Late last week it was surprisingly revealed that Microsoft now aims to be a media company, rather than a software company. This was in the context of Microsoft’s launch of its adCenter product, a direct competitor to Google’s Adsense and Adwords. But there it was in black and white, in a Microsoft press release:
“”Ad-supported software services are an integral part of Microsoft’s plans to give consumers access to a broader variety of digital media, whenever they want and on whatever device they prefer,” said Ballmer. “Our close partnership with the ad community is extremely important to us as we evolve Microsoft from a software company into the world’s largest, most attractive provider of online media through MSN, Windows Live(TM) and adCenter.” (emphasis mine)
When the world’s biggest and most successful software company ever proclaims itself to be a media company, you know the times they are a changin’.
Then I saw this MediaShift interview with I Want Media editor Patrick Phillips, who is also an adjunct professor of digital journalism at New York University. ‘I Want Media’ has been going since 2000 and it offers an excellent daily email – a comprehensive daily list of links to media/tech stories (thanks Scott Karp for telling me about it).
Phillips is in a better position than most to comment on how the media world is being changed by technology. When asked “How has your coverage at I Want Media changed over that time?”, he responded:
“[…] If anything, though, it’s probably more that Net and technology companies are encroaching steadily into the traditional media world.
When I launched IWM in July 2000, Google was just a young search engine. There was no Google Adwords. Google News was still two years off in the future. Now, of course, Google is taking steps into several traditional media strongholds, taking more and more advertising dollars away from “old” media. Yahoo is also moving aggressively into many traditional media areas. In addition, blogs and social networks like MySpace have emerged in recent years as legitimate alternative forms of media.
Traditional media companies are now eyeing them as possible acquisition targets — and as rivals. The concept of “media” itself has broadened beyond print and over-the-air to include digital and search. So, naturally, IWM covers the activities of these kinds of companies as well. Google is now a media company just as much as Time Warner.” (emphasis mine)
This incidentally is why I changed the focus of Read/WriteWeb at the beginning of 2006 to be about tech/media, rather than specifically ‘web 2.0’ (although in reality I’m still more tech focused than media).
So talk about convergence, the tech and media worlds are pretty much one and the same these days!
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)