Citizen Media: The High School Years

Future Entrepreneurs

If there's gold in citizen media's hills, these guys are selling both the map and the shovels.

(Class of 2007) Federated Media: CEO John Battelle's standing in the blogosphere helped him build a boutique ad network on tech, parenting, business and automotive sites in just over a year. The Internet's the limit.

The Deck: An advertising network of bloggers with A-list standing in the Web and design communities. Run by Chicago-based agency Coudal Partners.

Blogads: An early advertising network for bloggers and other citizen mediamakers to build an ad-based business model to support their content, it became the preeminent player, repping citizen celebs like Daily Kos, Perez Hilton, and GoFugYourself. But recent gains by Federated Media and The Deck indicate that its hold on the social media advertising space is hardly firm.

Fruitcast: Aiming to be the Google AdSense of sound by making it easy to insert small ads in podcasts. Will need to develop critical mass or savvy partnerships soon. Company blog hasn't been updated since May.

Feedostyle: Turn rss feeds into syndicated content! Post that content on your blog! Premium members get content ad-free!

Feedburner.com If it can reassert that the RSS feed is the backbone of both podcasting and video blogging, it could set itself up as a prime acquisition target. But thus far, the geeks have done a terrible job of explaining what a feed is and what it's good for.

Radiotail: Utilizing more of an agency-model than competitor Fruitcast, Radiotail sells podcast advertising for both independent broadcasters and manages campaigns for media companies. Nikon and Microsoft have bought time.

Guidance counselor's office

Taking media to the next level by putting a price tag on it

Blogburst: Syndicates blog content to major media outlets, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Gannett newspapers, and Parade Magazine. Its parent company Pluck also sells a number of tools for building communities around user-generated content, from user blogs to community photo galleries.

(Class of 2007) SocialRoots.com: If it can get the right partners and management lined up, plan on seeing them invent the monetization of citizen media content the way Ebay did for the junk in your attic.

Hall monitors

Who's worth paying attention to and who's still a kid with a light saber? Ask them.

Tailrank: "Finding the best content from blogs so you don't have to" is the motto of San Francisco-based Tailrank. It ranks the top 150,000 blogs according to its own algorithm, and then publishes a scrolling ticker-tape of influential technology, political and general news memes. Users can also create their own news filters.

Rapleaf.com: No one has been able to communicate to the old media what are the most influential blogs, which is what Technorati should be doing. Rapleaf could grab this ground right out from under Dave Sifry and co.

The Attendance Board

Technorati.com: If you're not on technorati, you don't exist.

Student who makes the morning announcements

Conversations Network: The non-profit wing of for-profit GigaVox Media, the Conversations Network has been called "The NPR of Podcasting." Plans are in the works for GigaVox to distribute nearly 60 monthly programs of recorded lectures and presentations on business, technology and social entrepreneurship by the end of 2006.

Work crew repairing and cleaning up around school grounds

Wikimapia: Combines Google Earth and Wikipedia. Pick any spot on the planet and give it a tag. This is either mindless fun--if used for good--or the beginning of 1984 if used for evil.

Reader Riff
"Napster just doesn't have it anymore. No matter what they try, they aren't going to be the 'rebel' company that they were--and that's what attracted people to it. Anybody can do what they are doing; why would anybody want to do it through them?" --Gary Bourgeault