Watch a highlights video of this presentation from Adage.com.
Peter Meirs at MPAs "Meet the Innovators" luncheon, June 6.
Meirs primary role at Time Inc. is to lead the development of technologies and business models that extend Time Inc.'s content into electronic magazines and other digital media. He is also an affiliate of the MIT Media Lab, which emphasizes technologies that improve quality of life, as well as a founding member of the PRISM
Technology can be broken into three groups, he said: disruptive, emerging, and practical. Disruptive is brand-new technology that is just breaking through. It's unclear if it will last or work. Emerging is when it is almost ready for adoption by the mass culture. Perhaps it still costs too much, is awkward to use, or doesn't scale. Practical technology is when it becomes part of the mainstream and is accepted.
Meirs pointed out that sometimes technology can take a long time to travel through this continuum and that it can float on a sea of hype for some time before it becomes something useable to all. Charge couple devices (CCD), which turned images into data, were invented in 1969 but there was no use for it until six years later when Kodak built the very first digital camera. It was huge and not practical, but it worked.
CCD, Meirs noted, was a crucial part of making the digital camera, which wasn't a widely accepted device until 2002 when digital-camera prices fell below $300. Then people began getting rid of their old cameras and using digital cameras as their sole cameras. Meirs pointed out that digital is quickly replacing most analog devices, such as DVDs instead of videotape or MP3s instead of records. Some digital such as ebooks has a long way to go before it replaces its predecessor.
Digital magazines fall into the latter category, said Meirs, but are much more viable at this point than ebooks. Digital editions have now existed for a number of years and once were thought to spell the eventual end of print editions. While that prediction may never come to fruition, digital editions are fast becoming a part of the overall picture for publishers. Companies such as Zinio, Olive, and Nextbook continue to crank out digital editions for publishers, but Meirs stated that there are far more innovative ways to use digital editions than the current offerings. He mentioned a company based in Norway called Magwerks that integrates moving images, sound, and extensive interactivity into every page of its digital editions.
Time Inc. put out a special digital edition for its Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue that featured slide shows, sound and the ability to remove text from a page if so desired. "Design-centric formats really aid reader retention" in digital, he said.
One thing that may help digital editions thrive is the creation of flexible electronic paper or virtual displays, which Meirs estimated could be a practical technology in the next three to five years. There are currently a few versions being beta tested. This flexible electronic paper would give the consumer more interactivity with the publication and retain the feel of looking through a magazine.
Meirs highly recommends publishers adopt
The near future of the web, Meirs said, is about connecting, collaborating and engagement. This includes such things as blogs and RSS, and it's emerging quickly. Within six months it will be practical. Websites Meirs offered as examples are Flickr, which posts user-created images that other users can view and organize extensively; YouTube, a similar site for video posting; and Technorati, which searches blogs for information you seek. "Everyone is collecting content and organizing it endlessly," said Meirs.
Meirs also mentioned Craigslist, Topix.net, Wikipedia and Pandora, where users can create their own radio station based on an individual's musical interests, as sites worth studying to witness the evolution of the consumer web experience. "Consumers are looking more and more to be engaged. We need to make platforms for that. Very soon this will be expected from us."
In Meirs' question-and-answer session, he said that he had no real idea on how to monetize mobile technology, and that he's not quite sure how publishers should use it. Personally, he's used AvantGo for years, but he knows that others aren't happy reading on small screens or needing to download content. He also noted that current digital-magazine vendors aren't changing with the times and aren't providing a way for consumers to get to the material without having to download software. "I don't want my reader to have to download something," he said.
One questioner mentioned that television advertising is becoming more and more irrelevant as TIVO and other digital video recorders allow consumers to delete commercials. When Meirs was asked if this meant the eventual elimination of magazine ads in digital formats, he replied that the crush on television ads was a real opportunity for magazine publishers. "This is forcing media buyers to consider magazine advertising," he said. "Television is at great risk."
He dismissed the notion of an earlier era that digital editions would replace print editions. "But they're great for sampling," he said. Special bonus copies could be sent digitally, perhaps immediately upon a consumer ordering a subscription online so he or she doesn't have to wait an eternity for the first print edition. Regarding digital editions: Responses line up on age not gender," he said. Younger consumers are more likely to check out the digital editions.
At the close of Meirs talk, MPA President & CEO Nina Link encouraged the crowd to not only identify the innovators within their own companies but to encourage innovation within the organization.
Check the Meet the Innovators page for schedued events and recaps of previous luncheons. The series is sponsored by The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc.
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