Queensbound Seven

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2007-05-23T09:21:00.000-04:00

Lots of news, my quick takes

2007-03-14T11:45:00.000-04:00

A lot of important web video news has broken in the past few days, and I thought it was high time I weighed in...

Mark Cuban's subpoenaing YouTube.

He wants the identities of people who are pirating his content. He's already made it clear that he doesn't intend to sue anyone with the information.

I don't care that the conventional wisdom on the web has turned against this guy - I love him. He's relentless, passionate and most of the time he's reasonable. He has no clue what leadership is on a basketball team, and that's one of the reasons the Mavs are perpetual chokers, but still - he's a smart dude.

Everyone's looking at this as Cuban attacking Goo-Tube, but that's not it at all. What he's really doing is testing the DCMA and making clear that the safe harbor provisions that protect YouTube and other "hosting companies" are designed to erode our privacy as users. If YouTube doesn't take responsibility for the copyright infringement, they are passing it on to you the user. And in order to maintain safe harbor, they're required to pass along all kinds of information that can be used against us. This is one of many really dangerous flaws in the DCMA, a piece of legislation that was hand crafted by special interests to be GOOD for the telecoms and the big content owners and BAD for users. Cuban's written extensively on this in the past, and if he can shine a light on these problems with his subpoenas, good for him.

For the record, though, I disagree completely with Cuban's analysis of what makes a hosting company and what doesn't. If they function as advertised, YouTube is indeed a hosting company. But if they're censoring and preventatively editing copyrighted material, they lose that safe harbor IMHO.

Michael Eisner's joining my industry! His new web studio Vuguru (I bet the focus group that came up with the name "Vuguru" cost more than our annual budget for Wallstrip) is launching with a soap opera targeted at teenaged girls. 80 episodes, 90 seconds each.

I like that they're launching their show with open distribution. You can watch it on Youtube, Veoh (which Eisner owns a piece of), as well as on their own destination site. I also like that they are partnering with Elle magazine and distributed the show on Elle's site. Ultimately, brand owners are going to become content providers on the web, not just advertising. That Vuguru's already building their distribution strategy in this direction is a very good sign. But ultimately, the question is will the content draw audience. When that happens, it's time to take notice.

More interesting to me was NBC's announcement that NBC Sports will be creating original web video for Sports Illustrated. Original content distributed where you're audience already is spending time on the web - that's moving in the right direction for NBC. A content company acting like a content company instead of a distribution company. Like it.

And, of course, Viacom slapped a one billion dollar lawsuit on YouTube. I'm not even going to link to it because the story's so ubiquitous that it was on the cover of the free AM magazine this morning in NYC. Just read about it where you get your news.

No big suprises here. If you read this blog, you already know that YouTube has a shut-off valve. The big question here is whether Viacom's doing this to kill YouTube or as a negotiating tactic to get a better deal. The "kill YouTube" option was a whole lot more attractive pre-Google than it is today, so my guess is that this is a negotiating tactic.

Either way, it will be interesting. And that's why we're all watching...

Hot off the presses

2007-03-12T10:27:00.000-04:00

Well, actually... not even on them yet.

Here's the joint press release we just issues with TheStreet.com. We're really excited to be distributed on a site that is the source of so much great content.

Wallstrip Joins TheStreet.com TV Network
Monday March 12, 9:00 am ET

TheStreet.com and Wallstrip Form Partnership to Distribute Video Content

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TheStreet.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSCM - News), a leading provider of financial commentary, analysis, research, news and ratings, and Wallstrip, a new Web site that produces daily video combining stock news and pop culture, today announced that they have entered into a video distribution partnership.
Under the agreement, Wallstrip, a daily three-minute show examining top-performing stocks, will be distributed on TheStreet.com TV, TheStreet.com's fast-growing video network.

"Wallstrip's innovative approach to stock coverage combined with humor is a terrific complement to our current video offerings," said Sandy Brown, Executive Producer & Managing Editor, TheStreet.com TV. "We're confident TheStreet.com TV's audience will appreciate the addition of Wallstrip to our video lineup."

Wallstrip has recently been featured in articles in Business Week ("A Sassy New Investment Webshow for Generation YouTube"), and The New York Times ("It's 'Squawk Box' Meets' 'Saturday Night Live'"), and on ABC News. An increasingly popular destination for non-traditional reporting on top stock picks, Wallstrip receives approximately 10,000 viewers per day.

Adam Elend, a Wallstrip producer and director said, "We are excited about the partnership because TheStreet.com has great audience reach and is a force for innovation in the online financial market."

TheStreet.com TV currently offers 12 channels of financial news and lifestyle content, including the Personal Finance and Executive Interviews channels, and Wall Street Confidential, a daily show featuring company founder James Cramer. In February, TheStreet.com reported production of 811 videos across its network in the fourth quarter of 2006 and an 80% increase in its video viewership from the previous quarter.

Wallstrip is currently available at www.thestreet.com on the Video and Audio section of the site.

About TheStreet.com, Inc.

TheStreet.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSCM - News) is a leading multimedia provider of business, investment and ratings content, available through its proprietary properties, which include Web sites, email subscription services, print, radio, syndication and audio and video programming. Founded in 1996, TheStreet.com, Inc. pioneered the electronic publishing of financial information on the Internet. Today, the Company offers proprietary information on stocks, mutual funds, exchange traded funds (ETFs) and financial institutions, including various insurers; HMOs; Blue Cross Blue Shield plans; banks and savings and loans. The Company's breadth of top-grade services empowers a wide audience of retail and professional investors, by delivering information they can rely upon to make sound, informed financial decisions.

About Wallstrip

Wallstrip is where stock culture meets pop culture. Each episode looks at a stock that is at or near an all time high, and assesses the reason why the company is performing so well -- not in the stock world, but in the real world. Monday through Thursday, there is a new three minute Wallstrip episode, presenting viewers with a unique "ear to the street" approach to the market. On Friday Wallstrip runs a "Wallstrip Chat" series, a short fun interview with an influencer in the financial world.

Hello? Is Anyone There?

2007-03-10T16:20:00.000-05:00

If you want to reach me, you give me a call, right? Or you email me, maybe you IM me or text me or site message me, right, but the point is you send a message from where you are to where I am.

You don't put a note on a bulliten board and hope I see it. Not even if that bulletin board is in a high traffic area.

You certainly don't stick a note on the front door of your business, and hope that I stop by. And you don't post a message on your website in hopes that I'll happen to cruise your URL this morning.

And yet, that's exactly how almost all content owners communicate with their audience on the web.

My entire relationship with NBC is through iTunes. I watch The Office and Heroes, two pretty solid shows.

But instead of catching them in Primetime, I have paid for a season of downloads. Each time there's a new episode, I get an email from APPLE, not NBC telling me to download it. I download it on my Apple Computer, from the iTunes music store, and watch it on my computer or Apple iPod in the iTunes viewing environment.

If I were NBC, I'd be less worried about getting a bigger piece of that $1.99/ download, and a lot more worried about developing a relationship with people who are consuming my media in remote environments. That email I get every week should be NBC branded. It should upsell me other NBC products I might like in the iTunes environment. It should offer me other opportunities to consume NBC's brand, both in my "comfort zone" (where I'm already spending time on the web) or on nbc.com.

Same goes for YouTube - CBS sticks their clips on the site, but they don't have a presence. In fact, they block the social functions that YouTube community members communicate with. To me, that's just ridiculous.

CBS Primetime, David Letterman, 60 minutes - these are brands that must have an interactive presence on YouTube. An intern who's a character on Dave's show must site message all day long with other YouTubers. That intern, if well cast, could potentially build up an audience of millions of people who aren't watching Dave's show now.

But that's not how most big content owners view their online experience. Instead, they put all their effort into scrawling messages at nbc.com and CBS innertube, just hoping that I'll find them there.

Media companies are fond of saying, "we're well aware that the only person making any money off of iTunes is Steve Jobs." And that may be the case. But it's not just because he controls the market and the infrastructure. It's because he's talking to us every day. We're coming to him to buy your product, and while he's chatting us up, you're back at your brick and mortar, filling your bulletin board with notes to us.

Dealing with talent can be the toughest part of a producer's job

2007-02-22T15:20:00.000-05:00

I was getting ready to write the second part of my "Why WV content is different" post - got all my ducks in a row, wrote out a few notes, ready to go.

Then LC directed me to this video, and it blew my concentration. Hope it blows yours too:

Adding the splashcast player

2007-02-20T09:35:00.000-05:00

Splashcast has created a product that's pretty cool, and very much in line with the kind of RSS innovation I talk about on this blog.

They grabbed the rss feed from our Wallstrip Youtube channel and created an embeddable Splashcast player. Anyone can do this, grabbing their own videos from sharing sites, or other videos they admire. Then they can add photos (a flickr feed), music, etc. - creating their own rss powered multimedia distribution platform that's easy to embed, email and share.

A lot of smart people say that editors are going to be the real winners in the web entertainment space - people who can weed through all the noise, and aggregate compelling content for their viewers/readers/listeners. Splashcast is out there providing an elegant way to do that.

I've added the Splashcast Wallstrip player to my sidebar so I can play with it and see how it performs. It's serving the same purpose as our Revver widget, and I'm curious how the daily experience will compare.

Stay tuned!

T-Minus Two Days

2007-02-12T07:39:00.001-05:00

Happy Monday everyone.

We're picking fights we can't win at Wallstrip:

Howard's picking fights no one would want to win on his blog

And boys and girls everywhere - from the 7 day middle school affair to the silver anniversary - is scrambling around to buy something for national Hallmark day.

