So, 'social networking' and 'user generated content' remained buzz words in music, marketing and media circles in 2007. The main difference in social networking, though, was that where as in 2006 everyone socially networked via MySpace, now everyone used the more user-friendly Facebook. Though, that said, in the main bands and labels continued to use MySpace because of their artist page MySpace Music platform. Though, that said, Facebook have just moved into that area themselves, so it will be interesting to see if bands follow their fans into the Facebook domain in 2008. Elsewhere in music related social networking, a social network service with a music bias called Imeem gained momentum, and secured licensing deals with the major labels along the way (after initially garnering some legal letters from the labels' lawyers). Also last.fm, the song recommendation services with social networking aspects, continued to grow, and was snapped up by American media conglom CBS. No media conglom managed to acquire Facebook, it should be noted, though some tried and Microsoft succeeded in getting a stake.
In the video sharing domain, more and more YouTube rivals arrived on the scene, offering longer uploads, bigger screens, download option and other things to make them better than their Google owned rival. YouTube also suffered a little because it was having to comply with the content owners it had formed relationships with and remove videos at those owners' request - meaning loads of archive TV content that had made YouTube popular disappeared. Some of the newer video on demand services were yet to form those content owner relationships so could continue to show the unofficial archive content, though not without receiving letters from those content owners' lawyers. Content came and content went, and then a useful website called TV-links that tracked content as it came and went got closed down, and it got harder to find the good stuff. But, on the upside, many of the TV companies started to launch their own legit video on demand services (or launched channels on other video platforms like Joost), and while some were better than others in terms of userbility, some of those services have come on quite a bit and the BBC's new iPlayer platform, due to officially launch next week, is looking quite fab.
While YouTube was in most cases one of the legit operations, that's not to say it managed to avoid all litigation from content owners (though it is generally on good terms with the major record companies). Some content companies didn't do deals with the Google service, and argued that it wasn't enough for YouTube to simply pledge to take down videos that infringed their copyright on demand, and that they should be stopping those videos from getting online in the first place. The most high profile of those content companies was MTV, whose lawsuit against YouTube is ongoing, and could prove to be an interesting test case if and when it gets to court.