not going to be a mass-media world any longer.
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