History

Over a half-century ago, there was a major shift in how we experienced media and information. The average American family went from listening to their household radios to watching television. The shift from radio media to television media was a significant event, so much so that many years later the average person still consumes the bulk of their media diet through their televisions. Over the last decade we’ve seen the percentages decrease as more and more access information through the internet and more recently through phones and mobile devices, but for the last six-plus decades TV has been king.

If we look at the history of media, one form that hasn’t changed a whole lot in the past 100 plus years is print. Though production technology and visual design has advanced significantly, newspapers are still very much the same as they were a century ago, books still require the turning of a page to read further, and magazines share the same general format. It stands to reason then, that the print medium is long overdue for a radical shift, and that is exactly what is happening.

The next 3-5 years will be the tipping point for E-Print media, and just as the shift from radio to television changed the game for publishers, advertisers and consumers alike, the same will hold true in the print industry.

What It Is

E-Print media is interactive published content, accessible through the web on mobile devices. This content can include e-books, e-magazines, e-newspapers, and interactive applications. Just like traditional print media, we’ll be able to “touch” and interact with the content, though in much more advanced ways. You may be asking yourself what’s the big deal? You may prefer to hold a paperback in your hands, rather than read an e-book, or flip through a newspaper instead of reading stories through an RSS feed. So if we can interact with traditional print media already, why should we make the shift to E-Print? It’s a valid question, why should we care?

Here are 5 key components of E-Print media that will help show us why we should care:

Why It Matters

1. Interactivity

I’m the kind of person who still likes to hold a book in my hands or flip through a magazine. There’s just something about being able to turn the page, make notes in the margins, and paint mental images of what you’re reading. So it would take a lot to get me to change my habits. One element that would get me to change is the interactivity factor. The biggest shift from traditional print media to E-Print media will be how much more interactive E-Print content will be. Check out this example of a new Alice and Wonderland app/book to get an idea of what I mean. No longer will our interaction be between our minds, our eyes, and the printed page. We’ll be able to use our hands, our fingers, manipulate the content, watch embedded videos, play games, and view ads all in an interactive environment that stimulates our senses more than ever before. This is huge. We are an “entertain me” culture, and E-Print will bring more entertainment to the once mundane actions of simply reading a page.

2. Design

We see, experience, and make decisions with our eyes. Visual design is one of the most important elements in print media. Most of the time we, as average consumers, don’t realize what “good” design is, but put something that is poorly designed in front of our faces and we’ll be turned off before we can blink. That’s why book covers are so important, it’s why newspapers spend so much time on typography design and layout, and it’s why magazines have entire departments dedicated to art direction. E-Print takes all of the creative talent, skill, and strategies and opens up literally a limitless medium in which to work and play. Up until this point designers were limited by the printing press – now published content can be designed without worrying how it might look on paper. Moreover, E-Print brings other creatives to the table, such as website designers, application developers, animators, videographers, and programmers.

3. Integration

One of the most profound elements in E-Print media is the ability to integrate multiple forms of media into one application. The video below from Wired magazine showcases how this is done. Notice how the reader interacts with several different forms of media, from the written word to design elements to video. And how cool is interactive advertising? This alone is a huge game-changer – instead of just having a car ad with a static image on a page, imagine if you were able to turn the car 360 degrees, or push a button and the car turned into an interactive video. This ain’t your grandma’s advertising anymore folks, E-Print opens the door to incredible user experience through multiple streams of media.

4. Aggregation

Okay, so up to this point, everything I’ve said sounds pretty cool right? But at the end of the day, just because something is really cool doesn’t mean it’s practical. I mean, take the Segway for example…it’s cool, but we all know how much that caught on. The next two elements deal with practicality. The first is aggregation. Devices such as the iPad allow for a very practical aggregation of content – essentially allowing us to pull all of the content we’re interested in into one place. Now we don’t have to carry around a book, a newspaper, a magazine, a phone, a computer, etc…We could literally carry around one or two devices that would aggregate all of that media for us, making our information consumption that much more enjoyable. This technology will only get better as the years go on, and it will do wonders for our overall print media experience.

