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WebGuild: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft: Offline Media is Dead Within a Decade
In an interview with one of the nations most prestigious offline news entities – the Washington Post – Steve Ballmer of Microsoft asserted this as a key aspect of Microsofts vision:
…. there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.
Let’s see, I guess this gets put with the other recent Microsoft prediction about how tablet PC’s will dominate the market by 2005. No wonder these guys are in a panic mode, they must actually believe their own BS.
I still prefer analogue clocks and watches. There will always be a small market for analogue books. How else to get reliable media of your choosing while waiting for the airplane/bus/train/while camping. But yes–a declining market.
No more supermarket tabloids?? Hard to believe==but we’ll all be here to tell the tale.
I don’t think print will be dead. I think printed media, particularly newspapers, will wind up being free with very audited circulation. Newspapers have always been 70-80% funded by advertising. If traditional newspapers gave away copies on the condition that each subscriber completes a survey each year, their circulation would grow for once and they’d make tons of ad revenue. Those circulars newspapers carry are very profitable, and the Kohl’s/JC Penney’s of the world would love to have a much larger targeted base to shovel their ads to.
I get two of these free “community” newspapers thrown onto my driveway each week, so the “free” model clearly could work.
This photo shows the now empowered Balmer taunting us to improve our aim and hit the target ’cause… Stevie loves his eggies!
This guy is a total ass. He makes me pine for the days of Bill Gates.
If his brave new world dystopia is ever realized, Microsoft better supply free soma for the entire populace.
I agree with him in principle that reading stuff on dead trees will be eventually go away.
I canceled my Dallas News subscription in 2004 (mostly because they were Bush sheep) but wold have done so anyway for this reason.
This is clearly the path and will only accelerate with things like e-ink.
This is such a complex issue that nobody really knows what will happen at the newstand.
I agree that all media will be delivered electronically, but the actual presentation to the reader will depend upon the business model of the information distributor.
Print will always remain an inexpensive, incorruptible, durable, disposable, high-contrast, compact, recyclable, means of accessing information. E-paper and other electronic media may come to dominate middle- and upper-class information consumption, but a free newspaper is hard to beat with a system that forces the user to invest any significant amount in the reader.
This is not to say that paper print will not become a niche media in the not-too-distant future, but the economies of scale, one-sided presentation capability (you can give a paper withn information on it to anyone whether they have a reader or not), and the lack of DRM required for hard-copy print make paper a very tough customer to beat in the mainstream.
The other serious issue that hasn’t been addressed to anyone’s satisfaction is the revenue model involved. There are quite a lot of “successful” sites in traffic and reader participation that still don’t make enough money to keep a dedicated permanent staff. As money gets even tighter, salespeople turn ever more to pimping the mailing lists, as they are one thing that advertisers have demonstrated a constant interest in.
As magazines become email newsletters regurgitating one another’s news, the revenue stream will come increasingly from list rentals and interactive email activity intended to get people to click on any link to open the barn-sized loophole in the “do not call” legislation. (Even if you are on a “don not call ” list, if you click on a link in a sponsored email you have given a one-off tacit agreement (interest in the sponsored content) to be contacted by that sponsor.
This heavy direct email marketing activity (that makes the old junk mail look like a neighborhood block-party circular in comparison) and lack of sufficient new content will cause some interesting dynamics to emerge. That hard-sell philosophy keeps paper magazines attractive in the eyes of a reader, who doesn’t have to sign up and give any person al information at a newstand to get a magazine.
Another reson I still think print will be around for a while because electronic media is still largely parasitic, with no real content of its own.
Yo, Dvorak, in an unrelated topic, you said on Cranky Geeks that’s there’s no insta-desktop like in the days of yore.
Well, I got news for ya. It’s called Suspend. If you ‘re using a laptop, it’s a treat. I hadn’t used it for over 2 years, then I accidentally pressed the relevant button combination and was amazed at how fast I could get back on my system. Never looked back since.
