A geração iPod e os media tradicionais

«On the content front, the question is how far online sources of news and entertainment will replace traditional ones. In the case of newspapers, a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Centre found that nearly one in three Americans regularly get their news online. Even adding print and online readers of daily newspapers gives a readership of 43 percent of Americans, well below the 50 percent who read a newspaper 10 years ago. Is the content worthless? Certainly, many peer-produced sites contain large amounts of rubbish. But some sites have considerable impact. CNET, some of whose stories are written by "citizen journalists", broke more stories on the crisis at Hewlett Packard this summer than did The Wall Street Journal. Flickr collected pictures that summed up the London bombings of July 7 2005. Where such sites are visited by a small elite, they may offer sophisticated commentary on law, finance and management. A further challenge to traditional producers of content is the ease with which material can be distributed online. Copyright laws are poor protection online, although publishers have fought a fierce rearguard action to protect their intellectual property.

Some traditional producers of content will find ways to benefit from these new online channels. The Wall Street Journal, for instance, uses clever software to deliver to readers the stories likely to interest them most, and to tell them which are the stories most widely read or blogged, and to encourage them to air their own views. As for the music industry, it has suddenly acquired new showcases for snippets of music videos, with vastly larger audiences than ever before. Advertising online As for advertising revenue, it is threatened not just by Craigslist et al. The business model for most open source and peer-produced activities online is advertising: a real diversion of resources from traditional media. The challenge is all the greater because online advertising is often carefully targeted, like Google’s. In 2005, online advertising became the fourth largest in revenue terms in Britain, running at three times the level of radio advertising, and overtaking billboards and the business and consumer magazine markets.»

«The Impact of Digitalization», KPMG, 2007 pag 14