5. Mobility

In my last article where I described the iPad as a game-changer, I covered the mobility element. As our information consumption becomes more centralized it also has to become more mobile. We won’t put up with sitting at our desktop to read the news anymore. We’ve solved the mobility issue in large part with the technological advancement in phones. I can do quite a lot on my iPhone. So is a device like the iPad necessary? Yes, and here’s why.

My iPhone is small.

Mobility and portability are essential, but so also is a good experience. The experience on the iPhone is awesome, but I’d rather surf the web, watch movies, and read books on a larger screen. Wouldn’t you? It doesn’t just have to be the iPad – it could be the new HP Slate, or one of the myriad of other tablet devices that are sure to come out in the near future. But the bottom line is the E-Print media means we become much more mobile which much more content, and that is a big deal.

What to Expect

So where do we go from here? The iPad and other devices have started to cover some ground, but we know it’s not ideal yet. But the rise of the E-Print medium fostered in large part by these new devices will begin to change the way we interact with and experience print media. Here are just a few ways this is happening and will continue to happen:

A) Interactive Books – as we saw in the Alice in Wonderland book example, books will become much more interactive through E-Print. Words will literally jump from the page, we’ll see more design and interactive elements placed inside books, and publishers will be able to integrate various forms of media such as video. In addition to just simply being really cool, this will heighten the user experience and allow authors to share more of what’s in their hearts and minds.

B) Interactive Ads – a couple of weeks ago Apple came out with a new advertising platform called iAds which allows advertisers to create interactive ads to be placed inside applications designed for the iPhone and iPad. As we saw in the Wired video, this type of platform and technology will allow advertisers to create ads like never before. Ads will become literal applications, mini-websites, or video productions designed to draw the user in. This opens up a world of change, creating new niches for designers and developers, advertisers, brands, and consumers. This could be the tipping point for online advertising.

C) Better, Smaller, More Mobile Devices – E-Print won’t be a flash in the pan. As a result we’ll see companies embrace this technology and strive to produce better devices on which to consume E-Print media. Just like today’s computers are worlds better than those even a decade ago, tablet devices five years from now will be worlds better than the current iterations today.

It will take time to make the shift from traditional print to E-Print, and just like radio is still around today, I think we’ll always have traditional print in one form or another. But just as television surpassed radio, look for E-Print to do the same. And the results will be overwhelmingly positive.

“This will have a huge influence on consumers, who will now be able to see what their social network of friends ‘Like’ on other sites they frequently visit,” says Justin Ramb, Covenant’s president.

For example, if someone decides to “Like” a T-shirt on Levis.com, this action will be shared both on the brand’s site and on Facebook as well.

This will also have a big impact on the way businesses market their products to consumers, helping them better understand their customers’ preferences and buying patterns, Ramb explains.

A full-service marketing agency, Covenant has launched successful social media campaigns for clients on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, establishing a relationship between businesses and their consumers. Also specializing in design, print and Web, Covenant plans to incorporate this new Facebook initiative into their custom Web designs for clients.

“This is a huge opportunity for businesses to market directly to their target audience, and redefine their products and services based on customer feedback,” Ramb says. “This opens a new door for marketing.”

Next up is the services industry. If we were service providers (mechanics, plumbers, consultants, etc), here are a few things we would do:

• We’d provide better information, to present ourselves as experts, but also to help our customers take more ownership on how to fix things and keep things maintained.
• We’d set up customer service channels through Twitter and Facebook to help provide a better and more consistent response to our customers.
• We’d offer coupons and specials to our followers and friends.
• We’d set up an “emergency” channel on Twitter or Facebook where customers can contact us or report issues.
• We’d set up profiles on major and niche review sites and invite our customers to post reviews. We’d monitor conversation about our company and make sure we respond to any negative feedback.
• We’d create DIY videos and articles and post to YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, and Facebook. Or we’d link to various DIY resources on a regular basis.

