I’ve been at SXSW Interactive since last week and inundated with more information and new companies than you can imagine. Really excited about the Entertainment and Media Under the Radar coming up on June 14.

I ran into JD Lasica, founder of OurMedia and a new partner in Outhink, and asked him about digital media.

What have you seen here at SXSW in regards to digital?

The social media service sites have exploded in the last few years and some new ones I’ve never heard of until walking around today — imeme.com, eyespot.com — they are doing incredible things with helping people create, manage, edit and share their personal media. That’s an important new phenomenon. People have been able to create personal media,
but now you can put it in some sort of social context, like the kinds of things you can do with flickr and photos, you can now do with other media. And now you can do it with private networks, to just share with friends and family, so it adds a lot more power to your personal media.
Why has this happened now?
Tools have matured and many of the sites are using AJAX — I know it’s the technology du jour, but it also lets you get a richer interactitve experience. We’re in the middle of a transformation in our culture where we’re sharing media. Before it was an invasion of privacy to post someone’s picture or media online, but people are getting used to it, they see that bad things aren’t happening. You don’t have to have perfect control, you can trust the marketplace and trust the community.

What are some of the companies that are at the forefront?

MySpace is a social media sharing site — they have 50 million users. You have an opportunhity to share your story, now you can do audio and video and you can keep all your content in one place. People can see you in the context of your professional or personal life. It is a social media space. Revver is another interesting one — they help you make money by sharing advertising money. I’ll menitioin a company I just joined, Outhink, and just yesterday we launched towerpod.com where you can sign up as a podcaster. It’s the first site where you can include full length and full fidelity songs
as part of your podcast (from the Tower Records catalog of 6000 songs — editorial note from Irina is…there are no Madonna songs in that catalog) and its free. Towerpod is supported by advertising and the podcaster gets a cut of the revenues.

I’ve been at SXSW Interactive since last week and inundated with more information and new companies than you can imagine. Really excited about the Entertainment and Media Under the Radar coming up on June 14.

I ran into JD Lasica, founder of OurMedia and a new partner in Outhink, and asked him about digital media.

What have you seen here at SXSW in regards to digital?

The social media service sites have exploded in the last few years and some new ones I’ve never heard of until walking around today — imeme.com, eyespot.com — they are doing incredible things with helping people create, manage, edit and share their personal media. That’s an important new phenomenon. People have been able to create personal media,
but now you can put it in some sort of social context, like the kinds of things you can do with flickr and photos, you can now do with other media. And now you can do it with private networks, to just share with friends and family, so it adds a lot more power to your personal media.
Why has this happened now?
Tools have matured and many of the sites are using AJAX — I know it’s the technology du jour, but it also lets you get a richer interactitve experience. We’re in the middle of a transformation in our culture where we’re sharing media. Before it was an invasion of privacy to post someone’s picture or media online, but people are getting used to it, they see that bad things aren’t happening. You don’t have to have perfect control, you can trust the marketplace and trust the community.

What are some of the companies that are at the forefront?

MySpace is a social media sharing site — they have 50 million users. You have an opportunhity to share your story, now you can do audio and video and you can keep all your content in one place. People can see you in the context of your professional or personal life. It is a social media space. Revver is another interesting one — they help you make money by sharing advertising money. I’ll menitioin a company I just joined, Outhink, and just yesterday we launched towerpod.com where you can sign up as a podcaster. It’s the first site where you can include full length and full fidelity songs
as part of your podcast (from the Tower Records catalog of 6000 songs — editorial note from Irina is…there are no Madonna songs in that catalog) and its free. Towerpod is supported by advertising and the podcaster gets a cut of the revenues.