• Citizen journalism through formal networks such as Demotix (which recently had a photo used by the Guardian on the newspaper’s front page in relation to the G20 demonstration)

• Informal video reporting by members of the public that are not looking for a story, but just recording an event. The American hedge fund manager who filmed Mr Ian Tomlinson being struck and pushed over by the police at the G20 demonstration is an example of such ‘accidental’ reportage.

• Video activism: Protesters using video footage as ‘evidence’ of alleged malpractice or wrongdoing – an example here is the video of protesters challenging a police officer to identify himself by his number at the G20 demo.

Citizen journalists, video activists, and people like you and me with a digital camera or a Flip are new ‘social’ media agents. What has empowered these groups are the simple tools to shoot and share video and the massive consumption of online video through video sharing and social networking sites with the default of course being Youtube.

Does this mean that old media is now on the sidelines? Far from it. In fact, all three examples cited above got into the mainstream and amplified through traditional media, especially newspapers such as the Guardian and the Evening Standard that broke them as stories in their print and online editions.

But what has changed is that front page news that can in a matter of hours change the direction of a major story is as likely to come from footage shot by a member of the public as a briefing from an insider. As the American hedge fund manager commenting on the impact his video had had on the investigation into Mr Tomlinson’s death said “… You needed something incontrovertible. In this case it was the video.”

The perceived role of the Media as the Fourth Estate acting as a check on political authority has been rightly challenged – Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent being a particularly strong mauling. However, I believe that the concept can have real weight when broadened to include not just traditional media, but the new ‘social’ media agents (citizen journalists, video activists and members of the public) who are out taking digital pictures and shooting online video of the events around them non-stop all over the world.

The pen being mightier than the sword always seemed to me to be a hopeful statement, rather than something borne out in practice. However, I am now thankful and relieved that the video camera is proving itself to be more powerful than the police baton.

For a good while now I’ve been thinking about buying a video camera and was settling on something like the Canon HF10 packed full of features and with a price tag at over £500. Then along comes Santa with a Flip Mino costing a little over £100 and with a feature set so limited it doesn’t come with a manual.

On paper these products are not at all comparable, but I now have a more usable and superior camcorder for my needs for a fifth of the price.  As a result, I think the maker of the Mino, Pure Digital Technologies, is disrupting the traditional digital camcorder business. More on that later, but first what’s the Flip Mino like?

It’s extremely quick and easy to get recording.  Press the ‘on’ button and then the big red record button on the back of the Mino and you’re off. You can zoom, but there are no options to change other record settings.  You get video at 30 fps and at VGA resolution and that’s it.   That’s easily good enough for the web (see video example I shot with the Flip Mino below) and not bad on TV playback either.

Getting video off the Flip is very straightforward.  Plug the built-in USB connector into your Mac or PC and use the Flip Share software to transfer or edit videos.  Uploading to video sharing sites is a breeze.

Any gripes? A couple. The touch sensitive buttons on the Flip are not that touch sensitive (!) esp. on zoom which can be irritating.  The Flip Share software runs slowly on my iBook G4.  That’s pretty much it on the negative side.

So why is this such an exciting product and is it going to disrupt the likes of Canon, Sony and JVC?

Well, the Flip Mino does fulfill a number of the key criteria for being a disruptive product as defined by Clayton M. Christensen, i.e  a good-enough, low-cost solution to a job that enough people are trying to get done that creates a new market at the low end of an established market. Specifically:

1. It creates demand from non-consumers (people like myself) who haven’t previously owned a camcorder.  The Mino is very affordable and simple to use and therefore accessible to consumer segments put off by the complexity and cost of the established camcorder market. On a related note, Adam Richardson has posted a good discussion of product simplicity and how it affects consumer adoption that also references the Flip.

2. It helps consumers do more easily and effectively a task they were already trying to do by other means.  In this case, record and share ad hoc moments online anywhere they want, when they want.  Before the Flip the three main options were:

- the limited video capability on a mobile phone or digital camera – available as a secondary or tertiary feature and often hard to really use

- the bulky, feature-rich camcorder that could be wheeled out for set-piece occasions

- or webcams that tied you to the computer.

Flip is not alone in this new market – Kodak’s Zi6 pocket video camera targets a similar set of needs.  But both Kodak and Pure Digital Technologies are new entrants in the camcorder business – the incumbents have not yet responded.  This is classic behaviour in markets experiencing disruption.  Sony, JVC, Panasonic and Canon appear content to continue competing amongst themselves on levels that are no longer or marginally relevant to most consumers, e.g. recording format, storage capacity, power of zoom and video resolution.  In so doing, they have missed the needs being addressed head on by the Flip and Kodak Zi6 in a different part of the market.

However, like all good disruptors, Pure Digital Technologies is moving up market by adding incremental innovations to its product set that pose a more direct threat to the established players in their mainstream camcorder market.  The new Flip Mino HD records higher resolution video (1,280×720-pixel) at 30 fps in 16:9 widescreen format, whilst at the same time retaining the ease of use, low price point and form factor that makes it so disruptive in the first place.

I just wish I had one of these new HD Flips.  But that’s OK.  When it’s available in the UK this year I can give the old one to my partner and keep the HD version for myself .  And this also shows just how much the camcorder market will change – it’ll no longer be just Dad who has one, but everyone in the family can have an affordable personal camcorder in their pocket.  If the incumbent consumer electronics giants don’t wake up to this new market reality (and massive growth opportunity) soon they will really suffer. Anyone remember DEC, the once dominant player in the mini computer market disrupted by the PC?

A text book case of new market disruption and the Innovator’s Dilemma I reckon.

What’s happening to the directories business is a classic example of the impact of digital disruption. I’ll drill down into why I believe this is the case in another post. But for now it’s worth considering that Yell was seen as a recession-proof stock because the classifieds directories business was “more resilient to economic downturns than other forms of advertising” according to its 2003 flotation. Well, that was true in previous recessions, but not now. And the reason why this one is different is that the Internet happened in the intervening period!

With that in mind, I’d like to plant this rogue line of reasoning. According to Nielsen Netratings about 70% of online local search is done through search engines and Google is the launch pad for most searches for local business on the Web. Now the Mozilla Corporation made c.$67M USD in revenues in 2006 (the latest numbers I could find) with 85% of this revenue coming from Google. In comparison yell.com’s 07/08 revenues were c. £140M GBP (c.$277M USD). I question whether yell.com can sustain its current growth as Google is becoming ever more dominant in search and is now going after the SME advertising market. And we do know that Firefox usage is growing year on year, so it’s revenues from Google are likely to increase too.

Against this background, is it just conceivable that the Mozilla Corp. could, in the near future, end up making more money from online local search than Yell.com? Yikes!