JESS3 designed and animated this for the JESS3 lecture at AIGA Baltimore in Feb 2010.

6. Location

As if it weren’t enough to Tweet about anything and everything happening to you throughout the course of a day, there’s another element to the web that is changing the game. Location is the new layer of the web (via Pete Cashmore), which is profound in and of itself. Think about it. On the web we have information, we have images, we have video and media. But up to this point the internet was akin to another planet – this complex network of floating information that exists somewhere but isn’t something we can really see or touch.

That may be changing now. The addition of location as a new layer of the web now means we can associate a tangible sense to the web. There is a real person, providing real information, at a real place. That’s profound. Keep an eye on location applications such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Brightkite, among a myriad of others. These apps will continue to grow in 2010 and so will the location layer of the web. Twitter and Facebook are already developing a location layer to their platforms, and it will be very interesting to see how businesses interact with location.

7. Privacy

Say the words “privacy” and “internet” in the same sentence and see what kind of response you get. It will probably be something similar to a sarcastic snort. That’s because in an age of digital media, and social media privacy is all but extinct. But the amazing thing is, we’ve given up our privacy voluntarily. Think about how much information exists about you online. If you have a Facebook or Twitter profile, website, blog, flickr account, or YouTube channel, you have a digital thumbprint. And as location-based services and online video continues to grow, we can expect what privacy we have to continue to erode.

Is this a bad thing? Perhaps, but the bottom line is we are volunteering more information about ourselves and our lives than ever before. Expect 2010 to be much of the same – we’ll continue to share information about our lives because that’s the foundation of social media. Whether that’s a convenience or a concern remains to be seen.

This is part three of a three-part series on what to expect in 2010. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed, join us on Facebook, or you can  follow us on Twitter.

4. Mobile

One of the reasons I believe social media is not just a flash in the pan is because social media has developed in the mobile age. People might still use various applications while sitting at their desks or on their couch, but so many more use social media because it’s mobile. Think of Foursquare, a relatively new location-based social media application that is creating a lot of buzz. The whole purpose of Foursquare is to “check in” at various locations around a city or area. The app would be virtually pointless if it didn’t have a mobile component. Who cares to check in at a Starbucks if you’re not at Starbucks.

Devices such as the iPhone, smart phones, smaller laptops, and cutting edge technology allow us to bring our social world “off” of the internet and into real life. And that’s what makes social media so powerful. It’s not just limited to the four walls of our desktop monitors. Expect social media applications to continue to flourish and push the boundaries of mobile technology in 2010. And businesses and brands that utilize mobile initiatives combined with social media initiatives will find great success in the upcoming year.

5. Information Filters

Pete Cashmore of Mashable has said that the Web’s biggest challenge of recent years is that content creation is outpacing our ability to consume it. Information overload is no longer just a euphemism, it’s actually a pretty common reality for most of us. We really don’t need all of the information we have access to, and more often than not the amount of information that bombards us on a daily basis is more of a hindrance than a help. So how do we best consume information in this attention economy? Well, in order to do so, we need to be able to manage the level and amount of information we consume, and we have to find a way to keep the information relevant, so we’re not mindlessly shuffling through information we really don’t care about.

Enter 2010 and the need for passive and active filters. With technologies like Facebook Connect and Google Social Search just now starting to gain traction (and both of which are major game changers in my opinion), expect these and other passive filters to help weed out unnecessary information via our friends and social networks. To reference Pete Cashmore again, he says that “Increasingly, your friends are becoming the curators of your consumption, from web links to movies, books to TV shows”. Without you really having to do anything, how you interact with your friends, and what social networks you are a part of can filter content so that what hits your “inbox” is stuff that’s generally relevant to you.

