Vlogging: Grassroots media continues to explode

I’ve had lots ‘o debates with people at work (and received a lot of teasing) about my trying to get people to understand the rapid acceleration in blogging and podcasting. You know what? Vlogging (or video blogging) is already accelerating almost as fast (and I frankly don’t care if people I interact with don’t get everything that is happening with grassroots media or don’t believe it).

Still, don’t take my word for the fact that this is happening…click on the links below and see for yourself what people are already doing and the volume of vlogs already online. Though most of the content below is clearly garage or basement quality, it will give you a sense of what people are doing with vlogging and the potential that exists. It reminds me of the cheesey quality of early works in the mid-Eighties created as a result of a phenomena called Desktop Publishing (DTP) that skeptics also didn’t believe would take off…and it has revolutionized the publishing world (early DTP works contained an explosion of fonts, bad design and worse layout…but people learned).

• The 05 Project
• Adam Quirk’s Bullemhead.com
• Amanda UnBoomed
• Amy Carpenter’s Welcome to Amyville
• Annie at Annieisms, is it?
• Ant: Subscribe to your *own* videoblogs
• Bob Dunn
• Chuck Olsen’s Blogumentary
• Chris Koehn
• Chris Weagel’s Human Dog Laboratory
• Deirdre Straughan
• Dylan Verdi’s Because I Can
• Erik Nelson’s Bottom Union
• Eric Rice
• Jay Dedman’s Momentshowing
• Joel Carner’s Joel Art
• Johnny Goldstein
• Josh Leo
• Josh Wolf
• Karma Girl
• Kristina Rapacki’s Nordark
• Lauren Verdi
• Lee Wilkins
• Lesley James’s Phatalspin
• Lisa Harper
• Luxomedia
• Mica Scalin’s Hello?
• Michael Verdi
• Phil Hamilton
• PJK.net
• Poor but Happy
• Raymond M Kristiansen’s dltq.vlog
• Ryanne Hodson
• Sarah Boyle
• Sarah Weagel @ Human Dog
• Scratchvideo
• Shannon Noble
• Steve Garfield
• The Treasure Hunters
• talkaoke
• textamerica
• tribe tv
• theVoiz.com
• Zed: Open Source Television

There is a convergence of factors which have collided enabling this to explode: enabling tools that are PC-based, web-based services to host and deliver the blogs, podcasts and vlogs (that are free or really cheap), and broadband adoption.

As I wrote about previously regarding the free media hosting site Ourmedia.org, about the tipping point with blogs and podcasts; and startups like Brightcove; much of the systemic enabling services are quickly getting in to place. With all the enabling tools out there like iMovie, Audioblog, inexpensive camcorders and digital cameras, and everything at our fingertips, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.