social networking: opportunity, not threat, to “old media”

Yesterday a student from the University of Westminster sent me a message via facebook, asking whether I thought social networking sites are a threat to "old media". I’m posting the response here:

Last month I was speaking with Glen Drury, the Vice President of Yahoo Northern Europe, and he told me that Yahoo’s view is that tv audiences are spending increasing amounts of time away from the television and on the internet instead. That may very well be true, although I don’t have any specific statistics to point to. But radio listening is, I’m told, on the increase, in part because people can and do listen to the radio while they use the internet. And as readership of print newspapers stagnates or goes into decline, at least according to some, the number of people visiting newspaper websites continues to increase.

So are social networking sites a threat to so called old media? I don’t think so. I actually see them as opportunities to interact with our audiences in new ways, and to tap into new audiences. I’ll explain.

When a radio or tv programme sets up a website or blog, it’s audience tends to be a subset of the existing audience of listeners. You could argue that it super-serves that audience and does little, if anything, to create new audiences. Now audience retention IS important, but as anyone working in media will tell you, growth in audiences is, just like growth in the economy or growth in corporate income, a key metric of success.

Media and news organisations therefore need to get their content out in front of new audiences and social networks are one way to do this. Already, people like me find the majority of their new web based content through their social networks – for me, that means via del.icio.us, twitter and facebook. I also find a lot of new music through last.fm and, to a lesser extent, online radio.

When a friend or contact tells you about something, or even recommends something or someone to you, it’s much more powerful than a PR or advertising message. By going out and participating in online social spaces, by putting content in front of audiences that are searching for social objects around which to build discussions and community, media companies can do exactly this – they can tap into a network of people who will see and share and hopefully recommend our content to their own social networks.

There are millions of people looking for photographic content on flickr. By uploading photos and tagging them appropriately, then linking back to a BBC page, we’re able to get our content in front of those people and they may very well follow the link back to source. That same is true with content posted on facebook or youtube or blip.tv or wherever.

And social networking sites give us even greater opportunities than this – they let us actually know who our audiences are and to interact with them. So a flickr group or facebook group created by a BBC person on behalf of a BBC programme can be a useful way to get the audience involved in critiquing the programme, building community around it (and generating buzz in doing so) and perhaps even getting them involved in creating the programme (eg. Networked Journalism).

So are social networks a threat to so called old media? I don’t think so. I think they are an opportunity for us to learn more about, and get closer to, our audiences and also a useful tool for getting our content in front of new audiences who, potentially, will discover us for the first time on the social media site of their choice rather than a TV channel or radio station.