Citizen Media: The High School Years

It wasn't long ago that "citizen media" meant a gang of political bloggers fact checking Dan Rather--and maybe a chubby kid doing a wild dance with a light saber. But my stars, how they've grown. Citizen media is about the aggregating, licensing and management of content created by everyday people for advertisers, marketers and product developers as well as the brokering of citizen media makers for live events. It's about the shift from a diffuse cacophony of voices to a viable business opportunity. A look around the Internet's homerooms confirms that citizen media has plunged into adolescence with business plans, VC money, and Hollywood waiting to cash in when they become of earning age. Of course, we've seen this pep rally before and know that today's valedictorian can be tomorrow's yearbook memory. But before the zits and angst set in, we present how citizen media really is like high school.

Student council

The BMOCs angling to be the Viacom and Disney of citizen media

Pod Show: Adam Curry's podcast network could be Citizen Media's first conglomerate, but it risks getting passed by medium-of-the-moment videoblogging and whatever comes after it.

Podtech: Pod Tech is looking to be the digital lifestyle's media of record with a network of corporate-branded podcasts, event coverage, and interviews with tech honchos. Most notably, it grabbed blogebrity Robert Scoble away from Microsoft. Its focus on b2b content could be more stable than consumer-focused media, but double check that after the next recession.

Weblogs Inc: AOL bought the blog publisher in 2005 and tapped founder Jason Calacanis to "save Netscape." Netscape's conversion this spring to a social bookmarking site has angered Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, the genre's heavyweight.

Gawker.com: The first publishing conglomerate of the Citizen Media has slimmed down to 10 blogs and stayed proudly independent. Still making mirco-celebrities of its editors and hauling in big name advertisers but is text-based blogging the future or so 2003?

9 Rules: Older and scrappier than Gawker or Weblogs Inc, 9 rules doesn't broker ads for its network of blogs but acts as a curator and promoter of independent content. Non-commerical and proud of it.

A/V Club

The video kids that want to create your home for uploading, hosting, and sharing video.

YouTube: The Library of Congress of citizen video clips and a ton of professional ones illegally uploaded too. If you haven't heard of them, we can't help you.

Dailymotion: Think Friendster with videos as the currency. This may be a prime example of late-to-the-party-piggybacking or just the mashup the space currently lacks.

Blip.tv: If YouTube is the public access cable of the Internet, then Blip is taking a TV-network approach. It focuses on serialized programming, distributing videos from such folks as CNN, Conde Nast and William Shatner's SciFi DVD Club (!) to iTunes, Dabble and other content aggregation spots. Producers can include opt-in advertising and license their videos through creative commons.

Vimeo.com: A subsidiary of New York-based Connected Ventures (who also has a little-known project called College Humor), Vimeo claims nearly 70,000 registered users but is, at the moment, yet another site for sharing video clips. The madness created around a Google-You Tube acquisition may make short work of their anonymity.

Grouper: Sony's August acquisition of this YouTube lookalike may foretell what will happen to the online video space once the big boys crash the party.

(Class of 2007) FireAnt.tv: Will bring the "network TV" model to video, catapulting it to success like those who followed this model for audio (Podshow) and blogging (Gawker Media).