New Media Differentiators

Robert Scoble in his "What is social media?" post explains “new, social, emergent media” nicely. It also sums up the salient aspects of social media by comparing it with “old, traditional media”.

Summarizing the distinguishing attributes of new media as compared to “old media” such as print media (e.g., newspapers, magazines, catalogs, paper mail, books), broadcast media (e.g., television & radio programs), digital media (e.g., CDs, DVDs, mini discs), Robert pointed out the following (I am rephrasing these points just to give a more personal touch to this post):

1. Old media once made public cannot be modified. For instance, the songs in a released CD cannot be changed.
   
2. Old media are mostly one-way communication channels that don’t let consumers interact with the producers of the media. For example, readers of blogs can leave behind their comments. In this regard, broadcast media is an exception since some programs do indeed permit listeners to call in and interact with the programming.
   
3. Social media lets consumers rate, remark, review and recommend stuff in almost real time. Other consumers can get a sense of the quality and / or popularity of the media item. On the contrary, old media gives consumers no idea of quality or popularity of any item until much later (e.g., a best seller list or Nielsen TV ratings).
   
4. With “new media” it is much easier to search archives and locate related content. New media also permits manipulation of material in ways that are just not possible with older media. Searching and locating related material in case of traditional media is relatively more difficult.
   
5. New media makes it possible to mix and match media types. For instance, you can have a video clip or a bunch of photos published with your web log.
   
6. New media imposes few or no editorial restrictions on the duration of broadcast or length of a publication. There is also greater freedom with topic selection and quality of production. For instance, one can publish a 20-page article on the Web or 100 articles on a given topic.
   
7. Social media also allows easy reuse, repurposing and republishing of material. For instance, I have linked to Robert Scoble’s post here and am adding my two-bit to it. Such reference to another article might be equally possible in a magazine. But, the difference is that the reader cannot quickly check the original article with the same degree of ease. Further, new media can be syndicated with great ease. I could have subscribed to Scoble’s posts through an RSS feed and republished them elsewhere.
   
8. New media can be combined or mashed up with other data served by other applications. For example, the publisher of a blog has no control over the advertisements Google serves or the stuff that get displayed in a widget. Such media aggregation is just not possible with traditional media.
   

Besides the above characteristics Scoble listed, here is a few more:

1. Social media has no constraints of circulation and distribution. Anyone with Internet connectivity can potentially access any article published practically anywhere in the world not only in real time but also at ANYTIME as well.
   
2. Old media by virtue of having been around for much longer than “new media” has a lot more material available on historical events, literary works and more.
   
3. In some instances, social media also permits the collaborative creation of material. New media can be edited at anytime. In most cases, social media published can even be reversed or retracted. This is next to impossible in most cases in the traditional context.