I was just taking a look at some data and it made me go back down memory lane. I think the new media types are busy scaring old media because deep down inside the new media guys fear what old media could do to them if they actually got their acts together. That’s the problem, old media probably won’t.
The other factor is that for all of their offline swagger, they really are clueless when it comes to a few things us online types take for granted.
Here are a couple of images showing to demonstrate what I mean.
Graph 1 shows the traffic trajectory of my old company, an online publisher, from 2001 to now. I was there from 2000 until I left in Dec. 2005.
Clearly, the company’s traffic rises from 2002 to mid-2003. Then, something happens in early 2004 and traffic begins to slide… it reaches a low in Fall of 2004… and then suddenly, poof, like magic, the trend totally turns around.
Why? I might talk about that a bit later on. Not today. We’re already at way too posts in one day (for a busy executive… anyway).
But the point is, look now as a I transpose the online traffic graph of our closest competitor, that being a venerable, well-known offline competitor.
As you can see, their traffic was always smaller, lower… but notice how when we had hit our low in Fall 2004 they were larger than us for a brief moment. Had a few things not happened, that graph suggests that they would have overtaken us.
History would have forever been different. But it’s very interesting to imagine what Web-savvy with so-called old media resources can do… quickly.
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