My Media Consumption Diet

I’m hoping to start this meme, that others will join in and share their media consumption diet, in hopes, that we’ll start to learn how they get information or be entertained. I’ve sort of mixed up mediums, and media types, but after some thought, that’s the best way to organize it.

My Media Consumption Diet (most used at top, least used at bottom):

Web: This is primarily where I get most of my news. I get my news from my Feedreader, I’m plugged into 160 subscriptions, but some of those are news feeds, techmeme, digg, and scoble’s shared feed (an incredible filter). I rarely go to ‘news sites’ like CNN, MSNBC, NYT, like I used to, although for a while, I was subscribed to Al-Jazeera and BBC to get other perspectives.

Music: I listen to Pandora at work, sometimes at home. I play CDs in the car most of the time, rarely listen to the radio. Used to have XM radio but canceled it in my car as the sound quality was crap. (I have ‘dog’ ears, after playing music starting at the age of 4) Sometimes I plug in the iPod while driving (but haven’t done that as much as the sound quality is not that great)

TV: I rarely turn on the TV, in fact, I only watch it if my wife has it on at home. I’d prefer to turn it off and turn on music (rarely radio, most often MP3, or Pandora, as I have my computer hooked up to my PC). We recently got comcast ondemand at home, that’s interesting. We don’t have Tivo. I really don’t watch TV, it was just last year that we got cable. Like most Gen Y (I’m Gen X) I use the computer in the foreground, and the TV is on in the background.

Communication: I access my email via my laptop. I have a 3G card now (thanks PodTech), or wifi at home. I have a LG phone where I check techmeme and personal mail while mobile. I’ve removed IM from my life as much as possible. I’m experimenting with Twitter but don’t think to use it all the time.

Update March 15, 2007:
I’ve starting to use Twitter more and more, and it’s cutting into my feedreader consumption.

Movies: We sometimes like to watch movies at theaters, which I tend to focus completely on, as they tend to be higher signal to noise, minus the ads forced during a theater experience. We used to rent movies from netflix and even the in-store blockbuster, but now that we have ondemand, we may just shift to that.

Magazines: I get Business 2.0, Wired, Forbes at home, and like them as they help to give summaries, and sometimes in-depth stories. I sometimes like the ads, as I can determine who’s got budget (A marketing hunt trick). I rarely find the news as ‘breaking news’ but often a symbol that the buzz I’ve already been reading about for a month or two is actually getting traction.

Books (Just added this as an update)
Yes, I read about 6-12 books a year, most are web or business related, I rarely read fiction. Yes, I find these books enjoyable, and many authors send me copies, which I often review from my blog. Often, I read these books while on travel.

Newspapers: What’s that? I was in the New York Times two days ago, and I didn’t even buy the physical paper.

What’s your Media Consumption Diet?
I’m signaling to Calacanis, Loren, Scoble, Martin, Pirillo, and all my contacts at the Media 2.0 workgroup to share how they get their information. Or if you don’t have a blog, leave a comment to your media consumption diet.

Update: Quick Analysis by Peter Kim shows that our diets are void of advertising dollars, does that mean that web advertising is efficient, or that I’m avoiding it?

Update Feb 27th: Folks are sharing their diets, you can see all of the blogs linking to this post from Technorati. Not a surprise that bloggers consume most of their content via the feedreader or the web, and overwhelmingly, most have newspapers at the bottom of the list. Over time, we should be able to see some real patterns in media consumption, this really will help those in the web and media industry to deliver the right tools.

Technorati Tag: Media Consumption Diet

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 8:46 am and is filed under Media 2.0, Web Advertising, Web Marketing, Web Usage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.