Chapter 8: Timeshifting Life 333 “Bloody well right I am. You know we’re loaded with illegal content. You are, too, by the way.” “But everybody’s doing that!” “You stupid cow! Everybody’s doing that but not shouting about it to the police!” “Yes they are!” “No, they’re not! Nobody with half a brain!” “They are too! All the girls in the ‘hood are getting into Zero. They don’t care. Data wants to be free, you know.” Eddie can’t believe this. His girl, after all these years, is turning into a context jockey. A Zero. A zombie. Braindead. After all their precious moments that they have kept to each other. He can’t have this. “Look, Angie, it’s taken me years to collect all that content.” “Yeah. But you, it cost you nothing. Not a nickel.” “That’s irrelevant. I spent a lifetime hunting for it. And then you go and expose all of our stuff. Ours, baby. Yours and mine.” Angie hesitates. The lava lamp on Eddie’s table pops a blob. Then she offers, “Maybe I don’t need that stuff anymore.” Ok, this is it. Eddie has been afraid of this for some time. They’re falling apart. Been distant for weeks, now getting even further away. What is probably more important than direct revenues from metadata is that access to metadata-related server infrastructure (such as ontolo- gies and content catalogues) may be necessary for total product offer- ings, not only as a service business as such. Presumably support for metadata and standardized GEMS actions in content-related applica- tions becomes fi rst a key differentiating factor, and application provid- ers will fast adapt once the general public turns towards products they trust and know are able to handle their memories and digital life for decades to come. However, in the long run, such support cannot alone positively differentiate applications. We assume that metadata-enabled application interworking will be a key competitive differentiator as far as content-related applications are concerned. Recent buy-outs of social and content-related web sites, such as MySpace and YouTube, are an indicator of the increasing importance of peer support and communities within personal content experience. The revenue models may still be unclear, but the potential consumer base for targeted advertisements is huge (more than 100 million views 5 per day in YouTube and reportedly over a billion for MySpace). Also, information that reveals users’ social networks, together with content- based networks and combinations of both, may be considered valuable. 5 From an Information Week article: “MySpace Dethrones Yahoo As Page-View Leader”, http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=19660 3894&subSection=