By Richard Scarlett
I used to have a very low opinion of the so-called ‘MySpace’ generation and their websites littered with grainy, user-generated content. Just a channel for socially inept teenagers and/or geeks of a certain age parading often intimate details of their lives before an audience of 'virtual' friends. Or so I thought…
Well, sitting here writing my latest blog, clearly my opinion has changed.
The question that I’m now asking myself is does ‘Web 2.0’ signal a depletion or development of our social skills? I mean nowadays, it’s often a case of “I’ll meet you online,” rather than “meet you in the bar,” and popularity is increasingly measured by how many hits, comments or linked-in friends one manages to accumulate.
My own take on it is that people are migrating towards personal page creation and uploading videos in a reflection of our “fifteen minutes of fame” era of Big Brother, I’m A Celebrity… and Strictly Natasha Kaplinsky. Everybody seems to want a piece of the action and everybody seems to love the attention – just check out all those users with numerous profile pages or a catalogue of personal videos to rival Universal Pictures.
No wonder then, with millions of profiles and videos viewed each day, that new media players such as Google et al are writing billion dollar cheques and talking about the massive financial potential of sites such as YouTube. But the question remains:
How do you actually convert this latest craze into a money-spinning cash cow?
Advertising revenue would seem to be the obvious solution , but when you’re dealing with a community of headstrong, cynical users who are a) used to getting something for nothing and b) have no intention of paying subscriptions or viewing adverts that they didn’t request (hence the current popularity of Sky Plus and Tivo), this will be no simple task.
One social networking icon about to dip its toes into the murky pool of advertising is Second Life. As a broadband TV service is launched within this strange little world, users can pick and choose Sky-type viewing packages and let their virtual alter ego while away the hours vegging out on their pixelated sofas. The idea is that viewers watch programmes in a ‘branded environment’ that allows for unobtrusive, ‘ambient’ advertising…
(However, I find myself wondering exactly what kind of person would be prepared to pay real money for a digital replica of themselves to watch a TV within a computer screen in a synthetic parallel universe. Anybody…?)
Still, I’m sure that Google - having followed the example of Rupert Murdoch and thrown a little pocket change into this fresh market - will find a way to crack those social freeloaders and reap the benefits of its YouTube investment.
Even if it does mean shrewdly gathering and selling the information provided at each video upload by the unsuspecting user – who is too busy storyboarding their next masterpiece to notice anyway…
I don’t think advertising is a problem on social networking sites as long as Google and the like do not use anything intrusive such as those advertisements that cover the whole screen. If it is a small advertisement which users can view passively then the often cynical users will not complain as long as the content remains free.
Posted by: Stephen Waddington | 09 November 2006 at 15:17