13:45
aaronchua
Flickr is an edge feeder and the best one I know of. I could take my photos and simply post them to my blog. But I don't do that. I put them on Flickr and then from Flickr, I post them to my blog. Flickr makes that dead simple. But they also give me a badge to show aggregated photos. And they let me post other's photos to my blog. They are the photo feeder of the blog world.
Blip.tv, vimeo, and youtube are the video feeders. I could post a video directly to my blog, but I don't. I post it to vimeo, youtube, or blip.tv, and then from there I post it to my blog. These services are rolling out lots of video specific blog integration techniques that will make it even easier to be a video content creator living on the edge.
Delicious is a link feeder. I could post a linkroll to my blog, but I don't. I use delicious to host all of my links, and I use a tag (mine is linkroll) to feed my linkroll. Delicious makes it easier to be a link content creator living on the edge.
Add to these are newer services like slideshare, scribd, last.fm, zemanta etc. Edge feeders are very powerful businesses as they are viral in nature. If a blogger embeds one of these in his blog, and if his readers like it, they will also embed it in their blogs, spreading the service wide and fast.
To me however, these are first generation edge feeders. They feed the personalised media channels that services like blogger, tumblr and twitter have enabled. How they serve it is very similar to how traditional media is broadcasting its content: mostly one way and lack of real interactivity.
Now, we are seeing the next generation of edge feeder like prezi. It torn itself away from our accepted definition of how powerpoint should behave and adapt it for the Web world. It turn linear sequenced slides into notes that jumps around, back and forth, in and out. What this does is creating a fun product that is both entertaining to use as well as leveraging on the medium to which it is created for. To me, that is how the next generation of edge feeders should be.
Are there opportunities then to reinvent the current edge feeders? To have a prezi for each type of media?
Posted in: idea generation,startup business ideas
