Some people probably thought the net would change the sorts of things that go mainstream, that it was just rubbish being force-fed to people, and when given more choice they would choose different, en mass.
Some thought that 'personal' was where the promised land lay. Others antsed to stick to formulas more similar to existing media, but with some different rules of the game, and more freedom. For others, creating quality & community centred around specific niche's seemed like the fertile plains of the future. We'll now years have passed, many people have proved that they got what it takes to make good content of many different types, but in all other aspects it seems reasonable to think there may be a few shattered dreams out there. For sure we've heard of the success stories, although the level of success may not be what was first imagined. Around a year ago the futurehype seemed to reach a peak, and a series of announcements made it feel like a new commercialised era was unfolding. During 2007 I would go as far as to say that this did not turn out to be the case, on a few levels the honeymoon is over and stagnation has set in. But in others the foundans are getting firmer and people are gettting a lot of gratification, either through creating or watching. So, Im rambling, hopign to elicit some conversation on any of these things. As per the title of the thread, I am particularily interested in how many people have managed to carve out a living in a specific niche. More or less people than you think? Still feels like international aspects are untapped, and that most poeple who may be interested, never get to know a site or series of videos exists in the first place, let along stick with it. And I bet that unfortunately, if I took a lot of time to go back through this messageboard and look at every ambitious project that was announced, many will have fallen well short compared to their expectations. Meanwhile on the technology front, the explosion in portable video devices seems to have made relatively little difference to any of the above so far? If I look to any upcoming technological developments to further things, I think there is probably more room for video as part of social networking, and I will be fasinated to see if google's open thingy project somewhat overcomes the 'walled garden' problem with social networking & other net services, there could be some amazing possibilities. The right tools on a whole series of loosely connected sites that are tailored around the social aspects of humans, combined with video, could perhaps succeed where vlogging has failed to live up to dreams, or at least those dreams require more humans? Cheers Steve Elbows
