Couple of weeks ago I started a little experiment to test the new hype and obsession with the Stream Theory. Quick reminder:
The next phase of media, I’ve been thinking, will be after the page and after the site. Media can’t expect us to go to it all the time. Media has to come to us. Media must insinuate itself into our streams.
So I decided to try and consume my ‘media’ only from the stream. No RSS, no bookmarks, no direct access - just streams.
Unsurprisingly, it proves futile after the first day. My new mantra fits exactly to the hype around Streams: old things are not being replaced with new stuff, they add to them. Sometimes they compete and sometime co-habit and complementary and together they evolve and we evolve. So categorically predicting that streams will ‘kill’ everything that was before is plain new-media fetishism.
Yes, the wonderful evolution of streams is making it very challenging for old media folks but that’s not new. First it was iGoogle, then the RSS reader and now our social streams. More and more, people consume media in different customised, ‘pull’ and ’social’ ways which shakes the business model of the newspapers and old portals. But very very few people will ditch the old behaviour and platforms altogether. The huge majority will adopt streams behaviour that, yes, will come at the expense of something, (most probably RSS readers, if they use them at all).
But it won’t replace everything. It will just add to the old ways and will become another option, another route, another filter for us to cope with the media firehose.
(All together now)
Old things are not being replaced with new stuff, they add to them
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