Wow. The Blogosphere is all a buzz today on what seems to be a battle
for which you’re supposed to pick a side. The major stories have to do
with YouTube allowing CBS to filter comments on its videos and have
them on a separate page (rather than right below the video itself) and
the New York Times adding, that is, “surrendering to” social news
(meaning, you can submit NYTimes articles directly to Digg, Newsvine,
or Facebook from within an article).
Mix that with the lingering rumor
that Fox, Viacom, CBS, and NBC might have a YouTube competitor in the
works, and you have all sorts of opinions flying!
Some are predicting the downfall of Digg & friends, explaining that social sites like Digg breed negativity of sorts. Others point out why a YouTube wannabe funded by the man couldn’t function properly: quirky, home-made videos would be lacking.
And on top of that, there’s a third viewpoint being called “de-portalization.” The idea that portals’ (Yahoo, Google, etc.) relative traffic will decrease as the “foothills” (blogs, etc.) traffic increases. Since Craigslist, MySpace, and YouTube are all considered portals in this model, the focus seems to be on the little guy taking the lead, trumping both social sites and big media sites.
I have no idea where any of this is really going, but it is fun to watch the speculation from the sidelines. In the mean time, I hope no one minds that I utilize all three types of sites (big media, social sites, and the little guys) and would prefer none of them to disappear
