SIIA Executive Summit: Would the Next “Pong” of Publishing Please Stand Up?

(by guest blogger John Blossom, President, Shore Communications Inc.) Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital, opened with a brilliant and brisk keynote address in search of “The Pong of Electronic Publishing”, referring to the retro progenitor of video games that was a crude but entrancing entertainment breakthrough in the 1970s. It took more than a decade for video gaming to reach a mature vision and gaming still continues to makes breakthroughs in features and online usage, but the basic hooks were there from the beginning of Pong’s rudimentary interface. Is weblogging the latest “Pong” of publishing, a simple tool and medium that makes use of readily available technology to reach people in a revolutionary way? Martin left that door open, but it’s clear that although content executives may have tired of hearing about disruptive technologies they continue to emerge in suprising and powerful venues. Whatever the next “pong” phenom may be, Martin sees it has having to be a global phenomenon that provides expressiveness to empower a “new class of creative people”. Talk of blogging was remarkably absent from this conference but Tom Glocer, Executive Officer of Reuters Group PLC, was not reluctant in a later panel to suggest that he would like to see blogs that play off of Reuters content to amplify its value. Keeping an open mind is half the battle for established players to make new breakthroughs, so a tip of the pong paddle to Tom.

This coverage is sponsored by HighBeam Research.

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