Archive for January, 2009
It’s no secret that communication has undergone more change in the past 133 years than in the entirety of human history prior to that. The telephone opened up one-to-one communication in a way that altered the relationship slate.
Fast forward to the advent of the cellular phone in the 1980’s and that too altered communication between people. But the cellular phone also changed the dynamic when it came to convenience. The cell caller would be driving or wherever and ring up someone they were thinking about sometimes just to pass the time. It was convenient for the caller but not necessarily for the recipient.
Then in the 1990’s email came into play. People over 35 have been dealing with email for nearly 20 years and while we are all aware of the problems, at least with email you get the opportunity to decide when (and if) you want to respond. Sure SPAM is a pain in the **!! …but it is ok to ignore it as nobody is really sure if you read an email or not (despite the annoying read receipt things that never really seem to work).
More recently (the past ten years) the rise of mobile messaging (see: texting) has exploded along with social networking sites. The immediacy of text messaging is such a powerful medium but it’s not all good. While it is the primary way for me to reach my teenage daughter and for her to reach me (email is so irrelevant to the Millenials) I am finding that friends, (and not necessarily close friends – why did I give them my mobile number in the first place) are sending me text messages and EXPECTING A RESPONSE – IMMEDIATELY!
To boot sometimes I have an exchange with someone I don’t know all that well but I am not quite sure how to end the string. Who ends it? What is the protocol? When is it ok to just stop? These are still my friends and sometimes business associates. I like them. But if I am out at dinner and engaged in a serial text exchange I don’t look at my phone nor would it be polite to whip it out (no Cleavon Little reference here!) and respond. So the communication dies off into the ether. It’s odd.
Then there are the requests from the hinterlands to be a friend to someone you knew 30+ years ago in high school on Facebook. I can ignore some/most of these as there is likely a reason why we have not been in touch for 30 years. However frequently it’s very cool to reconnect with someone you liked that you lost touch with and that’s one of the beauties of social networking. But for most of those the initial reconnect is all that I want. How’s your life worked out? Cool. Maybe we’ll get together sometime despite the fact that you live in Texas and I live in Connecticut. I don’t need much more than that. There just is not enough time in the day to engage 50 people or more in various stages of innocuous conversation. And these are people I know and like (at least for the most part).
There is no real solution. But my overriding thought is that in the past you would think about someone you had not seen or heard from in quite a while and that would be it. Maybe you could send them a letter (remember writing letters?) or try to find their phone number if you even knew where they lived. Now you can quickly and accurately search them in a number of different places, find them and send them a message over a social network and await a response. Don’t be surprised if they ignore it. You can always wonder if they might not have gotten the message at all.
Communications between humans will never again be as it was. Is that progress? I say yes and no. What say you?
Watching the inauguration of President Barack Obama was indeed an inspiring thing even if it was on television. Sadly I did not receive an invitation. Seeing my friends update their pages on Facebook such that photos taken at the inauguration were posted immediately also was a cool way to interact and get a bird’s eye feel for how it might have been to be there.
Magazines like LIFE and the Saturday Evening Post used to perform the same function. Detailed photo spreads on events of the day made their product must see media.
So while most of the weekly magazines are doing their darndest to remain alive (and this is apparently a losing battle – see US News going to a monthly!) the way magazines could stage a revival would be to offer a product that the internet simply cannot compete with. Lush photo spreads of the inaugural on heavy paper would be a collector’s item for sure and a hefty cover price to boot would be a huge draw for readers and advertisers alike. Count on several being on the newsstand next week although I have no advance knowledge of a particular publication taking this direction.
My 15 year old daughter still gets Seventeen Magazine and told me that she would rather get the magazine than read it on the internet but she likes having access to both. She/I pays for the subscription and reads it cover to cover as soon as she gets it. Talk about connection! There is something about seeing photos on high gloss high quality paper that makes them much more memorable than when viewed on your computer screen.
So while it is no surprise that the mass magazine appeal of the 1950’- 1980’s is dying away, magazines occupy an important part of the media equation. Upgrade the paper, charge more and connect with the audience in a personal way by delivering them the content they want to see and read. The market may be much smaller but it will still be a market after all…
There are things we Americans put up with simply because most of us have not had occasion to sample the way things could be. Yesterday was a nice and bright 20 degree day (wind chills in the single digits) here in New York City. I (like most New Yorkers) find that the subways are the best way to get around particularly when you have to go downtown to south Manhattan from midtown or beyond. I do prefer to walk when the walk is less than 20 minutes.
Subway service in the city seems to be slipping once again. More ridership has not reduced an increasing deficit and the plan is for fares to go up probably in later in 2009.
But with higher fares will New Yorkers be able to expect better service? Well it’s pretty lousy overall now if you ask me.
