Someone said the other day there’s nothing new about this stuff. I think the stuff was related to social media tools but let’s assume it was because it’s true. With a few exceptions all these things are nothing new.
So why are they interesting? Two things:
1) Accessibility. All these tools are either absurdly cheap or free (with restrictions or hidden time costs). This is the Printing Press or Photocopier argument.
2) Mass adoption. As Lord Shirky says, bigger or more us radically different. When you move from 1000 to 1000000 people doing a thing the nature of that thing changes.
So it’s all about access. That’s all that’s new really.