The New Media Boss Same as the Old Boss?

Who knew The Who to be so prescient about 21^st century media amid 1960s-like rebellion?  In the classic 1971 anthem “Won’t Get Fooled Again” distrust of the social order is bemoaned, social revolution is endorsed and all of it comes to a quixotic climax where the replacing “new boss” is same as the displaced “old boss.”

A classic among Classic Rockers, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is above all else begging for us to be careful of what we wish for in rebellion and revolution because of unintended consequences.  Fitting advice indeed and to me is becoming an increasingly apt description of what’s happening in the world of New Media among its heavy hitters at Google, Facebook and the like.

Not long ago what Google and Facebook and others were about promised to unlock us forever from the shackles of Old Media and its corporate imperatives where any content delivery to any audience had to be guided by whatever some advertiser was willing to pay to “sell” that same audience.  This power dynamic of information exchange was classic top-down where content providers in print, cinema, radio and TV on their desired schedules, provided new content for audiences to consider or ignore.  The content providers ran the show and all we did was decide to what degree and to which media segments we would focus our energy, attention and buying power.

The New Media pioneers promised that this model was forever changed.  That unlike the multi-segmented sheep herds before it, advances and applications in digital communication technologies made it possible for all of us to be masters of our own unique content experience.  It added the even more promising dimension that in real-time we could consume the content and simultaneously dialogue with other consumers about what we just saw, read or heard!  Gone were the days where as content consumers we were only seen as buyers to propel the wheels of commerce.

But many of the promises of New Media are slipping.  Just when we thought that being part of a “mass”-anything audience was passé the Googles and Facebooks of the world are looking increasingly like what they were thought to replace.  With an endless string of new rules about user “privacy” and whatnot the transparency of these entities’ intent is slowly disappearing under the drawn curtain of Oz’s wizard.  Users control less of their own content and profiles and the providers control more in amassing data and knowledge banks that can be spliced, diced and generally used to—get this—propel the wheels of commerce.

It is not fully realized yet but as clear as the clarion call, New Media is marching toward a model of corporatization that will bear a striking resemblance to the old Hollywood studio system or William Paley’s grandiose (and successful) ambitions to build America’s Tiffany media network at CBS.  A top-down model of content control (perhaps even the content you provided on their channel) will predominate.  Consider Google’s move that has SEO types apoplectic. 

No longer will it always specify the search query that fueled a web site visit.   Now a simple “not provided”  will appear.  What happened to the openness of Google’s promise; the “open-source” nature of the Web?  Vertical integration with deep tentacles will also predominate across the technology platforms and seminal content providers that characterize New Media.  In fact perhaps so deep that New Media may trod the same anti-trust path that disassembled parts of Old Media more than a half century ago.  Under such a scenario are we to believe the New Media user experience that was to be controlled from the “bottom-up” will survive as intended while thorny legal issues are considered? Hardly.

Meet the New Boss.  Same as the Old Boss.

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John Durante is senior marketing associate for WordWrite Communications.