One of the great rewards of being a parent, is watching my two children deal with the world around them. My early thoughts as a child were of how it all worked and how I could interact with what is there, and then to fit this into my life.
Sometimes your kids come up with a statement or a question that genuinely stops you in your tracks. My 7 year old Harry, stopped my partner Sally in her tracks the other weekend by telling her how worried he was about the situation in Ukraine and now that Putin had invaded Crimea, where she saw it all going? Clearly he is better informed than I was at 7 and worries about world events!
More interestingly, I have noticed for some time that Both Evie (10) and Harry consume content in a different way than I did as a child and it's worthy of comment.
Like many children of their age they are hooked on another digital disruption called 'Minecraft'. This is a game that must have annoyed the established gaming industry no end, in that with a small budget, Mojang have made millions on something with the production values I could have created on a PC from 20 years ago. But it is the playability, creativity and ease of access that makes it such a great concept. But that's not the topic of this piece.
What's more interesting is the fact that my two children, more often than not, when they watch the TV are viewing content on Youtube. More to the point, self generated content from Stampylongnose and iBallistic Squid to name just a couple. These two are recording what they do in Minecraft and then posting it online. Each of their video's (and they seem to generate many films each week between them) get over 1.5m views after a day or so and that gets noticed by Google and the advertisers that sponsor them. I believe they get considerable revenue for their troubles. But why are they popular? Well the point is, it doesn't matter. Right now, it just is, and when they get bored and the next topic of interest comes along, they will use Youtube or something similar to view new content, and so it goes on.
That's just not playing by the rules is it? How are Sony and Disney and others of that ilk going to react to this? It's ethereal, fleeting. The answer is they can't. The audience is not loyal and are totally mobile and not constrained by artificial borders or regimes. There is little brand loyalty with my children's peer group.
I could talk about how this is troublesome indeed for traditional publishers, but that's just not interesting, what is interesting, are the tools and platforms and media that allows all this to happen, and that's where we have to salute those that by design or accident created the platform that has been adopted.
Anyone can download the free developer kits to create an app to publish on iTunes, anyone can open a Youtube account, anyone can host a "Hunger Games" session on Minecraft. Anyone can utilise the Linux kernel and create a new distribution such as Ubuntu or Mint. There are no barriers to entry.
So this is the main point isn't it? There are no barriers to entry. I'm sure Stampylongnose wasn't the first to create a 'lets play' video but he most certainly has influenced many others to do the same, and so it goes on.
The growth is exponential and the ideas generated, spark new ideas and new products. Where products and services were created by large companies or people with a great deal of tenacity to get the product out there, you can now publish your blog, book or video content in an instant. You don't have to seek backing or approval, you just do it.
So the next time you need to come with an idea to generate income for your organisation, you may want to think a little differently. Maybe you create the platform and allow others to use it for free. All you have to do is consider how you monetize it!
And here we can steal a well known phrase from Nike , "Just do it"
All rights reserved - Simon Pass - www.irwellsolutions.co.uk
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