Week 7 - They were cool before everyone knew about them

Chris Anderson’s reading, “The Long Tail”, discusses the smaller niche markets, which are gaining in popularity due to the ease of digital distribution. Thanks to the digital age, media can be rapidly transmitted and redistributed in the blink of an eye. This got me thinking about transmedia, and the way content can be distributed to newer markets.

I’d like to talk about a slightly different take on transmedia. Typically, transmedia is a new medium for an existing story. Like making a movie out of a book, or a video game based on a movie. But it does come in other forms. As I write this, I’m listening to the dubstep remix of Lost Woods from the Legend of Zelda game, Ocarina of Time. The message tone on my phone is the exclamation noise from the Metal Gear Solid series, and my ringtone is either the 24 ringtone or the Metal Gear Solid codec. Every time my phone goes off, someone nearby chuckles to themselves because they know what it is. To me, this is a new take on transmedia. And in regards to the dubstep remix, an expansion on the long tail reaching a new market.

But getting back to Anderson’s discussion of the long tail, digital media has been the hero of this. We can now redistribute and discuss content at the click of a button. Anderson states that “popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability”. What I think he means by this, is that getting your content into the mass media scope is no longer the only way to “get your product out there”. Thanks to digital media, word-of-mouth is now global.