Focus on Community and Niche
The major factor, which separates digital media from traditional, is the users growing ability to control the media.

Successful consumer media enterprises almost always shared two characteristics: they were horizontal in their content coverage and format-specific. Companies like Random House, CBS, and The New York Times all embraced a very wide span of subject interest, but very seldom strayed from books, broadcast, or newspapers.

The net is flipping this, self-organizing us by subject niche, and because web interaction is about file exchanges, format specificity is meaningless. The file can hold text, art or photographs or other graphics, animation, moving images, sound, games, or code that helps us combine, sort, or tag. Today’s publishers will have to focus on extreme niches if they want to be tomorrow’s publishers. But they will also be driven to seek out and discover the niches because the horizontal outlets for promotion and sale are getting weaker and less numerous.
The key to niche market research is finding the needs of your target market. I’m diving in:

-New breed of DJs who author popular blogs and regularly share downloadable mixes with their readers.
-Celebrating the revival of old-fashioned pastimes, the art of knit-craft is given a new lease of life, partly due to the emergence of some innovative haberdasheries tucked away behind London’s high streets.
-Tay Kian Khuan 720 Skates. With an added feature, the skater gains the ability to spin 360º in place and skate sideways.
- New sensibilities, a different point of view and an appreciation of other ways to enhance life.
-Gay Chic, anyone?

-Cali ROCK’n'SOUL…How surf saved Rock’n'Roll.
-Biodynamic (BD) agriculture, using the astronomical calendar to guide all aspects of cultivation and harvesting.
-Motorsport Drift: the emerging drifting scene that is taking the West Coast by storm.
-Hipster/Insider travel guides on the rise, connected on landing.
-Elegance is back. Sophisticated connoisseur consumers creating New Tradition.

This paradigm is playing out in many places. Nike announced that it would no longer organize around the product (shoes, sporting equipment, clothing) but around the sport. This is not only an example of going from horizontal to vertical, it also obviously makes Nike a much more coherent customer for content.

-Nike Total 90 Laser, Innovative S.P.P. technology, ball control and shooting accuracy.

What will digital technology mean to the overall world of communication over the next decade or two? What connections, implications, parallels, can we make between the ways global culture is evolving and the modalities of the computer?

(Wiki: Modalities, plural for Modal, is a relational term of media pertaining to its’ presentation, form, or mode. Basically, modalities are modes; a manner, way, or method of doing.)

Modalities, one of the fundamental principles of new media, however vague they can sometimes be, are always constructed from a particular person’s point of view. Two people could paint or draw the same thing. Differences in background, ethnicity, childhood experiences, sociological, religious, or other differences in the individuals could allow for the works to appear and function in completely different ways, or in other words, their modes would differ.

So now, it’s all about The Author. The era of mass media is giving way to one of personal and participatory media, and will profoundly change both the media industry and society as a whole. Publishers are starting to put in place the building blocks for more substantial change; acquiring specialized Web sites to get content for their books/mags and to target niche audiences. Over time, personal bias will rule the day. Some examples:

Niche Digital: Digital magazines are changing the face of publishing, and could soon revolutionize the industry. A recent sports e-magazine OnBoard highlights this trend for high-niche exciting podcasts and online video services.

-Onboard Digital is a multimedia mix of everything snowboarding; out-of-the-ordinary news and gossip, event info, interviews and most-wanted gear though an assortment of Flash animations, videos and fully interactive pages.

Niche Community/Partnerships: Social media, hybrid news and blogs in particular, are becoming a more important part of global media consumption for Internet users than traditional media channels.

-Tandem Project, developed by a team of students this past year as part
of the Innovation Incubator Project, partnering with The Detroit News.
This project hits at the very heart of community journalism. The idea is to have news stories percolate from local communities. Community members on a wiki-style site start discussing issues they are facing within their neighborhoods. It may be street lights that are not working, gang issues, or turning local vacant lots into farm gardens. Community members begin filing their comments on the web site, maybe taking photos, detailing local governments response to request–whatever. When the story matures, a reporter gets involved with already identified sources, maybe photos and video clips.

Niche DYI Digital: You publish. Recently launched Issuu is a place for online publications: magazines, catalogs, documents, and stuff you’d normally find on print. It’s the place where YOU become the publisher creating sleek online mags from your own pdfs.

-Members upload files, they’re transformed into expandable digital magazines, readable via Issuu’s viewer. These mags can also be shared, printed, and embedded on other blogs, social networking profiles, and websites.