This interview of Barry Diller speaks volumes bout a previous generation's media mogul and how he views the current state and future of media.
Q: Twitter?A: I'm sure there are some commercial applications for Twitter, but they don't really interest me. I mean, 140 characters? I am really not interested in Ashton Kutcher's daily walks. Not for me.
I think that will be Diller's Bill Gates 640K Of RAM Quote for future generations to point at and mock.
The public is obsessed with celebrity gossip and crap. So is the mass media, because it's much easier to cover than actual news which requires investigation, confirmation and a level of intelligence from the public and the news business.
He does not appear to value the crowdsourcing, socialiality, compactness, convenience, opt-in management, simplicity of interface, and other things that have made Twitter so popular.
I think the biggest draw is the fact that it's free and it's a huge "I will tell you when I want your material, not when you think I want it" to the traditional media.
Instead:
Q: Facebook?A: Facebook's the real deal. Nobody can buy Facebook now. Everybody has taken an angle at it. But Facebook may be the place that organizes everybody's personal information. It's got a very good chance of being that.
Facebook is socialnetworking bloatware. Typical target of a dinosaur media mogul.
Oh, and it has traditional web adspace. Twitter has yet to find its revenue generator, which someone like Diller can't figure out since he's so wrapped up in the last generation's tech.
He even admits the old model is dying:
And only now does he admit that an Old Media Broadcaster without distribution in its portfolio is dead meat:
Q: You said a few years ago that you were concerned the cable industry would take over broadband. Is that still a concern?
A: I very much believe in net neutrality. We have all lived through a world which has been dominated by distribution scarcity. There were only so many cable programs you could have because (cable operators) conned everybody into thinking that (their lines) could only carry so much. But, they were interested in it being scarce. They could say (to programmers): If you want to get on, give us half your business. It was a great scam while it lasted, this idea of scarcity.
Diller/Eisner/Iger have had their heads in the sand with ABC viability without partnership or ownership of some method of distribution over cable or net. Even resisted Comcast's buyout/revenge play by Steve Burke.
I think that spells D-O-O-M in the long run. We'll see.
Especially when faced with:
Q: You've been very excited about video on the Web. But no one's making money at it yet.A: That's definitely true. We have a site called CollegeHumor.com some of you have probably seen. A few years ago it started to produce videos, and over a relatively short period they built up this little group, about 30 people, and they now make about eight videos a week.
And they're extremely successful in the sense that a lot of people view them. They get spikes in the millions of hits, and the quality is very good. And it's not expensive to produce a three- to five-minute video. Now people are getting used to the fact that they're going to have some commercial interruption of videos.
Q: So what's the business opportunity?
A: Go back almost 100 years to the beginning of the motion picture business. They began with "one-reelers." A lot of them were serials. They were at that time anywhere from seven to 10 minutes. Cecil B. DeMille, one of the great movie makers of all time, was making 30 of these a year.
So, I see this little group who are using modern techniques. They're going to graduate as the form evolves just like the movie business did, from two-reelers to 10-reelers. In other words, it will expand as the Internet and bandwidth is able to deliver video that will not just be seen on small little form factors, but on screens in your house or screens of any size.
There's competition in entertainment, but Diller's myopic when it comes to who will produce the content. It's not going to be production houses that are under mogul control, but everyone who can learn the tech and has a story to tell.
The key is to become the gatekeeper/portal that has some kind of way to handle micro-ads or micro-payments... or own the net/broadband access that people pay for to get to those sites.
Once again - if you don't own the pipe, nobody's going to be sucking from your spigot when the pipemasters tighten your valve.
There's one aspect of that interview that has me raising my eyebrow about the music industry. But this is not where I will post my thoughts on it.