As far as Ballmar goes, I don’t think he has a clue and everything he’s saying is hype and extreme desire to enter a yearly office renewal revenue stream. Just imagine for each additional feature you want, they could just charge you an additional sum – just like they did with Vista. Revenue heaven 🙂
For my part, I want a program that I own and don’t have to rent, I don’t even my employer would be that stupid to put out money like MS wants, although my employer is a utility and they really like the MS cool aid. We just went from Novell Groupwise to MS Outlook ’03. It’s hard to believe the mess or disappointment – what a mess.
And this is without going to new paranoid belief on going a my job of protecting customer and business information. 🙂 From relaxed disinterest to extreme paranoia in the space of a few weeks. Without some kind of encryption, I can’t see them putting our information on someone else’s computers, our IT department just got bigger and they project an increase in size over the next few years.
No one likes reading the information on line, but I can see a government interested in controlling it’s population making print illegal ( Orwell’s 1984 coming true) or expensive to print each page and impossible for citizens to do so. This would all be done in an effort to combat the non-existent global warming ( or is it now non-existent global cooling now).
We have Hussein Obama already proposing to cut our ability to heat/cool our home and reduce what we eat – ie we should reduce our own carbon footprint in order to have a bunch of trash in China and India increase their’s. All so the elite NAZI Trash here can feel good at their country clubs and little meetings
>>We have Hussein Obama….
Hussein? Hey, isn’t that Saddam’s son? “Chemical” Barack? Wasn’t he responsible for the 9/11 hijackings? Didn’t he have weapons of mass destruction stashed all over the palace? Isn’t he the reason why we don’t have unlimited supplies of “cheap” gas?
We’re electing a guy named “Hussein” as president of the United States! Have the terrorists won?
Sheesh.
Haven’t you guys been saying the same thing, and that the companies should adjust?
#8, Traax,
… but I can see a government interested in controlling it’s population making print illegal …
Sort of like the path the Republicans have been taking us for the past seven years.
***
Print will take a lot of time to go out of fashion. It is too inconvenient to carry a “reader” with you where ever you go. Can you imagine carrying your own reader to a restaurant in order to see the menu? Or to a play to read the playbill? Or to a ballgame to read the program?
What about the peeps that are not able to get any type of high speed connection? I know a few that are still stuck with dial up.
Print will never die. Why? Because a newspaper can’t crash and have to reboot. It doesn’t have to wait for wifi connection or any of that. If all the mainstream media goes online, the “alternative” press will have print. Probably go on and offline. And don’t forget about the “old timers” Heck you still see 100 year old congressmen who thinks the internet is nothing but tubes.
Instead of trying to persuade the user to do what Microsoft thinks is best. Maybe Microsoft should work to bring the best technology that user’s prefer. It’s obvious tablet PC’s are not popular. It’s also obvious that online products are only as good as the connection between the user’s computer and the server. Sometimes it’s not so good.
I still prefer a disc with a program that I can load on my hard drive and that I can use that disc anytime something goes wrong. Sorry Microsoft but I not only do not trust you or any other company to provide me with quality service that would allow me to use web based programs.
Even your “Live” service as problems. Balmer better quit thinking about the future and start dealing with todays problems or their will be no future for Microsoft.
Never say never but I don’t see print going away with the current technology and infrastructure we have in the US. In 10 years? Maybe. Look where we were 10 years ago. The majority of us were still working with dial-up.
I agree with jescott. While I do download and install programs from the Internet, they’re applications like Open Office that stay on my computer. Most of my programs come loaded on CDs or DVDs. I’ve never used any of the Windows Live programs, though I do use Google Earth. I think that “cloud computing” is inherently insecure, as someone will eventually figure out how to steal someone else’s data.
I have no reason to use a tablet interface to smudge my computer screen (yes I saw the MS demo. Why would I want to do any of those things?). Mice, trackballs, and even trackpads are all better interfaces than a tablet. I think that’s why tablet computers don’t sell.
Oh yes–while newspaper circulation isn’t what it used to be, there’s still plenty of reasons to read a paper, magazine, or book. If you load a book into a Kindle (I’m picking on a Kindle for now, but the readers all have the same problems) or other reader, how do you put that “book” on your bookshelf with a bookmark in it? If you’re studying a book for work or school, how do you underline a passage or scribble in the margins? How do I reload a 10 year old book into Kindle 3, read the book, then metaphorically put it back on the shelf?
