The surge of new technologies and social media innovations is altering the media landscape. Convergence is everywhere. It’s easier than ever to reach a large audience, but harden than ever to really connect with it. These changes are affecting the way people behave.

Are you ready for the future?

Well over 1,000,000 books are published worldwide every year, where Google Book Search scanner can digitize 1,000 pages every hour.

This year, traditional advertising is in steep decline. Meanwhile digital advertising is growing rapidly. 47% of broadcast television viewers say they’d “pay for ad-less” programming. NBC, ABC, CBS had been airing new content (video) 24/7/365 since 1948 (which was when ABC started broadcasting) but more video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 2 months. NBC, ABC, CBS get 10 Million unique visitors every month, collectively. These businesses have been around for a combined 200 years.
The number of unique visitors on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook is 250 Million, collectively and is growing every day. None of these sites existed 6 years ago.

Facts:

  • Wikipedia launched in 2001. It now features over 13 million articles in more than 200 languages.
  • Nokia manufactures 13 cell phones every second.
  • Dell claims to earn 3 Million via twitter posts since 2007.
  • In February 2008, John McCain raised $11 million for his U.S presidential bid. That same month, Barack Obama attended no campaign fundraisers. Instead, Obama leveraged online social networks to raise $55 million in those 29 days.
  • Twitter played an unprecedented role in sharing information during the 2009 Iranian presidential elections.

So how are you using social networking sites?

The mobile device will be the world’s primary connection tool to the Internet in 2020.

“The computer in your cell phone today is a million times cheaper
and a thousand times more powerful
and about a hundred thousand times small
[than the one computer at MIT in 1965]…”

“ So what used to fit in a building
now fits in your pocket,
what fits in your pocket now
will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.”

Now that’s convergence and now you know.

Credits & Sources:
Written by: XPLANE, The Economist, Scott McLeod, Karl Fisch, Laura Bestler
Designed by: XPLANE | The visual thinking company www.xplane.com