Capture, edit and share: I hear Spike Lee’s shooting down the street
I can’t imagine a chemist walks around thinking everyone else appreciates chemistry the way he does. Yet I’ve grown so used to being surrounded by fellow bloggers, Twitterers and Firefox users, I’ve been known to forget that outside of my fun geek bubble, people are still using Internet Explorer, visiting websites rather than using RSS feeds, and are utterly uninterested by the latest web app’s private beta. Like a massive distortion field, I assume that because all my immediate friends and colleagues have the latest gadgets, it’s fair to extrapolate that everyone else does. It ain’t so!
However, looking into my crystal ball, I can see that things are changing. Sharing is becoming so easy and effortless that, in a NYT article, Nokia said “it surveyed 9,000 consumers last year and concluded that by 2012 one out of every four consumers will create, edit or share entertainment with friends, instead of getting it from traditional media outlets like television or movie studios.”
In the US, according to Forrester’s Groundswell Social Technographics Profile (erk, such a painfully dull name for otherwise pretty cool information!), certain segments of the population are already blowing those numbers out of the water. Already, 39% of 18-24 year olds and 30% of 25-34’s are labelled as content creators, while in the UK, they’re 19% and 10% respectively.
With moves like Vodafone’s decision to include 500MB of data to all new monthly contracts, concerns over data tariffs are going to disappear over time and getting your phone out to capture that unmissable clip to share to YouTube, Qik or Flickr will become second nature! If an image is worth a thousand words, these snap videos will be worth a million, whether you’re just looking to share it with your family or, like yours truly, to hoards of readers.
So go on, pick your weapon and start sharing! Yes, even you, mom! It isn’t just for kids and geeks anymore.
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