Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
As I've been contemplating the Everything Wars and content delivery, something struck me about game machines – Wii, X-Box, even DS or PSP.
It seems fairly obvious that the game machines are changing to multi-media machines, as we've mentioned before – Netflix on X-box, e-books on DS, etc. Yet it's still easy to talk about the future of game consoles, handheld games, etc.
I'm starting to think that's the wrong idea.
So I talked about the Everything Wars last post and laid down an outline of how I saw the battle going:
Level 1: Apple, Google, and Microsoft battling over technologies of software, systems, and access.
Level 2a: Content delivery companies, battling each other over rights and distribution, and possibly making deals with other companies.
Level 2b: Social media and integration tools, battling each other midly, but somewhat away from Level 1.
Level 3: Content deliverers, dealing with the battles above.
So now where do I see this going and what does it mean for you?
Idle speculation time here.
With Facebook pretty much dominating social media, and having obvious gaming aspirations, I began to wonder what else Facebook can deliver. Once I began theorizing, I really began to wonder more.
Facebook could actually be useful as a way to distribute artistic (comic and manga) and written fiction. Easy for alerts, easy to notify people it's ready, incredibly easy to get more fans to buy into it. Nice, public distribution that makes people very aware of what their friends are doing and reading.
Facebook could be an excellent distribution platform – read the manga there, discuss it with your friends, etc. There's already a lot of this in place now – and the widget creation could let OTHER companies do it while Facebook enjoys the piggybacking and additional attention (and possibly cash).
As its my firm belief community building is a big part of success for media efforts, especially new ones, Facebook is a logical place to try or do some of it. You want to build and maintain an audience – that's one of the ways to do it very fast (with some limits). A retained, happy, engaged audience buys more of your stuff when it comes down to it, and is more likely to want to see you at a con or invite you to one.
Do I think this is where media distribution is going? No. Part part of it doubtlessly will try, far more than is being done now. I await seeing the results.
– Steven Savage