OJR: The Online Journalism Review

Jacqueline Howard

Los Angeles, California

Jacqueline Howard is a project associate at the Knight Digital Media Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

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These articles are the work of their author, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of nor an assignment by OJR.

What's coming next in online news? A few clues from south by southwest

March 23, 2010
Twitter turned four years old this past Sunday, March 21. At a time when news sites, such as CNN.com and NYTimes.com, are experiencing a decline in the number of unique visitors, 50 million tweets are being sent out per day — that's almost 600 tweets every second.

But this isn't to be a Twitter fan-fest. Instead, consider this an illustration, how the prediction made at Twitter's introduction as a new start-up at SxSWi that it would soon sweep the world came to fruition.

So what is next in the south by southwest crystal ball?

The predictions made this year at SxSWi suggested that news stations would soon compete with 40,000 other channels for an audience. (Oh, yeah, and you'll be able to watch them *all* on your cell phone.) Other predictions focused on the notion that the U.S. average broadband speed will continue to double annually. So, if you don't feel like watching TV, you'll be able to download "Avatar in 3D", and it won't take long.

As technology develops and media converges, SxSWi continues to provide evidence that the communication landscape is changing... and will continue to change. Media will converge. We'll see audio, video and print combine on the mobile Web.

And journalists will be forced to keep up. More...

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