Microsoft CEO Ballmer: Print Media Dead in 10 Years
June 07 2008 / by Alvis Brigis
Category: Business & Work Year: 2018 Rating: 2
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has joined the ranks of those predicting the near-term demise of print media.
In a recent Washington Post interview (see below), Ballmer forecasts that, “In the next 10 the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down, in my opinion.”
“There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, magazines that are delivered in paper form – everything get delivered in electronic form,” he claims.
The reasoning behind this vision is rooted Ballmer’s belief that “advertising, community and content [will] all kind of blend”, resulting in a world in which we’re “going to have incredible pieces of software that run out in the internet that know all about the publishers that want to sell ads, all about the advertisers that want to buy ads and all about the users who want to consume content and advertising; and it sort of algorithmically puts them together … and it gets smarter and smarter at delivering the right ad at the right place at the right time. That’s a big business, we think.”
Personally, I am in full agreement with this scenario, though I do think that while they will seriously dwindle, some forms of traditional print will still be around in 2018. But I think Ballmer is spot-on in his argument that newspapers and magazines will certainly be hard pressed to continue their traditional existence(s).
(via Tech Crunch)
