Return to all Posts

Where Are We Going?

Q&A in MEDIA Magazine

Saturday, October 31, 2009 | Posted by Aaron Goldman

Posted In: Digital Marketing / Press / Press Mentions

I did a Q&A for MEDIA Magazine that was published in the September print edition focused on the future of media. I can't find the content online so I'll repurpose the text here...
--
Interview with Phyllis Fine

What is the biggest change coming?

Goldman: A Google and TiVo mash-up platform, crawling all the digital content that's available, which will allow you to choose what you want to see and make it available to you on-demand in a queue, taking the element of recommendations that TiVo's been able to do. It's one part retrieving content you want to see, and one part discovering what you didn't know was out there. However, no one's cracked the code yet on baking your social graph into the recommended set. Right now my Tivo says, "Every day you're recording Jon Stewart -- we think you'd like Colbert." That's a pretty obvious connection, since they're back-to-back shows on Comedy Central.

How can this be improved?

Goldman: Take everything Google knows about me -- that I also tend to watch this movie or YouTube video -- and have it bubble up into the queue. To me, my time is money. When I spend an hour consuming content for entertainment, I want that hour to be well-spent.

What still surprises you?

Goldman: How big of a hit-driven culture we are. The buzzword du jour was long-tail proliferation, but for every blog or tweet that's being put out, there's still an interest in hits. People want to know what other people are talking about. They want to see that same darned American Idol episode. There's a sense of community and connection that I would have thought had gone away, with people sitting in their own little bubbles of personalized content. But it's proven quite the opposite. Niche content has its own place, but I'm going to want to toggle back and forth. Having that option is important.

Will this change any time soon?

Goldman: There will probably be just as many people watching American Idol and the Super Bowl [as there are now]. The difference is, they'll be watching at different times and in different formats.

Update 11/24: Yesterday, the LA Times reported that Google and Tivo are indeed partnering up. Granted, the agreement seems to be more around measurement than programming but it's only a matter of time!