Finally, newspapers can be used for other things after you’ve read them, like as a drop cloth when you’re painting a piece of furniture…
>>Look where we were 10 years ago. The majority
>>of us were still working with dial-up.
The majority of “us” were working with dial-up just a few years ago. There was an article in newspapers back in 2004 or 2005 saying that broadband had finally passed the 50% mark for all residential users. A fair number of folks STILL use dialup.
In any case, I doubt print media will EVER go away (except for those print newspapers that go bankrupt because they can’t keep up). I don’t know a single person who actually LIKES to read stuff (other than 1-page emails and things like that) on a computer screen. Does anybody really want to lounge in the surf reading a paperback book on a Kendle? Read a 300-page report with their eyes glued to a monitor screen? For all the talk of the “paperless office” over the past two decades, most readin’ work gets done on the same thing Gutenburg and Abe Lincoln used.
Paper will never die.
Who wants to put an LCD in the bottom of the birdcage?
J/P=?
I guess this means it’s curtain for M$ Press and ***books*** trying to explain how M$ software might work !!! And HP’s printer business should disappear, although we seem to be printing more now than ever before !!! But I guess we should not believe everything we hear on or about the Internet, without checking who is saying it !!!
RE: The picture: Ballmer says: “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” !!!
#17
Actually, annotations are available with some online reading sites and almost all allow for bookmarks. Thus, the online reader has the advantage that you can bookmark dozens or hundreds of books and search on annotations which is something you cannot do with paper. Similarly, you could in theory load any book regardless of age, read it and “put it away” to be read again.
I read almost all of my technical books online as most books contain about 50% fluff and I want to skip past that easily without having to take up bookshelf space. People are just not yet used to reading online and the apparatus for doing so are not convenient enough but should get substantially better in the near future.
Still, I do not think that printed media will disappear completely as it is a convenient and cheap medium for hotels and such. However, for daily news to my house, I haven’t gotten a paper in 20 years and read all my news online. I generally do not have time to read through a 2 inch brick of news every morning or evening and the depth of coverage of information on subjects I find interesting generally sucks in newspapers because of the limitations of the medium.
I remember having a discussion w/Steve about 10 years ago about why computers were still so difficult to operate…we’re both from Detroit and I told him that millions around the world w/diff. cultural backgrounds and varying levels of ed can hop in a car and drive…he got excited, waved his arms around and said MS was working hard in their speech recognition division to improve things
…still can’t talk to my computer, but now that I’m running Vista, I sure do swear at it a lot. A lot. Nostra-steve-us he is not.
Print media will be around forever.
So will books.
Print media will continue to decline as the medium of choice for news, but is very portable.
Books won’t get erased by an EMP.
This is the same company that almost missed the internet by about a week!
#25 – blabrmouth
The longest week… ever!..
When are they going to fire Ballmer ?
This stock has done nothing since the Nasdaq meltdown.
The reason why, is Balmmers lame leadership.
Well, I can’t deal with this Balmy crap, so I’m going to get back to reading the May 2008 issue of National Geographic, which has some great stories, pictures, and a great map.
I may be out of line here, but I’d like to say that I seem to remember some analysis of the whole web versus print topic by John C. Dvorak. He observed that it’s really great when a story is worked on with editors: That can greatly improve things.
It appears by the picture that Baldmer is saying, “I like to suck dicks this big!”
I spend about two hours a day online reading the news. But I still get POed if my WSJ is not on my doorstep by five am. Sinking into my lazyboy with a laptop or blackberry is not the same.
“I still prefer a disc with a program that I can load on my hard drive and that I can use that disc anytime something goes wrong.”
I still get the disk to but it imediatly tells me to go on line to update or register. A lot of APPs cut you off in 30 days if you donot register.
Big plus no DRM on paper. Also somebody better tell the packed crowd at the B&N that books are dead.