Do you respect Media Snackers? Tell me why
(Above video: this 90 second clip from the folks at MediaSnackers summarize the changing landscape)
What’s a mediasnacker? Folks who consume small bits of information, data or entertainment when, where, and how they want. If you want to be part of their lives you’ve got to respect them. I’d argue that the folks who created this video emphasized too much that mediasnackers are the youth only, because business folks of any age are busy, get information from multiple sources, and need filters.
Here’s how I respect MediaSnackers
I write Digests for my audience, saving them time. I use MicroMedia, such as Twitter My 10-15 min Web Strategy Video show was tight and concise, not long and wandering, see premise I do ’street’ video shows of web personalities and they average just about 2 minutes, and I don’t let them pitch ’till the end The reports I will write as an Analyst are designed to give decision makers the right information in the most concise medium
What I’m not good at
Keeping my blog posts tight and concise, I need to work on that more, I’m known for excessive writing, and it likely scares people off.
I also publish too frequently, which is also not respecting your time, as I get busier at work, that will naturally change.
Scoble does long videos (although Rocky often creates summary versions), and Chris Pirillo streams for hours a day, does that work? How does that work in today’s new attention economy? We have more inputs but the same number of hours a day.
Talk back, how do you respect MediaSnackers?
What are you doing well, and what do you need to improve on. I’m tagging Francine Hardaway, Chris Brogan, Shel Israel, Connie Benson, and Bill Claxton to respond.
65 Comments so far
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It should be know that scoble and pirillo are also active users of creating small media too, they’re both on twitter, and scoble uses his mobile phone to create fast quick videos.
Jeremiah,
The Video doesn’t really keep what its title promises, does it? It seems to reduce media snackers to mainly one attribute (doing stuff for free that used to cost money) instead of focusing more on their consuming habits…
I’d agree to your conclusion, though: With changing usage patterns and habits, we need to produce content differently, just as we want to consume differently. Respecting your audience’s time is a great way to start there!
Cheers,
P.
I think respecting the mediasnacking tendency of those around you needs to extend offline as well. I personally schedule meetings for 15 or 30 minutes instead of the standard hour, use IM instead of email, and use designated outlets to share links/resources I want to share rather than sending a barrage of emails. I think its important to be aware that the attitudes, behaviors and expectations that are being shaped and encouraged in the online arena are spilling over into expectations for interactions in the offline world as well.
Cynthia
I actually avoid IM as I find it intrusive. I like the fast meeting times, very productive.
Very strategic thinking: understand your audience first, then adapt to their needs.
[…] Jeremiah Owyang may not have tagged me in his post this morning the idea of mediasnackers caught my sleep deprived attention as I tried to prop my eyelids open […]
Agree with Cynthia, must extend it to offline life as well. All my co workers are mediasnackers, so is easy to tell and run, and is good excercise for my job. Like Jeremiah it is hard for me to write small posts, so what I do is write small paragraphs and then re-write from it.
Cheers
I’d answer you, but I gotta go eat. I had a snack earlier, but I’m always hungry it seems.
Honoured to be featured - thank you.
Agreed, MediaSnackers can be any age. We focus on young people because of our background and experience. Also, this youth generation media-snack intuitively across platforms, and with technology and content which allows them to - (most of) the rest of us have to relearn
Again, thanks for using our stuff as a discussion point - great to see come notable and distinguished people involved.
Peace
DK
MediaSnackers Founder
And in a previous comment here ( not more than a few hours ago ) I said exactly this, that permanence of data and longevity of projects is so greatly reduced as to be nothing.
Do a project, get the results and move on.
Data mining was leaving us in the dark so lets build on the ground and into the sky one brick of data upon another and keep building onwards.
Nice catch. thanks
An intriguing set of questions on several levels.
Obviously the beauty of DK’s organization’s name — MediaSnackers — lends itself to multiple semantic uses depending on the business sector, age group, or conversation.
