Reflections on Qik, life casting, and social media strategy.
[editors note, this was started yesterday]
I’m not doing real good on my effort to write short blog entries today.. I’ve written parts of two really long ones.. for some reason these never seem to want to get published.. oh the pain and suffering of it all!
As we speak, I’m preparing food.. just chicken, I’m starving..
Today I watched some internet TV which has me thinking a little differently about what I’m doing. I’m thinking I might want to think more seriously about Qik. Qik is a website that allows you to stream video live, via a cell phone, out to the internet, where anyone could watch. Of course you need a special sort of Nokia smart phone sort of cell phone, and a special sorta internet connection.. to make it happen… but the more I think about it, the more I find myself thinking “wow, this could be cool.”
The question, of course, is how much it costs. You need a phone.. they seem to be more then $500… you need an unlimited data plan.. I have no idea how much these are going for.. Apple’s is what, $60 a month for the basic plan? So basically, I have to look at my budget and fiscal situation, and try and figure out just what my priorities ought be..
So here’s sorta what I’m thinking: Pseudo Life Casting. What I mean is that it’s a means by which you can bring an audience into your world…….
I haven’t quite figured this all out yet.. But the way I see it is.. I’m creating a story.. between the blogs and podcasts and media work. There’s what we might consider “a total story” and then there’s “particular narrative threads.” This is perhaps terrible terminology, but bare with me.. Any particular consumer of my story may only be interested in particular threads.. For instance.. perhaps you’re interested in music production.. so only the blog entries in the music production subject of this blog are of interest to you.. you really don’t care what my cat had for lunch! But then there are other people.. perhaps friends, who might actually be interested in what my cat had for lunch… or at least they are interested in pretending to be interested…
So.. can you create a granularity… where someone can tune into a grain.. and only get that grain’s content.. and not have to suffer the rest of it? I doubt it.. or.. I’m sure there’s ways of achieving this.. but I don’t think the technological ecosystem of the moment is capable of doing this out of the box, put it that way.
It might make sense to not go a qik route.. as I think of it. What is the meaning of Live? How important is live content? As I ask this question multiple thoughts come to me. For one thing… Live can mean user interactivity.. where you can comment on the live feed, and the person in the video can in someway react to what your saying..
Also.. imagine Live as one part of a larger whole. Lets say you’re life is the narrative. You have twitter, which is pretty close to real time.. lets call them grains of thought. You have a blog which is.. well ideally I’d like to think of it as a daily thing.. A podcast, which ideally is probably a weekly thing.. In someways, doesn’t it sorta seem like.. the closer to real time you go, the closer to the person you go?
I’m almost thinking.. forget about the audience.. in terms of thinking what might be interesting. I mean who knows, right? Lets just do our thing and see if anyone tunes into it.. Imagine you’re just constantly creating content.. almost like breathing. Would the constant flow of content, almost on it’s own, generate an audience? Sorta like.. I could type out anything here… and Google, and other search engines.. will see this text, and it’ll show up in searches.. so that it probably doesn’t even matter what I say.. if I just keep talking, an audience will develop.
Well no, not really.. who wants to read crap, right? Sure, you’ll see it, you’ll read a couple lines.. and then you’ll go “wow, this is stupid” and run away… so sure.. I can get zillions of people to take that first look, maybe.. just as an effect of creating lots of content.. but that’s not really what we want to do.. what we really want to do is to have folks who actively follow us.
I suppose we could look at these followers in terms of various segments.. There are people who might know who you are and casually follow you.. say if you connect with someone in a particular context.. they might be curious enough to sorta visit your stream… That person is a consumer.. but you know.. not a big consumer.. Then you have someone who’s.. lets say a fan.. or better yet, we are talking about a hard core fan! The hard core fan, depending on how hard the core is.. that person is likely to consume a lot more content then the person who’s only occasionally bumping into things.
Ok.. so look at that.. Isn’t that interesting! What I mean is… the hard core and the casual consumer want different things. The way I would look at it is like this.. the casual consumer hears your music on the radio, the hard core consumer buys your CD. When you only know a band by there TV and Radio appearances.. that you happen into by chance.. versus someone who actively seeks this band out.. you have qualitatively different experiences.. When communicating with the casual consumer… you speak in sound bites, when speaking to the hard core fellow, you speak in paragraphs.
I guess my point is.. you can see why a social media strategy would want both.. and perhaps the full spectrum in between.
In marketing, the subject of “conversion” is not insignificant.. of how to convert someone from a casual consumer, lets say, and a hard core consumer.. or even from a non consumer to a hard core consumer.
Next day:
Good enough, lets post