Old media is a term used to describe the traditional media: print, television, radio, and sometimes film. Usually referred to the traditional journalism industries, the term is used in conjunction with new media: internet news sites, blogs, or social networks etc. (Saila.com | Online Media Matters: Glossary terms – Old media)

While old media is easily seen as non-interactive and one-dimensional, new media is revolutionarily interactive, multi-dimensional and a catch-all term for all forms of electronic and digital communication craze. The advent of web 2.0 has caused a drastic shift from multi-media to many media. Contributing factors of this shift are mainly the remarkable pace of technology and the internet, through features and software like 3G and multimedia mobile, Bluetooth, web 2.0 and so on, all together have given a new facet to the world of media. Today, possession of a mobile or PC (Personal Computer), along with an internet connection allows us have access instantly and rapidly to news, watch films, listen to music and many more. In short, communicate, inform and entertain, the three main objectives of traditional media is now available ‘all-in-one’, not only at a mere click or touch but also with much more features and scope. The trends according to various surveys point out that media consumption habits are rapidly changing. It implies more directly that some forms of new media are performing much better than others.





Below figures are from a recent survey of Ketchum (www.ketchum.com)

• Blogs are now used by 24% of Internet users, up from 13% in 2006
• Social networks are now used by 26% of Internet users, up from 17% in 2006
• Videocasts are now used by 11% of Internet users, up from 6% in 2006

Figures are constantly increasing within a matter of months, weeks and even days. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter register thousands of subscription daily. Similarly, right now, you should be aware that the mere fact of reading this post online and also the online referencing of this post demonstrate that both you and me are responsible for the up-rising of new media. In this era of digitalisation, old media is considerably losing grounds and space among consumers, while contradictorily it remains as a pioneer reference, ever-present in the world of media. Though it is often still on the top, some medium are shrinking faster than others, and some are resisting the decline. This decline of usage of old media is not much surprising, given the growth rates for different forms of new media. But will traditional media survive to this tsunami of new media? Well, views and thoughts vary. Realistic factors however shows a fair picture of the scenario. New media consumers are not necessarily youngsters but also adults and old people. This trends indicate that usage of new media and technologies does not limit to young aged persons only. Thus, new media landscape is expanding to reach the ‘mass’, explaining the high demand and imposing presence of new forms of media. While some feel that old media will be completely submerged, others believe that it has the capacity of resisting by no doubt, having to re-invent itself through adaptation and re-orientation to fit in the era of new media.

Other sources: Mashable.com | The social Media Guide

i-Technology Viewpoint: Attack of the Blogs

By Jeremy Geelan

What’s the key issue underlying Daniel Lyons’s controversial “Attack of the Blogs” article in this month’s Forbes? In my view his piece, with its knowingly provocative title, has provoked much heat…but so far very little light. So let’s try and redress that, however slightly!

Blogging is a hot topic in the professional news-gathering community right now and one of the simplest ways to understand all the fuss (on both sides) is to think for a moment of why Microsoft feels so threatened by Linux. The professional journalist community, if you accept this analogy, is like Microsoft, and the blogging community is like Linux, it holds out the promise of providing a product for free that is at least equal to and very possibly superior to the commercial version.

If you hold with this interpretation, then it becomes at once easier to understand why a professional writer (Dan Lyons) writing for a commercial publication (Forbes magazine) might have a vested interest in publishing an article turning the spotlight on what he terms “attack blogs” – that’s to say, blogs used by for example rival companies “as a weapon, unleashing swarms of critics on their rivals.”

But Lyons himself writes in Forbes that attack blogs “are but a sliver of the rapidly expanding blogosphere,” so let’s concentrate instead on the fact that 100,000 new blogs are said to be created every day – that’s more than one new blog per second. (These stats are derived from the San Francisco firm Technorati, which tracks the content of 20 million active blogs.) Does the blogosphere, viewed from this perspective, amount to a threat to paid-for journalism?

Source: http://newmediaforms.wetpaint.com/page/Old+Media+Vs.+New+Media