The Audience Is Dead But The Show Must Go On

by on 9 July, 2006 - 09:43

by: Karl LongIain at Morrison Macmillan just picked up on a previous post of mine that was, tongue in cheek, titled YouTube Bigger Than Jesus. What Iain comments is how Revver has a long way to go before it becomes as successful as youtube, mtv etc.In fact, this is what he says: Their case for the creative merits of Revver over YouTube is a persuasive one, and one that would financially favor the creators of popular content. However, it’s hard to estimate how long it might take audiences to change their viewing habits in big enough numbers to make properties like Revver more successful than YouTube, MTV or anyone else.

And thats a fair point if the measure of success is sheer volume of audience (eyeballs), which i’m sure youtube, myspace and photobucket would like everyone to believe is the pinnacle of success. IMHO the concept of the audience is dead. As the social customer manifesto says

There are no spectators anymore. Participate

So what does this mean for measuring success if it’s not just about the size of the audience? How about “revenue per customer” “revenue per registered user” how about “value creating activity per user”. Think about the value that is created through the active participation of your customers? People are down on flickr because they don’t have so many users as photobucket, but have you seen the value in collections, clusters, how much richer the experience of navigating that folksonomy is? What % of flickr users are pro users? And how many of those pro users are stewards of beauty and art? Hey, I’m not saying flickr is going to be bigger than photobucket, and wouldn’t want it to, just how do you measure success. As Caterina says in Metrics, registered users and social ecosystems:

They have different social structures and value propositions.

In the end most customers in the social media space are co-creators of value and IMHO many companies need to be looking at how they steward those value creation activities. In the end co-creative customers are making meaning for themselves, in conjunction with your brand, your role is to help them become more. The audience may be dead but the show must go on.

Original Post: http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/the-audience-is-dead-but-the-show-must-go-on