Is New Media Actually Tech, Or Some Sort Of Media/Tech Love Child?
I was thinking about the tech pioneer days of the 1980s when guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were starting their businesses. These guys were extremely successful at a very young age, and few people older than them were catching this wave. I recently read Malcom Gladwell’s book “Outliers” and he actually pointed out that most of these tech guys were born within a year or two of each other:
Steve Jobs – February 24, 1955
Bill Gates – October 28, 1955
Eric Schmidt – April 27, 1955
Why does this matter? Timing. These guys were at just the right age, and had just the right amount of experience in their respective fields to prosper, and being young they were much more open to how things could be, instead of how they were. As a result they hit the jackpot. Remember, luck is when opportunity meets preparation.
So where am I going with all of this? How does this apply to new media? Well if we look at what is happening with media right now, and how new media is encroaching into traditional media’s business, we see some serious disruption. I’m sure that companies like IBM looked down at Apple and even Microsoft at first. Why else would they suggest licensing DOS instead of buying it? Big mistake of course. So the traditional media companies looked down on the new media companies, or even ignored them all together because they viewed them as being more tech than media. But I hardly expect that Viacom is ignoring Google now. Suddenly the media industry is on it’s heels.
This is a particularly interesting time for people involved with media, and I think it’s going to follow a similar path as we saw with tech. The barriers to entry are incredibly low, and in fact in some ways they are lower for the younger generations as they actually have far more experience with new media. I’m doubtful you’re going to see many new companies within new media that have people over 40 years old running them (unless they’re from the tech industry). I’m willing to bet we’re still going to see a few more interesting new media companies sprouting up over the next few years, and the big guys are not going to be the ones launching them, but they may start acquiring them.