Shopping for new Web 2.0 jargon? How about ‘communitainment,’ coined by investment bank Piper Jaffray to describe the convergence of communication and entertainment in social Web sites today. Thanks to instant messaging, social networks, photo- and video-sharing sites, communitainment will grow from 30% of online content consumption today to 50% in the next 10 years, according to User Revolution, a Piper report issued in March. Large ‘Usites’ for user-generated content such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Yahoo! Answers already grew from a 3% Internet audience share in April 2005 to nearly a third by last October, and social networking is almost as prevalent as searching and buying online music or video. The study's author, Piper Jaffray managing director/senior analyst Safa Rashtchy, concedes that marketers will have a hard time entering this consumer-generated zone. But those that do and win users' trust will see their message spread virally. ‘It's a closed system and advertisers have to find a way to get into it,’ Rashtchy says. ‘But once you get in, you're actually part of the family.’
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