Fred Wilson has a new post where you can, once again, see that he understands new media. I will try to quickly touch on a few of the points he raises:
- Fred points out that MySpace is AOL for blogging. I agree and think MySpace is AOL in the sense that it is about personalization. Blogging, in the mainstream, will not take the shape of blogging. It will be about online representation of identity and personalization.
- In the same vein, Fred says, "They want to be the TV station, the radio station, the newspaper". This is true, however, YouTube, currently, falls short of true personalization in the mini-media channel it allows its user to create. Cut-n-paste microchunks are not enough, because all users end up with similar "channels". Next step will be personalization tools that allows for putting one’s personality more emphatically into the channel they create – think of it as a user-friendly web-service where you upload videos and play with it – much like GarageBand on Macs.
- I think the edge will be increasingly about easier sharing and syndication. Grou.ps is an example of moves in this direction.
“YouTube, currently, falls short of true personalization in the mini-media channel it allows its user to create. Cut-n-paste microchunks are not enough, because all users end up with similar “channels”. Next step will be personalization tools that allows for putting one’s personality more emphatically into the channel they create – think of it as a user-friendly web-service where you upload videos and play with it – much like GarageBand on Macs.”
Michael Robertson’s EyeSpot (http://www.eyespot.com) is doing exactly this. And there are some other stealth mode startups also entering in the online video editing business. I agree with this argument and I think they’ll quickly become acquisition targets of YouTube likes.
LikeLike