The relationship between social sites and tech
Youtube is the latest in a series of fashionable websites that have a different emphasis than seen in the past. Rather than trying to sell the participants things, they are social in nature. They are not B-B or B-C, they are true C-C sites, Consumer-to-Consumer.
It may not look like technology plays a big part in their makeup, but it does. Many of these sites exist not just because they allow social interaction, but also because they give people something to do with hi tech gadgetry that they buy.
Without Youtube, where would budding film directors put their video?
The explosion of digital appliances in the last ten years is really a series of pummeling waves: cell phones, MP3 players, digital video cameras. Each wave seems to take about 3-5 years to crest. At that point, the gadget is the Christmas gift de jour. Everyone has one even though they may not know how to use it yet.
But what do they do with it other than annoy friends and family with the ritual show-off scene?
It's especially hard because these gadgets are almost always content-driven; they function best when they're either loaded with content (MP3 player) or creating content (video camera).
I believe that this is where many of these social sites come in. They are inevitably locked to the spread of content-driven digital gadgets, following on the tail end of the wave, after adoption.
The point here is that when a new way of creating, acquiring or distributing digital content is introduced, the demand begins to be created for a website that facilitates same. People don't want to pay for it, they've already spent money for the gadget. Now they want to use it.
Posted on May 04, 2006
