Twitter couldn't save Brangelina

I'm not one to follow the lives of celebrities. I don't watch TMZ, and the very sound of Entertainment Tonight's Mary Hart's voice is enough to make me nauseous. I turn my head as I walk past the supermarket tabloids in the checkout aisle because I could care less who Jennifer Aniston is dating this week or that Elvis was spotted in a rural Kentucky laundromat. I've got better things to do with my life than wonder how many more kids Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt want to adopt or when she plans on getting another tattoo.

For all my celeb-fatigue, though, I found it interesting this past weekend when I first learned about the Brangelina supercouple's separation not from television, radio, or a newspaper, but from my Twitter feed. After I sarcastically retweeted the supposed news, I heard from a number of friends that they, too, had gotten the news from online sources.

Things are tough all over. And tougher here.

While the recession ravaged businesses in all sectors, it's been particularly brutal if you work in conventional media. Long in decline because of the industry's general inability (or unwillingness; I'm still trying to figure out which one is more true) to adapt to the growing influence of online tools on how we learn about the world around us, so-called traditional media outlets have especially taken it on the chin during the recession. That's because the advertisers who drive their major source of revenue have reined in their own marketing budgets. Well, the lucky ones have. The unlucky ones no longer exist.

So instead of reading the newspaper, we custom-build our RSS feeds and hoover them wherever we happen to be -- desktop, laptop, mobile device, game console, whatever. We're no longer stuck waiting for our favorite television shows to be delivered via conventional broadcast. Instead, we watch them online. Radio was bypassed years ago when we began using iTunes to program our own playlists instead of relying on some anonymous program director to do the same thing.

In every case, the Internet has turned us into masters of our respective media domains. While conventional media routes control of the message through relatively few gatekeepers who shape the message for the masses, new media hands that control over to us. Katie Couric is no more the sole source of breaking news from Haiti than Mary Hart is the only place we can learn about Brangelina.

Social media vs. Mary Hart

Conventional media's monopoly over the flow of information and advertising dollars is crumbling. Or, to put it in headline form for Mary Hart's teleprompter: The entire industry is cooked. If television, which used to be a license to print money, no longer has the sure-fire ability to suck in millions of viewers and connect them with advertisers willing to pay for that connection, Mary Hart and Katie Couric won't be the only televisionistas headed for the unemployment line.

Those Web 2.0 -- or, dare I say, Web 3.0 -- tools that readers of sites like Betanews have been using to Tweet and Facebook each other for the past couple of years have evolved into de facto communication platforms in their own right. While my tech-Luddite in-laws may laugh at the thought, it is indeed possible to cut off all conventional television, radio, and newspapers and get all your news from new/social media sources.

Next week, a group of journalists will do exactly that, living in a farmhouse in the French countryside and using only social media tools to cover their respective beats. No conventional media allowed. The project, "Behind Closed Doors on the Net," runs from February 1 through 5, and should reinforce social media's transition from neat way to keep in touch into a powerful, real-time information medium. I'm sure when all is said and done, sipping from the media spigot through exclusively new media channels won't pose any obstacles to news gathering. And if social media tools are good enough for professional journalists, they'll be good enough for regular consumers, too.

A case of unfortunate timing

If only it were that simple, then every conventional media outlet on the planet would have long ago adopted the tools of new media and we'd still be relying on publishers and broadcasters for real-time news. But things rarely transition smoothly in any industry, especially those too resistant to change for their own good. Even if Twitter's a better real-time means of learning the size, shape, and theme of Angelina's newest tattoo, it's a scary business model (for now, at least) because advertisers haven't bought in just yet. So while the new tools are home to growing legions of engaged, motivated audience members, they're not anywhere near capable of replacing the money lost by advertisers no longer content to pay premium rates for conventional media audiences who no longer exist because they're all Facebooking and Twittering.

Welcome to today's Social Media Catch-22.

Like most of the rest of the world, I have no idea how Brangelina's split will play out, and I don't much care either way. But that's not the point. While the subject of a celebrity breakup is shallow to the extreme, I nevertheless find it fascinating to watch through the lens of social media. How we learn about everything around us -- from relief workers tweeting from the front lines in Haiti to politicians blogging from the seat of power to journalists updating their Facebook pages from the anchor's desk -- is evolving almost as fast as the tools themselves. And unless Mary Hart learns to tweet for real, the scoops and the advertisers that come with them will become fewer and further between for her and others like her.

Fruity pebbles

The emergence this week of a new offering from Apple -- which could, depending on who you listen to, be a tablet, a slate, or a Star Trek tricorder-like device -- adds yet another wrench. If the form factor, content payment-and-delivery model and carrier/publisher partnerships pan out as the universe says they must, conventional media will end the week either saluting Apple as its savior, or blaming it for the industry's eventual demise.

Picture of Brad Jolie morphed with Angelina Pitt, or vice versa, comes from MorphThing.com.

Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.