I've been watching the new web video series Quarterlife recently. Its worth a look. Commissioned as a web only series by MySpace, and written by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the guys behind “My So-Called Life” and “Blood Diamond” - its a sign of how fast the online content space is moving away from just random YouTube stunts and webcam stars.
The first episode is a little shaky, and I was worried at first it would be a paltry LonelyGirl15 reprise. But by the next installment, I realised that Herskovitz and Zwick were on familiar ground - honing into generational foibles and twisting the knife. It will be interesting to see how the show pans out, and whether the adjunct online creative communty launched with the series has legs. But there is no doubt that in the next year we will see both more professionally produced web only content like Quarterlife being produced, and more networks imitating NBC and Fox's surprisingly well executed Hulu video platform to capture growing numbers of audience members who are moving from their TV couch to their computer chair.
I've been totally immersed in Mobile TV for the last few months and on Friday I presented a keynote talk at 
Playing with Facebook lately has made me rethink the concept of tagging. Initially I saw it as a kind of distributed classification activity. I tag things on delicious or Flickr out of enlightened self interest. By classifying a photo or an article I make it easier for myself to find it later. The fact that it also makes that piece of content more searchable for everyone else is great, but not really a motivating factor. I have better things to do than be a human search engine. But tagging on Facebook is a bit different. When I add tag my friends on a Facebook photo or video, I'm actually saying 'come and look'. Its not classification but form of attention grabbing. Its a social ping - the personal variant of Technorati buzz. And more proof, if anything, that the essence of the next generation web is pure vanity.
October is the perfect time to be in Hong Kong. There are about two weeks of joy - between 'hot and damp' and 'cold and damp'. Not that its the weather that keeps me here. Or the LA eighties retro smog for that matter. What makes Hong Kong special is just how nodal it is. Everything connects. Put simply, its easy to get from here to everywhere else. And more than that, its like one big social router. Whatever networks you may have started with, rapidly expand regionally the longer you spend here.
