Thursday, October 28, 2010

The new PBS iPad app would be even better if it were five different PBS iPad apps

Of course I like the new PBS iPad app. I like all of that socialist media stuff. My car radio dial doesn’t know there is a station other than WBEZ until my younger kid comes home from school and compulsively hits the scan button to drink in the nicheyness of the Chicago music radio market compared to the less specific range of options in his college town.

But about the app. The rage on the right to defund public media suggests that PBS/NPR fans are a sub-culture (that must be thwarted).  We may be a “type,” it’s true, but it’s a loose type, and I think the ideal would be a collection of PBS iPad apps carving out more specific niches. Why not make several apps for different communities of interest and bake social media features right into them? I think they could be supported, just as larger radio markets can support more narrowly programed stations.

I might like PBS but I love literary adaptations. An app devoted to Masterpiece classics could allow users to watch the latest productions and talk about them with each other. (Would they be into talking? Oh yes, yes they would.) I may not care much about migration patterns of bison, but fans of Nature would love an app just for them, too.

I wouldn’t be surprised if contributions would flow in, just because people appreciate it when they have been given a space that celebrates their passions and interests and provides an opportunity to revel in their obsessions in the company of like minds. Engagement follows when it’s all about the affinity group in relation to the provider of the media—not just about the provider.

In fact, I really believe that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the “Here is all our stuff” approach will come to be perceived as an egocentric stance. TV “channels” won’t be established by their creators; they’ll be determined or defined over time based on the density of followers on a scatterplot. 

This notion of increasing specialization of social media by affinity and interest has been a minor recurring theme of Gillmor Gang discussions in recent months.