They say that the average man will spend $120 this year, down from $140 last year. I will be spending zero dollars, because I don't believe in saints.

Even if my favorite actor is pimping America's "when you don't feel like expressing yourself, let us" company this year.

When I was in grade school, it was cool to make your own valentines for your class. Six years later, when my sister was in grade school, it was all about who had the coolest store-bought barbie and ken valentines.

So this Valentine's Day, I'd like to encourage you to celebrate my way: either teach kids it's okay to show affection to others... or stay out of the stores and have some sex... it's free (most of the time).

Yahoo! Pipes

2007-02-11T09:16:00.000-05:00

Yahoo just launched it's very cool, very ajaxy new service Yahoo! Pipes last week. I've had some time now to play around with the service and create a few pipes.

If you read the hype on the web, pipes is supposed to bring programming to the masses and turn the entire web into a programming platform. If you read the hype on the pipes site, "pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment."

OK, so I get the feed mashup aspect - it's very easy to string feeds together, filter them very basically, and spit out a result. I did that here with the different feeds I use to monitor buzz about Wallstrip.

This alone is pretty cool for people like me, who regularly use feeds in their web work-flow. I would love the data integration aspects of this service to be more spelled out - maybe I'm just an idiot (maybe?) and definitely I'm not a programmer- not even an amateur one, but I thought this was supposed to bring programming to the masses.

On the other hand, I thought I might be getting with Pipes was a way to build easy web applications that use .xml as a background technology. In this case, I would understand why the data integration, etc was beyond me, but I would be REALLY excited because people who are smarter than me, but are not programmers could create all kinds of new applications that made life easier and made the web more personal, without the end user ever thinking about the fact that they're using RSS.

That's the future and potential of RSS. I've talked about it a lot on this blog.

But as far as I can tell, that's not what Pipes is about either - at least not right now. The output is simply a feed. There's no way to build an application around it, and user interface design is not integrated into the service.

So count me in the "see the potential, but a little disappointed in the beta" camp.

A little pub on ABC News

2007-02-08T23:44:00.000-05:00

Had a fun time on ABC News with Lindsay talking about Wallstrip. Biana was a great host, and Lindz kept me from making too much of a fool out of myself. I'm the one in the brown jacket, in case you have a difficult time telling us a part.

Since the NYT article, I've spent a lot of time on the phone talking to people who are interested in working with us or helping us. It's been great, but I want to get back out there and shoot! Today we're filming two shows, including a Man on the Street and a rather ambitious green screen project. Should be a really fun way to spend a Friday.

How WV content is different, part 1

2007-02-06T07:51:00.000-05:00

Based on my post yesterday, I got a few emails yesterday asking me to explain how I thought WV (web video) content should be different than TV content.

It's a big question, and the most honest answer is, "I don't know." None of us do. I do, however, have plenty of ideas, some of which we're implementing on Wallstrip. Today, I want to talk specifically about intimacy and authenticity.

Start with the premise that you watch your TV from 10 feet away and you watch WV from 3 feet away. In the "real world", if I watch a scene play out in a bar tonight from 10 feet away, I am a spectator. The players in that scene aren't aware of me and I have no impact on its result.

If I watch the same scene from 3 feet away, I am a participant. I may not be involed in the plot, but the players know I'm there (even if they ignore me). And if I'm watching a scene play out three feet away, it's going to dominate my field of view. I'll be immersed in it and not able to watch other things going on at the same time. Finally, I'm more likely to watch it subjectively. If I'm 10 feet away, I'm a more impartial observer. When I'm 3 feet away, I'm hearing every word, looking into the eyes of th players, and making my own judgements about the situation.

So how does all that translate into narrative and structural differences? Here are a few rules I stick to in WV. Of course, the idea with any visual storytelling is to figure out the rules and then find creative ways to break them.

1) The viewer will see the story more intimately, so tell it more intimately. Not just tighter shots and close ups, but stories that focus on one character. (I'm talking fiction or non-fiction storytelling here). That's one reason why Wallstrip is centered around one personality - our host, Lindsay.

2) Authenticity is the gate keeper. From two or three feet away, I can see all your flaws. I can judge for myself if you're lying to me. The realism bar for me to buy into the story is a whole lot higher. In terms of non-fiction, that means being self-reflexive, acknowledging when something you're doing is silly or risky. It might mean breaking the "fourth wall" and talking directly to the audience. In Wallstrip, we are relentlessly self-referential. We do shows about our lack of popularity, we talk about our audience and specific characters we've built out of audience members. We sometimes talk conversationally with the audience ("I know what you're thinking," etc.)

3) Be intimate with your audience. People think about "interactive storytelling" in literal terms - strict structures where audience members have an opportunity to influence the direction of the story (voting on American Idol, for example). But the best kind if interactivity is completely organic and unplanned. It's about carrying on a conversation. Every morning, I wake up and read all the comments on Wallstrip. I also read every blog post or web article that mentions us. I don't take action based on these comments, but they influence my understanding of who we're talking to when we're writing and directing. They give me a more complete understanding of the world I'm making narrative choices in. As Fred Wilson described, our Jack-in-the-Box show evolved from these conversations with our audience.

I've got lots more I'd like to say about how the web environment and user experience effects narrative and formal components of WV, and I'll do so in the next few days. The bottom line, though, is that WV is different. Jeff and I started our company BrightRED Pictures because we believe strongly that this is a new art form, with it's own conventions.

And, in the spirit of interactivity, we got our first real panner of a review yesterday in New York Magazine. While the tone seems decidedly, "we like to dog on anything the New York Times likes," I must admit - it feels damned good to be dogged a little bit. Get's the juices flowing.

While I didn't mind them dogging us, I was a little miffed that they took a shot at our investors. I can think of a lot lamer things to do with $500k than invest it in a few people who are trying to create something entertaining and take a chance in a new environment.

Besides... "Dumb, but Edgy" - that seems like the slugline for my life. If that's as bad as it gets, I'm a happy man.

Brrrrrrr... see for yourself

2007-02-05T07:37:00.000-05:00

It's COLD here in NY.

It's one thing to know it's going to be below 10 degrees when you wake up, and it's quite another to hobble over to the gym at 5:45 AM trying to figure out if your eyeballs have frozen.

There is no replacement for experience. That's what we're banking on at BrightRED Pictures, committing fully to the web video space so early in the process.

Web video is fundamentally different than television, and right now there are no rules. We're all making them up as we're going and learning from... experience.

My wife is a graphic designer... just like I am a producer. But that doesn't tell the whole story for either of us.

Ciara is a print designer. She does book covers, logos, posters, brochures... that's a world away from a web designer. The work Ciara does is looked at. Information is derived from it passively. Designing for the web is more like product design or packaging design. It's about function as much as form. You have to handle a web site, work it to get what you want out of it - you have to USE it. And that limits the choices and changes the priorities for a graphic designer.

Same thing for a producer like me. Television is a wholey passive medium. In fact, that's why I like it. I can sit in front of the tube and be talked at for a while. Good web video is designed to be used, just like other web content. Whether it's being passed around, fed to you, viewed contextually with other content, referenced while working, viewed on a mobile phone, searched for, mashed up, etc, etc.

It's not as if web video doesn't share characteristics with television, just like print and web design share certain characteristics. But WV has fundamentally different priorities than TV, and that should mean fundamentally different content.

The next step in Pro-Sumer video

2007-02-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

I wrote a post not long ago about the rise of pro-sumer video over the last 15 years, and the impact it's making right now on the web video revolution.

Well, this CNET article fortells the coming of a second wave of pro-sumerism... and I think they totally miss the point.

They're talking about evolution of internet video editing tools like eyespot and jumpcut, and asserting that these will open up the exclusive world of video editing to "the rest of us"...

I'm very suspect of this assertion - Editing is about choices. That takes experience and training. The tools you use to edit are pretty much irrelevant.

You can make shooting video very automatic. Camera work is as much about what you get as how you get it. If you point the camera at something compelling, the camera can handle the exposure, and the footage will be compelling. A great shooter is active, creating the shots. You can be a good shooter, though, and be reactive.

In the non-fiction space, editing is where you craft the story and build the experience for your viewer. Lowering the barriers to entry by creating cheaper and easier to use tools and then expecting the whole youtube world to edit is kind of like saying that, by moving from typewriters to word processors, we've created a whole generation of great authors.

Web based editing does have the potential to revolutionize both the editing field and the world of user generated content, though, just in different ways.

Non-destructive editing (which is what we do on NLE's like Final Cut Pro and Avid) is revolutionary because the work itself is very easy on the computer. Basically, you "digitize" your video onto the computer, creating large media files for each clip. These files are never touched by the editing process, they're just referenced by your editing program. The editing project file itself is a series of instructions about what order to play the referenced media files in, what parts of them to play, how loud to play them, etc.

The editing file for my documentary contains over a hundred hours of video. There are probably over a hundred different editing "sequences" (a sequence is the linear result of your editing work - a timeline that has all your footage cut up and placed in the right order). The project references over 150 gigs of raw video. Yet that project file is less than a 100 MB.

Web based editing is a natural evolution of this process - instead of referencing clips stored on local hard drives, we can store the video online - accessing and editing the files from anywhere, on multiple computers at once. This will take remote editing, on location editing, and collaborative editing to a whole new level. And by integrating the ajax based interfaces that are becoming the norm in new web tools, you can create a fully functional editing workflow that's completely virtual. The online video's not fast enough, but it will be soon. The bandwidth's not there yet, but it will be soon. And this will have an enormous, positive impact on my industry.

On the user generated side of things, web based editing won't create a generation of home trained Walter Murch's, but it will allow users to interact with video online in a much deeper way. Video commenting, remixing, video messaging, video quoting - these are the places where the tools can improve the user experience. If I post a video and make the clips I use available online, then other people can build on what I did, play with it, switch it around, add their own work to it.

Simple editing tools won't make great editors, but it will allow people to use video more like they use text online. They will make it easier to search and communicate with video. Right now I can link to and/or embed your video in my blog post or on my website, or an email. Soon I'll be able to quote your video in any of those forums too (in fact, on vSocial I can do that right now). Web based editing will allow me to quote your video just as easily in my videos as I can in my blog posts. Imagine youtube as a giant library of raw footage for me to create whatever I want out of - the possibilities for creativity, better video communication and video social networking are endless.

There's also a great opportunity to build web based editing into the user experience when you create entertainment and information on the web. I blogged about this before - talking about intuitive, interactive web documentaries.

All of that is the true potential of web based editing. And I, for one, can't wait until that potential is realized.

All the news that's fit to print

2007-02-03T09:19:00.000-05:00

I admit, I have a long history of criticizing the New York Times.

After all, my dog's name is Chomsky.

In my political life, they were the establishment press - cheering us on to war in Iraq, adding credibility to the administration's fantasies of weapons of mass destruction...

Then in my web 2.0 life, they became "old media" - putting their best content behind a walled garden, two steps behind their online readers.

Well, yesterday I finally realized that I was all wrong about this NY institution. They really are the paper of record. They deserve our respect. For example, take a look at this fine piece of reporting.

Wallstrip does SNL

2007-01-29T11:22:00.000-05:00

Where is the low hanging fruit?

2007-01-07T22:38:00.000-05:00

I've been hearing a lot lately about advertisers chomping at the bit to buy ads against video content. The "low hanging fruit" of internet advertising as we move into 2007.

Granted, the overall market for video ads increased 82% this year to over 400 million dollars. But I fail to see how this is low hanging fruit for content producers.

Sure, right now it's pretty easy to sell ads against video content at around a $40 CPM. That's what the video sites like Revver or BlipTV are getting from their advertisers, and that's what you're getting from the large ad networks. Unless you're going to seek custom advertisers on your own (which is expensive) then you're pretty much stuck at that level.

Is there a lot of demand for that advertising space? Probably so. Because that CPM is incredibly low for video. Video is wayyy more expensive to produce than text content, yet the CPM isn't much different.

And it's not just us independents stuck in this position. I can't seem to find a link anywhere to back me up, but I remember clearly when ABC announced that they would be streaming their primetime shows, they also announced that the advertisers were forking over 500k for a fiscal quarter of advertising. That's a lot of advertising - a half a TV season. And if you've watched ABC's streams, the ads are incredibly prominent. That may sound like a lot of dough, but compared to television advertising, it's peanuts. We're talking about shows that cost 2 million an episode to make.

To build a large audience for web video is exponentially harder than driving traffic to a site, and for the advertiser the brand exposure in video is pretty rich - even richer with brand integration/sponsorship models.

So what we have now is basically low hanging fruit for the advertiser and unsustainable returns for the content creator or video network. To make that equation more favorable to the content producer, we need to get better with metrics and we need more ROI success stories.

Primetime Podcast

2007-01-05T23:59:00.000-05:00

You know that podcasting has hit the mainstream when they become a critical plot device in a warmed over primetime drama plot.

Ciara and I were clicking through the channels on the old media magic video box yesterday and came across a new episode of the hit CBS show Numbers. Turns out that the evil child rapist polygamist terrorist communicated with his mindless flock through - you guessed it: podcasts.

"What's that"

"He records the audio on his computer and uploads it to a podcast website with a unique identifyer - the name."

"So terrorists everywhere are podcasting?"

"Yes, terrorists and Dane Cook."

The show was so boring I made that last part up. Then we shut off Numbers and watched the new episode of The Office, which had downloaded automatically to my iTunes.

We watched it full screen on my 17 inch MacBook Pro, and I have to say - really hard to tell a difference between the iTunes file and the boob tube image quality wise. They didn't mention podcasting on The Office, but that's OK, because they didn't have any child rapists on this episode.

We're to the point now where we do about half our television watching on the computer. The shows we like to watch oon CBS and ABC are free, and so far we've been williing to pay for the few shows we really, really like on iTunes. I think this trend is likely to catch on soon - probably before the L.A. FBI office catches the evil podcaster.

Wait until they hear about RSS feeds.

The rise of the internet video networks

2007-01-04T17:31:00.000-05:00

It started with atomfilms.

Then it was the the Digg team's Revision 3. And in the past couple of weeks we've heard about two new web video networks: Abby Corps, which boasts the videoblog star power of Andrew Baron, and Next New Networks, with a lot of old media executive firepower.

All these networks are looking to produce content for the web. They're all well funded. And, despite what some say, that's a very good thing for the web video business.

Production costs money. There's no secret to that. Unlike a story, a blog, or even an audio podcast, web video doesn't leave much to the viewer's imagination. It's up to the content creator to build the world that we want to watch. And that costs money.

It makes sense to pool resources like space, personnel and equipment, so the costs are shared across different shows. It makes sense to build some brand consistency across your shows too - in terms of user experience, monetization method, distribution etc. And it makes sense to agreggate different niche audiences together and build cross over appeal.

But the biggest reason why independent video networks are a good thing is marketing, marketing, marketing. You can't build a big audience without marketing the hell out of your product. There's a reason why CNBC plasters Jim Cramer's face on every website they possibly can - it drives audience. A single show, bare bones outfit can't do that, but a funded network can.

A single show shop means that the same people are writing and producing shows, making long term strategic decisions, building the brand, doing distribution deals, doing monetization deals, marketing the show, publicizing the show, and sometimes acting. That leads to some brilliant and amazing work, but it's not a realistic business model for anyone.

Independent networks are the best way to create innovative outside the box programming that's sustainable in the long term. The reality is that the big players in this market will be the television and movie studios. And what they offer will not be as cool or as good as what independents are offering. But it will gain more viewership because it will have star power and money to market.

The golden age of american cinema was from Bonnie & Clyde to Raging Bull. Those were the years when the movie studios were smaller - in most cases the people who owned the studios ran the studios. The movies were edgy and risky and actually SAID something. But they were also studios who had the firepower to get their films in front of audiences.

In the web world, it's not about getting your work in front of viewers - that's easy. You need the firepower to stand out from the crowd and get noticed.

I think that independent web networks (studios is probably a more accurate term) have the potential to bring on that kind of creative renaissance for video on the web. And that's why I think it's a good thing.

Here's to '06

2006-12-31T12:10:00.000-05:00

2006 was billed as the breakout year for web video and was it ever.

2006 was the year when Google launched Google Video, relaunched it, reached 2nd place in video traffic, and then bought 1st place for 1.6 Billion dollars.

2006 was the year that CBS and ABC started streaming their primetime shows online and in watchable quality.

2006 was the year that web video revived the stone dead Saturday Night Live and kept The Office on the air.

2006 was the year when two guys making videos on their couch raised more than a million bucks to start a web video studio.

We talk about the "You Tube era"... that era is comprised of not even the entirety of 2006.

Will web video be like e-commerce and change the way we use the web? Will it be like flash intros and just fade away? We'll find out in '07... stay tuned.

Happy New Year.

A new start in the new year

2006-12-29T23:29:00.000-05:00

It's been nearly a month since I've updated my blog, and that means it's not serving it's purpose.

Queensbound Seven is supposed to be a forum in which I think out loud about the emerging web video industry, join the ongoing conversation about new media, and interact with others about my ideas.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I've been pouring a great deal of my energy in the last few months into Wallstrip. It's a daily show, and writing, directing and producing has left me little time to blog.

My first job out of college was as operations manager for a large graduation photography company. Our busy season was (obviously) April-June. Every year, when we got to the season, all the upkeep of my personal life would fade away: my credit card bills went unopened, my apartment uncleaned, daily workouts abandoned. To my friends and family, I just disappeared. There was just the work.

That's my instinct. I'm the kind of person who likes to dive head first into a project, slap the blinders on and live my work.

Over the years, I've gotten much better. My priorities have shifted - I'm married, I have a lot more responsibility, and shutting off my life affects other people. Besides, it's just not healthy. You lose all your perspective and the job suffers along with the rest of your life.

Getting better means fighting my instincts. It's easy for something like this blog to get lost in the shuffle when I get really busy. But busy times are when this blog is most useful.

Wallstrip isn't simply a show I produce, it's a show that's distributed based on the BrightRED strategies I develop and fine tune on this blog. Right now I am putting many of the ideas I talk about here to work in the real world, and that's the time when the thought becomes a hypothesis and the hypothesis becomes a theory.

BrightRED has evolved to the point where every single project we pitch contains at least one element that stretches beyond the boundaries of conventional video and integrates net native characteristics into content and form. We may not be solving all the problems in web video, but we're actually trying things every day.

For our clients, what matters is the result of each campaign - the growth of each show. But for us, it's about the evolution of the form, and our position as leaders in that evolution. To get there takes some hard thinking about what can be and what might be - along with some experience in what actually is. My work isn't done when Wallstrip gains audience share, or when we acheive the goals set for one of our commercial campaigns. It's just as critical that I use this blog to analyze what we're doing, compare it to what others are doing, and think about what no one is doing.

In the past few months, I've come to believe that search is the single most important form of distribution for web video, and while that idea has shaped my thinking about every new project I take on, I've never even mentioned it on Queensbound Seven! So what am I going to do about it?

In the coming weeks, your going to see a few changes here. First off, I'm going to be converting the blog to a wordpress platform. I want the added functionality, and I'm a little sick of clogspot. So you'll see a new look and a new user experience.

Secondly, I'll be adding a store to the blog. I'm very interested in affiliate marketing, and I want to create an affiliate store for Queensbound Seven to, well, try it out for myself. I want to build a store based on products that I like and use, and sell them using the medium that I'm comfortable with: video

And finally, I'm going to be posting at least one "thinking out loud" post each week. I may post every day, I may only post once, but I'm going to add at least 52 valuable posts to this archive by the end of 2007. I don't make declarations like that very often, mostly because I feel terribly humiliated if I can't live up to them. But that's exactly why I'm putting this in print, because it's important to me that I do it. And I want to feel disappointed and embarrassed if I don't.

So there you have it. My end of the year manifesto. I usually try to keep the personal stuff to a minimun here, but it is a personal blog, so you have to indulge me every once in a while.

Stay tuned for my New Years challenge to the web video community - Seven problems we've got to solve in '07.

Somebody's Watching Me

2006-12-01T21:37:00.000-05:00

I just grabbed theattention trust recorder, something I've been meaning to do since we interviewed Seth.

A nice easy firefox extension install later, I am now perpetually creating an .xml file of my clickstream, both on my hardrive and at the Root Vaults, where I can play with my data and learn more about my online identity.

Extremely important with a tool like this, turning it OFF is really easy. On click and the green diamond on my toolbar becomes a red box, and my stream goes unrecorded.

Engaging in this exercise made me realize how many different ways you can use rss to look at me online:

Anyone who wants to can set their RSS reader to:

watch my daily show

read this blog

see what sites I'm bookmarking, and who's tagging with my name

see what people are saying about this blog

see what people are saying about wallstrip

Who's going to monitor all those things? Probably just me and the FBI. My wife? Please. And anyone else, well that would just be creepy.

In The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, the title case study is about a man who lost his ability to interpret what he saw. He had no trouble seeing, and described abstract shapes perfectly. But when it came to interepreting and contextualizing that data, he was at a loss. An autistic brain can only analyze what is concrete. Conversely, his brain could only think in the abstract, and so he couldn't discern by site the difference between his wife's head and his bowler.

Right now, attention tracking is sort of like that man's brain. Once we develop tools to contextualize and interpret that data, an observation like, "Adam seems blue today" will be something that can be concluded not only by seeing me and interacting with me in person, but also from my web presence. That's pretty cool.

Embedding your name on my face

2006-11-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

I was directed to this post from the MIT Ad Lab via Publishing 2.0. The Ad Lab suggests a different way to look at advertising on YouTube, namely this:

Embedded ads. My response is... duh. Anyone who's in the television business knows that embedded advertising works without seriously eroding the user experience. Why do you think the CBS bug (that's the term for the little graphic in the corner) sits there through all 46 minutes of CSI?

And for those of us who see the path to success for video on the web as light, portable content that you can embed, share, and discover at sites you already visit, the only viable monetization solution is embedded advertising. Your advertising has to be as light and portable as your media.

I can't figure out why no big video site has tried this monetization model yet - to me it is the single most obvious solution - it's easy, it doesn't take any of my time as a user, and it has a track record of actually WORKING - embedded advertising, integrated marketing, product placement and sponsorship. Those are the only ad strategies that will work in the evolving web video space.

Perhaps the only place where that's NOT the case, however, is Youtube. Like mySpace (ok, mySpace is another exception to my video advertising rule) Youtube is a destination. It's a social networking site that seamlessly integrates video and has an audience. You can sell ads around content and banner ads, etc in this context. Youtube's got an entirely different monetization problem, which I blogged about here (and provided my idea for a solution).

But back to the embedded ads - think about where that takes you... so I've got this portable media... and I've got portable ads that go in my portable media. That means I can distribute my media like ads are already being distributed online - because I make money anytime anyone watches it. I can start distributing my videos through adsense, or doubleclick.

To me, this model just makes sense. It allows the content producer to monetize their product in a way that's good for the user (good content with no ads that they don't have to hunt for - in context with what they're doing already online) and good for the websites that have traffic (valuable and entertaining content for their audience).

The beauty of the web to me is synergy.

When the Internet works, things just make sense and fit together. Everyone's life gets easier and everyone makes money. That's the kind of monetization model we should be working towards, and embedded ads are a key part of that.

Who's side are you on, anyway?

2006-11-27T20:36:00.000-05:00

A little video hosting performance art from Chris Pirillo. Nice!

Zune Nation

2006-11-27T16:14:00.000-05:00

I don't have one (yet) but I have played with it. Well, at least I played with it for a little while... then the battery died.

After that, I read this article - which falls pretty much in line with my experience.

"Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

I wish it had a clickwheel. But Apple has the copyright. For now, at least.

It has a wider screen than the iPod, which is way cool. But it's the same resolution, just spread over more space, which is way uncool. It's mighty impressive to make a screen improvement that gives you a net loss in image quality.

It has wi-fi, but it doesn't really. It just lets you share a song for a few plays, and then replaces it with an advertisment. It's like the "beam" feature on my Treo, but lamer... and my Treo has real wifi too. Did I mention that this doesn't?

The DRM sucks. Hard. And so does Apple's. No reason to complain when the competition sucks too.

But the Zune has NO podcasts.

How disappointing. Really, I mean it. I'm not just kvetching. To me, this shows a startling lack of "getting it."

Even though the vassst majority of the media consumed on iTunes is music bought from big record companies, the podcast integration makes the Music Store an interactive user experience.

Think about it - anyone can link to their RSS feed right now and have an instant presence on the music store. I produce a few podcasts up there, and when someone clicks on my show, the interface looks just like NPR, or ABC or CNN. I'm placed on equal footing. That's important. It's a little of the mySpace magic sprinkled on Apple's music interface.

It's part of what makes iTunes successful - it's about me, the user. It's also about Apple (that's the reason for the sucky DRM). But, to a great extent, it's about Apple and me tolerating the record companies together (that's the reason for no wifi), and rolling our eyes privately.

The Zune is about Microsoft and the record companies selling me something. That's old news, and not very interesting.

If you want to come after the iPod, I would think you'd want to hit hard in the first round.
But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they've got a "rope-a-dope" strategy... or at least some kind of strategy. I'm sure the Zune will get better.

Really, I'm not sure why I'm bitching. I can't use the damned thing on my Mac anyway.

Why is no one watching video on their iPod

2006-11-25T21:15:00.000-05:00

In case you missed it, Neilson reported that less than 3% of video iPod owners watch video on their iPods last week. This was based on a survey of 400 iPod users (only a portion of which own a video iPod).

I question whether you can reach meaningful conclusions based on such a small sample. And their are other problems with the study, some of which are outlined in this article.

But even if the results are accurate, I don't think they say too much about the demand for video.

Don't forget - Apple never released a video iPod. Instead, they added video to the iPod without changing the price point. That means for the past year, anyone who wanted to buy an iPod had to buy a video iPod.

This was sheer brilliance on the part of Apple. With that one move, they created an industry around video on the iPod, from The Office to Ze Frank. But it also means that most people who have a video iPod didn't make the decision to buy a video iPod. And that's why it's not surprising to me that the percentage isn't higher.

What Apple is counting on, and what the rest of us in the industry are counting on, is that the people who didn't have any interest in video when they bought their iPod might try it out. Maybe they'll like it. Or maybe they'll miss an episode of their favorite show, and decide to download it on their iPod.

Regular users? Maybe. But more importantly, they'll get familiar with consuming video that way. The biggest hurdle to overcome in making the leap from early adopter to mainstream is lack of familiarity.

Your grandma doesn't use firefox, and if she does, she doesn't download toolbars to customize it. Your quicktime movie doesn't play on her computer.

But maybe she has iTunes, and if she knows how to get a song, she can get a video. And if she has an iPod, and she listens to her music on it, the video she downloads will just show up on the iPod too. And maybe she'll watch it.

And then next year, when some thing she really wants to see is available only online, the chances increase that she'll watch it.

That's not the way you build big numbers in a year, but it's an interesting long term strategy. And, I think, a good one.

Turkey for you, Turkey for me...

2006-11-23T13:58:00.000-05:00

Well, actually, chicken.

I'm enjoying a Thanksgiving feast with close friends here in Sunnyside, and due to oven size issues, we're eating the wrong bird.

How wonderfully rebellious of us, don't you think?

Glad to be among friends in the first city that's really felt like home for Ciara and I. It may be cold and raining, but the Bucs are on at 4, and it's warm inside, so I'm happy - and thankful.

I usually resist cliche's like lists of what I'm thankful for - but I think it's gotten more cliche to resist such cliche's than to give in to them. Plus, it's a good exercise, so here goes:

I'm sooo thankful for my amazing wife who has changed the way I see the world. And for my obstinate dog for keeping me in my place.

I'm thankful that I have a family that's tolerant and supportive and warm and tight-knit. Everyone should have that and most people don't.

I'm thankful that I have a business partner who I want to work with everyday, even after ten years.

And I'm thankful we're working at things that are hard, and that might fail. And that I have the support I need to take that risk.

I'm thankful that people like Howard and the folks at Kontent Real trust me to create work from their vision.

and I'm thankful that it's my job to meet amazing and inspirational people every day, and listen to them.

I'm thankful that I was born in a place where I do not lack nourishment or shelter or opportunity like most of the people in the world do.

and I'm thankful that I'm not the guy huddled under my subway stop right now, trying to keep his legs warm. I know there's probably not much difference between us, other than luck.

Happy Thanksgiving - and thanks for reading.

technorati tags: thanksgivinglist, thanksgiving, thankful, holiday

Youtube vs. Cuban

2006-11-20T22:49:00.000-05:00

Is this stuff that Cuban is saying about YouTube true?

We know that Youtube makes a ton of money of the advertising around infringing content. We know how they use their adscripts with doubleclick to serve ads by category and track all ads served by who uploaded the content. We checked the scripts when UFC ads popped up around the WEC videos we found. (cagefights from HDNet.) UFC ads above WEC infringing videos seemed too much of a coincidence Its all right there with a viewsource of a youtube page

If so, then this company is going down the copyright tube, period. That's like the cigarette companies getting caught jacking up nicotine levels. You can't "not no" and simultaneously act in a way that's to your advantage based on the very information you claim not to know.

I know this other stuff that Cuban is saying is true:

If you are under the safe harbor rules, and merely a conduit to others hosting files, how in the world could you give yourself a license to those files ? In other words, Youtube owns what you just uploaded, and can do anything they want with it, without limitation, but at the same time under the DMCA they want to be considered only a conduit that falls under the safe harbors.

I never thought about it quite that way, but of course he's right. When you grant yourself a license to content, you are taking responsibility for that content. When I produce a documentary, I don't get my subjects to sign releases to protect me - I don't have enough money to make it worth their while to sue.

I get the released signed because no television channel (read - video platform) would license my content if I didn't. YouTube is all wet in this department. They say they can do whatever they want with your content, yet they're not responsible for what they're licensing?

That's harbor's not looking too safe to me.

Thinking about the future

2006-11-19T15:22:00.000-05:00

Friday's Wallstrip interview was with Seth Goldstein. It was a fascinating discussion, where he laid out a vision for the future of the web.

Unfortunately, because of time constraints and in order to stay true to our show's tone, we were only able to slip a portion of the meat of the interview into the episode.

In case you weren't able to glean from the video - Seth is talking about attention in terms of giving (or even selling) your attention, not getting attention.

I'm interested in ideas about the future that envision how we will do things, rather than exactly what we will be doing.

I've talked a lot about the potential of RSS. Most people who dismiss or don't understand RSS are looking at it as an "application technology" (a technology you use to do something).

RSS interests me as a background technology. In the same way that search changed the internet by answering the question "How do I find what I'm looking for", RSS has the potential to revolutionize the interent by answering the question "Once I find what I'm looking for, how do I hang onto it."

It has already started - in fact, you could argue that 2006 has been less about video and more about RSS - iTunes, YouTube, the Google Reader, widgets, gadgets, etc. People who see web 3.0 as the "widgetized web" are predicting that RSS will become a critical component of how we interact with the web.

Last week, Seth talked about attention in the same terms, and that's what fascinated me about the discussion. Attentiontrust.org is about recognizing the value of how you behave on the web, and part of that is recording your clickstream to build a data set about you. Once you have that data set, you can do a lot with it... you can sell it, you can combine it with other people's data to create a more valuable comparative data set, and you can share it with others.

"Who, besides a stalker, would want to look at someone else's clickstream" was the very logical question that Lindsay asked Seth. The answer was, basically, that it doesn't matter "what" you can do with it.

It's a way of thinking that can answer a "how" question: "How do I interact more meaningfully with people on the web?"

Clearly, that's what a majority of the users are looking for right now. Growth in web activity is being dominated by the social networking trend.

Seth gave an example, using technology that's available to all of us right now, that clicked on my lightbulb - maybe it'll do the same for you:

Seth recently decided to move to Mill Valley, CA after spending his adult life in New York. While his family was making their decision, he kept it a secret, and was careful not to record his visits to sites about the Mill Valley schools and real estate market. When the family was ready to announce the move, he simply added one tag to his del.icio.us stream: millvalleyschooldistrict.

Soon he started to get calls from friends who subscribe to his tag feed, asking if he was moving to California.

It's as if, by his behavior on the web and his decision to share that behavior, he had telepathically informed his friends of the decision to move. That's interesting.

Now expand that concept out to a future where the conscious steps in Seth's example were handled by web applications. So my application is constantly analyzing my clickstream data and, based on my parameters, observing and communicating my intentions.

Then, based on how much I've decided to share with my friend, their application is analyzing my clickstream and making observations about me that are available to my friend.

Sure, there's been a lot of science fiction where people decide to open a door and it opens, or communicate with each other telepathically. This is the first time I've met someone who's shown me a path to that end that's in any way rational.

Is that really possible? I have no idea, and I don't even know if that's even part of Seth's project, or just my own interpretation. Clearly, I've thought about this idea a lot less than the impressive list of people involved with attentiontrust.org.

Regardless though, I found the interview to be a refreshing mix of imagination and critical thinking, and I am glad that Seth was willing to talk to us, and that Fred Wilson pointed us in his direction.

One are where Seth left me wanting more was privacy. To take ownership of your data means, to some extent, creating a record of you that would not exist but for your recording it. Privacy can be protected to some extent by limiting the exposure of your data... but aren't you, simply by creating the recording, leaving yourself vulnerable to people who can take your data without asking - by force of law or by brute force? Richard Nixon can tell you a thing or two about that.

It's an important question, one that Seth and his organization need to answer thoroughly if attentiontrust has any chance of gaining traction.

Look at what happened with facebook's friend monitoring feature... privacy is #1 concern for people when they're thinking about these issues, and it absolutely cannot be ignored or dismissed. It must be addressed.

Google shares ad wealth with videographers | CNET News.com

2006-10-31T08:09:00.000-05:00

Google makes an interesting play in the user gen realm:

Okay... ANOTHER interesting play. But this one won't cost them 1.6 billion.

"Google has begun sharing advertising revenue with the makers of a popular video clip in a groundbreaking deal that could drive up the costs of competing in the fledgling video-sharing sector.

The search company has agreed to turn over most advertising revenue generated by the latest video from Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, creators of 'The Diet Coke & Mentos Experiment,' according to Peter Chane, a senior product manager for Google Video."

The Pro-sumer model

2006-10-29T13:00:00.000-05:00

Most of the talk in video conent is either about consumer video (user gen) or professional video - the big studios cranking out original content online.

Today's post is about pro-sumer video.

I'm talking about the content aquisition business model employed by, among others, Current TV and TurnHere.com. I find this model fascinating and forward thinking.

These companies take what's best about user generated video - interesting and authentic content from a wide variety of perspectives and channels it into a package that is easy to consume, monetize and distribute.

Turn Here, for example, solicits short travel videos from pro-sumer producers. The freelancers create fun short videos about a neighborhood to specs provided y Turn Here. If Turn Here likes the videos, they aquire them, brand them, and distribute through the distribution infrastruture they've built. And they also foster a community for their participating producers, ensuring a stong stable of filmmakers to keep turning out content that fits the Turn Here brand.

The prosumer model meets a need that many businesses find near impossible - to provide content that is consistent, entertaining and of good quality at an affordable price. I think web people are finally coming to the understanding that video content costs. A lot. This model addresses that need.

AND... it addresses that need using an untapped resource.

The history of the prosumer filmmaker is really a story about technology. Sony's VX1000 was the first DV camera on the market in 1996, and really, it was the first time you could buy a camera for under $10,000k that could shoot video anywhere near broadcast quality. Before that it was Beta SP or 3/4 inch analog tape.

By the I finished film school in 1998, DV cameras were just coming into their own - Canon released the XL1, a dv camera for filmmakers, and Sony came out with the PD-150: the VX1000 upgraded with enough professional features that news organizations and documentary filmmakers started using the $3,500 camera.

Shortly thereafter, Apple bought Final Cut Pro and released Final Cut Pro 1.2. For $1,000 you could buy a software package that rivaled, and in some ways trounced, the $30,000 Avid for video (you could get it for $500 if you used your mom's educational discount). Creative people did what they always do when they're given access to resources.. they created. And poof - the prosumer revolution was born.

Since then the prosumers have, in many ways, taken over the documentary community, they've fueled the ever growing production of reality tv, and they've led the way in putting video online - populating sites like ifilm and atomfilms and now, with the emergence of YouTube and mySpace, posting their films there.

But while these producers and filmmakers have, in some cases, forced their way into the mainstream media, they have been mostly ignored. I think that any business model that harnesses the skill and enthusiasm of the pro-sumer community is a smart bet.

Climbing the charts...

2006-10-29T12:04:00.000-05:00

I was thrilled to see that Wallstrip is now the #5 rated business podcast on iTunes, ahead of both of Jim Cramer's shows. BOUYAHHHHH!

Just two weeks in... and ready to start building momentum.

A day late and a dollar short

2006-10-28T00:02:00.000-04:00

whew. Just finished week two of Wallstrip, and I'm exhausted.

More importantly, my blog's been neglected. Time to correct that... Here's my favorite Wallstrip so far:

It's been tremendous fun to launch this project - to watch viewers get introduced to the show, and then to watch them get used to it.

The first few days, the comments and feedback we got was like criticism of a movie. Every episode was treated like it's own "thing" and evaluated that way.

Around day three or four (Chipotle burrito making contest or Adobe Flasher) the show began to develop an identity. "Lindsay's starting to get more comfortable" "You guys are finding a rhythm" - (this, of course, in addition to "this sucks" "you guys suck" etc, etc).

While shows 3 and 4 were stronger than shows 1 and 2, they were shot simultaneously. Lindsay was no more comfortable in the studio doing Thursday's show than she was doing Monday's show, because we shot all the studio stuff for the first week on the same day.

The comments were evidence of something else - people started getting used to the idea of Wallstrip. The identity of the show began to emerge.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course. As viewers perceive the show, their perceptions shape the identity of Wallstrip in our minds as creators, and the show evolves to meet (or contradict) the expectations of our audience.

It's exciting to be a part of a project that is so fundamentally interactive. When Jeff and I upload a show, we have a preconceived notion of what the general reaction will be. By 7:30am, I can go to the web and see if we were right. And learn about the audience. And learn about my show.

When you say interactive, a lot of people think about direct involvement - the audience can comment on the show, submit topics, etc. Sure, that's an element of the project. But what really makes it interactive is the instantaneous nature of the web. It's the fact that I can go to technorati and see how many people link to us today based on the episode we offered up. I can see how our download rate changed, how many people on You Tube checked us out, how many people tagged the episode in del.icio.us.

Everyday we drop a pebble in the pond and we get to see all the ripples. That's pretty cool.

Wallstrip for today

2006-10-17T21:05:00.000-04:00

Why Wallstrip is different

2006-10-16T12:56:00.000-04:00

We launched our daily video blog Wallstrip today. Jeff and I have been working pretty much non-stop for the past month to get it off the ground.

Howard Lindzon is the executive producer (with a guest appearance on the first show). Wallstrip is his brainchild, and he is a creative force who's not afraid to try something new.

Lindsay Campbell is our beautiful, smart and talented host (she already has hundreds of stock brokers pining for her.

Every day, we take a company whose stock is at or near an alltime high, and we figure out why - not in the stock world, but in the real world. The show is 1-3 minute riff on that pop culture catalyst. No charts, no graphs, (ok, one chart, but it's real quick) just fun and unique takes on some of the most innovative companies in the world.

After the show, professional stock bloggers debate the merits of the company's stock from a financial perspective. They each bring their own investment strategies to the conversation and you get a robust and interactive discussio of the stock.

Wallstrip is different because we are pioneering a distribution strategy that I have been talking about on this blog since I started it. "Along the Way" distribution. The key to our strategy is the widget you see in the upper right hand corner of my site.

That is essentially a tv sitting on my blog, which allows my readers to watch the new wallstrip full size every day, without ever leaving queensboundseven. Our stock bloggers are each putting this widget up on their sites, and the code is available at wallstrip.com, so anyone who wants wallstrip can have it on their site or blog.

Right now, it's ancillary distribution, but I anticipate this will be the most effective way to distribute video content in the long run. Why wouldn't brokers who like our show want to watch it on their Yahoo Financial page, which they keep up on their screen all day long?

Why are we trying to grab attention, which is the only ingredient that is scarce on the web, by sticking a flag pole in the ground and telling people to come to us?

Instead we should be telling them to distribute us - and not just by sending an email. We should be exchanging our great content for access to their audience.

We're doing a lot of things on Wallstrip. We're trying to bring comedy to the stock market, to give the financial audience a real web 2.0 product, to take the great and successful model of videoblogs like Rocketboom and expand that genre.

It's a very important project for me personally, in terms of trying out the things I blog about every day (well, ok, not every day recently...).

But of all those things, the one I'm most excited and optimistic about is the little box you see in my sidebar.

What Revver can do better

2006-10-15T22:38:00.000-04:00

This post is about a week late to the party. I've had my head buried in Wallstrip, and have neglected my much more important duty to blather on endlessly about gootube.

Here goes...

Revver. What the hell is Revver going to do? That question has been tossed around the blogosphere a lot, and I guess it makes sense. Youtube always had the traffic... Revver appeared to be going after the monetization.

Now that google has Youtube, they have the traffic and (presumably) the means to monetize it. So Revver's screwed, right?

Wrong.

If you really look at what Revver is doing, you'll see that while they may be the first video hosting site to get serious about making money, they're not really about the monetization model. They're about the content providers who are serious about making money.

It's not just their advertising strategy that appeals to the serious content provider, it's most everything about their service. They offer format flexibility (flash or quicktime), they have an open API, their player is larger than the standard web video, and (this one's REALLY important to us content producers) THE FLASH VIDEO LOOKS GOOD.

I chose Revver as a platform for Wallstrip in large part because of the quality of the image. The monetization model was a nice bonus, but I made the decision because of quality and flexibility. Now of course, the image quality isn't close to having a quicktime or even .wmv video progressively download from your site, but when you look at comparable products, Revver is an excellent choice.

While image quality is a great part of revver now, it's not a sustainable competitive advantage - Google can improve Youtube's flash video quality overnight. So what is revver doing right that they can keep doing right regardless of what Youtube does?

BE EVERYWHERE.

Revver just launched their redesigned servicec (Revver One), and with it they are launching several key features to make them a platform not for social networking, but for broad distribution on the web - "along the way" distribution.

One is the widget that we modified for Wallstrip... I blogged about it on Monday. Basically this allows you to create your own channel and syndicate it around the web. We are using it for one program, but you could add a whole lineup to your widget, just like a television channel. Youtube was the first to this feature (revolutionary, I called it at that time) but now Revver does it better. Youtube's embeddable playlist is not a widget, it's a full size player. And it's very clunky. Revver's ui is extremely elegant.

The second thing I love is that they are solidly deferential when it comes to branding. You'll notice that the Revver video at Wallstrip.com is skinned with our logo, not Revver's. Within a couple of months, the default player will have no logo on it. They're also actively promoting their API as a tool for you to create your own sharing site using Revver's background technology. So if you wanted to create a site like, say, sillyfaces.com, you could build it essentially out of the box from Revver, without anyone knowing it was a Revver site. Their developers will even help you do it.

Pretty cool.

Revver appeals to me the same way that Final Cut Pro, or the first Mini DV cameras did. It empowers the creative producer to distribute high quality work with almost no resources. That's a disruptive technology in my book.

technorati tags: usergenerated, video, platform, syndication, youtube, google, revver, sharing

Confessions of a bandwidth junkie

2006-10-11T17:33:00.000-04:00

My friend and partner Howard calls Adobe and Akamai the big winners in the Gootube deal.

He's smart. He's thinking about the oil companies when everyone else is thinking about the automakers. Adobe makes flash, which makes YouTube work. Akamai is the big cheese content management company - they serve up all that rich media we love to watch.

His post made me think... Enron had it right. Way back in the bubble days, they took their trading business and applied it to bandwidth. The concept is pretty simple - if you're not using your bandwidth, and I need it, I can use yours. Enron provides the forum for the deal and the vehicle for the exchange of bandwidth.

I wonder what that company is doing now? If it's still around, it's definitely not owned by the big E. Nothing is.

The concept makes sense - particularly because almost everything revolutionary coming out of the web space right now requires a lot of bandwidth.

A great idea in the midst of the Gootube debate

2006-10-11T15:56:00.000-04:00

Like him or hate him, Mark Cuban thinks about the web 2.0 space, and he shares what he thinks with all of us.

There aren't many people as successful as the Blog Maverick who do that on a regular basis. And if you think he hasn't made an important contribution to the ongoing conversation, you're crazy.

I, for one, like him. But I don't always agree with him. On Gootube, I'm mixed - I disagree that it's doomed to failure. What makes youtube work is syndication, not copyrighted material. When it comes to the combination of free bandwidth and cutting edge syndication - they have been second to none. Also, of course, "it's the community, stupid."

Where I do agree with Cuban is that the copyright problems are real. The DCMA problems are real too, and scary for all of us.

And, in the midst of one of his coypright rants, he popped out this gem of an idea:

Forget Youtube, a site could come along EverythingTube.com. Make it primarily for sharing independent artists music videos and user generated video content, a 'bigger, better Youtube' if you will. Just offer an encoder that mixes mp3 audio with any video or any series of pictures Then create profiles like Beatleswhitealbum and upload the white album, etc, etc. If Youtube can do what its doing, why not EverythingTube?

This is not a copyright problem, it's a brilliant idea? Someone needs to create a sharing site not with an encoder that mixes mp3s and flash video, but a player that plays them simulateously. Then allow me to upload my video resources and create my own music videos and share them with friends.

Secure an ascap/bmi license and make the videos only viewable in the site, and through the site's syndication mechanisms (you can't OWN the video you create, but you can sure as hell SHARE and EMBED the video you create!) and you've got a great mash-up that allows people to be creative without eroding anyone's copyright.

Words to live by

2006-10-08T22:30:00.000-04:00

Will Video For Food has a good post with an even better quote:

“Campaigns that Seek Out Consumers will Fail. Campaigns that Consumers Seek Out Will Succeed.”

GooTube

2006-10-07T10:04:00.000-04:00

About a month before the recent round of speculation on YouTube's copyright problems, I posted that YouTube has a shut-off valve.

Anytime a big media conglomerate (like Universal, for example) is ready, they can kill YouTube off with a couple of burly lawsuits.

Well, that dynamic certainly changes if Google buys Youtube. If the video sharing site is sued by big media, that's David and Goliath. But if Google is sued by big media, that's Goliath vs. Goliath... and in a battle like that is not about ownership or content creation or opensource values, it's about money.

But Google's forced entry into this debate brings up another interesting question - Does Google have a shut-off valve?

The answer is no, of course. You can't just shut off what Google has. It's too big and powerful. But there's no doubt that they have copyright problems.

The kind of problems that turn a "don't-be-evil" information liberator into a backdoor censor.

"Your work is not valuable enough to be protected" is a rather evil position to take. But the legal standard for copyright forces Google to argue exactly that.

These problems are going to get worse as the information Google feeds you becomes a primary source. Right now they are beginning to duke it out with the book publishing industry over book search.

In contrast to Microsoft's strategy, Google is involuntarily crawling books for their booksearch and forcing publishers to opt out, basically telling the industry to F- off or get on board.

Their strategy could work, or it could not. But nobody could say there isn't some risk involved. So, no shut off valve, but maybe a degenerative disease?

What Google has in their back pocket, of course, is that they have totally changed the way we interact with the web. And that they've become a verb... without marketing themselves like a verb (Yahoooo!!!!). "Coke" became a synonym for "soda." When that company's namesake ingredient became illegal, I'm sure a lot of folks speculated that Coca-Cola was on its way out the door.

Just some food for thought. There's a lot of speculation in the air, and it seemed like an appropriate time to reflect a bit.

All reflection aside, though, the thought of the two biggest copyright disruptors merging must make the courts happy - so here's to judicial expedience.

The power of conflict

2006-10-04T09:23:00.000-04:00

A culture of dissent is critical to making good group decisions.

That's the premise of an interesting take on the HP board debacle I read in the New Yorker this morning.

Lost in the hue and cry over the Chairwoman's unquestionably lame spy games, the author argued, is the fact that the leaks are terrible for HP because they encourage unaminity on the board... Which leads to bad decisions.

The article goes on to say that task conflict in a group setting is often misinterpreted as a difference in character, or relationship conflict.

Get a group together that has task conflict but no relationship conflict, and you get good decisions and a great work environment. Conflict in relationships and tasks means good decisions coming out of a room full of people who hate each other, and no conflict means mediocre decisionmaking.

I agree with this premise whole heartedly. The key ingredient in the task-only conflict recipe is trust. If you trust your colleagues, you are free to disagree, to say something stupid, to get batted down.

In my own business, my partner Jeff and I argue all the time about decisions, and keep a good relationship. I think it makes our choices better.

I have other working relationships where trust facilitates a culture of dissent (my marriage, for one), but I also have situations where dissent and hurt feelings are too intertwined.

My personality makes me naturally conflict averse and, as a result, I'm likely to sacrifice the task conflict to avoid the relationship conflict, and I know that decisionmaking suffers when I do that.

It's one of my biggest challenges as a manager and a person- to get better at this without changing who I am. I work on it a lot. But still I find that the working relationships that add the most value to my life are the ones where I can say what I think without worrying about them taking it personally.

technorati tags: conflict, argue, business, relationship, management, life

Linear vs. Non-linear follow up

2006-10-02T00:19:00.000-04:00

I've had a few private emails from people trying to figure out what exactly I mean by a non-linear web video experience.

Here's a nice example:

Korsakow is a software that allows you to make non-linear narrative films online. The finished product is interactive - you set boundaries for the content based on your interests and preferences as you watch, and the program builds on your feedback to generate a film tailored to you from a database of clips. If the film strays from your interest, you can correct it.

Pretty cool.

Video can be more than VHS tapes

2006-09-28T22:56:00.000-04:00

I'm 29. But I've been producing, shooting and editing video for a long time.

17 years to be exact. Back then it was Super VHS, 3/4 inch or Beta. Editing was tape to tape (still is for most local daily news) - "linear" it's called. The only computer I used was a Video Toaster- a piece of crapiness put out by Amiga that really did nothing to change the mechanics of the process.

When I hear people speculating about whether online video will ever be what television is, I think about the tools I first used to make video. I remember taking apart a vcr with the tape inside it to watch how it worked.

I think about that time because that's exactly where we are with online video. Linear.

Think about your wmv, quicktime file or even your flash movie. The progress bar is a straight line. You can go forward, you can go back, but that's it. It's an unbreakable block of information that can only be decifered one way.

Digital video isn't linear, it's spacial, just like text or code.

If I read an article or a post, I can do anything I want to it. I can highlight any snippet I want and copy it to my own publishing space. I can aggregate headlines, or text or keywords into any form I want.

That's exactly how my NLE works (Non-linear editing system - I use Final Cut Pro). I load up my video onto hard drives, the video is tagged temporally with time code, and I can instantly grab any piece of any file I upload, copy it and republish it in whatever mutated form I want in a new linear form.

Part of what the internet does so well is break up what is very big into little flexible chunks so you can cater them to your specific needs. As the uses for those chunks become clear, you can automate the process so the aggregation and search tools begin to predict your needs before you experience them.

Video data can be that kind of content. The way we comprehend visual and auditory information and entertainment can fundamentally change from linear and fixed to dynamic and spacial.

Admittedly, there are some structural differences between the video I put in my NLE and the video you watch online that are barriers to what I'm describing (I won't bore you with them, but if you want to appear video savvy, you can refer to your online video as long GOP technology). But it won't be hard to overcome them.

I think it will happen soon enough. Motionbox is already taking a big step forward - their player allows you to easily highlight any segment of a video clip and forward just that segment on to others or embed it on your own site.

In my mind, wondering if internet video can ever be like TV is kind of like wondering if Google can ever be like the Phone Book.

We're Havin' A Party

2006-09-26T10:22:00.000-04:00

Join us this Friday night if you can...

What I'd like to see from MeeVee

2006-09-22T18:25:00.000-04:00

Reel Pop has an interesting review of the online, interactive tv guide MeeVee.

I agree with Steve that, as a user, the overall value of the site is somewhat questionable.

But his review made me think - in the internet entertainment space I'd really like to see a product that aggregates RSS feeds from video content into a searchable, browsable, taggable and commentable guide like MeeVee.

Of course all the closed social networks have this, but I'd love to see one that crawls for xml files so you can discover new material.

All part of bringing the content to the user where they're already spending time on the net.

Anyone know of a product like that?

Friday afternoon break

2006-09-22T17:03:00.000-04:00

Because I'm tired of seeing that old Mark Cuban post on my front page...

but I'm totally swamped with auditions for the new daily web show we're developing,

here's an exclusive photo of the stash Willie Nelson was busted with from Steve Bloom who blogs at Blooming Ideas.

Here's the story. Steve is editor-at-large at High Times magazine and writes a great blog. If you are a Mets fan, you MUST read him.

here are a couple of videos that were produced by actors who came in to audition for us. Not related to our show, but very funny stuff.

Enjoy!

Mark Cuban reads my blog

2006-09-18T07:31:00.000-04:00

Mark has an excellent post today about the vulnerability of YouTube. His argument is essentially that YouTube has a shut-off valve, which I posted in July.

Here's a taste:

The thing is the shock that until Universal Music Group apparently started to put the pressure on them, no one had sued them. Considering the RIAA will sue your grandma or a 12 year old at the drop of a hat, the fact that Youtube is building a traffic juggernaut around copyrighted audio and video without being sued is like.... well Napster at the beginning as the labels were trying to figure out what it meant to them. With the MGM vs Grokster ruling, its just a question of when Youtube will be hit with a charge of inducing millions of people to break copyright laws , not if...

...And its not just copyright lawsuits that will end up severely impacting Youtube's business, its that their business is too easy for the people who own the copyrights to copy.

Well, it's stating the obvious to say that a lot more people read Mark than read me. And it's good that this argument is getting some real play.

I wish he had given me some link love, and he probably would have... if he actually read my blog.

Update: Techcrunch is reporting that Warner Music has reached a deal with YouTube that will allow user generated vids to use music owned by Warner. There are plenty of restrictions and caveats, but this is a big deal. And it suggests that Cuban's assertion may be a little premature. YouTube has plenty left in the tank - nobody was making deals like this with Napster.

On the other hand, doesn't it bolster Universal's impending suit against YouTube, that the video sharing company is entering into this type of agreement with Warner? I dunno. One thing I do know, though, is that the Warner deal says they can pull the rights at any time. And that means that YouTube still has a shut-off valve.

Apple's New Killer App

2006-09-15T16:52:00.000-04:00

Ok, so the general feeling around the blogosphere following the Apple announcement could be described as... depression, anxiety, disappointment, confusion and unease.

It's almost as if we're all saying, "you're the one who got us here, Steve. You salvaged the legal music download business, you busted out the video iPod without changing the price. You proved to us that people would watch a little screen. Now we're standing here holding our iPods and we're not sure where to go next. Show us the way, Steve, just like Bill used to do."

And then he comes out with... a new version of iTunes?? $9.99 for a drm'ed movie download? And the set top box so, what, I can watch my favorite shows on my TV at $1.99 an episode? I can watch them for free on my TV now.

But for those worried about Apple, don't be. I've been hearing concerns about flattening iPod sales for months now. It seems like everyone's forgotten that, for Apple, it's not about the iPod anymore. Apple already introduced their next killer app - and they did it almost a year ago.

Bootcamp. You can run Windows on a Mac now. PC users don't have to sacrifice their operating system to buy the prettiest, slickest hottest computers on the market. And if they like OSX, they can ease into it.

Apple's new product is their original product. Hardware. Now you can argue that an Apple's more affordable than a Dell. Last year at this time, that debate would be pointless - Apples and Oranges (or Windows, as the case may be).

In the third quarter, Apple reported a 12% increase year-to-year in Mac sales. PC users are moving to the Mac, while staying PC users. And that trend is only beginning. It seems like every month another blogger I read buys a Mac. Come to think of it, I don't know a person who's bought a computer in the past few months who hasn't at least considered a Mac.

Those guys over there a pretty smart. In the past year, they revolutionized the video download business and overnight they've become a major player in the PC hardware biz.

Don't look at their iPod sales, look at their hardware sales. I have a feeling it's a damned good time to own Apple's stock.

