The Waiting Game
This morning Wired magazine posted this: http://www.wired.com/2015/11/periscope-binge-apple-tv/ an account of one of their editors’ binge-watching the new PeriscopeTV app that runs through Apple TV. I bring this up here because we have often spoken about how libraries can use technology to their advantage, to spread the message of what the library can do in the 21st Century. Many — almost all — libraries have at least one social media page and most have three or four. These pages are often utilized mostly to act as copies of the library website or newsletter and little else, but then something like this comes along and gets me thinking about what the possibilities could be.
The caveat here is that even by Periscope’s own admission this app currently is nowhere near where it should be in terms of what it might actually be able to do and become. But this is, in the case of libraries, a good thing.
Libraries will likely never be considered “early adaptors” of anything technological. Libraries tend to be like your aunt who just had her first Skype conversation in 2014 and puts the word “the” in front of Facebook and Twitter. Still, libraries eventually take their seat at the far end of the cafeteria and ask what’s up, and right around this time there is a chance that Periscope TV could very well be a viable tool for libraries to use.
As we have discussed in the past, often times the way a site or app is used differs from the original intention of the creator. In the American version of The Office, Ryan (The Temp) creates a service called WUPH that attaches itself to all of your devices at once (phone, fax, email, text) so that there is no way you could miss a message. While the joke on the show is that he envisions the service as a multi-media global empire, the serious suggestion within the show was that an area emergency broadcast network wanted to buy the idea to use as a means of communicating danger.
Applying this theory to PeriscopeTV, what is currently a stream of non-sequitur tirades and pointless clips of people doing inane things, could, in time be a great marketing tool for libraries. Not only would it communicate to patrons directly what the library offers it would also unconsciously communicate to patrons that the library is well-versed in the current technological trends.
Of course, all of this hinges on public reaction to PersicopeTV (or any app/service), which is also to the advantage of the slow-to-adopt library. While, overall, the nature of technology disallows for permanence, there are technologies and services that have become iconic (Google and Facebook are first to mind) and as such have a longer shelf life than say, Friendster. These are the apps and services the library should attach itself to. Like a forty-year-old talking about pop music, libraries tend to be about a year behind which is an advantage in that they can then develop an online presence with trusted names. Time will only tell if PeriscopeTV becomes one of these names. Until then the library can wait.
