Online and social media are unpredictable platforms. Some products that started out as niche and tech oriented products, have turned into mainstream products.
Example: Twitter
A few months ago, Leo Laporte from TWiT and Kevin Rose for battling for subscriber counts, which was significantly below the 100,000 mark. However, in the past few weeks, mainstream media has picked up on Twitter and are dominating the service.
Example: YouTube:
YouTube started out as a user-generated site, with a vast majority of content coming from independent producers. Today, the site features certain full length movies and shows.
Example: Podcasting
Similar to the above two examples, podcasting originated in the technology space. However, currently, a majority of the top performing podcasts are dominated by mainstream media.
While the adoption of mainstream media is great — why aren’t independent producers succeeding? The answer is visibility. TV shows and personalities get millions of views a day. However, even the low ranking broadcast shows generate more traffic than a popular website.
Will this change over time? No, not unless TV goes away. Mass media has always been a promotional vehicle — a formula that has been perfected over many decades. While the formula doesn’t always work, it works in many situations.
