Commentary

Interested In Being A Media Mogul? Cross The Pond

It’s time to get over to the U.K. You’ll be the most powerful person in media the minute you clear customs. You’ll trump Page, Sandberg, Cook, Bezos, Murdoch and Sorrell.

So what if you won’t make as much as them and have to fly commercial. It’s the clout, the influence that matters. How intoxicating!

MediaGuardian says the job is yours. The publication has “You” at the top of its list of 100 most powerful people in the industry for 2013.

Really, all that’s needed to carry out your duties is a smartphone. Take the device and mix it with social media and that’s media mogul-dom at your fingertips, quite literally.

The smartphone-social media confluence allows you to be a broadcaster or publisher and brings the opportunity to produce content with thunderous worldwide resonance. MediaGuardian says you can be “a critic, a trendsetter and -- a less welcome consequence of social media -- a troll.”

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Of course, some might say in a digital world, Edward Snowden should actually rival you for that most powerful title (or at least beat you for most influential). After all, he's the one who exposed the NSA spying machinations, which should have you -- and all your subjects -- well aware of how valuable data is in building a business, but how crucial it is to treat with respect. Otherwise, people may turn against you and you’ll lose your kingdom.

“Rarely has the question posed by the Big Data era – the balance to be struck between the right to gather and exploit personal information within the law and the rights of the individual -- been put into such stark relief (and been argued so fiercely),” MediaGuardian says of the Snowden fallout.

So, again, you’ll have to learn from the Snowden snowball. As will all the other bigwigs you’re more powerful than, such as Costolo (the Twitter guy) and Hastings (the Netflix guy). Unfortunately, even with their inferiority to you, they sure know a lot about your interests and behavior. But don’t think about how that too much: you’ll be frightened.

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