The Digital Tipping Point is Imminent

Posted January 11th, 2008 by admin

I caught an episode of “Access Hollywood” the other night. One of their feature stories was the re-launch of their companion website www.accesshollywood.com – Who cares, right? Well, Access Hollywood does…and BIG time (and they should). While I was intrigued by the length and depth of airtime given to this story, it was host Billy Bush’s voiceover commentary that grabbed my attention. In it, he described how central and integrated Access Hollywood’s website has become (in a very short time) to the distribution of entertainment news & media. What used to be a second thought to the on-air broadcast is now a rush to post content online.

And then while watching CNN’s coverage of the New Hampshire primary results, I literally had a “holy crap” moment: Suddenly my “viewer experience” became a seamless “user experience” because of the way CNN converged its online and on-air media.

The highly watched cable news network managed to pull this off in a number of ways:

• Purposeful Crossovers: The on-air broadcast of the results maintained a persistent running tally of votes framed around the visual commentary – if a viewer was watching CNN in HD, they’d get access to additional data points along both sides of the frame. Throughout the broadcast, host Wolf Blitzer would lead viewers to reference their laptops and check out CNNpolitics.com in order to drill down and hone into more granular real-time specifics. While lots of broadcast programs lead people to the web, it was the effortless, integrated, “live”, and complementary nature of the use of their website that grabbed me.
• Embedded Content: At certain points throughout the broadcast, CNN would feature segments from the various campaign’s live video feeds and direct viewers to CNNpolitics.com to tune into any of the candidate’s specific coverage for further viewing and analysis. Since the on-air broadcast only gave samplings of each campaign event, viewers were easily able to target their preferred candidate online and augment the on-air content. Although CNNpolitics.com was referenced constantly throughout the broadcast, it wasn’t disruptive – it felt right.
• Integrated Look & Feel: CNNpolitics.com was a natural creative extension of CNN’s “Election Center” set design and broadcast graphics. The two mediums visually became like one. Viewers who frequently turned their attention from being an online user to an on-air viewer felt a single, integrated experience.

The fundamental shift in the way in which we consume and interact with media has now tipped the scale from the after thought of “supporting Web information” to primary online content. We’ll be seeing many more examples of this in 2008 as TV continues to become an inefficient content consumption technology.

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A Mighty Little Box

Posted January 11th, 2008 by Neha

I suppose I’m a Facebook snob.  I created my profile on Facebook before the time of news feeds, throwing sheep or giving gifts of lipstick and penguins.  The clean appearance of the profile appealed to me then.

I’ve been wary of the superwalls, graffiti and bumper stickers that are tacked on to chaotic profiles now.  I diffidently adopt applications that align with my interests – like the causes application or the “Where Have I Been” travel map.  I’m shamelessly careful not to clutter my page, even voting applications, groups and profile information off to maintain order.  

Last month I received a Facebook gift from one of my favorite non-profit bloggers, Beth.  It was a tiny pink and green gift box and in it, a donation to the organization of her choice.   With each gift you buy with this Changing The Present application, you can make a donation to any of the non-profits that have teamed up with the application.  I scoured the organizations to return the gift to Beth and introduce it to other friends of mine.

The application introduced me to Freedom from Hunger, a non-profit I donated to by presenting little pink and green facebook gift boxes to ten of my friends.  So today, there is a box on my profile that displays the first gift I received from Beth.  In my news feed, where I normally hastily delete any activity to minimize that box as much as possible, I have retained the information about my own Changing the Present gift giving so anyone who stumbles across my profile may find this gift – one that I find far more distinctive and meaningful than animated teddy bears and balloons. 

This Christmas, my family and friends made donations to Freedom from Hunger in my name.  My parents sponsored a program that allows 378 young mothers in a 3^rd world country to be educated so they can help guide their daughters into a better life.  The card that accompanied their donation and thanked me for my support was nestled under the tree in a large sage green box with a deep pink bow wrapped around it.  Apparently, tiny colorful boxes on Facebook can lead to life-size change. 

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