But we don’t just need a passive filter. If you’re anything like me you likely actively seek out information as well. My method of choice is an RSS reader where I can pick and choose what information sources to link into, sort of like choosing which channels I plug into to achieve the best sound as a musician. RSS applications such as Fever, and customized Google Reader programs have some great features that increasingly allow you to customize how you receive information. In 2010 expect more innovations to be made in this area, and expect mainstream applications to tap into these technologies to produce a better social experience.

This is part two of a three-part series on what to expect in 2010. Stay tuned for more. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed, or you can also follow us on Twitter.

1. Real Time

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to return to the days of hand-written letters? We’ve come a long way since old Alex invented the telephone which ushered in the first “instant” form of communication. We’ve come so far that email is almost obsolete. Who wants to wait 10 whole minutes for someone to respond to your email when you have Twitter, instant message, and 10,000 Google search results at the click of a button?

Truly we live in a real-time environment. We like our information served with a side of right now, and the trends point to this. Why wait until you get home to post a restaurant review when scores of iPhone apps let you post feedback as soon as you get dessert (via Pete Cashmore)? Why spend time agonizing over the name of a song when you can “Shazam” it and know the title, artist, album, and be able to purchase in less than 10 seconds? Other key movers such as Google’s new Social Search, and Google Wave make online search and online collaboration more real time as well.

Expect more and more web applications, websites, companies, and brands to embrace the power of real-time. Whether it’s real-time news updates on heads-up displays in cars or instant notifications of sale items individualized to your tastes sent through your preferred communications channel, we’ve only just scratched the surface. Real-time is a big player and it’s here to stay.

2. Conversational Marketing

Jason Falls, a social media strategist, says that conversational marketing will be the prevailing success tactic for brands in 2010. What exactly is conversational marketing? Think of it as viral marketing evolved. It’s essentially capitalizing on conversations that are either happening anyway, or happen as a result of marketing efforts, and building a marketing strategy around those conversations. You’ve heard it said that word-of-mouth marketing is one of the more effective means of marketing – well, word-of-mouth hasn’t gone away. It’s just changed it’s appearance. Conversational marketing is essentially word-of-mouth marketing that happens in real-time or close to it across the web and the world.

We can see an example of this in the recent Facebook experiment where women announced the color of their bra as their status to help breast cancer awareness. Here is an example of where conversational marketing could have played a much larger role. Imagine the impact if the founders of this idea encouraged women to not just post their color, but to also provide a central location for women to have conversations about breast cancer, how to prevent it, success stories, etc. We saw a blip on the radar as thousands of women participated, but it could have been a much larger blip had the conversation been fueled.

Brands and businesses that effectively build and encourage conversation around their products or services will find more success than those who simply sell by way of traditional means. Expect the conversational marketing approach to grow and develop in 2010.

3. Social Media Optimization

2009 was the year of social media. In 2009, Twitter doubled, then tripled it’s user base. Facebook crossed the 300million user threshold, and Apple sold more than 2 billion applications. So has social media peaked or will we see more of the same? It’s our view that if 2009 was the year of learning what social media is and what it can do, 2010 will be the year of optimizing social media. There is still room for a few more large players in the social media world, but we should start to see less “new” players and more optimization and innovation of “old” players.

We don’t need another Facebook. But we will see an optimized Facebook. We don’t need another Twitter. But we will see an optimized Twitter. In 2010 we’ll start to see businesses and brands who have spent the last year or two learning the ropes, start to optimize and utilize specific social media platforms for their specific needs. As we’ve mentioned before, not all social platforms are for everyone, but social media is for everyone. Companies must learn how to use social media well to be successful in 2010.

This is part one of a three-part series on what to expect in 2010. Stay tuned for more. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed, or you can also follow us on Twitter.

A few days ago Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills released a Twitter strategy for the British Government. He advises ministers to avoid “pointless content” but instead to “provide an informal, ‘human’ voice of the organization”.

You know, he’s right. Just relax with a cup of tea and use your voice to help give dimension to your brand’s personality. Twitter is a social media marketing tactic that builds a consumer connection to your brand.

blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement