Camera phones allow citizens to report the world around them. A different mantra is replacing "content is king" as the new slogan of the media industry, delegates at a London conference on new media have been told.

As more media become increasingly available in digital formats, and traditional models of media packaging and distribution start to unravel, "the customer is king" is fast becoming the industry's new catchphrase.

During a session at the Financial Times Digital Media Conference on what media consumption in the UK might look like in 2012, several speakers predicted a big rise in the sharing of information among online communities with common interests.

Consumers are exercising more control, said Microsoft's Neil Holloway, Already in the U.S., 70% of personal video recorder users are skipping adverts, he noted. "People want to connect to information and connect to their friends," he said. "The focus will be on highly personalized experiences." Suggesting that advertisers might be missing a trick, he added: "Today only about 5% of global advertising is online, yet 20% of media is consumed online. This is an amazing opportunity for advertisers."

"Collaborative usage of the internet is rising," said Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia written by thousands of users. The scope will exist for far greater personalization of all forms of content, and end users will be empowered and have greater influence, controlling how, where and at what price they consume content

Ed Shedd, Deloitte "This is a social innovation, and not just a technological innovation," he said. Collaborative editing of music and video content were the next likely trends, although this depended on free licensing and the availability of easy-to-use software, he added.

Lorraine Twohill, director of Google's European marketing programs, said consumers of news from the media were transforming themselves into providers of information.

"The trick for media companies is how to embrace multiple content in a profitable way," Ed Shedd of the UK consultancy firm Deloitte told the FT Conference.

Traditional media like newspapers are being forced to change By 2012, in the developed markets of North America and Europe, "content will be delivered anywhere to a growing range of devices," he forecast. (Source: BBC News)