So Wired is predicting The End of The Web.

Using data from Cisco the Wired graph shows not just a decline in Web based traffic and email but also a concurrent phenomena of traffic going to apps and other off web locations. As various commentators have pointed out, and Boing Boing graphically illustrate, the story is not as straight forward as the Wired article and graph make it seem; there are different ways of illustrating the data and the idea of many environments is not new. There are similar sorts of thoughts expressed in Forrester’s Splinternet view of the internet back in January this year.

But to paraphrase lots of other people; an exaggerated data point is a terrible thing to waste, and if all this does is gets us thinking about the non-web internet, then its a good thing.

So what implications does this have for how brands communicate with their audiences?

4 threats:

* Less contact through traditional owned media of email and brand web sites
* Less exposures (really can it get any smaller?) to audiences through online (web) ads
* Questions around the role of search in all of this; if audiences are not on the web as much how are they finding brand’s content and services?
* More reliance on user recommendations, not on searched discoveries

4 opportunities:

* Mobile and desktop apps and advertising (not new news but perhaps a bit more urgent)
* Content feeds via twitter / rss / podcast (really not new, but perhaps renewed relevance)
* Internet services to mobiles, tablets, social networks, fridges and in-car? (the day of the networked toaster is coming and you know it)
* Built in sociability: not just ‘share this‘, but real (compelling) reasons to invite others to use / subscribe / view

To set the record straight Bjarne Thelin, BARB’s Chief Exec, invited Bulkley in for a chat which resulted in yet another critical article from Bulkley as Thalin explained that BARB is not tracking any web TV viewing at all! Thalin’s response to that article was to then write directly to Broadcast. In his letter he explained BARB’s position on these whacky-new-fangled-inter-web-things;

However, we do have an R&D programme exploring possible additional reporting of content that falls outside the core Barb output. We examine new potential measurement techniques as they become available. There are many techniques and devices in the development stage. But we cannot be reckless in using products and services that are still unproven to us. Barb is not a new-tech laboratory, or a room full of crystal balls; neither is our panel a playground for testing new toys.

Now I know crap-all about TV but I do know a little about the internet and video measurement. And if I know, then surely it can’t be beyond the wit of BARB to use any one of the currently available technologies in some shape or form. So I went green ink on them and sent this in…

Dear Broadcast

I have been following the exchange between your correspondent Kate Bulkley and Bjarne Thelin of BARB. It is interesting that this exchange takes place at the same time that Project Canvas looks set to be given the green light, that the Wall Street Journal reports that WebTV viewing in the US has moved from lunch time to Prime Time: http://bit.ly/cPv6bX and Google TV hits daylight. It may be BARB’s view that online TV is the territory of crystal balls but consumers and some players in the industry have decided that its one of the key ways to watch TV.

And this is not new. The technologies for tracking online video consumption are many, varied and have been established for a number of years. Two services that I have recommended to clients that offer deep analytics and robust tracking of all video consumed (not just that watched by a panel) are TubeMogul and Visible Measures. Is it that these services also enable any video content creator to distribute and track video content, not just the incumbent status quo broadcasters that inclines Thelin to regard them as ‘new toys’?

This archaic approach may be just what BARB’s underwriters and subscribers require of them, but its certainly not reflective of reality.

Sincerely etc.

PS. In a brilliantly British move Project Canvas looks to go the same way as Kangaroo according to the FT. Meanwhile the States continues to steam ahead innovating and exploring new ways of funding and providing TV content to where users are; online.

The panel moderator was TV industry journalist and analyst Kate Bulkley and the other two panelists were Jonathan Sykes, ex-head of content for Tiscali (formerly Home Choice) and Peter Cowley, ex-head of interactive content Endemol UK.

There is a short summary of it here and my slides are up on slideshare here.

Unlike the other panelists I am one of the least qualified people in the world to prognosticate about the current state or possible future of TV. What I think Kate planned was that I’d bring a contrarian POV about the intersection of TV and online audience participation (AKA social media).

As part of my prep for the panel I read “It’s Not The End of TV As We Know It“  by Sheila Seles at the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT. In her paper Seles makes the distinction between Broadcast TV as being ‘Live TV (broadcast once)’ and Online TV as being ‘Supplementary Content’ (Webisodes, games, mobisodes etc) and that the intersection of the two results in ‘Duplicate Content’ such as full length episodes broadcast on Hulu or the BBC iPlayer.

TV Types: Seles, MIT

I’m not sure that I agree with the various distinctions and overlaps. I’d see Duplicate Content as it’s own area, not the overlap of Online and Broadcast. But with that change made I thought it formed a useful picture of universe of the opportunities for audience participation in TV. As with all other forms of content there is no distinction between where or when TV happens and  the opportunities for engaging an audience on social platforms occurs at every stage and in every iteration.

TV types; Amended

Ross shows me his new toy at breakfast

After the obligatory discussion, passing of judgment and prognostications on the future of media , we got to the point; where did he get it and what had it cost? Turned out that he had bought it across the road from the agency at the Chicago flagship Apple store. Also turned out that I had an hour to kill before my flight. So a few hundred dollars later I was the proud owner. And a few hours later I was in the departure lounge missing the opportunity to download the apps I would so sorely miss once I got back to the UK.

And miss them I do.

Despite the blurb extolling that the iPad as the best way to expereince email, photos and video I want to experience the apps dammit! One of the things Ross showed me that was quite impressive was the iPad as an eReader. iBooks has a couple of lovely features that are especially useful if you read for study or work; bookmarking and saving excerpts. Yet amazingly it doesn’t come bundled with the iPad, you have to download it from the Apps Store. It’s free, but it still needs to be downloaded. Which you can’t do in the UK yet…because you can’t access the apps store at all.

The workaround I have devised it downloading apps from my iPhone to the laptop and then syncing the laptop with the iPad and getting the iPhone apps onto it that way. Most of them work quite nicely; I’m running MobileRSS, Flickr, Tweetie, the TED conference app, Guardian, the usual suspects…and most of them work quite nicely; they are just bigger easier to use with fat ex-rugby player finger apps. There are some glitches with a few of them, for example the personalisation menu on the Guardian menu doesn’t work, but by and large it’s actually pretty. I have yet to conquer the Wordpress app, but then I can’t get it to work on the iPhone either so I am suspecting user error.

But of course the one I want the most is the iBooks app that I can’t have. And the ABC TV app that’s getting so much play and the Netflicks app. But then we probably won’t be getting any of these here in the UK, the land where Kangaroo got stopped. So I wonder if one of two scenarios will play out;

1. The iPad will fail in the UK because of the general lack of tech, media, governance and culture entrepreneurial-ism we suffer under here.

2. The success of the iPad (and other tablets that create a walled content playground) will encourage developments in all of those industries now that there seems to be a way of controlling access and extracting payment. Certainly this is Chris Anderson’s view, somewhat ironically given his recent manifesto of ‘Free“…