January 2, 2007

2007 Trends: The HearMeSeeMe Web

by Piers Fawkes in Opinion, TV & Film, Music, Entertainment, Web & Technology, Home & Garden

As 2006 saw the maturing of the read-write web (or Web 2.0), 2007 will see the rise of the third stage of the internet’s evolution: the HearMeSeeMe web. The rise of video and audio on the web has been phenomenal and we will see the average user’s behavior change over the next year as he/she moves from reading and writing text to consuming and generating moving image and sound.

The speed of audio and video development on the web has been astonishing. We first started to write about early Web-TV and Podcasting in January 2005, but the subsequent development of web 2.0 apps like YouTube and Skype allowed the medium to thrive. Suddenly it became fairly easy for to make and add video and audio to the web.

Two years later and the BBC predicts that 10% of TV viewing is soon be done the web. We also see French and German politicians using video to communicate to their constituents and Starbucks using it as a PR tool. Prosumer video makers can make money from advertising through sites like Revver and AOL has just launched a service that lets people sell their videos. And as YouTube cracks down on some of the more risque content found in its archive, plenty of competitors like Stickam are springing up to provide access to whatever video content you choose to peruse.

Audio-video is also infiltrating business. Phone-over-the-web system Skype is a common tool now for business travelers and people are already recording their Skype telephone conversations and adding these recordings to their blogs as podcasts. We’re also witnessing video being leveraged too. 2006 saw the launch of a unique business called the Open Intelligence Agency - a company of 4 advertising-planners dispersed over the world. Each morning the OIA send video messages to each other (and their clients) (see employees David, Emily, Jeffre & David’s video on the subject here). As we see more laptops sold with inbuilt web-cams, we’ll see more of this to come.

In addition to platforms like YouTube for access to audio-visual content, the development of the HearMeSeeMe web relies on two things though: editing, bandwidth, storage and capture.

The latest generation of computers from Apple has been a driving force in the democratization of creativity in the last few years. Their computers allow fast and easy editing of video and audio in a way that was only available to studio-engineers and editors only a few years previously. Other applications like Muvee auto mixes and edits your content and Mojito let’s you add text and links anywhere in video. In this video here, art-director Jack Cheng argues that the rise of accessibility in applications will further our creative ability.

Bandwidth will be partly dealt with through peer-to-peer networks: in the same way Skype manages the traffic of the calls made by dispersing traffic via the computers logged on to the network, sites like the Venice Project will use P2P technology to distribute video.

Storage of this content will be partly overcome by the diving prices of external hard-drives (120GB now $99 at BestBuy), but also by services that let users keep and upload their footage onto a server somewhere on the web.

Capture saw significant developments in 2006. In the audio-only side of ‘capture’, a new microphone accessory
is being sold in Apple stores for the second generation Nano and is
being billed as a device to make podcasts. In terms of video, YouTube first allowed mobile phone users to send video captured from their phone to go directly to their archives then they offered a direct-upload from webcam service that bypasses the use of hard-drive or video editing software. Phones in Asia already have an "Upload This Photo To Flickr" setting, and we’d expect this to evolve to "Upload This Video To YouTube".

Mobile phones will not be the only device driving capture evolution. The video-option on digital photo cameras is already being used extensively by bloggers (including ourselves) and the new hard-drive camcorders allow personal computers to transfer content to and from their camera in the same way they operate their iPods. Like cameras, Bluetooth and WiFi capabilities will be added to camcorders to allow almost-instant upload of captured content to the web.

The question to ask is: could the HearMeSeeMe web overtake the Read-Write web sometime in the next few years? Up until now, at the prosumer level, we could generalize by saying that audio-visual content has been mainly developed by teenagers in their bedrooms and tech-geeks - but PSFK predicts that we will see the mass adoption of audio-visual content creation and consumption happening very soon. When the mobile phone first appeared, unless you were a bit of a show off, it was quite awkward and embarrassing to take a call in public - but before long, we got used to the idea and now we make calls driving cars and in the movie theatres. A similar change is going to take place with the camera-shy and this will be driven by the fact that we’ll actually prefer it to writing and reading.

The moving image has become both quick to make and attention grabbing. Let’s just look at the mass-popularity of TV versus books as a pointer. If that preference is replicated in our digital consumption then we should predict that audio-visual media will become the dominant content type on the web if access, bandwidth, storage and capture continues to evolve.

