The End of Web 2.0. the beginning of the Media Web.......

There is an interesting article on GigaOm by Jackson West on SXSW (South by SouthWest) this year, in that the increasing influence of the videoweb has become clear this time round. To quote:

If last year was the year of ‘Web 2.0′ at South by Southwest Interactive1, this is the year that video killed the Internet rockstar. A total of fifteen panels at the conference are, for the first time, cross-listed in both the Film and Interactive conference schedules, and have featured the likes of Adobe, MTV, JetSet, Cinematech, Amanda Congdon and the producers of Lonelygirl15.

Not that there haven’t been great panels that are pure geekouts, like Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried2’s keynote yesterday. And frankly, some of the web video panels have been kind of boring. But then, if you only come to Austin for the panels, you’re missing out on most of the fun.

He goes on....

There’s certainly still plenty of tension and gaps of understanding. While in the panels and on the trade show floors, blue (film) and orange (interactive) badged necks mingle, at the parties, not so much. Old media speakers have tended to be less skeptical of DRM and more focused on marketing, and new media people are maybe too wrapped up in the possibilities instead of the realities. But my experience so far has only reinforced my opinion that the two camps are tending towards a merge, since motion pictures are motion pictures4, after all.

And its not just Jackson, see here, here, here - or even here for the Olde TV guys not getting it either (we know, we know.....)

We know this trend has been evident for awhile, though maybe overshadowed by the Web 2.0 hypemachine - As we note above, 12 months ago we struggled to get people to get people to even listen to the idea of WebTV (amazing as this is the UK), now everybody knows its the future.

What a difference an $1.65 bn sale makes

The thing is, the intrinsic attraction - and value - of video media plus the emergence of a totally disruptive new media channel to market means an opportunity to break the power structures of the past, forge new enterprises, and....well, get rich fast is always a powerful motivation.

Web 2.0 has had an important contribution to make, pioneering open-ness, forging the way in the use of social media and user content, and providing the necessary shocks that cracked the hegemony of the Web 1.0 world order...but it is fundamentally rooted in the ethos of the baseband technologies (websites) of Web 1.0, whereas the Media Web will be a totally new medium.

(My overall impression of FOWA 07 has taken awhile to form, but essentially it is that it was a high watermark for the Web 2.0 movement - I did not hear very much new, and the current buzzmeme - Open ID - is at best a grand tactical play rather than a strategic shift of paradigms)

Our background is in Digital TV, Cable, and the 'Net, and we started Broadsight because we saw some of this emergent behaviour in the Triple Play cable industry, but the penetration of the broadband internet, and its average bandwidth across the OECD, is now - we believe - at the tipping point. The major problem to solve (as in the early days of the web) is the metadata, to allow search to happen.

And the need for advertisers to find their disappearing audience is adding to the pressure. And lets be clear, big Adspend means moving pictures. (Yes, the rise in SME search ads online has been huge, but its hardly moved topline Adspend, and its a drop in the ocean compared to TV advertising).

2005 was the year MySpace and Flickr were bought - highly interactive, but fundamentally based on static media platforms at that time. 2006 was the year Skype and YouTube were bought - the validation of "Moving Media" on the 'Net.

And that, as they say, has made all the difference.