From “Innovation Watch”
Hitwise analyst LeeAnn Prescott says 2005 was a breakout year for consumer generated content. Citizen’s media is hot, she says, and it is fundamentally changing the way we use the Internet MySpace ranked fourth in visitor traffic, increasing “market share of visits” by 846 last year. Wikipedia is now the most popular reference site on the web. Visits to Flickr grew by 1,317 percent in 2005. Blogging has gone mainstream. Video promises to be the next big thing, with Google and others launching video search services, iTunes selling TV programming, and home videos finding an enthusiastic audience. “Young Internet users,” she says, “appear to enjoy consuming content created by their peers, and feel less of a need to get information and entertainment from established, authoritative sources.”
