Raghu Ramakrishnan, Chief Scientist for Search and Cloud Platforms at Yahoo!

The Future of Media: Content Optimization, Social Networks, Interactivity---And Who Will Pay?
The nature of information discovery has been transformed over the past few years, and the nature of content publication---including journalism and authoring of all kinds---has been evolving in tandem. I will discuss some of the underlying trends that have re-shaped how users keep up with news (about the world, about their communities, about their friends and colleagues), discover and explore topics of interest, and search for specific information they require. First, as people consume information increasingly from websites and digital devices, algorithmic techniques for selecting content have revolutionized the traditional notion of a static publication in which every user saw the same content and presentation: personalized, context-sensitive targeting is becoming the norm, and the role of an editor who shapes this user experience is changing so as to leverage the algorithmic tools to achieve a desired editorial voice. Second, social networks are emerging as an ubiquitous, near-instantaneous distribution channel that publishers must take into account in order to maximize their reach. Third, the distinction between searching for information and discovering information serendipitously is blurring: increasingly, contextual information is triggering relevant searchable companion experiences. For example, while watching a TV program, users can see a stream of relevant entities and topics such as celebrities in a movie or teams and players in a game of soccer, and by clicking retrieve more detailed information on these entities and topics. Finally, the economics of the entire content ecosystem (content creation, aggregation, distribution, consumption) is in flux as publishers struggle with the shift from conventional offline subscriptions to the new online world, with its diverse monetization models ranging from ad-supported to subscriptions to micropayments. I will present an overview of these trends, highlighting the computational opportunities and challenges.