lovely report from the conference. most interesting. regarding legal options for downloading – i was just hypothesizing to myself , but since media companies are offering internet access already (cables companies, and not just in israel of course) wouldn’t it be logical to offer a personal internet account for each customer/viewer – and provide downloading capabilities ?

the companies can have pre-bulk billings with current TV-Movie-media conglomerates (which they have business relations now days anyways, because they purchase tv series, broadcasting rights etc), they can tunnel the downloading through them and hoard any statistical/marketing/users characteristics for later use.

since high bandwidth will become common, the users wont have no more the question of – do i want to buy a 5++ MB bandwidth with ADSL or whatever – why would the user be interested in the technology particulars anyway ?? and so -

a media company can offer setting up an internet service for the private user, free of charges, except for a monthly bill which will reflect how much and what do you download not the bandwidth you’re using. then the user has media centre -> choses -> downloads ->everyone knows what was downloaded, everyone happy.

Yours,

from Sydney (at the moment)

Reut

Or is it human psychology that expects rapid change when it doesn’t exist?

We can look at the past with cellular phones – how long did it existed before the change took place (and today everyone knows it did). I didn’t hear anyone that claimed the iPhone would change the world as we see it and again it would surprise me if anyone thought that – iPhone didn’t bring such a big change.

UGC is an amazing change. It WILL change everything. It will not be the end of older things, as people often mistakenly think – Web2.0 is NOT instead of Web1.0, they co exist. There will be ups and downs to UGC as people slowly understand what they can and can’t do (in both directions: what they can add to the pool, and what they can take from it), as recommendation engines improve, rules are set, hype slowly subsides, and read value emerges.

Re video – mobile data was a promise in 1998. Only now things start to happen that make mobile data as a reasonable replacement to other data channels. Video conferencing is still a niche market.

The main problem with hype is that it promise false promises. iPhone didn’t change the telecom world as we know it – it made a tiny dent. UGC didn’t kill TV, nor killed the need to have content people in websites – it just created a new business model with limited though important effect.

Re time – you know how it is in large companies. when they see a hype they mobilize budget to it. when it doesn’t fulfill its promise – they see it as a financial blow. they need to think in Q….

Kfir – I’ll read the stuff on the links you’ve sent, but no matter what they say, I can’t see a way someone can say this s a hype that doesn’t work so fast, it’s been a hype for too short, and these things take time. Otherwise, the internet wouldn’t be here, ads on the internet wouldn’t be here, video will not work on mobile and on the net, etc. etc.

Btw, since you do know video, then video on mobile and on the net has been around a lot more than UGC. Was it buried already as well?

We will be happy to explain our predictions, you can contact me directly to discuss,

Asaf Lev

IDC

alev@idc.com

See http://www.paidcontent.org – they covered this topic, as well as Om Malik. My take is that like every hype, people start to understand what works and what not – the same would happen with Facebook…