Bean Blog

This is the conclusion of a recent white paper by MIT media researcher Henry Jenkins. And of course, it has major implications for those of us in the web and interactive fields.

The white paper’s argument is that media artifacts have greatest impact when consumers are able to pass on, reuse, adapt and remix them as they choose.

So it goes without saying that your website should not only be designed and programmed to facilitate circulation of your assets, but also that your assets be created with this end result in mind.

Creating content, imagery, video and other multimedia, digital elements with the expressed intent to widely distribute is a different approach and production process than trying to fit existing assets into a new distribution model.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you holding your assets too close to the vest?
• Are you making it difficult for your content to spread virally and organically?
• What are the properties of your content make it more likely to be spread among your visitors?

Take the Bean Blog, for example. We’re not writing to keep ourselves busy (our clients are wonderful at doing that for us!), but instead to make an impact, impart information and widen our spheres of influence. However, there are many organizations that struggle with wide-open distribution. Many of our museum and television clients struggle with sharing due to rights issues (who owns the copyright on a work) as well as ramifications to revenue streams.

Five or so years ago, we all coveted “stickiness” — attracting and holding viewer interest directly on our sites. Now, we want to give our content wings.

Is your content ready to fly?

If you’re interested, check out Henry Jenkins’ dissection of his white paper on his blog.