Citizen Media: The High School Years

Campus radio

These audiophiles want to make creating podcasts as easy as Web surfing.

Hipcast: Its simple interface lets bloggers create audio and video posts in seconds. Formally audioblog.com, Hipcast predates Odeo and was created by citizen journalism pioneer Eric Rice.

Libsyn: An open-source podcast creation and hosting site. It offers four tiers of paid memberships, podcast length, and audio quality.

Class of 2007 Odeo.com: Has all the tools and talent to bring podcasting further into the mainstream, giving us no shortage of "Will Clear Channel buy Odeo?" rumors next year.

Newspapers

Their blogging tools began the citizen media revolution. How will they evolve?

Wordpress: The latecomer to blogging software is now the platform of choice among the blogerati and a San Francisco-based, five-person company headed by former Web 1.0 veteran (onetime Outpost CEO) Toni Schneider.

Six Apart: The husband-and-wife-founded company behind popular blogging tools Movable Type, Typepad and Vox, it acquired Web-based news aggregator Rojo this fall and mobile blogging client Splash data in the spring. Valley buzz predicts more grabs for this "little giant" of citizen media, long rumored a target themselves.

Blogger.com: Has the the Model T of citizen media gotten too comfortable at the Googleplex while social and mobile devices alter the meaning of the verb it helped invent? Or will potential new sibling You Tube rev it up again?

Playground

Where the media you create becomes the center of socializing

Dabble: Aggregates video from YouTube, blip.tv and other hosting services and lets members tag and organize their clip collections into playlists. It could become the flickr of video, but are we ready for another media locker to keep tidy?

Imeem.com: Social networker Imeem has many of the same moves as its competitors (blogs, photos, media swapability) but is looking towards music sharing and hosting communities around large media properties to set it apart. For example, it's recently partnered with Virgin Records and Warner Independent Pictures.

(Class of 2007) Yelp.com: The people-powered Citysearch is grabbing more metros by the day. Its Myspace take on cities could make local expertise the new digital currency.

Clubs

City guides, dating and whole worlds created entirely by users. They just hand 'em the tools.

Second Life: Only two years old, this user-created universe has a GDP of $64 million and the real-world recognition that its forerunner Everquest never had. Marketers are suitably obsessed: The latest X-Men movie had a Second Life premiere and Adidas and American Apparel sell their virtual wares here. Maybe-presidential candidate Mark Warner has also been making the rounds.

People Aggregator: This pet project of Macromedia co-founder Marc Canter, People Aggregator's looking to be the giant bucket for your digital life. It includes a downloadable component for creating your own social network or stitching together others. The big question: Is this a great leap forward for an already crowded space or a ho-hum lateral slide?

Vox: The newest entry into Six Apart's portfolio of blogging tools, Vox gives personal publishing easy photo and video integration and a social network of private "neighborhoods." Still in invite only beta, Vox may be the all-in-one digital life People Aggregator is after or an even smaller slice of the blogging pie.

Consumating: Ostensibly began as a dating site for the geekily inclined but it's evolved into the too-old-for-MySpace social network of choice for nearly 20,000 users. CNET Networks acquired it last year.