LaughlinOutLoud

Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of presenting the “State of the State of Digital” to a bright, interested and engaged audience. In pulling the presentation together, I was served my daily reminder of just how much things have changed. To wit:

“If Facebook were a country, it would be the 8th most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan.” — Mark Zuckerberg, January 7, 2009

To be clear, when I say I was reminded how much things have changed, I mean since January 7, 2009. According to Facebookʼs most recent numbers, it has over 250 million members. Which would place them fourth on the most populated countries in the world list. Now ahead of Indonesia. Nigeria, we hardly knew thee.

Thatʼs quite a jump in seven months. And it raises an important question. In these exponential times in which we live, how fast do numbers become irrelevant? If Wikipedia can have trouble keeping up, what are the rest of us to do?

One surprising exception – time spent online. Forrester reports the amount of time spend online per week by the average American is 12 hours. Last year that number was… 12 hours. Thatʼs not exponential at all. According to analyst Jackie Anderson, “Engagement with the online channel has deepened. Web users are becoming savvier and are better multi-taskers.” So while hours online arenʼt growing, productivity is. And competition for their time has (potentially, exponentially). Savvier users will look for savvier solutions. And, with this deeper engagement and apparent comfort, the internet is starting to “more closely resemble a traditional media channel.” Oh, how quickly things change.

The fate of newspapers has been reported on and debated ad nauseam. Time will tell, but itʼs safe to say that in its current form the newspaper model of today faces significant challenges.

And the newspaper industry is, no doubt, to blame. An article by Jack Shafer from earlier this year made a compelling case that newspapers shouldnʼt be surprised by any of this. As early as the 1970s, newspapers “considered themselves vulnerable to new entrants and were worrying aloud to anyone who would listen about falling readership.” That said, once technologies – like long forgotten videotex – were determined to pose no threat to the newsprint model, papers were happy to move on. Too much defense, not enough offense. But thatʼs another subject for another post.

Two interesting perspectives that have seen fewer headlines:

The first is a Malcolm Gladwell thought experiment: “What if we had started with everything online, and paper was only invented five years ago?” Weʼd no longer have to “lug our laptops to the breakfast table every morning.” The new solution would be lighter and more portable. Said another way, being first isnʼt always best.

The second is from a Bill Simmonsʼ podcast on espn.com. I realize that this is not the epicenter of leading business thought. But the observation is insightful. (Side note: Simmons is also responsible for one of my favorite, yet-to-be-established positions: The VP of Common Sense.) At the time that newspapers were trying to figure out how to
monetize the online experience, nobody (not you, not me, not anybody) was comfortable buying things online. If The New York Times was just going online today, the proposition of a daily paid subscription would be *much* more palatable than it was in 1995.

I get my news online. We donʼt subscribe to any papers at my household. So Iʼm no newspaper-apologist. But the easy answer (Newspapers are dumb! The internet is better!) rarely gives the full perspective.