This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next edition is Monday, Oct. 28
TAKEAWAY: The tablet is moving center stage in the midst of the new media quartet reorganization.
Media quartet as originally displayed
Media quartet: circa late 2013
We definitely are in the midst of a fast-evolving media business. It is not only challenging to keep up with the changes, let alone the time to digest them and to process them so that we can make sense of what is going on.
Take, for example, the media quartet to which I refer often in this blog and in all of my training workshops.
It is still a media quartet, for sure: phone, online, print and tablet.
But we are seeing dramatic changes in how those four pieces perform, and the degree of preference among users.
The major change: how the tablet is moving from a 100% lean-back platform, primarily used during evening hours, to an all-day affair: the platform of choice for many to read news throughout the day.
It changes the dynamics. It poses challenges for what content we put on the tablet. It encourages us to think that perhaps the tablet becomes a two-track device: one that we come to at various times during the day to get updated on the news, and one that we lie down in bed or on the couch with at the end of the day to enjoy a long narrative or multimedia piece, watch photo galleries and videos.
“I would say tablet use in general is declining as a lean-back experience because of the growth of smaller, lighter tablets with greater mobility,“ says Raju Narisetti, News Corp Senior Vice President, Strategy.
J Ford Huffman, a former USA Today deputy managing editor, had this to say about the changes we are witnessing about the positioning of mobile devices:
PROBABLY it is reshuffling
as it does every time somebody improves the technology platform, but the reshuffling is incremental. The dance is not over, and it takes two to tangothe technology and the tangibility.
Smaller devices win the day, it seems. It is also the reason we are now also spending more time looking at photos, using maps, playing games, checking the weather and social networking on mobile phones rather than desktop computers, according to recent research from Statista.
For now, I am still using the media quartet image of the four platforms in my presentations, but I have added a new one that best reflects what is happening right now. The smaller platforms continue to get stronger in preference for maps, games, networking and weather, even though most readers continue to get “news” via desktop computer.
Stay tuned!
Recent research on the subject:
Peak Times for Smart Devices: Primetime for Entertainment, Morning Commute for news
65% of Time Spent on Social Networks Happens on Mobile
http://mashable.com/2013/10/24/content-consumption-desktop-mobile/
