HOLLYWOOD, Calif.-Social networking sites and user-generated content have taken the drivers seat in the world of digital media, said Michael Stroud, CEO and co-founder of iHollywood Forum, in opening remarks at last week’s Digital Media Summit here. Hollywood’s stock and trade generally is passive content, he said, but interactive, multi-tasking media is what’s leading the trend today.
Disney Online executive Paul Yanover and Sony Corporation of America executive Albhy Galuten validated those sentiments in their morning keynotes and addressed the gray areas presented by emerging technologies. Galuten went so far as to lay out a more detailed strategy to digital rights management, something he sees as an inevitable byproduct of the capability consumers now have to store and stream large amounts of information. But for it to succeed, it must be virtually invisible to the consumer, said Galuten, VP of digital media technology at Sony.
“We all hear the rumors about how DRM is going to be dead, it’s too complicated, it’s too confusing,” he said. “The goal is to have it invisible to the consumer.”
He squarely put that responsibility on the industry. Media companies must enable consumers to enjoy the content they want on the device they prefer on their schedule, he said.
“This whole personal network could be more convenient, more durable and more flexible,” Galuten said, adding that consumers are frustrated by the lack of interoperability between their multiple devices at home.
“Things change, friction goes lower and lower,” he said, but if the industry doesn’t harness that potential, it will miss significant business opportunities going forward.
“The consumer will ultimately figure out how to do it on their own without our help,” he said. “We can morph the business to stop the bleeding.”
Part of the problem is it is difficult to educate consumers about the many people who earn their living on these increasingly declining revenues, he said. “I personally feel that whoever creates something ought to be able to get paid for it if they want,” and have a say in its distribution, he said.
“Ideally what you want to do is give the artist the tools to create their media . and allow it to flourish,” he said. “How do we get there? Obviously we need to make DRM invisible.”
Hungry for feature-rich content
In his keynote, Yanover addressed consumers’ growing appetite for feature-rich, immersive content.
Where many adults may consider e-mailing on their mobile device while watching TV a feat in multi-tasking, kids are likely doing five to six things at once throughout much of their day, said Yanover, executive VP and managing director of Disney Online.
With that in mind, Disney.com was recently re-launched to mirror the opportunities Web 2.0 presents for kids and families. “I live in a world of moms and dads and 11-year-old kids and 6-year-old kids,” he said.
“Community for me really has to be around context,” he said. “I want to build communities around context because I want communities that are safe.”
Disney.com was designed to be the front door to Disney’s characters, stories and worlds. “Disney is vast,” he said. “We wanted to really re-aggregate who we are to the public through this.”
The entertainment-focused, integrated environment allows kids to immerse themselves in the storytelling that is Disney’s heritage. “Kids see Disney as a world of worlds,” Yanover said. “We think the idea of creating event-based experiences is very powerful.”
Since its re-launch last month, Disney.com has streamed about 1 million videos each week, registrations have increased tenfold while total page views have increased by 9 percent, Yanover said.
In closing, Yanover announced the forthcoming launch of DisneyFamily.com, a portal for parents to find answers to questions that come up every day in their family life. Information on everything from potty training to helping their kids deal with the all-too-often traumatizing effects of adolescence will be available on the site after it launches later this month, he said.
