We all know YouTube, it's as main stream as X-Factor. In fact, some X-Factor YouTube videos get 500,000 views at a time, so clearly the Google-owned Goliath that is YouTube still has life in it yet ... it has 71m US visitors a month!

However, if we look at the social networking trends over the last six months, you can see patterns emerging within established social media that show MySpace and YouTube are steadily declining. Only Facebook is increasing its daily reach.





So, what's happening? YouTube is coming under attack from good quality opposition with Vimeo.com. This holds a similar peer review and create slant, very much on the lines of Flickr.com, but has the added avantage of HD viewing and a great embedding function.


Bristol Alliance from Andy Reeve on Vimeo.

Vimeo already has a very respectable 10m visits a month globally and is on the increase.

However, the main threat is other social networking sites. For example, Facebook has overtaken Flickr for the numbers of photos online. This trend is also evident with video on sites such as Facebook and Bebo.

I also think that, technically, the YouTube viewer is no longer up to scratch with the development of HD filming (See YouTube below).

It's no wonder that bloggers are becoming increasingly more influential as regional news in print and broadcast steadily declines.

One has to ask: Will there be any regional news left in ten years time? Why? Well, let's look at the facts and trends of recent times.

1 - ITV West and ITV West Country have effectively merged, with 85 regional news jobs and journalists being made redundant. This means that basically the same news will be broadcast to everyone across one of the UK's largest regions, with a small "local" element tagged onto certain bulletins.

2 - Northcliffe is steadily merging business and sports desks across its titles in the South West, such as the sports desks at the Bristol Evening Post and the Bath Chronicle.

3 - To cut costs we will see more weeklies as opposed to dailies across the South West, as happened with the Bath Chronicle.

4 - According to the rumour mill, GWR Bristol has cut back on its journalists to focus more on syndicated and nationalised content.

Even local radio stations (mentioning no names) have outsourced news content all together ...

I am certain that the logic behind these moves are monetary only and have nothing to do with content. Surely, though, as more media moves online we still need strong and engaging content?

According to myuk (2003), 65% of people said that their local paper was the one thing that really binds people together in their area, and becomes a focus for regional identity. So a strongly focused regional brand of media will do well in the long run.

It has been well known for a while now in marketing and PR circles that people trust local more than national media. As a result, "Regional press is the most frequently acted upon media, with 61% of people responding to advertising in the medium" (Consumer Choice V - Newspaper society).

Bearing this in mind, I predict that there still will be a strong local news following in every town, city and village in the land. As the media increasingly focuses on international (e.g. BBC) and regional only (e.g. ITV), the void will be filled by bloggers, news sites and community radio stations such as Bristol Community Radio.