Clearly DK’s organization focuses 100% of their energy/expertise on the evolving media habits of young people (aka “kids”). This is vital.
The majority of comments thus far have perhaps looked only at the video — perhaps taken a bit out of context in this blog post — or responded to Jeremiah’s more general question as to the “mediasnacking” habits of people/professionals in general. I suppose there is irony in seeing we “old” folks being more prone to snacking on ideas/links (such as these), rather than actually taking the time to look more closely at the original source/link.
While I’d encourage folks to certainly play tether-ball with the more general “mediasnacking” questions Jeremiah posed here, I also hope that folks will use this as an opportunity to explore more closely what DK is doing with kids, media groups, educators, and technology leaders in his efforts to help foster the creative voices of rising generations of young MediaSnackers around the world. I think you’ll like what you find.
Cheers,
Christian
[…] Jeremiah Owyang asks me, “Do you respect media snackers?” What a great question. It talks to the point of how much media we consume, in which formats, and […]
I need to check on my settings to see why the backlinks aren’t working.
http://conniebensen.com/blog/2007/10/24/do-i-respect-media-snackers/
Thanks for including me Jeremiah!
Christian
We agree. While we can certainly focus in on the youth market as rabid fast and furious consumers, what take-aways can we glean from applying this to other market segments?
Multiple boats are moving in this tide.
Sheesh, I wish the people who made that video had been considerate of snackers. It was too long and had too little info. I finished reading the blog by 1/3 through the video.
Yuk, I don’t like what being a speed reader says about my eating habits.
Jeremiah,
to me, conciseness is good as long as there is no loss of content, but i’m not a media snacker (value of content > value of some time). I defer some reading to even days after the post.
I also think that you must/should post as frequently as you like. If you post less for politeness only, then you are taking away choice from me and others.
It will not be long before some tools appear for the media snacker to filter out content, if there are none yet.
Cheers!
I am not convinced snacking communicates a complete thought, sacking maybe like waiting for Godo!
I am a media snacker myself. It’s not age-related, it’s attention-related. I have a short attention span, and I live by “do unto others.” I never make a video over two minutes. I communicate through Twitter as much as possible. I keep my blog posts to 500 words. I use photos when I can.
You would be surprised how long even a two minute video can seem. I think it was Mark Twain who once said something like: pardon the length of this letter, if I had more time to write, it would have been shorter.
I love Robert but rarely watch his videos all the way though, and I pray for Rocky’s summaries.
“I also publish too frequently”
As much as I love reading your posts Jeremiah, trying to following all of them is like drinking from a fire hose. I don’t know how you do it
Yeah, I build these posts slowly over time, I have over 100 drafts.
It’s an open tab, I add to it all the time.
When I get asked repeated questions, it becomes blog fodder.
I also can type very quickly!
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When I attended a conference on Women in Gaming a year or so back, it was emphasised that a lot of mainstream women wanted to play games, but their lives were so fast-paced they tended to play games that: A) improved their life somehow (vocabulary oriented games like crosswords and boggle were extremely popular) and B) could be consumed in small bite sized chunks or laid down at need.
I kind of see Snackable Media as a similar concept. People want entertainment and information that will fit into their lifestyle–the snackable media fills a niche that is often overlooked by the more hardcore enthusiast. I don’t necessarily think it’s about age so much as it is the rest of the consumer’s lifestyle.
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Feeding the Media Snackers…
The story doesnt end there. Now the term Media Snacker could be applied to just about anyone who lives in this mock 1 speed society.
Drew McLellan, from Drews Marketing Minute, tagged me on a discussion that Jeremiah Owyang started by asking, …
Found this a really interesting concept to think and write about. Enjoying the conversation about it.
This is the link to my thoughts on Media Snacker R-E-S-P-E-CT.
