I’ve been touting my net predictions for 2005 and 2006 several weeks now. 2004 for was a big year for bloggers. Merriam-Webster had more requests for the defintion of “blog” than any other word (It defines a blog as: “a web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks”). Bloggers nearly made Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. So where do we go from here?
This January 2005, I’d like to declare that this trend of adopting social computing software on the web will continue for quite some time. There are many great examples of this… del.icio.us shared bookmarks, shared photos , social networking, shared music, news… and anything you can make into a webfeed (rss).
The hottest new social computing technology on the internet this year will be podcasting. Why do I say this? The iPod craze hit like a storm last year. Virtually everyone who has ever considered purchasing a personal device has at least heard of the iPod. Following on the coattails of its success are all sorts of applications developed for the iPod. Podcasting is named after the iPod and is a marriage of the audible internet to personal audio devices. Most simply, podcasts are described as “web radio”. The method for distribution is a special kind of webfeed that feed readers can interpret. There are podcast directories and rating services that can help you find the audio casts that suit your taste. At your convenience, your reader goes out and scans the web and downloads new casts that you’ve subscribed to. Then it dumps them onto your portable devices and off you go.
So of all the new great ideas in social computing why do I think podcasting will be the next big splash? Because traditional audible media is beginning to take notice and offer audio casts. Afterall, this is essentially subscription radio! NPR’s On the Media is the first traditional radio show to offer a podcast. Well, they aren’t doing this on a regular basis yet… but the January 7 2005 show talks about podcasting in an actual podcast. If it isn’t perfectly obvious why subscription radio (and all of it currently free!) will be popular, then I’m doing a terrible job explaining all of this. (As an aside, discussion in the “On the Media” podcast discusses social computing in terms of democratization of media… this is a wonderful topic that you will hear about more and more…)
A key element of the popularity of podcasting will be the ability of non-audio specialists to make and deliver content. Mixcast is currently in beta, but is tool designed specifically for the non-expert to easily produce and mix audio for web streaming.
Beyond this, there are now online services that will allow you to easily upload your audio for hosting. This is incredibly important since it also takes some technological skill to host your own audioblog and the monetary costs associated with network streaming climb tremendously the more popular the stream. (My site enjoys, fortunately, little to no popularity and thus I don’t have to worry about this.)
So what’s beyond podcasting? Vlogging (video blogging), of course! Or, subscription internet video. Vlogging follows on the tail of podcasting but requires even more tech savvy than audio casting. Video is a challenging medium when you begin to consider editing, mixing, compressing and delivery. The videoblogging group at videoblogging.info has been working hard to define the scope of this new media as well as the face of new tools and methods to support media creation and delivery. Two very early grassroots experimental tools of this group are video commenting (developed by Andreas Haugstrup and the ANT video blog player. (As I understand, the Rocketboom Vlog has been experimenting with video commmenting.)
Currently, both the podcast and vlog communities are struggling with self-identity. They are also growing at an increasingly large rate and developing tools, marketing strategies, hosting sites and a plethora of styles and content. This seems to me a clear sign that these two communities will explode into popular awareness in 2005 and 2006. Supporting technology that I think will be rewarded by this popularity (besides those I’ve already mentioned) include wearable video, standards and tools for metadata creation, and audio/video hotspotting and content retrieval. Perhaps the means for success for podcasting and vlogging will be adoption by current established media icons, politicians and the more grassroots community — bloggers.
Listen to this post.
Though I wanted to attend Vloggercon today, travel was pre-empted by a East Coast Winter storm. I tried to login and view the event, but my satellite modem was not up to the task. So here is my best memory of the day. I hope everyone in NY had fun!
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