How do we define a media company? To begin with Facebook was a Big Tech company. Could we call it an aggregator? Or is it a media company?
Simply put, a company that looks for audiences is a media company. It seeks audiences across geographies, technologies, formats and tastes. It seeks to monetise the audience through advertising or pay revenues.
Netflix is thus a pay revenue media company. It could create stickiness for another business, say Amazon.
MX Player is a video streaming platform. It is run on advertising revenue. It decided to launch a subscription-based service called MX Gold, thus giving ad-free service to its subscribers. It has 200 million active users per month. It has been downloaded 1 billion times in October, 2021. MX Player was taken over by Times Internet in 2018. Chinese Ten Cent has too invested in this platform.
It releases original shows. They were north-based. It also offers international and regional content. The content is supported by the ads. It attracts rural audience not touched by the likes of Netflix or Amazon Prime. It is video-on-demand service. In 2010, it started gaming. Its revenue model is hybrid.
Metaverse, the virtual reality universe, will be shaped by tech saavy manpower from India, according to Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Indian talent of app developers, AR developers, and online gaming developers will contribute a great deal in building the foundation of the metaverse. Zuckerberg articulated his views at Fuel for India 2021 event.
AS we know, Facebook has been rechristened Meta in consistence with Zuckerberg’s vision of the future of internet.
Meta is investing in education and commerce too through startups. Meta wants to accelerate the developments of fundamental technologies, the social platforms and creative tools that are necessary to bring the metaverse to life.
Metaverse will not be developed by just one country or one company. It will be a huge collaborative effort.
At present, Facebook has an audience of 3 billion users globally and it aims to double this user base. A huge amount of foundation of metaverse is likely to be built here in India.
In the 1970s, the primary media for advertising were print, radio, cinema and outdoor. Cinema ads were seen in Technicolor on a large screen, say of 500 sq. ft., with an effective sound system. It was a time to enjoy the visuals of Old Spice Surfing ad or Karen Lunel’s Waterfall ad for Liril. It was time to exploit the full impact of the big screen, where captive audience was in attendance.
TV appeared later in its rudinentary form — B & W 21-23 inches set. It reached the homes and bedrooms, and became the family medium. It did not have the booming sound of cinema. It cannot project the dramatic shots of waterfall. There could not be panoramic shots, especially on B&W sets. The characters have to communicate with the families on one-to-one basis. Thus ads with good dialogues were shown. We had Lalitaji’s ad for Surf detergent — Surf ki kharidari mein hai samajdari. This was the scenario in the 1980s. In the 1990s, the TV sets became bigger and better. The screen size expanded so as to accommodate panoramic shots. There were ads such as Fevicol bus.
By the 2000’s, there was computerisation everywhere. Laptops were used extensively, and video messages were delivered through them.YouTube videos became popular since 2005. Ads were to be adopted to computer – laptop screen. A laptop is a one-to-one medium, unlike TV which is a family medium. Thus laptop may need subtitling, since in offices the videos are played in law volume. The screen size had shrunk to 13 inches, but the viewer was just two feet away.
By 2015, India became the biggest consumer of video content on the cell phones. A TV ad may not be perfect for a laptop. And a laptop one may not suit a 5-inch cell phone screen. Should brands run one and the same ad across all these screen? Or should they curate for one medium, and let it play on others? Is it necessary to repurpose videos for each individual medium?
Video consumption in India has shifted primarily to cell phones. It means ads will be seen on 5-7 inch screens. The sound will be heard through weak mobile speakers or through headphones. There is going to be a less than one-feet distance at which the mobile phone will be held from the eyes. There will be passive viewing, as the consumer is likely to indulge in other activities while viewing.
Perhaps, it is time to go hyperclose on mobile screens, say ECU. Maybe, there should be the same language subtitling. Panoramic shots of the film era should be kept to the minimum. The whole technique of ad making for the mobile era has to be evolved. What worked in the past may not work now. Colours, characters, music, dialogues and editing — each element must change.
Brands have to think where they would like to optimise – TV, laptop, mobile or cinema.
Gen Z has new online hangouts. Facebook and Twitter are just passe. The new hangouts are Discord. Reddit, Twitch and Wickr.
These offer complete anonymity to the users. They do not offer algorithm-driven content to the users — unlike the traditional media sites.
Reddit is called the front page of internet. It was launched in 2005. Its app appeared in 2016. It covered the age groups of 13s to 30s. It has many different communities — sub-reddit. It is used by 2.6 million teenagers all over the world. The handles used are pseudonyms. Alien mascots constitute the DPs. Its anonymity allows you to post anything — sad, happy or bizarre. The Reddit community either upvotes or downvotes it.
Twitch is a live streaming platform. There are ASMR videos covering diverse things. It is a new way to express yourself.
Wickr is a secret messaging app. These are self-destructing messages. Screenshots are not allowed. Youngers use it for sexting and gossiping. They can plan secret parties.
