Whatever the business - be it media, travel or retailing - the Internet is changing the rules
Public relations specialist DC Consultants recently bought representatives from traditional media, online media, web hosts and an airline together to talk about how the rise of the Internet has affected them.
Kowit Sanandang, digital media director of the BKK Post, explained how Rupert Murdoch ceased his attachment to print media a few years ago. The reason was that he saw how his daughter had stopped reading traditional newspapers and was consuming all her news via her PC. Murdoch called together all his editors and told them, "That's it. We're going online!"
Since then, Murdoch has invested billions into building up an online presence. One of his key investments was in the MySpace social networking portal. Today, MySpace has 100 million users, a figure that no print media can hope to match.
Murdoch spent 600 million dollars to buy MySpace, but in one year he broke even in his investment with a deal with Google.
More recently, he was trying to purchase Dow Jones Newswire, the owner of The Wall Street Journal and the Asian Wall Street Journal. But rather than going back into print, he wanted the WSJ because it had successfully moved into the digital age - half of its revenue now comes from the online edition.
Kowit also said that Lord Roy Thomson, a former owner of the BKK Post, has today sold off most of its newspapers and was trying to buy Reuters, which makes most of its money online by selling financial information.
However, while eyeballs are going from print to online, advertising is not following at the same pace.
"The trend is from print to Internet to mobile," Kowit explained. "We set up Post Digital to explore the Internet, SMS text messaging and other online paid-for services and the BKK Post was the first Thai newspaper to offer an electronic edition," he said.
"Newspapers have a deadline. But online media does not have a deadline, only story births. If any of my staff mention the word deadline, I will fire them," the former editor of the BKK Post joked.
Today, the BKK Post in conjunction with Canada-based Newspapers Direct offers an online version at the same time as printed version This version can automatically be searched, read and translated into 10 different languages.
"Online versus media. It's all about power. It's about the power of the editors and those in the newsroom. In the past, it was a one-way street to get news out to the public. But today, the power of the editors is eroding," he said, citing the emergence of citizen journalist as one of the reasons.
Many news organisations worldwide have embraced citizen journalists, who have proven to be very useful in helping their news coverage.
Dr Kanokwan Wongwatanasin, chairperson of web hosting firm ISSP, explained how 2007 is finally the year the online population in Thailand has reached a critical mass.
It took radio 38 years before it reached a mass of 50 million users, 13 years for television, 10 years for cable and just five years for the Internet. Last year, ISSP estimated that there were seven million active Internet users, mostly in the group from 15 years up until their first job, but that demographic is expanding rapidly both ways.
The mobile market, on the other hand, is estimated at 31 million, and together the two are more than enough to do serious business today.
Dr Kanokwan said that 2004 was the year of the search engine, 05 was the year of the blog, while last year was the social network, as evidenced by sites such as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook.
"This year, the biggest thing is online video. We used to think that it was impossible, but today with broadband, anyone can broadcast," she said.
Kanokwan set her sights on 2008 and said that social mobile networking will come to Thailand, despite the lack of WiMax.
"Everyone will have a second life in cyberspace, four-year-old children will demand a notebook and people will watch TV less and less and spend more of their time reading blogs and watching online Korean dramas," she predicted.
Coca-Cola has adapted by allocating one third of its annual advertising budget to online media.
However, the change in Thailand will be muted because of the lack of 3G or WiMax. Today, many WiMax solutions promise up to 75Mbps speeds with a cell radius of up to 50 kilometres. Already in Japan and Korea, many households do not own a television and consume all their video via the PC.
"Lord Buddha said that we are all connected. I feel that is so true today," she said.
Torboon Puangmaha, CEO of popular Thai portal Sanook.com, explained how today the way the new generation works is quite different.
"I would write a memo and send email, but today's 20-30 year old graduates need something instant and they work more by instant messenger," he said.
He echoed the consensus that there was a marked shift from print to online, but noted that streaming media has blurred the boundaries of broadcast and static content even further.
"Socially, online games mean we can have friends who enjoy the same things in Japan or Korea. I came from an all-boys school and it was very, very hard for me to get to know any girls. When I did, I would have to sit in front of a telephone and hope it would ring. Today, kids can have friends from all over the world and their voice calls can follow them everywhere in the world via VoIP," he said.
For the online advertiser, the Internet can be a challenge. Since people pull only the content they want to watch, advertisers cannot force them to watch traditional advertisements. However, it also opens up new opportunities.
For instance, Pringles recently did a campaign with Sanook in which users competed for an iPod shuffle by inviting competitors to sing songs and submit a sample video clip. Other users would then vote for their favourite singer in a highly user-interactive manner in a mini reality show format.
Cathay Pacific Thailand manager Yongyuth Lujintanont explained how the airline industry has been transformed by the Internet. Today, travellers buy tickets, check in, select seats and can even print out boarding passes online. On the plane, many Cathay Pacific flights now provide Internet and while on the ground, passengers are kept informed of flight information via SMS.
No comments:
Post a Comment