Friday, September 01, 2006

Day of the Longtail Video

Day of the Longtail

Great video on the rise of participatory, or disintermediated, or whatever you want to call it - media and the fall of corporate media. I don't think it will actually happen this way, but great video nonetheless. We've definitely seen that people want their stuff when they want it, however they want it, whenever they want it and on whatever device they want it on. And we'll continue to see more content posted by the people - i hate the term UGC, but we don't have a better one yet - and a lot of the other things this video implies will keep occuring.

Unfortunately, every new technology has brought about utopian visions of the democratization of media - the printing press, ham radio, public television, the phonograph, the telephone, the list is endless. And each time, the range of possibilities has been narrowed immensely by corporate interests, and the regulatory bodies which serve their interests.

What we are seeing today - the long tail, YouTube's success, etc - was all easily envisioned back in the early 90s (maybe earlier), but we could also see then that corporations would take back control. And it has really already occured. We'll have a mix of both, but you would be dead wrong to think that Fox, Google, and other Hollywood companies won't still rule the media landscape.