I recently attended two days of conferences at The IET. The first day was Next Generation Networks . The second on IPTV.
I think the broadcasters and ISPs have missed a trick.
Witness the massive growth in internet advertising spend , fast catching up with TV spend in the UK.
TV is being delivered as part of a social network. Look at cycling.tv , Zattoo , Tioti (Tape It Off The Internet), tvcatchup , TitanTV , Jaman , Babelgum , Veoh (backed by Microsoft), Miro . And these are on top of existing companies like Youtube , Blinkx , Brightcove .
The power of the content is magnified by adding a layer of social networking on top. Advertisers will love it. Check out Metcalf’s blog on this subject.
Are these sites allowing us to go back to a mode of communication more akin to our evolutionary origins ? E.g. first contact tribes .
Maybe, over the years, technology has moved humans away from their natural habitat. Through newspapers, books, magazines, radio, cinema and TV. But now, the internet is giving people back what they lost. That is why we see the rise of social networking sites. In fact, I think that Facebook and Myspace will have to move fast to add content to compete. To quote Murdoch “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”