Steve Rosenbaum, CEO of the social video platform Magnify.net, has been working with user generated content for more than a decade.
In the 1990s, he handed out cameras to ordinary people who had called in with interesting story ideas, allowing them to film their own lives for MTV's News Unfiltered.
Rosenbaum tells Vator.tv's John Shinal that, at the time, people in the media thought it was revolutionary.
To him, though, "we were just answering the phone."
Today, he's surprised that more media giants are still not inviting users to create content.
"At the big media level, not a lot of people are answering the phone yet," Rosenbaum says.
He says that when big Internet sites like Amazon and eBay start hosting user-generated content, media companies will get a wake-up call.
Rosenbaum adds that when Apple puts a video recorder into the iPhone, it will be a "game changer."
Still, these developments are still down the road a bit.
Online media is so early in its evolutionary process that "it's like a great party before they've even handed out the food. The best part is yet to come," Rosenbaum says. "You can go out in the hall and have a smoke and you still won't miss it."
