You may recall some of their earlier work. The Web Trends map # 4 provides a unique visualisation of the Web as a London Underground Transport Map. This time they have remodelled the map around Twitter’s Top 140 Influencers.
I found the map to be a useful tool for exploring the simple question: Who has more influence on the web Old Media or New Media?
It is generally recognised that Twitter achieved its “Zeitgeist” event in March 2007 when it dominated the SXSW festival. It was also in March 2007 that the New York Times, Techcrunch, Mashable, Fred Wilson, Wired, Fox and Reuters all started twittering.
In the following month the Wall St Journal, NPR, Read Write Web and Barak Obama all joined in. The rest as they say is history.
What I find interesting is CNN was twittering for 2 months before the Zeitgeist event and the New York Times adopted the new medium before Techcrunch, Wired, Mashable and Read Write Web.
Indeed only GigaOm – who had an account a week before the public launch in July 2006 – and Scobilizer were out there twittering before the New York Times.
This indicates a couple of things. Firstly the old media (e.g. CNN, Fox, the New York Times, Reuters and the Wall St Journal) are just as tech savvy – if not more so – than the new media. Indeed Google didn’t start twittering until February 2009. So the old media doesn’t have a problem with the early adoption of new media innovations.
Secondly it raises the question what would Twitter be today if the market leaders of the old mass media hadn’t been such early adopters of the technology? After all both CNN and the New York Times adopted the technology prior to the SXSW event horizon and again it wasn’t Google that set the agenda because Google was a relatively late adopter of the technology.
Thirdly it raises the question of just how influential the new media tech blogs really are. After all, apart from GigaOm and Scobilizer, all the major blogs adopted the technology during the time of the Zeitgeist event. So they were really just mirroring the market by tapping into the Zeitgeist.
Based on dates in the Cosmic 140 it is clear that both CNN and the New York Times can still lay claims to leading and influencing the what future of the media market will look like. After all would Barak Obama have been Twittering during the 2008 election campaign if CNN, the New York Times, Fox News, Reuters and Wall St Journal had not already adopted the technology?
The next question that needs to be asked is what business are the tech blogs in if they are not in the business of leading and influencing the shape of the new media landscape? The answer to that, as I have said before, is probably conferencing.
After all, the top tech blogs are increasingly being remodelled as “Freemium” content hooks for a wide range of tech conferences. (e.g. GigaOm –Structure, Mobilize, NewTeeVee Live and the Bunker Summit. Techcrunch – Disrupt. RWW – Real Time Web and Mobile Summits. Venturebeat – Demo. Mashable – Media Summit. Business Insider – Startup 2010. and finally the Crunchies (GigaOm, TechCrunch and VentureBeat).
The final question is if the tech blogs aren’t leading the media convergence revolution who is? The answer to that can be found in some research published over the weekend by the Pew Research Center. Their post on New Media Old Media indicates that for the 7 month period ending the 15th of June 43% of Tweets were technology related compared to only 8% Blog Posts and 1% of Newspaper articles.
So I guess the team over at Information Architects were in tune with the Zeitgeist when they chose to model their latest road map on Twitter but it would appear it’s still that 1% of newspaper coverage that can make or break an emerging technology.
May 25th, 2010 → 10:58 pm
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