Succinct and insightful, as is always consistent with the Howard Rheingold brand. :-)

This video is further provoking me to sersiously gather up my thoughts about the parallel evolving Attention Economy.

The statement "Content is King" is accepted as virtually axiomatic and now WE are the New Content. Sites like Mogulus seem to haltingly acknowlege this fact, while sites like BlogTV strike me as temptingly close to a subtle -- if not immediately intuitively obvious -- form of child exploitation; to the extent that others would collect ad or other revenue that would not be available to them but for the Attention Attractor of the actors in these communities.

That is to say, it seems to me that there is an ethic involved in attracting children (under 21, for sake of argument) to a video community sites where the Core Value the audience is attracted to is clearly Itself (One Another); yet, the ad and other revenue collected by the platform provider is not proportionally shared with the Content Creators, regardless of age or expertise.

It seems to me that this would be considered stealing in just about any other scenario.

This presents a potential to build the expectation into an entire generation that it's okay for someone else to aggregate and profit from THEIR intellectual work, however casual that may be: their Vernacular Content.

The fact that community participants derive enjoyment or other economically external value from the very act of participation does not, to my mind, offset the fact that it is the participants themselves who create the value that then pulls in the attention and participation of others.

So it seems I'm suggesting that Vernacular Video is also -- perhaps outside of the academic context -- a new variety of Compelling Content that embodies significant Economic Value; value that I'm sure the MPAA would agree should overwhelmingly accrue to the content creators, themselves.

In contrast to User Generated Content, I've been roughly referring to this by the quip, User AS Content; everyday conversation as a tangible digital artifact to which economic value can and will be ascribed.

The unpacking of these interrelated ideas has barely begun.

Howard, great video, I am excited about entering the vlogosphere; also, great comments/thoughts, silverton-thanks.

I am looking forward to catching up on your past videos.

All the best....

Howard, that is FANTASTIC! You hit all the bells and whistles.

That was good but you state the obvious what is the punchline? BTW great edits you make me look like a hack. Love the word Co-Evolve

Thanks so much for the comments. I wasn't really aiming for a punchline, but to survey an emerging field. It's really a small footnote to Mike Wesch's superb "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube" -- a broader, shallower look.