Born Curious

A new-to-me blog I found today : The Media Business

Professor and author Robert G. Picard (apparently no relation to the Captain) describes his blog as a “discussion of business and economic issues affecting media companies and industries.” I went there after reading his opinion piece “Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay” in the Christian Science Monitor.

Great numbers and food for thought from a recent post of his. I am going to keep tabs on him.

Although large numbers of people are trying the new technologies, they are reacting to them in different ways. Some find them highly useful and satisfying; some find them worthless and disappointing; some find them a worthy pastime; others find them a waste of time. What this means is that—like all technologies—they are more important to some people than to others. Consequently, managers need to be realistic in assessing their potential, the extent to which they are being used by the public, and the extent to which they provide opportunities that media companies should pursue.

Because those promoting the technologies are self interested, uptake figures are easy to come by. Finding out who has tried the technologies, but decided they were undesirable is harder. However, research [I found his source - Nielsen Online] is showing some interesting results in that regard. We now know that 60 percent of the people who try Twitter stop using it within a month, that only about 5% of blogs are regularly updated, that more than 200 million blogs have been abandoned, and that about 37 million web domain names are deleted every year.