NY TIMES -- Jan 21 -- Social networking is a close cousin of the other obsession of the moment: user-generated content. Sony paid $65 million for video-sharing site, Grouper. The Hearst Corporation bought eCrush, and the Walt Disney, CBS, Viacom and NBC have all been busy planning new social networking features for their various Web sites. The big debate - will Internet surfers continue to migrate to big portal sites like AOL and Yahoo or use widely available tools to fashion their own customized Web lives. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES
Mark Brooks: One of the great appeals of the internet experience is 'mass customization.' Individuals will ultimately design their own information sharing environments down to minute details. The big companies will have a part in this world but will move slowly and lose massive 'attention share' (market share) to nimbler companies with teams of tens of people.