13 Responses to “2007 Trends: The HearMeSeeMe Web”

orli
Posted from: 66.92.123.98
January 2nd, 2007 at 3:13 pm

this reminds me of that song in Tommy that goes “see me / feel me / touch me / heal me”.
i think it’s worth remembering those lyrics as we participate in the “seemehearme” web.
Emily
Posted from: 210.84.61.69
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:45 pm

Have already spent several evenings at various friends’ houses showing each other our favourite YouTube clips on the computer. While the TV sat quiet and dark in the background.
Noah Brier
Posted from: 74.66.250.52
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:44 am

One issue I have with video passing text is the usage patterns of the web. More and more people are spending nights with their laptops open, but the computer is still mainly a work machine (I would imagine, I don’t have the numbers to back that up). When you’re sitting in a cubicle trying to hide away from your boss, things that don’t move and have no sound are preferable. That’s not to say computers won’t be accepted as leisure tools like the television (looking at younger generations they already have), but I just don’t know that we’re there yet.

On top of that, I look at the poor optimization of video as a serious issue this year. To put it bluntly: Video search sucks. If you say something in a video and don’t include a transcript the world will never know. It’s nice at the moment, but the web as archive won’t treat all these videos quite as nice.

Don’t mean to be a downer, as I totally agree this will be a huge year for video. Just not quite ready to declare victory over text.
Piers Fawkes
Posted from: 141.149.33.171
January 3rd, 2007 at 7:51 am

N,

Thanks for your comments. I dont think we were trying to say that video was going to outdo text in 2007 - I’ve made an amend to the text to reflect that.

I’d have to strongly disagaree with your idea that the computer at home is a work machine. Outside the main metropolitan areas, computers in the home are far from work machines. They’re people’s access to the world, to their relatives, to games, to meet people, to find out medical info. Yeah, some use them for work, but many use them for entertainment.

Also, I think you’ll find the general public’s need for search to find every world spoken in a video unnecessary. Unlike library searches, we never really needed to know what the lines being spoken on the television were in advance of a show - we just needed to know what was on when. Look at music, we don’t use search engines dedicated to take us to songs with certain lines. When it comes to business intelligence search is important - but I’m not too sure it’s necessary to go beyond tags & algorythm for general video esearch.
Noah Brier
Posted from: 74.66.250.52
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:55 am

Hey Piers, very good points. On the first one, I didn’t mean to say that the computer at home is a work machine, but rather that the computer in general is still a work machine. Apologies for not being clear on that one. I know from looking at my own traffic numbers that the majority of visitors come from 9-5.

On the second point, television and the web are very different and I think our needs are also very different. Television is traditionally a live medium (though TiVo is changing that). In addition, a fair amount of television is episodic or at least show based. Web video, on the other hand, tends to be one off (excluding something like lonelygirl). What that means to me is that we need better ways to find what we want to watch. You’re probably right that full text search isn’t necessarily the answer to that.

Actually, this makes me think of one of the trends I’ve been expecting to hit for some time: Web programming. Not like HTML, but rather being able to loop together, or at least host in one place, a number of videos of your choosing. That, to me, would allow for web video to take on a less active role: Closer mimicking what you get from sitting in front of a television. Add in some revenue sharing and I think there’s a great idea for a site. (I hope you’re listening Google).

Anyway Piers, as usual, thank you very much for making me think.
ozgur alaz
Posted from: 85.100.89.142
January 3rd, 2007 at 4:33 pm

Great analysis Piers.
Do you consider to launch video.psfk.com?
PSFK
Posted from: 10.0.20.5
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm

2007 Trends : WiLife

One of the key trends we’ve been following is the development of WiLife, or wireless living. Technologies such as WiFi and Bluetooth are freeing us from fixed locations and driving
Piers Fawkes
Posted from: 141.149.33.171
January 4th, 2007 at 8:56 am

The rise of the online TV networks:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/index.php/2007/01/04/and-god-said-its-tv-stupid/
Guy Brighton
Posted from: 141.149.33.171
January 4th, 2007 at 9:56 am

Emily watches the web rather than TV:

http://www.conformistsunite.com/?p=362
eva
Posted from: 203.194.169.66
January 4th, 2007 at 9:34 pm

TV loses as it is a passive medium. Web entices with freedom to explore and express individual points of view. Bandwidth will make possible the next evolution with the web being the seed bed for (forgive the pun) out of the box content. The world goes full circle as in current TV.
www.currenttv.com
Joandó
Posted from: 81.32.180.153
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:14 pm

Hello Piers,

I totally agree with your article and I also write about it in my blog (only in spanish).

Let me add two good examples of your prediction. One is the Nintendo web site for Wii (http://us.wii.com/experience_gallery.jsp) and the other one is the funny history of Blendtec (http://www.ineedhits.com/free-tools/blog/2006/11/case-study-blendtec-power-of-viral.aspx) and their web site “Will It Blend?” (http://www.willitblend.com/).

Congratulations for your site,

Joandó
Piers Fawkes
Posted from: 64.94.163.210
January 24th, 2007 at 11:52 am

A book about how people are getting paid ont he HearmeSeeme web:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/23/video_websites_that_.html
2007 Trend:
Posted from: 84.15.56.24
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:15 am

[…] Look at your laptop in your home as your new cable box and your additional hard-drive as your Tivo.