Youtube.com and the new media landscape

My students love to show me their favorite a href="http://youtube.com/">youtube.com videos. It seems like a pretty new site, but it is catching fire. This is the "citizen journalist" thing, but what it really should be called is "active user" rather than "passive consumer." Where the age of printing press newspapers, broadcast radio and broadcast televsion was the age of mass media for a passive audience with few choices, the essence of our digital age is participant media, 2-way media, and transparency by which I measn, a sort of meritocracy of ideas and content. What people like, they'll download, watch, blog about, and talk about. It won't matter so much WHO produced it, but WHAT it is. The big breakthrough is going to be the rise of the popular channelers--these will be "online editors" who put together feeds that other people will pay for. The media companies shouldn't suffer if they build on their ability to produce good content, but it will democratize the production side of information production because any 17 year old with a cool idea can command the same attention that some austere talking head used to be able to monopolize. I gotta go. My old crittercam doesn't work with OSX so I'm out to get myself a logitech again. I bet there's a market for some of my wacky views. YouTube's 'Bowiechick' and the spiders from marketing | CNET News.com

tags technorati : unbundled