'Paid for homemade'

That's one reason why young "auteurs" (homemade media producers) are flocking to sites like YouTube.com and iFilm.com – to get paid, yes. But more common reasons for all the "viral videos" up there on the Web are for winning contests, e.g., getting picked to produce a band's music video or – for most auteurs – just being able to upload their videos for all their friends to see. "The number of postings [of homemade videos] has jumped in the last few weeks since [iFilm.com] introduced a contest with the cable channel VH1 called 'Show Us Your Junk' that will feature the best submissions on the television program 'WebJunk20' and reward winners with digital gadgetry and flat-screen TVs," the New York Times reports. The Times gives many other examples of contests at sites like Metacafe.com, Current.tv, eBaumsWorld.com and even MSN and Yahoo, but auteurs don't just upload videos. There are cellphone-generated photos, mashups of photos, video, and animation, and text in recipes, book reviews at Amazon, blogs, Web pages, readers' comments on local events in newspaper sites, etc. The social, or interactive, aspect is the key to homemade media's popularity. The Times cites research firm Technorati data showing that the 27 million blogs that were on the Web in January are "doubling every 5.5 months, with 75,000 blogs created daily." See the New York Times also on "slivercasts" on the Web.