Mobile Explosion is Impacting Everyone…Especially PR Professionals
July 28th, 2010 by Tony Sapienza
I attended a Mass Tech Leadership Council event last night focused on “the mobile data deluge” — a topic we hear about more and more these days. But some of the figures presented last night surprised me. Every 30 minutes nearly 23,000 mobile subscribers are added, and more than 73,000 cellphones are shipped (14,000 of them smartphones). Over the next five years, we can expect to see a 4000% increase in data traffic. I’ve seen alot of data on mobile use, but this surprised me. And it got me thinking about the impact smartphones and the mobile internet have had on PR (what also jogged my mind: during the hour-long presentation I was able to use my Blackberry to check email, text a team member and browse the net to get info on one of the speakers). Mobile devices are everywhere in our lives, but for PR people it’s making a big impact professionally. At a recent trade show, I’ve been able to access photos of the editor I was planning to meet, text my client when the editor arrived and later check for coverage. Now, I don’t want to sound like a PR dinosaur, but I can remember the day when my employer gave me a much-appreciated phone card I could use when calling the office from a trade show payphone (when did you last see one of these relics). I also remember the days when my four PR co-workers and I are shared a single PC that we rolled around the office (and we worked for a computer company); when I stood in line waiting to send off a news release using a tech PR agency’s single networked terminal to connect with Businesswire; when doing research meant pouring over huge bound directories or trudging off to a local library; when media pitches where printed and mailed; when we watched for the mailman to arrive with the latest issue of Computerworld, to see if our story ran. Laptops, email, the web, social media and other technology advances have allowed us to work faster, reach broader audiences, access more intelligence and disemminate more information than we ever thought possible. We have to add mobile devices to that list — and from what we’re seeing, it’s likely an even greater impact in the years ahead.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 11:03 pm and is filed under PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
July 29th, 2010 at 9:35 am
Tony,
Good article. As you know, you’ve got just a couple of years on me, but I also remember early in my career when we first got e-mail — it took about 10 minutes for us to finish punching off quick notes to others in the office and then sit wondering if this new technology would ever take off and how long it might take for our other clients and media contacts to get e-mail addresses that we could reach them with.
What’s most interesting to me about the mobile data explosion is the issue of quality versus quantity. The quantity of sources continues to explode, and while we’ve seen the quality of some of these new sources dictate a shift from traditional media (i.e., many non-traditional sources, like blogs, have gained credibility through good reporting, challenging the notion of the pay for media model that arguably built everything before it), the overall quality of “new media” is spotty with reports leaning more toward “first” than “correct.”
So for me, the question is how will the concept of media and information continue to evolve in a world that now offers as much rumor and speculation as “news” as it does genuine reporting — and will the idea of quality in reporting ever regain the value it once had (i.e., paying for premium content with the definition of “premium” resting not in exclusive content but quality content)?
I still consider myself in the minority as far as Twitter goes, but I think it is one example of how quality is segmenting technology/news sources. Initially thought of as another source of citizen journalism, Twitter is largely a funnel for celebrity “brain farts” or other fun but useless bits of information. While there have been some successes for Twitter as a revolutionary tool to not only report news but be a part of it (i.e., social unrest in Iran), those are the exceptions rather than the rule.
Best,
The other Tony Sapienza