Moving Forward From Reach to Engagement
About a year ago, I was invited to give a presentation to an industry group on the subject of “The Future of the Internet.” Now, the good thing about a subject that broad is that I could say just about anything; on the flip side, that future weighs heavily over every business in profound ways and deserves a rigorous examination. So to begin my research, I took the obvious strategic-thinker step: I buzzed around YouTube to come up with some ideas. And in my wanderings-er, rather, in my strategic search, I found one about the Guinness Book of World Records for the most T-shirts worn at one time. Check it out! At the time, that video had been viewed more than 4,000,000 times; when I checked it the other day, it was up to 8,332,245.
Now, that’s not only a lotta T-shirts, that’s a lotta views-and what are 8 million views worth to a media company? Well, that depends—who are all those people? What do they want, what do they do, what do they buy, why are they on the site they’re on, and do they want to be there or are they just passing by? Not too long ago, though, online value was pegged almost exclusively to big, fat, unfiltered, unwashed reach-the more the better, right? (Say—take 6.69 seconds and look at this video of the world’s fastest cup-stacker—after all, more than 1,200,000 viewers can’t be all wrong, right?)
So while these examples might be a bit silly, the story they tell goes right to the heart of the online business today: we have moved beyond the days of pure mass as measured by reach and have entered into the more valuable and enduring realm of engagement. At InformationWeek, the millions of people who use our online products and services every day have made it clear to us that they don’t have time to bounce from one big noisy site to another and another—they want sites that have specific appeal to them, that reach out and connect with them, and that cause them to make the decision to give certain sites the most valuable thing they have: their time. That’s engagement, and that’s the future of the web. In this context, the new math looks something like this:
Reach = what’s new?
Engagement = what’s new? + what’s important? + what’s most valuable? + what ties into my daily work flow?
In upcoming posts, we’ll be looking at some examples of sites that are doing a good job of going beyond the buzz of reach to the value of engagement. If you’ve got some examples, please send them my way at bevans@techweb.com and I’ll evaluate them for use in future posts. Cheers.
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