Rupert Murdoch is keeping himself in the headlines with bold statements like Content is not just king. It is the emperor of all things electronic. He's wrong though. Content isn't king - and never was, the king has always been communication
Before the invention of mass broadcast media people told stories - to small or larger groups, people talked to each other, shared stories, and embellished them. Plays were written and performed and this tradition grew leading to the creation of mass broadcast media - whether print, radio or television.
Along this journey part of the art of communication was lost however - the part that your audience is not a passive wall, but a set of thinking, breathing, story telling human beings. The reason broadcast media is successful is that it excites conversation - not just one way, from the content to the audience, but among the audience, and back to the content producer. In the world of mass broadcast this vital link from the audience back to the story teller has been lost.
Fortunately for us the creation of connected devices - whether telephones, web browsers or mobile phones, this connection is being re-established. Citizen journalism from mobile phone carrying newspaper readers, social network discussions of TV shows and audience influenced mass entertainment such as X Factor are all reconnecting audiences with the broadcaster, and the other audience members. No longer does broadcast content stand in a vacuum isolated from the society that it is talking to - the society, you, can talk back.
Getting people talking does require great content - but it also requires an understanding that people want to communicate - so great outgoing content isn't sufficient, handling incoming audience feedback is also important for success.
It's this gap in understanding that may be the reason that MySpace has underperformed Facebook since being acquired by News Corp - in spite of the fact that MySpace has a richer set of content to build on - Facebook has understood the importance of communication to it's core offering.
At Live Talkback we are working at the cutting edge of audience interaction - it's an exciting place to be - we are listening to you all.
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