Special Problems in Journalism

Convergence
E. Aguilar
Bicol University
College of Arts and Letters

CONVERGENCE is the merging of distinct technologies, industries, or devices into a unified whole.

NEW MEDIA is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked
information and communication technologies in the later part of the 20th century.

SOCIAL MEDIA is a type of online media that expedites conversation as opposed to traditional media,
which delivers content but doesn't allow readers/viewers/listeners to participate in the creation or
development of the content.

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ARE YOU READY FOR THE FUTURE? (Video transcript)

A surge of new technologies and social media innovations is altering the media landscape.
Convergence is everywhere. It's easier than ever to reach a large audience, but harder than ever
to really connect with it. These changes are affecting the way people behave. Are you ready for
the future?

Over 1 million books are published worldwide every year. A Google Book Search scanner can
digitalize 1,000 pages every hour.

Americans have access to:

1,000,000,000,000 web pages
65,000 iPhone apps
10,500 radio stations
5,500 magazines
200+ cable TV networks

There are 240,000,000 TVs in the U.S. 2,000,000 are in bath rooms.

When was the last time you read a newspaper? Newspaper circulation is down 7 million over
the last 25 years. But in the last 5 years, unique readers of online newspapers are up 30 million.

This year, traditional advertising is in steep decline:

o Newspaper 18.7%
o TV 10.1%
o Radio 11.7%
o Magazines 14.8%

Meanwhile, digital advertising is growing rapidly:

o Mobile phone 18.1%
 o Internet 9.2%

47% of broadcast television viewers say they'd pay for ad-less programming

More video was uploaded to YouTube in the last 2 months than if ABC, NBC, and CBS had been
airing new content 24/7/365 since4 1948 (which was when ABC started broadcasting).

10 million is the number of unique visitors ABC, NBC, and CBS get every month collectively.
These businesses have been around for a combined 200 years.

The number of unique visitors MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook get every month collectively is
250 million. None of these sites existed 6 years ago.

You have been Rickroll'd, right? So have about 40 million other people.

95% of all songs download last year weren't paid for.

Wikipedia launched in 2001. It now features over 13 million articles in more than 200 languages.

Ang Chuang Yang of Singapore typed a Guiness Book of World Records-approved 160-character
text on his cellphone in 41.52 seconds. That's about 4 character per second!

How many text messages does the average American teen send each month? 2,272. Brady
James of Los Angeles, California sent 217 text messages in March 2009.

Nokia manufactures 13 cell phones every second, more than 1,800 since the last three minutes.

93% if U.S. adults own a cell phone. But 1/3 don't yet feel safe using it for purchases. Unless
we're talking about pizza.

Multinational technology corporation Dell claims to have earned $3 million via Twitter posts
since 2007.

In February 2008, John McCain raised $11 million for his U.S. presidential bid. That same month,
Barack Obama attended no campaign fundraisers. Instead, Obama leveraged online social
networks to raise $55 million in those 29 days.

How are you using social networking sites? Among larger U.S. companies, 17% have disciplined
an employee for violating blog or message board policies.

"I hate Ron, my big fat loser boss at BigCo. I'm looking for a new job"

"Ummm isn't he on your friends' list?"

"See you in my office Monday, Ann."

Twitter played an unprecedented role in sharing information during the 2009 Iranian
presidential elections.

All mentions of the disputed election were bumped from Twitter's trending topics list when
news of Michael Jackson's death broke.

Jackson, swine flu, and Barack Obama have been this year's top subjects for malware-
distributing emails.

90% of the 200 billion emails sent every day are spam.

The mobile device will be the world's primary internet connection tool to the Internet in 2020.

The computer in your cellphone today is a million times cheaper, a thousand times more
powerful, and abpout a hundred thousand times smaller the one computer at MIT
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1965.

So what used to fit in a building now fits in your pocket, what fits in your pocket now
will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.

Now that's convergence and now you know.