Zoom-in Online

I dedicate this post to those who are depressed, impatient, disappointed or frustrated about the lack of mass-market adoption and real business models of podcasts, videoblogs, internet video and everything else in Web 2.0 that's been prematurely hyped, but which still is an undeniable media industry trend.

For those who regularly read blogs, view videoblogs or tune into weekly podcasts, this newscaster's awkward discovery of the web is pretty funny:

"There's a revolution going on in rec rooms, offices and classrooms around the world. A revolution in which 15 million people are taking part!"

Like "a computer network called INTERNET" seemed as alien as a robot in 1993, for your average consumer today, most new media formats today are still foreign .

Yet, it's beyond question that the MySpace Video / iTunes Store / GooTube explosion has demonstrated an appetite for watching and listening online, and that --on the business side of things-- these formats are experiencing triple-digit year over year growth...

My takeaways from this:

(1) When it comes to new cultural phenomena, significant market adoption often lags behind opinion-makers' hype. Predicting the HORIZON over which a new trend will arrive as a real industry is often the trickiest part.

Yet, this doesn't make the oracles wrong, it just means that in order to sustain themselves, the participants in that phenomena either need outside capital to last over the elongated horizon before real businesses exist or they need to boot-strap (themselves or their businesses) using an alternative source of revenues or income.

(2) Like 1.0 business models, not every aspect of Web 2.0 or 3.0 will become a viable, sustainable business. But like Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay emerged from the rubble of Web 1.0, a New Media empire will emerge of star talent, content aggregators and ad networks that take advantage of the demand for a more interactive, more social media universe.