Susan Boyle, you can go back to the village with your head held high - it’s three yes’s

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Reality television saw an explosion of global popularity starting in the summer of 2000, with the successes of Big Brother and Survivor (in the US). One can glorify or vilify this type of content but there is no doubt that these TV shows have created something new and played a key role in the process of connecting content creators and consumers. 

These programs enabled two main things:

1. People could present themselves and their talent to a wide audience.
2. Consumer audiences were able to express their opinions and influence.

Obviously, the purpose of this post is not to praise reality shows, but rather to clarify the point that they created a new kind of connection between creators (although this title may not necessarily be attributed to all reality show participants) and consumers (the people watching TV).

I remember those times in the early 2000s; these shows were starting to gain widespread momentum all around the world, especially talent-related programs like American Idol and Got Talent. Back then, sharing content over the internet was at a very early stage, which made these shows extremely popular; people from all over the world competed for a place in front of our TV screens and we, the viewers, became remote judges who could vote over the phone and promote the talents we liked.

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Speaking of ‘LIKE’:

In 2007, Justin Rosenstein, a Facebook engineer created the “awesome” feature which later became the LIKE button. The team who ran the site’s News Feed feature were keen, as it would help rank posts based on popularity. For the first time, people who were watching content over the internet could interact and respond to it; From that moment on, internet users could express that they like, enjoy or support certainand creators. This little button allowed content creators to get feedback and be promoted by viewers who could now interact and express their opinions instantly.

Towards the end of the first decade of the millennium, social networks started to spread at a dizzying pace and people, bloggers, creators and many others began to upload a huge amount of content to the web; if in the early 2000s, content creators had to wait in line for auditions in order to compete for a spot on our screen, now everyone had the ability to produce content and make it accessible to the masses. If as viewers of reality shows we could influence by voting through SMS for a small fee, now, we could promote content and creators at the click of a button and get instant feedback.

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So what's the point in all this?

The presentation of reality shows and the Like button is to illustrate the fact that in the creator-consumer relationship, there is always one side who creates content - it can be a singer, blogger, painter, business, or anyone, and on the other side there is always the side who consumes it. The creator wants to be recognized for his abilities and to generate income from the content he produces, and the consumer wants to get access to quality content and to earn recognition for his/her knowledge, judgment and contribution to the promotion of the creators.

If in the not-so-distant past, only a few could create content and gain recognition, today, anyone can. If in the analog age the role of consumers was mainly to pay for content consumption, today, they function as content marketers.

One produces content, the other distributes it.

This raises the question - how to create a direct-economic connection between them?