New Media: Audience, Self-Authorisation, and the Death of Video Stores

A couple of excellent videos linked to by Bill Cunningham at Pulp 2.0.

Here's an excellent panel discussion about how to build an audience on the internet. Some points I took away from it:

• I really like internet celebrities like Kos and Jonathon Coulton. They have a really low-key vibe about them
• Coulton talks about building an audience by releasing a song every Friday, regardless of whether he thought it was good
• The idea that people surf the internet by rotating through 5 to 10 bookmarks rings true for me. The trick is to get into that rotation.
• Go and get involved in popular sites, and be available to communicate with people. Schedule time to keep in contact ... but have a 'hub', an site that's yours that people can come back to
• Get your audience involved in a project; give them ownership of something they think is cool
• Don't neglect to actually spend time creating

Here's the video:



This second video is about the importance of net neutrality, but I loved the first two minutes which provide inspirational examples of how easy it is to start creating web-based solutions to problems. It's helping me do some thinking about what my next New Thing might be.



And David Poland identifies something that eluded me: while everything is going to get digitally streamed to us, it's going to be increasingly difficult for third-parties like Netflix to do it. The studios who own the movies, music and TV will try to be the ones providing us with the content in order to maximise their profit. The studios will try and eliminate video stores, Fatso, and pretty much anything that draw eyeballs away from themselves.