An Emperor who cares for nothing but his appearance and attire hires two tailors who promise him the finest suit of clothes from a fabric invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or “just hopelessly stupid”.
The Emperor cannot see the cloth himself, but pretends that he can for fear of appearing unfit for his position or stupid; his ministers do the same.
When the swindlers report the suit is finished, they pretend to dress him. The Emperor then marches in procession before his subjects, who play along with the pretence.
Suddenly, A child in the crowd, too young to understand the desirability of keeping up the pretence, blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all and the cry is taken up by others.
The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but holds himself up proudly and continues the procession.
Hans Christian Andersen’s tale makes for one mighty good analogy for print media these days.
The old Kings of industry sing its praises – and their local followers salute. Whatever analogy you choose to draw, from Nero fiddling, print advertising is catatonic.
The dictionary definition of which is an immobile or unresponsive stupor. Economically unsound, technologically obsolete and environmentally unfriendly to boot.
The Americans wised up to this years ago, with the LA Times publishing its last real estate lift-out in 2008.
The cost of pulping forests, making all that paper, running all those huge presses that suck up so much power and chemical inks and dispatching fleets of trucks to deliver all those bundles of ‘news’ to central points, so hundreds of people can get in their cars and drive down and discover what happened yesterday.
I can’t wait to see the cost of real estate print advertising as peak oil really starts to bite and some semblance of a carbon tax or trading scheme starts to impact.
Tomorrow’s world is one of ‘Apps’, QR codes, watchable content and social networks; the new sign posts (or signboards) for Real Estate agents.
OZ Media Trends According to Roy Morgan, on average, Australians spend 54 hours a week watching media in all its forms. TV – 20 hours Radio 12 hours Internet at home – 9 hours Newspapers and magazines – 4.5 hours Mobile phone/ipod – 4 hours Music – 3.5 hours Interestingly, Internet Time at work is listed. Then again, nobody ever accesses the net at work for anything other than business.
Real estate advertising campaigns in media need a big overhaul. We know it. You know it. And ‘they’ know it. They say success leaves clues – how many more users of Facebook will it take before the old Emperor realizes he’s wearing his birthday suit? 600 million? A billion?
How many more videos need to be uploaded and watched on YouTube? How many searches on Google and BING? Cisco Systems is at the intersection of the Internet.
The following is an extract from their Visual Networking Index (VNI), an ongoing initiative to track and forecast the impact of visual networking applications. Global Internet Highlights In 2014, the Internet will be four times larger than it was in 2009.
By year-end 2014, the equivalent of 12 billion DVDs will cross the Internet each month. Peer-to-peer is growing in volume, but declining as a percentage of overall IP traffic.
P2P file-sharing networks are now carrying 3.5 exabytes per month and will continue to grow at a moderate pace with a CAGR of 16 percent from 2009 to 2014.
Other means of file sharing, such as one-click file hosting, will grow rapidly at a CAGR of 47 percent and will reach 4 exabytes per month in 2014.
Despite this growth, P2P as a percentage of consumer Internet traffic will drop to 17 percent of consumer Internet traffic by 2014, down from 39 percent at the end of 2009.
Global Video Highlights Internet video is now over one-third of all consumer Internet traffic, and will approach 40 percent of consumer Internet traffic by the end of 2010, not including the amount of video exchanged through P2P file sharing.
The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand, Internet, and P2P) will continue to exceed 91 percent of global consumer traffic by 2014.
Internet video alone will account for 57 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2014. Advanced Internet video (3D and HD) will increase 23-fold between 2009 and 2014.
By 2014, 3D and HD Internet video will comprise 46 percent of consumer Internet video traffic.
Video communications traffic growth is accelerating. Though still a small fraction of overall Internet traffic, video over instant messaging and video calling are experiencing high growth.
Video communications traffic will increase sevenfold from 2009 to 2014. Real-time video is growing in importance.
By 2014, Internet TV will be over 8 percent of consumer Internet traffic, and ambient video will be an additional 5 percent of consumer Internet traffic.
Live TV has gained substantial ground in the past few years. Globally, P2P TV is now over 280 petabytes per month. Video-on-demand (VoD) traffic will double every two and a half years through 2014. Consumer IPTV and CATV traffic will grow at a 33 percent CAGR between 2009 and 2014.
Sources: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheEmperor’NewClothes http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25642/ http://www.observer.com/2008/mag-hell http://www.therealestatebloggers.com/real-estate-technology/los-angeles-times-real-estate-section-put-to-bed/