Thanks to Adam Reyer, SVP of Business Develpment at XM Radio for giving me a couple of his digital media predictions for 2008 and beyond. I will continue with a couple of additional predictions from others over the next week.
1. Internet video on TV finally makes headway
Now that home networks and HDTVs are commonplace in the living room, people are actually going to start watching internet video on the big screen. The driving factors will be:
- Content: It isn't bad watching, say, Abbott & Costello's "Who's on First" routine - or, virtually any other great scene from TV or movie history when you're in lean back/TV mode - and wait until YouTube has a good 8' UI!
- CyberSecurity: For those of us with kids, the thought process will go something like this: "...we need a PC for the kids to use; hmmm...all the cyber security experts at our kids' schools tell us that problems don't occur if the PC is located in the common area of the home vs. tucked away in the home office; wow, those small powerful multimedia PCs (incl. Macs) are pretty cheap...wait, that's because they're priced without monitors...oh, I get it, I'm supposed to hook it up to that HDTV I just bought...bingo."
2. Placeshifting becomes the norm
A proliferation in free applications that enable you to access your photos, music and videos remotely over the wired and wireless Internet (e.g. Orb Networks, Simplify Networks), combined with the demand for sharing such media via social networks and other means, will get people to see placeshifting as a free God-given right, as opposed to some kind of magic. Unfortunately, the outlook is not as bright for the business models of the enabling application providers.
3. Social networking fragmentation
New vertical/niche social networks will take hold by leveraging content and widgets from established vertical/community sites and the social networking toolset.
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