While beginning some initial digging for a presentation a client asked me to give in October, I found my notes from a similar presentation I gave in October 2007 – just four years ago.
The topic was basically “What Has Changed In The Media?” In the presentation, I talked about the now obvious trends that newspaper circulations and local TV news ratings were down, the Web was rising as a source of information and that, because of staff cuts, hard news received unprecedented priority over even “human interest” stories. I recommended that the audience build relationships with media outlets so they can help you help them use new media platforms to tell stories.
All that I included is still fundamentally true, but to realize how much has changed in just four years, think about what wasn’t included in the presentation. There was nothing on Social Media – Facebook was still largely for college students and Twitter was still months away from its mainstream takeoff. That also means there were no self-proclaimed “Social Media Gurus” (aaaah… the good old days). Keep in mind, those self-billed “experts” were all doing something else just four years ago. Those who are actually doing well with Social Media now were probably communicating over other platforms, with sound fundamentals that are now being applied in multiple ways.
There was nothing in the presentation about Smartphones – the iPhone was still something of a curiosity – just four months old and running on the EDGE network. There was nothing about streaming content, as pre-iPad and pre-broadband mobile networks, it was really just YouTube. Never mind the economic impact felt by traditional media – hastening even more cuts – with the financial collapse of 2008 and the auto bankruptcies in 2009.
Yes, it’s certainly time to update this presentation. And when I do, I’m going to keep it in a place where in October 2015, it will be easy to see how much changes in another four years.