Top Innovators in Media

Over the past few years, it seems as if the media industry has expanded more during this generations than it has at any other time in history. Throughout every field in the media industry there has been a select group of innovative leaders who have revolutionized their fields. In social networking, we have the like of Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn), and Jack Dorsey (twitter), who have completely changed the ways in which people network. In enterprise and cloud computing, perhaps the most prominent leaders are Sergey Brin with Larry Page (Google), Padmasfree Warrior (Cisco), and Andy Stanford-Clark (IBM) who have simply created a metamorphosis of how people communicate with each other. As for the News category, innovative leaders such as Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.), Fiona Spruil (NY times), Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post), and Kim Walton (CNN) are constantly finding new and creative ways to deliver the news to the public. While in the digital entertainment category Eddy Cue (iTunes), Chad Hurley (YouTube), and Reed Hastings (Netflix) have dramatically transformed how we watch videos and listen to music.

All About the Buzz

In Medias Res staff was asked: "What drives revenue growth in this industry (i.e. more units sold, expanding geographic reach, lower costs for manufacturing, etc.)?"

It’s hard to chart revenue growth in the media industry when only some of the money comes from units sold (i.e. ticket sales, DVD-s, Blu-Rays, CD-s, books merchandise). According to RevenueRecognition.com, “newspapers get their lion’s share of revenue from advertisers.” The same goes for magazines and other periodicals, as well as cable TV broadcasting. A lot of the revenue growth comes from marketing the products on television and the internet and sharing ad-space for other products and industries. The more that the public pays attention, the more they are exposed to advertising. And so, the media industry grows.

But it’s not as easy as just having some well-placed ads. Back in the times of Charlie Chaplin, all you needed to sell out your show or newspaper was a cute, scrappy kid standing on a soap-box, calling all the ladies and gents to attention.

To draw a crowd in this industry you need to create a buzz. Today, many people are very vocal about their preferences- if only because to express views today, all you have to do is click the “Like” option on Facebook. Well, it is this sort of online acceptance that is giving branches of the media industry credit where it’s due.

On Paid Content, a poll is displayed (complements of Trendrr, a social measurement company) showing howoften companies are being mentioned on blogs or on Twitter. They compiled a tidy list of 50 popular companies and brands and how often they have been mentioned in the blogs of hipsters and Tweets of tweens.

This representation of “popularity,” while very non-traditional, seems to be pretty indicative of what’s on people’s minds. Of course, the data doesn’t show whether the comments on blogs and Twitter were positive or negative- which is ok, considering that, in this business especially, all publicity is good publicity! It’s buzz like this that brings in revenue to an industry that relies so heavily on advertisement.