The Fourth Estate (Moved)

Make Me Famous

If you watch technology long enough, you get to see it become socialised. Cyber punk author Gibson said it well - "The Street finds its own uses for things". Networked audiences, powerful image and video capture devices, and simple publishing tools are all adding up to a new social vector. During a recent chat with one of my clients, they observed drily that their new generation of users seemed to be interested in just one thing. Make me famous.

Bad Boys For Life

Contrary to cliché, its not hard putting a value on reputation. Accumulate enough bad reviews on eBay or have your business flamed by enough blog writers, and you can literally count the dollars disappearing from your bank balance. Transactional trust has until now been the main focus of online reputation management systems, but is it the only game in town?

Leaking Buckets

Interesting piece on Techcrunch today about PhotoBucket - a hosting and publishing service for consumer videos and photos. The have just announced a $10.5 million Series B round with Trinity Ventures, largely on the strength of their 15 million members and their claim to drive drives 2% of total U.S. Internet traffic.

The bigger trend is worth considering. When it comes to consumer generated content - there is an important difference between storage and social connections.