EUIST

2006 brought us a lot of changes including but not limited to the Euro 1.25bn YouTube takeover by Google. Less than 12 months after YouTube had been launched. As well, in the U.S. MySpace has managed to attract more pageviews a month than Yahoo!.

So who will be a winner regarding the next upstart website capable of forging a mass audience from this outpouring of so-called user-generated content?

We identify three forces that will shape this development:

1) Convergence of user-generated and traditional media going further than ever

How about media companies such as Walt Disney making its content available to be integrated into user-generated content. A Disney character could be used in a digital photoframe for displaying this Xmas family snaps online? Naturally, Walt Disney would want you to pay a license fee for this.

2) Converence of web-browsing and videogames.

The result is virtual worlds such as Second Life, where users are represented by fictional characters or avatars. But if this will be a commercial success is still to be tested, so far Second Life is far from it.

These sites are fantasy role-playing things and we do not know if these will become a true mass-market hit.

3) Convergence of internet and TV – time-shifting and place-shifting of entertainment
During the 1980s, video cassette recorders changed our TV watching habits by letting us ‘time-shift’ broadcasts to suit our lifestyles.

Place-shifting allows viewers to watch TV programs received at home in another location and on such devices such as iTV, computers and so on. Here the TV program subscriber could have a show transmitted via a broadband connection to the location she is staying at with the computer hooked up to a broadband connection. Such use can be considered fair use since the purpose does not infringe on copyrights and the user has paid for the content through his subscription at home.

The family’s teenagers might have created user-generated content whilst being at college. That content can be fed via broadband internet to be viewed on the family’s TV thousands of miles away.

_Conclusion_

The hunt is on for the next killer application on the web and whilst we may not be certain now what it will be. Nonetheless, in a few months it will seem so obvious to all of us when we describe it here. Until then, enjoy.