Recently I wrote about the closure of free video-hosting services at both AOL and Brightcove. I suggested that no free hosting service can be relied on to be around forever, or even a year from now in the current economic crisis.

Today the Daily Telegraph reports that social networking sites, such as Facebook, face a ‘data cost crisis’, as advertising revenue declines from a position that wasn’t exactly lucrative in the first place.

Research by the consultants Deloitte suggests that the cost of storing electronic data ‘has soared to more than $100m (£68m) a year for larger sites, as users increasingly want to upload memory-hungry photos and videos’.

Video hosting company Brightcove has pulled the plug on its free service. Users who don’t want to cough up for paid video hosting have until 17 December before their videos disappear.

I believe this is just the beginning. In the current economic climate, many free services will close. (more…)

If you want an example of how the current economic situation is hitting retailers, take a walk along Manchester’s King Street.

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The property crisis continues, with Manchester one of the cities that stands to be most severely affected (along with Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield), in part due to over-supply. And it seems to me that many of the ‘luxury’ apartments in the city centre are anything but.

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