Another way 'this community' can become disconnected from the wider body of humankind, eg new would be video-bloggers trying to find help, is by the seas of terminology and buzz turning against 'us'.
Eg I was reading some BBC article from The Money programme, and it was talking baaout that old dude from the UK who got so many views on youtube. Videoblogging or any similar term isnt mentioned once. Meanwhile heres an interesting page on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_sharing (some intreuging 'video wiki' sites there I havent looked at properly yet) So is a videoblog without a blog now just some shared video? Or is a video without a blog but with an RSS feed, a video podcast? It doesnt really matter what we think, it matters what people interested in this stuff think they are looking for. The media gave quite a lot of attention to blogging, and then for a while videoblogging, but am I right to sense that in general things are shifting centre a bit, at a minimum in terms of labels, and that since the large $ value that youtube got for itself, many are inclined to talk about these things in their terms? Youtube themselves seem to use the 'video sharing' term to describe what they offer, although if they remain dominant the term youtube itself could solidify as a brand that virtually becomes a verb? In any case, if people arent searching for videoblogging or similar, they will have less chance of stumbling upon anything that any branches of this community or others offer in the way of help, conversation etc. I dunno, Ive painted a slanted picture there, there are still high-profile things like Rocketboom that call themselves videoblogs. I guess apple still confuse the whole videopodcasting thing by not really distinguishing between audio and video much. Ack whats the reality right now anyway, in terms of mass of humans following and using web 2 stuff? All I can be really sure is that the word video will remain involved for the forseeable future, and that the media have been throwing a heck of a lot of hype around about stuff, Im racing ahead and Im not even sure that whats apparently happened has really happened yet - are more and more people lsitening to and watching podcasts, or has it stagnated somewhat? How much have the young embraced it? At least the success of youtube seems to prove that grassroots-created video is something quite a lot of people want to do online, although Ive got no real sense of quite how large that community is compared to the 'copyrighted material' side of youtube. I must spend more time exploring youtube groups. Beware the media, they are looking for the same old patterns of deline that I have been discussing. Seen some journalists already speculating about blogging and whether it has peaked, no doubt spurred on by studies that predict trends or seem to show a lot of dead blogs out there. Thyve been keen to report on videoblogging here and there, lets see how fickle they prove to be and whether they will maul us on exit. Or maybe we will yet get some ghastly scanerio where prejudices are played to because the activities of a minority on youtube etc end up iving the whole thing 'a bad name'. Still that hasnt worked ont he rest of the net so far, or the media would have suceeded in tarring the whole net with the evil brush by now. Sometimes video on the net ends up on the frontlines of the war on terror of the horror of social decline. Prediction for the medium term: regulation. [v much hope to be wrong on that one] Cheers Steve Elbows