Discord beats all other apps with 150 million active users. It offers online gaming. It is free voice and video-enabled chatting platform. It was originally designed for gamers but transformed into space for teens and preteens. They spot new friends here. They hangout privately or in public chat communities. They can do texting and switch to voice calls and video conferencing.
There are invite-only virtual communities on discord. Some of these are problematic. Some address psychological issues. Some support LGBT community. Some give opportunity to bond over a common interest, say music, books. There are gambling tutorials and e-dating.
There are private invite-only servers. There are no age or identity filters. It is a world-wide exposure. There are some servers which promote negativity, say Trash Talk.
Discord has a safety centre to protect users from content or interactions they do not want. Parents find Discord too difficult to navigate. The nicknames too change with every server. Therefore, it is a free world, with no parental monitoring.
Many youngsters sign up on Discord just to belong. Parents are unaware of this.
Instagram is being probed by several states of the US such as Texas, Nebraska, Massachusetts, California, Florida, Keutucky, Tenessee, New Jersey and Vermount for its effects on children and young adults, especially the risk it posses to their mental health and well-being.
It has been observed that Meta, the company that runs Instagram, has put profits over safety. The probe seeks to end this behaviour. It will examine the techniques to boost usage among young people. Meta itself has paused plans to create an Instagram for kids when the Wall Street Journal outlined company’s own research on the app’s impact on children, especially teenage girls.
A whistle blower Frances Haugen, also a former employee, levelled charges against Facebook that it did not do enough to prevent the spread hate speech and misinformation.
In fact, Facebook allocated only 13 percent of its total budget to counter hate speech and misinformation in 2020 outside the US, including India.
Monica, VP, Content Safety Says they have a network of 10 fact checkers working in 11 Indian languages. There are similar number of fact checkers in the US market.
There are reviews of problematic content in 20 Indian languages. In addition, there are hate speech classifiers, which is an automated detection technology in regional languages.
A connected digital world is envisaged in near future. It is a concept akin to Second Life, where people will create an online avatar of themselves and would live a second life in online space. Creators of second life have issues with metaverse, which they find too much controlled and ad-supported.
Metaverse relies on gaming as an essential component, whereas Second Life does not have games or points to play. It is just a community built by users.
There are activities which are considered odd in mainstream culture. These are welcome in the metaverse. Events, art, interactions and unique self-expression are common elements of metaverse. These are unique within Second Life. There would be mode for commerce too. Cryptos could be used here.
Second Life as a game is required to be run on a PC or laptop, and has not got a proper mobile app. It, therefore, has not become mainstream. It is a 2-D experience. The future lies in 3-D technology, making use of AR-VR. An iOS app has been developed that allows playing Second Life on mobile device, but it has not been built by Linden Labs, the parent firm.
Second Life provides ultimate escapism, where players forget about family and social lives. They build deep social and virtual sex connections. It is a matter of concern.
In metaverse, we share immersive experiences with other people who may not be physically together. It is a feeling of presence — you are right there. It is the climax of social technology. Every trend is being gamified. And VR is the favourite gaming technology, followed by AR and wearable gaming.
Metaverse could be toxic for women and minorities. How could there be moderation of users? They can speak anything and behave the way they like. Can we afford continuous recording? Will it not encroach on the privacy? And there are physical limitations of hardware — at some point the headset will run out of memory and power. It is not possible to monitor the users at meaningful scale.
While designing, iterating and bringing new products, we must be mindful that technology has the potential to harm the users.
Corporates may invest heavily in the concept of a metaverse. They would like to create a social, 3D virtual space to share the immersive experience, though people are not together physically.
Metaverse could be an existential threat to Facebook itself if it wards off mainstream customers from the medium. Facebook would like to have ‘almost Disney levels of safety’ for its virtual worlds.
As we know, the term metaverse was derived from the 1992 novel, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. In 1991, Tim Berners — Lee Invented HTML or Hyper Text Mark-Up Language which laid the foundation of the World Wide Web. In this novel, Stephenson imagined a world with MNCs and AR which he called the metaverse. This concept of metaverse has been adopted by the tech community. In fact, the metaverse will consist of multiple metaverses or spaces, seamlessly blending the physical reality into augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). It could be seen as an extension of the social media. It will attract huge investment for its development and marketing.
The hardware that will be used in meta will be VR helmets, and platforms like Horizons. Microsoft is developing software, avatars and productivity tools. Roblox, a gaming platform, is developing meta-gaming tools. Tinder may introduce meta-sexuality nuances. Electronic Arts may create metaverses centred on its games. Each organisation will contribute to the development of metaverses in its own way. It is difficult to figure industry standard at this stage.
What for these platforms be used? What is going to be the revenue model? These are issues difficult to answer now. Of course, gaming is one of the possibilities. There could be enhanced entertainment options. There could be simulations of real environment, providing touch-and-feel experience. After a technology develops, there could be unimaginable ways of using it.