It’s now so very easy to create MTV-like graphic productions which can be embedded across platforms for multiple audiences. Of course it’s all template led – a little like PowerPoint on steroids – which can be initially pleasing but ultimately grating. But then again it’s easy to be blasé. I spent 20 minutes putting together one such ‘production’ as a follow-up to a recruitment day. Most of that time was waiting for things to load and included uploading the final product to a Facebook Page and YouTube channel. I couldn’t have done anything similar a few months ago.

What I used was animoto, a tool that allows you to upload photos, music (or choose creative commons music made available through the site), insert text, and play with effects Then it processes the mix; the application does its ‘magic’ and you get a finished production. That magic includes different production values for different music styles so nobody gets exactly the same production: very slick, fun and clearly of interest.

Initially in 2007 when it was launched it

was averaging 5,000 users a day until it suddenly received a burst of new users who discovered it through Facebook. Its traffic surged to 750,000 visitors over three days. The number of servers Animoto was running on jumped from 50 to 3,500 during that span of time. “It was just numbers we never imagined we would ever see,” chief technology officer Stevie Clifton told a Seattle newspaper. “It was fun and scary and pretty cool.” Thanks to Amazon Web Services, Animoto’s servers did not crash, because Animoto does not have any servers. It outsources its computing power to Amazon.comand and pays only for what it uses. (Aspen Institute)

So, animoto is an exemplar of the ways in which cloud computing is facilitating new business models and new organisational structures according to a study by the Aspen Institute: Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing: The next-generation Internet’s impact on business, governance and social interaction.

Isn’t it interesting that what was considered (at least by UK HE) two years ago as the risky business of using third-party applications (such as Google docs, WordPress, or Flickr) is now itself described as a sustainable business model. The problems don’t go away though. It’s just that the concentration of (computing) power into an ever shrinking group (Amazon, Google, Microsoft …) and its renaming as ‘the cloud’, somehow make it sound less risky. Maybe the thinking is: if the banks were bailed out (because they supported the financial structures of the corporate market on which the governments’ depended) so would Amazon be (it stores the information/applications that support … etc.). I haven’t read the Aspen report yet but the whole idea of ‘the cloud’ seems to me to be an attempt to use a metaphor to distract from the corporate reality of ownership. Two years ago nobody seemed to care that loans were being ‘outsourced’ to Iceland. Everybody was getting a good return. But now they do. Could the same be happening with cloud computing? And are we looking at the formation of a ‘cartel cloud’ which could change very quickly from cumulus to nimbus giving us all a soak in the process?