Wednesday 8 July 2009

Is vlog the next big thing after social networks?

When the like of MySpace and Facebook came into existence, social networking was a new buzz word and potential technological and commercial venture. Some even hailed the new technology as the new definition of socialism for the 21st century.
Nowadays, social networking sites are like corner shops springing everywhere. As they replicate each other, some decided to specialize to create their own niche market whilst others forced into it. For example, as a computer scientist I find LinkedIn to be must useful. However, I doubt a pop artist would do, instead Bebo would provide a good outlet for the artist to reach potential young audience on the social network whose users' average age is 16 or so it seems.

Bebo is an example of age group oriented social network. Others, like Google's Orkut, Friendster, and Netlog, either lack orientation or becoming more of regional or specific activities oriented social networks. The point is that social networking sites became part of the social activities like clubs and social gatherings. One cannot help but to wander where is the next explosion of this technology based socializing?

If we compare what happened in the cyber world with what happened in the physical world, one expects pictures to follow text, which had happened already, and as technology becomes available, video to follow pictures. That may be where is out next stop. This thought came to me as I was surveying video sharing sites.

Youtube is the first one comes to mind, with its flexibility, Google's backing, first in the market, and so on. But is there potential competitors? Looking at Blip.tv, the variety of questions and issues to be asked and answered in this field jumped out. First, vlogging will never kill social network sites or textual blogging, so the best thing is to integrate that. Second, vlogging has elements of music showcasing that appear strongly on MySpace and Last.FM so an ability to showcase is very important. As a result, Youtube single channel needs to change; Blip.tv advertising income share strengthen the idea of showcasing similar to Last.FM; these are examples.

The vlogging and vodcasting may be the next socially burgeoning technology as technology becoming accessible to users and benefits become clearer to commercial users in particular. However, it remains unclear if there will be similar growth in services providers in this area, will remain limited to handful of providers, or will be incorporated service within existing social networking sites with vlogging or vodcasting as another tab on the menu? One decisive factor in this is availability of technology to vlogging providers, i.e. codecs, streaming, and ontological tagging.