Thank you for taking the time to research every angle of the program.I  think the final paragraph of you post sums it up perfectly.

“We thought we’d come out of SXSW talking about the next hot app or some new trend in mobile commerce, but here we are talking about a very real problem and some of the complicated issues surrounding it.”

Thanks again.
Tim Nolan, Creative Director BBH Labs / NY & Homeless Hotspots

I’ve concluded there is no hope for the current public media models, aside from guarding existing territory. There are pockets of good work where the money supports it (NPR), but broadly the system faces increasing irrelevance and collapsing funding in the years to come. The only hope is that an organization like NPR could take over public media as a whole, leading it with a clarified central mission (news) and greater efficiencies and economies of scale.

There’s a future out there for the mission and principles of public media. But it won’t be led by Boomers, who are just skating to retirement and taking everything for themselves along the way.

Today I’m back in healthcare technology, and lemme tell you something — this is a fast-moving and fascinating industry comprised of multiple generations and players at all levels of government, nonprofits, and private companies. It’s not as simple as public media, and there are many factions with different ideas about the future. But technology and communications and media are all part of that future and everyone knows it.

God bless you to the Millenials and GenXers still working in public media. You guys are doing great work and I hope you’re not suffering too much. Just know there are places for you out there, outside public media, where you can have a community impact and don’t have to be second-class citizens in your own workplaces.

I’m actually wondering if Facebook may really be at their peak right now in the run up to their IPO and it’s all going to be downhill from here for them.We’ll see, but there is definitely something behind this movement towards tools that do one thing exceptionally well over sites like Facebook that (in my opinion) might be trying to do a bit too much.

There will still be some room for tools that connect all of the tools to one another and that’s where Facebook is hoping to be, but that could still just as easily be Google or someone else.

Interesting times for sure.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that, like Youtube, premium pages will eventually be able to specially brand their pages. Nothing major but adding some graphic and or color changes I think are the next step.

I also feel like images are a lot more important now with the timeline, which is great if you’re a company with promotions and products to sell.  Nothing like a wall with big images standing out to get your customers’ attention.

I’m not sure how directly related this is to the success of Pinterest as a visual social network, but I think many social networks are taking the plunge to become much more visual. It’s been, what, five years of The Wall type interface, with chronological comments and lots and lots of text and whatnot? In Internet years, that’s a lifetime of the same old thing.

It also makes me wonder how some of the bigger brands will change the focus of their pages…so many FBPs are just complaint platforms…now, if the experience is different (you’re greeted by a wall of pictures, rather than a wall of text), how might that change the purpose of a FBP for a company.

Anyway, I’m rambling…thanks for this article, lots to think about!