[…] Some really smart guy named Jeremiah Owyang has classified a bunch of internet users as “media snackers.” […]
Hello Jeremiah,
This is a really interesting question. I recorded my answer here http://media.vascellari.com/?p=33
I’m interested in knowing what you and the web-strategist readers think about it,
Andrea
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I think I leave too much on the snack bar.
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I’ve watched several videos that Jeremiah produced. I liked the short catchy format, and the downloads are quick (in Singapore). He respects media snackers, and I agree with him on the creative decision to “keep it tight”.
I also agree that the definition provided in the MediaSnackers clip is too youth-oriented. I’m an MSer and yet old enough to have seen Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison perform live.
But there is a danger in snacking, as Remy explains to Emile in Ratatouille. While Emile and other rats are content to dig into any available trash, his tastes require interesting combinations of flavors to savor, quality food that takes time to select and prepare.
Just the other day I was discussing with my wife about how important it is to have long, in depth discussions rather than short daily sound-bytes like “how’s your day” and “oh, just fine”. We need (Remy and I need) more than that.
I am now reading a book on social currency called “Crowd of One” that makes the point that language, media and other symbolic representations (eg- money) are the necessary tokens and protocols for managing social connections. So I’d say that we need both, long discourses and short bursts.
Another point that comes to mind is our increasing use of multiple channels (Jeremiah mentions Twitter, blogs and video in the same breath). I think that we need to manage backchannel communications better, because the frontchannel is often too jammed. I’d love to have a Channel 9 to communicate with my wife, for example .
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I found that video to be very superficial. People were doing form-shifting and time-shifting in the 80’s. Taping songs from the radio, video-ing shows from TV, to be consumed whenever and wherever wanted. And in my case, Bondie’s Heart of Glass Abba’s Dancing Queen was played over and over again.
But it’s not a youth preoccupation. Nor is synchronous (instant) and asynchronous (delayed) communication in social networks. Some people like instant discussions, others prefer to think things over and THEN respond. Sometimes it’s even just a mood thing, both in one person over the course of the day. *shrugs* Compuserve’s consumer division was established in the 1970s and immediately became a huge (within the limitations of the technology) online community.
For me, it’s more useful to talk about Dine In and Take Out options - do I want to check a site manually (dine in), or subscribe to a RSS feed (take out)? Does the conversation take place on your (the host) site (comments) or my (the member) site (trackbacks)? PC or mobile? Now or later? Thank you (and John Johnston) for bringing this to our attention.:)
PS Please add the preview module?
The same phenomenon is discussed over here in Europe as micro-learning - informal learning, using tiniest bits and pieces of content:
http://www.microlearning.org/
[…] Media snack or good food guide? 1 11 2007 I’m taking Sherrilynne’s tag bait on her post: Media snack attack which was prompted Jeremiah Owyang. […]
Laurel
Great points, but now, this shift is even easier to do, faster to do, and lower cost to do.
Do you mean the preview module on the blog posts? If I get other questions about it, I’ll consider it.
[…] Posted on November 1, 2007 by Bill I was recently tagged by Chris Wilson on a meme started by Jeremiah Owyang wherein he asks the question - how do you respect […]
Do I (really) respect Media Snackers?…
Oh, I’ve been tagged, now I have to blog about a bunch of internet users “memified” media snackers - i.e. a new breed of
young people, hyperconnected to a wide assortment of digital, on-demand media. They are consumers who are no lon…
I can see the need for media snacking, but personally I don’t like “lite” versions of things. I prefer longer versions.
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I respect the concept of “media snackers” and that’s one of the reasons we collaborated with Dave Winer on the Twittergram project. But I have a question?
Do you think our audience wants a snack or a meal when listening to an interview with Directors Brian DePalma, Oliver Stone, General Wesley Clark or Dr. Mehment Oz?
www.blogtalkradio.com
Alan
There’s a place for both short and long form. Traditionally, we’ve often planned for long form, but have to now ‘respect’ the needs of the mobile and attention lacking world.
Twittergram was a pioneer project, great job!
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