Animoto - The "Prosumer" Revealed

In the 1980 book, The Third Wave, futurologist Alvin Toffler coined the term "prosumer" when he predicted that the role of producers and consumers would begin to blur and merge; he even described the concept his 1970 book Future Shock . Toffler envisioned a highly saturated marketplace as mass production of standardized products began to satisfy basic consumer demands. To continue growing profit, businesses would initiate a process of mass customization, that is the mass production of highly customized products.

With the advent of technology Toffler's vision is increasingly becoming a reality. More recently, The Cluetrain Manifesto noted that "markets are conversations" with the new economy moving from passive consumers ... to active prosumers

Animoto is a very neat Amazon-powered application and exemplified the "prosumer" revolution as well as new cloud based business models.. Built on top of Amazon EC2, S3, and SQS, the site allows you to upload a series of images. It then generates a unique, attractive, and entertaining music video using your own music or something selected from the royalty-free library on the site.