I Was Way Off

All those numbers that I quoted in the previous post were wrong, sadly. Dreamhost now gives 2 terabytes for less than $10. My bad.

This actually just goes to prove my point though, that distribution is the least of the concerns when developing media. Two terabytes is enough bandwidth to serve content to an extraordinarily large audience. A 100 megabyte file, for instance, can be delivered 20,000 times. All this for less than $10. Let's just imagine that whatever is being distributed encourages the audience to buy something that results in a $2 profit. If only one out of 4,000 people go for it, you've still managed at least to break even on the distribution cost.

Of course, that doesn't cover the cost of production, but I hope my point is being made. The cost to move bits is getting so low that some interesting trends will shortly be emerging as a direct result. I foresee a massive amount of less polished but still compelling or entertaining media hitting the Internet in a short time. I'm not talking about people filming themselves with their webcams, singing along to Ricky Martin and posting to YouTube - I'm talking about nature documentaries, how-to programs, dramas and more, all being distributed directly by the content creators themselves. I know that people are producing home-grown media to distribute online already, but many are stuck using proxy services like YouTube or Flickr. These services work for and against the content creators - while there's a possible increase in exposure for the content that is created, there's a loss of focus on the original content creator in favor of a focus on the service provider.

This is going to change, and soon. Ready-made publication software for content distributors will make it easier for the content producers to stand up sites that give Flickr- or YouTube-like functionality without relying on those service providers. Further, meta networks will also arise, organizing and further enabling independent publishing and control by the content creators.

The sites Metafilter and Kontraband, two of thousands, already do this to a degree - yet I see things getting much better than what is offered by these sites. They currently serve as aggregators of content already delivered on YouTube, Google Video and others - these meta channel sites will have to work a lot harder in the future and will become focused/specialized into certain content areas. They will serve specific markets for content, thus becoming much like channels on television.

These newly emergent "channels", providing consistent quality material serving interest groups, feeding content through RSS to the Internet community at large, will reshape the media landscape profoundly. I can hardly wait.