If you have not had a chance to check it out yet, read the new Wired cover story on Rupert Murdoch, MySpace and News Corp. Murdoch, a 75 year old conservative republican, starts the interview with this....
“To find something comparable, you have to go back 500 years to the printing press, the birth of mass media – which, incidentally, is what really destroyed the old world of kings and aristocracies. Technology is shifting power away from the editors, the publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are taking control.”
It's a fascinating read and good insight into an old media company trying to get ahead in the new world.
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Agreed
I agree, I read that with great interest....and it is a particularly ironic quote from Rupert on technology shifting power from the media elite to the people.
BTW, two quick points:
First, I think it is telling that old media had to buy something like MySpace -- for a huge 580 million dollars --not being able to generate it internally. It also speaks to the brokeness of traditional TV advertising that he HAD to "buy back eyeballs" (as one of my friends put it) that had left his other traditional tv ad based networks.
Secondly, lots of my friends here in LA predict that with the new stress for putting more ads into Myspace plus the more rigorous enforcement of content policies that News corp will push teens to other rising social network sites, like Bebo. Bebo is a new social net site that is neck and neck with Myspace for traffic in the UK and after 1 year has 25 million users -- compared to Myspace at 90 million after 3 years. Who knows?
http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=17009&hed=FastStats%3A+Social+Network+War§or=Briefings&subsector=Trends
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