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The State of Louisiana's economic development department has been trying to persuade Electronic Arts to relocate to or open a new game design studio in Louisiana. EA has already located a game testing center at Louisiana State University, and the state would like to expand EA's presence. Louisiana's digital media tax incentives program was originally focused on attracting game development companies to Louisiana like EA.

Unfortunately, the slow down of the national economy has worked against Louisiana's efforts as EA has seen its own business difficulties during the past year. 

Nevertheless if the State of Louisiana wants to remain attuned to EA's vision of the future of video game development, the State should note that EA has just announced its intention to purchase Playfish, a social game company. See the San Francisco Chronicle article on November 10, 2009 entitled, EA buying Playfish in $300 million deal.

If you are not familiar with social games that have grown out of platforms like Facebook, I found a pretty good definition of social games and also a good list of social game developers on The Social Times Blog in an entry entitled, "What are social games?". 

The various economic development arms of Louisiana and its cities should consider efforts to attract social game developers to Louisiana. If they are successful, they might find that EA is not far behind.

Erich P Rapp.

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Digital Interactive Media including Twitter and YouTube are fueling and energizing a popular uprising in Iran. While traditional media operations face official steps attempting to thwart their reporting in Iran, the enormous number of informal social media "journalists" are shooting video of protests from their cell phones that is then posted on YouTube and Twitter and posting reports about protests in real time on Twitter. These activities seem to be energizing the uprising in Iran. Wow!!! Digital Interactive Media in the form of social media networks has come of age. 

Critics keep suggesting that Twitter may never make any money, but imagine how one would feel if their web platform was supporting a popular uprising against an illegitimate government that is part of a repressive regime. Money may not be everything. Congratulations to the owners of Twitter. Their web platform may facilitate the reform of the Iranian government that many years of United States government pressure has failed to do.

Some of the related stories can be found at Iran's Twitter Revolution on the Nation web site and also on the New York Times web site in the article entitled, In Iran, Iron Cleric, Now Blinking. These events in Iran are a huge step forward for the role and relevance of digital interactive media in the form of social media networks. It is a revolution - - - In this case, literally.

Erich P Rapp.

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Dell Computer reports it has earned $3 million in sales from people visiting their web site referred from their Twitter profile with 624,000 followers. Dell has paid Twitter $0.00 for its profile and promotion. This report is found in a New York Times story dated Friday June 12, 2009 entitled, Dell says it has earned $3 million from twitter. Amazing. Is there any doubt why old media outlets like newspapers, magazines, radio and television are suffering steep declines in their advertising revenue.

While Twitter cannot continue to give away commercial advertising for free, Twitter's costs for delivering that promotion are much lower than any traditional old media outlet. The old media outlets most evolve into a new model that focuses more on web based delivery and combines professional journalism and user/amateur provided journalism in order to reduce their cost base. The details of such a model are yet to be determined, but the path to uncovering that business model might become more clear in the months ahead.

Erich P Rapp.

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Traditional media outlets are dramatically reducing the local based services that they offer to communities. For example, the Baton Rouge Business Report's Daily Report stated on April 28, 2009 that several local radio station DJ's would be laid off as part of Clear Channel's 590 person reduction in its national work force. On the same day, the Daily Report also stated that  WVLA-TV NBC 33 and WGMB-TV Fox 44 would cease broadcasting local news from a Baton Rouge location effective immediately. These actions are service and job losses to the local community, and we must assume based upon events around the country that more such service and job reductions are coming.

Perhaps, however, this reduction in local service presents an opportunity for a new way of distributing media content. Is there a local digital interactive media response to the scaling back of traditional media in the form of television and radio stations. Can the "media" part of web based digital interactive media go beyond blogging and .mp3 file downloads to offer a new and better product to replace the receding traditional media outlets.

If Louisiana is to replace the local media jobs and services that it is losing, it will need to find a way to attract new digital interactive media talent. Louisiana Senate bill 277 is one way to get new talent capable of developing digital interactive media software products and web platforms into Louisiana. By passing Louisiana Senate Bill 277 which provide for tax credits and business incentives for digital interactive media companies doing business in Louisiana, the state will place itself in a position to not only replace the media jobs it is currently losing, but the state will also be in a position to attract many new high paying computer programing ( design and development) jobs to Louisiana.

If a larger community of web platform developers and designers are attracted to Louisiana, a new generation of web based interactive newspapers, radio stations and television stations would likely arise in Louisiana. Louisiana would be a leader of this new generation of interactive media, and these services can then be exported to other communities across the country.

Louisiana should not let the dramatic changes occurring with the business models for traditional media companies leave Louisiana with a smaller and more economically disadvantaged economy. Instead, Louisiana can grow a new and better positioned digital interactive media economy for the future.

Erich P. Rapp. 

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The future of journalism is online interactive and hyperlocal. Printed newspapers across the United States are under extraordinary financial pressure. Some industry experts expect that a large U.S. city will be without a major daily printed newspaper within the next few months.

This leaves the old news media industry wondering how online news outlets will profitably deliver the news to the public. Recent years have seen a rise in blogging, but this vehicle seems short of professional text based journalism that the public expects. In many instances, blogging is either a democratization of editorial writing or alternatively a filtering or re-posting of professional journalism found in the existing major news sources. Blogging alone does not seem to be a substitute for professional text based journalism. Instead, blogging seems more like an enhancement or extension of the reach of professional text based journalism.

The New York Times published an article by Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone on Sunday April 12, 2009 entitled, Hyperlocal web sites deliver news without newspapers. The article concerns a number of web sites focused on publishing content on events at the neighborhood level in an effort to access the solely local advertising dollar. Such sites have achieved limited success so far, but experimentation with variations on them continues. The hyperlocal news report delivered online at relatively low cost seems like the "Long Tail" of journalism, and this hyperlocal aspect of news delivery will likely be important in the evolution of any future text based online news delivery model.  

Regardless of the final direction of  text based news delivery in the future. It seems likely that an online model will eventually overtake the printed newspaper as the primary delivery mechanism for such professional journalism.

Erich P. Rapp.

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