I only said “content creator” because it was a shorter way to say photographer, filmmaker, writer, artist, etc. But I see what you’re saying, nonetheless. Feature film (Tarantino) and music (Timberlake) are solidly established and extremely commercial formats today, so it makes me ask, “What kind of online “content” (meaning interactive slideshows, podcasts, Flash animation, etc) will establish itself as commercially viable?”

ChrisN,

I agree 100% with you in philosophy, but am willing to compromise for the time being. Maybe I’m a sellout but Flickr has facilitated a lot of rewarding sharing (lots of comments, encouraging interactions, networking, etc). I use Creative Commons licenses for everything, and it’s allowed my stuff to travel. Today, I took a couple minutes to count up all the different venues that have opened just from Flickr:

I’ve been published on CNET.co.uk, an online publication at MIT, a student magazine in Sweden, a travel book, an exhibition in Spain, another in New Zealand, a German magazine, four requests to NowPublic.com, two independant documentary films, a non-profit magazine in Washington, a corporate office in Tijuana, and a community publication in New Jersey. My only financial gain was $150 from the corporate office in Tijuana. I got a request from Travel Girl Magazine (commercial publication that didn’t fit my CC license) but they weren’t willing to pay so I said “no.”

Oso,

At the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute arts department, there was talk about migrating away from Final Cut, Protools, etc and to only teach using open source programs. I don’t know how much progress they’ve made in the past few years, but it seemed like an honorable goal. Someone needs to fund a non-profit think tank to solve all these problems

Like I said, I agree with you completely and for the next couple years I’ll be doing all I can to spread the use of open source tools for content creation and production. However, while GIMP, Audacity, and Jahshaka are great, they’re not installed in most internet cafes around the world. I’d like to see open source programmers start moving to the web and thinking offering online image, audio, and video production tools.

ChrisN,

Can you imagine how pissed off the old school del.icio.us and Flickr users are going to be if those sites become Microsoft owned?

Ndesanjo,

Thanks for stopping by. I’m attaching an audio comment to this to see if it works. Sometimes the uploading goes really slow for me too.

10 bucks a month

Sorry, that should ready ’10 bucks a year’.

As a content creator (video shorts, photography), I’ve made the decision to go for audience by using open licenses on YouTube and Flickr. My purpose in making art isn’t about making money (and usually when it is, it seems to lose its core). Part of it is that the effort it would take to market my own work can’t return any profit (lets take that as a reflection on the art market, not that my stuff sucks).

I think it’s completely reasonable that companies make money for providing services free to users. To have real control over ones personal site, you have recurring payments for domain and hosting. And I don’t generate enough traffic to recoup those costs in sensibly placed google ads. You, on the other hand, probably could.

The interesting part to me is the journalistic side. News makers know they need to get “2.0″ but know one seems to have a proven “how to” list for them, so they’re all taking stabs at it. It seems like news organizations need to figure out how to open the doors to the public, letting them produce/report stories and pay them for it, like freelancing. It would be great to see the huge corporations get that amateurish quality that community stations have, because broadcast audiences like seeing ‘real’ people.

What will this blog look like in 10 years?

In 10 years, will non-trained people be performing journalistic acts with their [ insert name of future personal media device that can broadcast via broadband ] on the side of the road as the first person on-scene of an accident? TV stations would love that footage. Where will those clips go? Will a site collect them and license them? Will the company that manages the [ insert name of device ] create personalized uploads pages and host all the media?