I read an article the other morning and it made me think of the old SNL skit for Shimmer Floor Wax. If you don’t know it you can watch the skit by clicking this link (I tried to embed it but good luck getting certain video providers to work nicely with WordPress). 
You might remember it – is new Shimmer a floor wax or a dessert topping? As with the article, it turns out to be both.The piece was about video consoles such as the XBox:
Video console use is still dominated by the devices’ original intention: playing online and offline games. But non-gaming TV and video activities are catching up.
You can read the rest of the piece here and the Nielsen data behind it. No real shock but it’s kind of a good reminder about most things these days. We tend to categorize them as one thing – a mobile phone, a game player, a PC – when in fact they have a ton of other uses – a GPS unit, a DVD player, a connected TV. The lines are only going to become even more blurry as content itself becomes more channel agnostic and the lines between those channels break down altogether. I don’t know of any major content player who is thinking solely about a particular channel the way we’d only think TV many years ago.
When I’m not killing mutants on my XBox I’m watching them on ESPN3 or Netflix through the same device (OK, not all the folks on those channels are mutants…) and only the game was created specifically for this device. I’m sure you’re doing much the same.
I think folks should spend less time trying to figure out if it’s a floor wax or dessert topping and more time on how to get it in peoples’ hands. You?
Consult Keith 