First off there’s the communication issue. Or lack thereof more properly. Have you ever tried to listen to the ‘announcements’? Even if you can hear them through the tiny speakers built in 1945 I challenge to tell me what language is being spoken. And the information if the words can even be made is unintelligible anyway! Today’s message for instance – ‘Due to an incident the R & Q trains are running slower than normal). ‘This was after I was standing waiting for a train for 20 minutes in the freezing cold. Really? Then there was some garbled information about transferring. Of course there was no train to get on to transfer to! NO mention of when the next train might arrive (or if). Finally when a train arrived it was neither an R nor a Q but some other train that I got on simply because I was tired of waiting and was hoping to go somewhere at least.
Then there’s the issue of personal communication when riding the subway. There is hardly any cell phone service. At least not in New York. Tokyo has it all over New York when it comes to moving people. Granted the New York City Transit Authority is famous for having more miles of train tracks than any other system and it has been around for a very long time. Yet Tokyo and several other cities have mobile phone service in their subways. Their communication systems tell you the next few trains and when they are to arrive on what track to the minute. And they arrive precisely on schedule. I lived in New York City for years before I knew the subways even ran on a schedule (yes amazingly there is a schedule)!
So why do we have to content with substandard service? The MTA fare structure is a bit unusual – $ 2.00 and you can ride as much as you want. All 200 miles. Of course the mayor has noted that the prices must go up ($ 2.50 is being thrown around) and service curtailed even more. I don’t know of many other cities that price their subway service this way. You pay for how far you go. Maybe it’s just because New Yorkers for the most part just don’t realize what the alternatives are, and so we take what we have. Dirty, smelly, poorly lit, inconsistent service, lousy information and non-existent cell phone service underground. Are we getting what we deserve? I sure don’t feel that way. Do you?
I went to a meeting yesterday and met an interesting guy who is an investment banker/venture capital funding specialist. After he was done he offered to send us the deck from which he presented. So like I do when I receive any card from someone I have met I entered in his contact information into my contacts. But I took pause when I set to enter in the fax number.
Will I ever fax anything to this person? Probably never. So then I thought about how infrequently I send or receive a fax. Yes we use them occasionally in our business for bills of lading or proof of deliveries on shipments we have made on behalf of clients. But even those could be scanned and emailed.
So many of us (me included) are trying to cut down on the office paper we use on a daily basis. Emails often include a line to ‘please think about be sure printing this email is necessary’ or something to that effect. A good and useful message to be sure. But what about faxes?
I have been around long enough to have been there at the outset of faxes – rolls of paper in a big bulky machine that went around and around, took forever to print out and to boot were printed on awful paper that would want to roll up on itself once half the roll had been used.
Today we get a couple of faxes every morning from local eateries notifying us of their daily specials. I would think that it would be to their (and our) benefit to create an email list and then email the specials each morning. Then they have a list and we do not have to waste paper or energy (or a phone line) for a fax machine. Maybe during the day we get or send a fax or two but that’s about it.
And what could be less private than a fax machine in the middle of an office where everyone has access? An inexpensive scanner could easily do the trick to replace the fax and a service like eFax (which is free for the basic version) would allow faxes sent to you to be received as emails.
So when I meet with my team next week I will discuss jettisoning the fax machine. I am sure that idea is will be met with some trepidation and discomfort since it will be difficult for some to imagine losing the perceived convenience of the fax machine. But one less phone line, less paper and removing the need to go look for a fax far outweighs the benefit. We can do this. So can you. What do you think?
Sirius paid Howard a SERIOUS amount of money to beat out XM for his ‘services’. Of course Sirius ended up outbidding itself once the government approved the union of these two floundering companies. I read the article in the 12/28 NY Times Sunday Business section (read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/media/28radio.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Mel%20Karmazin%20&st=cse )
I do think a great deal of Mel Karmazin and he has given his best effort but it’s not working. Over the past few years we have had 2 new leased cars both of which came equipped with satellite radio for a 3 month trial. Both times we did not extend the service after the trial period was over. At $ 12.95 per month it was an easy decision. I am not a Howard Stern listener so that wasn’t a reason to pay up nor would I pay for the opportunity to listen to Chris ‘Mad Dog’ Russo formerly of WFAN now on satellite radio.
It was doomed from the start. A big market never really existed for a paid service ($ 150+/year!) where you could get some unique content but advertisements as well. Terrestrial radio is slowly dying as well of natural causes. But Sirius/XM is on life support and I believe the plug will soon be pulled.
The iPod is only one reason and eventually the iPod will take feeds in from the internet such that you could play those feeds through to your car. And how many people subscribe to satellite radio at home?
If satellite radio were $ 4/month that price would be intriguing enough for me (and perhaps other people) to give it a serious look. But the content is still lacking after several years of promises of cool and unique programming. It reminds me of my 100+ channels of cable TV where frequently I am unable to find anything to watch.
In my customer controlled communications world I would have content made available to me to be called up on voice command. Read me page one of the NY Times. Allow me to say ‘next article’ or sports, or ‘Jets news’ and then have that read over the air with no delay. This technology exists. Why satellite radio never made it there is a mystery to me. But it’s too late now. I would not invest in XM/Sirius stock right now ($ 0.12/share) and it seems most investors feel the same.
Too bad – it wasn’t a bad idea it was just poorly executed.