Every week MiC invites Canada’s top media gurus for a show-and-tell session of the work they think best exemplifies smart new media thinking.
Today, Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image, a national digital marketing agency (with offices in Toronto and Montreal), is at bat. Joel has a uniquely digital take on the mediaverse. In 2008 he was named Canada’s most influential male in social media and one of the top 100 online marketers in the world – and was just recognized as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 this month. His column, New Business – Six Pixels of Separation, runs bi-monthly in the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun, and his first book, Six Pixels of Separation, named after his blog and podcast musings, will be published in September 2009. Here’s his P.O.V.:
Media is interesting. Media is changing. The following three news items should make you question what you do, how to do it better and what the future is going to look like. (Hint: it’s not going to be the same as it always was and it won’t be based on saying things like, ‘that’s the way it’s always been.’)
My three picks are:
1. The New Amazon Kindle
‘How Big Can The Kindle Get?’ – TechCrunch
Moments after launching the second generation e-book reader, Kindle 2, Amazon announces a newer, bigger screen version (Kindle DX) that looks more like a magazine/tabloid newspaper. Where does Amazon get off charging $489 for the device – a subscription to the New York Times Kindle edition will run you $167.88 for the year – in a world where no one is willing to pay 75 cents for a daily newspaper or pay a cent for news online? It does get one thinking…if Amazon can charge that much for the device and content, why are traditional media companies unable to sell their product or, at the very least, monetize their digital properties in a more efficient way?
2. Marketers dumping affiliate links into their Twitter stream
‘It’s About Intent: Affiliate Links in Twitter’ – Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang
More and more people are pumping affiliate links for a myriad of products and services into their Twitter tweets, once again proving that if you give someone a platform, they’ll try to sell you something. If marketers don’t want Twitter to have the same marketing credibility as spam and telemarketing, we need to be very careful how we tread here. This sort of ‘cut off your nose to spite your face’ tactic for a couple of bucks here and there is almost as off-putting as pay-per-post on blogs. The more people keep trying to monetize their online social networks instead of using these channels to communicate, build, share and grow trust for themselves and the brands they represent, the faster we’ll see this channel lose all credibility and opportunity.
3. Google dominates your mobile phone too (don’t tell the iPhone).
‘Google’s Latest Domination’ – The Big Money/Slate
One of the bigger conversations about the future of mobile revolves around ensuring that content on your mobile device is quick and easy to find. For years the media pundits argued that Google was paying too much attention to the web, and not enough attention to the mobile space. Here’s the big news from this item: Google accounts for 97.5% of all mobile phone searches. How scary is that?!?
