Social Consensus: Control Becomes a Big Thing
September 13, 2015
I read “The Cable Industry Faces the Perfect Storm: Apps, App Stores, and Apple.” I think the idea is a valid one. I am not sure about the Apple thing.
Let’s go to the Web page. (Shades of Warner Wolfe.)
The write up states:
the average US consumer is spending 198 minutes per day inside apps compared to 168 minutes on TV. Please note that the 198 minutes per day spent inside apps on smart phones and tablets don’t include time spent in the mobile browser. In fact, if we add that time, the total time spent on mobile devices by the average US consumer is now 220 minutes (or 3 hours and 40 minutes) per day…
In the good old days, people were supposed to be watching the fire burn in their caves. Then folks listened to Jack Benny on Sunday night. When I was a wee lad, we had a black and white television which sort of worked. My progeny had color TV to watch. Today lots of people look at tiny screens and checking Facebook or looking for pizza via Google or Alphabet or whatever the company is.
Bad news for cable companies it seems.
Forget the cable folks. My view is that the bad news is what I call the consensus problem. Shared experiences are blockbusters in the James Twitchell sense of the word in Adcult USA.
Cohesiveness comes from the Super Bowl and similar constructs. The implications of this tiny screen shift are significant. Losers will be the organizations constructed to serve the mass markets of mass media.
Apple, bless its innovative heart, makes gizmos. The powerhouses are the outfits which deliver micro-content and micro-experiences to the OreIda’s walking around or sitting in coffee shops with their mobile devices.
Search and retrieval? A loser. Sustained concentration? A loser. Consensus? Interesting about that.
Stephen E Arnold, September 13, 2015
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