3: Push Versus Pull (part one)
Not all who scroll are lost.
[This is an installment of a serial article that is being gathered here. -D ]
Here’s an unremarkable statement: The internet changed the way people find and consume media.
Here’s a slightly more contentious one: The most dramatic shift in media consumption models didn’t happen in the late 1990s, it’s happening right now. I call it the shift from pull to push.
The Pull Era: Active Content Discovery
In the early days of the internet, media consumption was primarily characterized by the "pull" model. Users sought out content that piqued their interest, using search engines, following links from online communities and advertisements, following thematic indexes like web rings and “blogrolls,” and subscribing to mailing lists.
What I’m describing can be called intentional content discovery, where the consumer has directorial control over what they consume. This kind of self-curated entertainment consumption is an inherited trait of Mass Media, the venerated parent of digital media.
(Before Mass Media, access to information and entertainment was constrained by things like social class, and geopolitical disparities, and rampant censorship, and illiteracy1).
From Gutenberg to Google, the technologies evolved and the media adapted - but the underlying behavior of intentional content discovery remained the same: look for an answer, or for the news, or for entertainment, using a combination of available and accessible directories, clearinghouses and subscriptions
What changed, and changed big, was how media organizations vied for attention. Exit the TV Guide and the card catalog the local paper, and enter my favorite prog band, SEO and the New Power Dynamic.
In the early days, Google emerged as a leader in search technology, quickly establishing itself as the go-to platform for people seeking to navigate the confusing and ungoverned expanse of online content. As we learned last time, the business of content creators and website owners is to get (and keep) site visitors, so they had to learn, almost overnight, to optimize their content for search engines (particularly Google) in order to improve their visibility and reach. This gave rise to the practice of search engine optimization (SEO), along with the $60+ billion SEO consulting and services marketplace.
As businesses and creators adapted their strategies to align with Google's ever-evolving algorithms, the search giant's influence on the digital landscape continued to grow, solidifying its position as the superpower in the realm of content discovery for most of the world. In parallel, but at somewhat lower volume, RSS feeds and email newsletters also gained prominence, allowing users to subscribe to their favorite sources and receive regular updates.
The fraying edges of “Pull” Media
As the internet matured and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram gained traction, limitations of the traditional pull model of content discovery started to appear. In the early days of the web, users had primarily relied on search engines to actively seek out information, entertainment, and resources; however, the explosive growth of social media introduced a new type of content discovery, one that relied more heavily on the recommendations and shares of a user's “network.”
Instead of actively searching for content, users could passively consume information, entertainment, and news through their social media feeds. A Facebook user might discover a new article, video, or product through a friend's share or a sponsored post, rather than deliberately searching for it on Google. Similarly, a Twitter user might stumble upon breaking news or a trending topic through the platform's real-time feed, without the need to actively seek out this information, and YouTube and Vine set the stage for the doomscrolling future (omg spoilers).
The rise of smartphones and mobile internet access further accelerated this shift towards passive, on-the-go content consumption. With the ability to access the internet anytime and anywhere, users increasingly turned to their mobile devices for quick, bite-sized content that could be easily consumed during spare moments throughout the day. This trend gave rise to new content formats, such as short-form videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Stories, which were optimized for mobile viewing and easy sharing.
The shift towards passive content discovery through social media and mobile devices also had implications for content recommendation systems. Platforms like YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify invested heavily in sophisticated algorithms that could predict user preferences and suggest personalized content based on past behavior and engagement. By leveraging the user data at their disposal, these platforms were able to keep users engaged and coming back for more, even without the need for active searching.
(to be continued.)
unlike now.