In January 2007, during the Independent Activities Period, there were three major strains of discussion here on the C3 blog. The first was about the emergence in 2006 and going into 2007 of various Web 2.0 initiatives. This included social networking and video sharing sites in particular. See our posts on the prevalence of social networking, legislation regarding social networks, and ambivalence toward social networks and big media's move toward using social networks.
On the online video front, we wrote about increased expectations for user-generated content, business models growing around the distribution of user-generated content, niche sites rising around YouTube, and copyright issues raised by quoting and mash-ups.
There were also a variety of posts during last year's IAP about a variety of fan communities and fan dedication sites. We had posts, for instance, about fans of comic strips, fan reaction to Vincent Schiavelli and Paul Lynde, fans of household brands, fans of the U.S. Postal Service, and WB and UPN fan communities surrounding the merger into The CW, as well as a piece about the most popular hits for the term "fan community."
Finally, at this time last year, we were doing a fair amount of writing on complex television, questions about whether serialization is a format or a genre, less hitty shows, and crossovers between daytime and primetime genres.
Unfortunately, our comments are still down, but if anyone has any thoughts on some of these stories, and what has changed in the past year (or not changed), feel free to e-mail me at samford@mit.edu.