Me without my blanket

2006-09-15T13:37:00.000-04:00

Ughh. Woke up this morning to find my blog was down (thanks to Minic over at The Blogging Times for pointing it out to me).

Odd, I haven't posted in a couple of days, but suddenly not being able to access my site (or let anyone else see it) left me in a state of panic.

So glad it's finally back up. I didn't realize that QB7 had become such a security blanket for me.

I started making a list of things to post about. On paper. Psychologically it was, "the internet's unreliable... must revert to paper..."

The reality, though, is that being a blogspot blog has gotten a little tiresome for me. It's a great service (even though it gets a lot of playa hate), but I'm moving to http://queensboundseven.com soon, and probably migrating to wordpress too.

Mr. Angry's revenge (or why I still like my idea)

2006-09-13T11:02:00.000-04:00

Mr. Angry had a good response to my YouTube monetization post, and I wrote a long comment response. So long, in fact, that I decided to delete my comment and turn it into a post.

Here's what the angry man wrote:

I think you're glossing over the viewer experience a little. Pre-roll ads would kill the popularity of YouTube (or any video service). I think YT might actually be close to a successful model - featured commercial videos.

Your idea generally could work well but I think the type of inserted advertising is critical. Maybe a return to the old "brought to you by" days is in order - companies could buy popular personalities to shill for them. I know I'd sell out for about a buck fifty.

My thoughts on pre-roll ads... depends how they're done.

If there's a separate ad that streams through, and then you have to wait for the content to load, that's BS.

But with advertisers actually bidding on content, you could just embed the pre-roll in the video.

Also, as I mentioned in my post on the AP/AOL poll, I don't think the numbers right now support the general panic about viewer experience. When you're talking widespread adoption, people generally feel that advertising is a fair trade for good content.

And the bidding aspect of my plan also serves as natural selection - so you don't get ads on really bad or stupid content. If it has an ad, you know it's going to appeal to at least some people.

My personal favorite advertising method is embedded logos, which we're all used to seeing on TV. But exactly what kind of advertising should be sold is not the point of my post, nor is it what we should be thinking about.

The bottom line is that the advertising that works is the kind that's going to sell the most of whatever's being advertised. That factors in user experience, brand exposure, technology, everything.

So I'm not so focused on finding the right way to advertise - I'm focused on finding the right way to place advertising.

More on Youtube - My idea for monetizing it.

2006-09-11T21:33:00.000-04:00

Since my last post, I've been thinking about what would work as an advertising model for YouTube.

Clearly it's not Paris Hilton saying "YouTube is the hottest place on the web, and that's where I want to be. It's Hot! (tm)"

I told you I liked Charlie's drop down menu brand embedding idea. The problem with that, however, is the same problem that mySpace has with ad networks. Companies simply are not willing to give away control of their brand like that.

I just hopped over to YouTube, and the first featured video is entitled "The Vomit Show." It's rudamentary animation of a guy with a chainsaw massacaring his friend, then asking him for forgiveness. My favorite quote, "you're the best friend a murderer could have."

Yes, I can just imagine those execs at Nike, Disney, Apple, etc. resting easy knowing that "The Vomit Show" is embedded with their logo.

Never going to happen.
A workable model for monetizing user generated content MUST give advertisers control over their brands.

The other stumbling block is the very same quality that makes user gen content so attractive to advertisers - the viral nature of the videos.

The reality is that most videos get about 1000 views, not a million views like the stars. And unlike other forms of entertainment, past stardom is not necessarily indicative of future success. Sure, LisaNova is going to get a ton of views on her next video, but that's the exception, not the rule.

Advertising on a viral video is a gamble. Once a video has reached 100,000 views, will it vault to a million? Will it peter out? Who wants to advertise on a video that's already reached a million views and has saturated the market in unbranded form? It's like the stock market.

My solution to both these problems is simple. Build an ad market into YouTube - half eBay and half Adsense.

When a user uploads a video, they can choose whether to make it available for advertising. They can offer embedding, pre-roll, or other advertising opportunities, and can set minimum prices, just like an auction. Then advertisers can bid for those rights (or even a buy now feature?).

Most advertisers will probably gamble, trying to find that breakout hit just before it skyrockets - a video reaches 100,000 views, then it gets really hot on the market. I imagine Lisa Nova announcing her new video and accepting bids before it premieres. And just like adsense, some advertisers with small budgets can appeal to a niche market by finding the right niche video that 1000 people will see.

I remember a few months ago, Howard found a great video of a golf performer he wanted to use as advertising for GolfNow, his company that sells last minute tee times. With the market in place, he could have bid on the rights to the video, gotten it branded golf now, and started using it - a five minute process.

I like this concept because it exploits what's really exciting about user generated content - the big hit, the undiscovered gem, without diluting the advertiser's brand.

You could also implement this idea as a third party vendor - users on popular video sharing sites could tag their videos signaling their interest, and the transactions could occur outside the community. The user would just replace the unbranded video with the branded one. This would be much less elegant, and maybe impractical, but it's possible.

That's my take - I'm still on the hunt for more good ideas...

The YouTube Pre-roll conversation

2006-09-09T11:31:00.000-04:00

Fred started this conversation with his post on monetizing YouTube. The point of Fred's post was not to talk about pre-rolls, but to explore the value of YouTube and (more interesting to me) to put a dollar figure to being a content producer in the YouTube world.

But that's where the conversation has gone, so...

This post by Charlie is one of the best ideas I've heard for monetizing YouTube:

with the wiffleball videos, the user could be given a little editor that allows him to stick a logo and some text right on the corner of the screen... they select from a menu of choices... they might pick Nike or Adidas or Gatorade or something.

He also talks about having a brand solicit videos for their ads. This is being done now, and it's a good idea.

The reality is that 30 second ads, at least the good ones, are just creative short films. And when you look at most videos that go viral, they're also just creative short films... most have one "beat" and reference our culture in a way that is entertaining and allows the audience to immediately identify with the video.

So the format is the same - whether it's Budweiser Clydesdales bowing to the NY skyline after 9/11 or Musicians playing with treadmills on youtube. And a smart brand will be looking to use videos the way they use ads, not advertise on the ads. That's a bit redundant.

In all this, it's important to remember that the strong anti-ad sentiment in both the video blogging and online video communities is not a very good representation of how users in general feel. Most people would rather get good content and understand that advertising is a trade off.

What "works" as an eventual model is what turns viewers into customers the best. The best user experience is just not to have any sponsorship at all, so any ad model is going to have a negative impact on user experience.

The question for the folks with the dollars is, "which model gets my message across most effectively, and in a way that doesn't destroy user experience to the extent that people won't watch it."

Remember, the 23 minute half hour, the "hook", the sitcom, the procedural drama - these are not conventions built around the best way to tell a story. The first concern is always, "what's the best way to advertise". Our television conventions come from "what's the best way to tell a story given that we're advertising this way."

Short is soooo much better than long

2006-09-06T19:17:00.000-04:00

That's the not very shocking conclusion of a new AOL/AP online video poll released yesterday.

Reading the results, here's what caught my eye:

79% of respondents who have downloaded or watched a video clip connect via broadband. No surprise, but it's important to remember that our audience is almost exclusively broadband. A lot of internet polling data is still heavily skewed by dial-up users. I usually ignore the overall numbers and focus only on the broadband results when I can.

Mean hours weekly spent on the internet was 11.1. Mean hours spent watching tv was 13.9. Those numbers are surprisingly close together for a poll in which all adult age groups are represented. Really surprising!

69% of those who watch video online find content contextually (stumble on them as they browse), 61% find them through sharing (sent by friends), and 58% through aggregation - a list of sites they regularly visit. To me, this is the most important finding in the study. It suggests that "pass along" distribution (sharing) and "along the way" distribution (syndication of video in places where your audience is already spending time on the internet), two things I blog about probably more than anything else, are the most popular ways people find content to consume. Wow, that's a great finding for me. I can feel my pagerank rising... oddly enough - while they like to get their video from friends, they don't like to share. Only 1% listed "ability to share" as a reason they like video online.

People don't watch stuff they have to pay for - 93% no, 7% yes. They don't care about commercials - not A SINGLE respondant selected "no commercials" as something they like about online video. Interesting from a business model perspective, and in line with what a lot of smart folks have been saying.

What is liked about online video? Convenience and Accessibility. Period. Only 8% went for entertainment value (of course that's probably because there's not much entertaining stuff online). Of course we all know why this is - people are watching repurposed stuff online - video from major television and movie content providers. They watch it because they missed it on TV, or it's more convenient. When this number shifts, then online video has become a medium.

What people don't like about online video is interesting too. Video quality, a/v issues, and download time. That's what bothered them - not screen size, watching alone, content appropriateness... even though these are things that are often regarded as major hurdles to widespread adoption. Funny that YouTube's quality is soooo crappy, but they still have so many views. My guess is that in a study skewed younger, quality would matter less.

A wonk I am not, but I think those findings are a lot more interesting than the headline.

My mail in a feed

2006-09-06T07:22:00.000-04:00

ooooh, this is a good idea:

Social Mail

It's a service that turns an email address into a feed. Simple and smart.

I signed up and created a new address, then promptly routed all my email newsletters to that address. Now I get no newsletters in my inbox, but I have a feed to keep track of them.

I created another address just for entertainment/BrightRED bulletins (my CNET newstracker, my entertainment news updates, the google flags I have set up, etc) - now I get one feed where I can keep track of all my personalized business news. And I can share this feed with my partner, and my customized news becomes my company's customized news... you know, syndication!

If I have a group project, I can create an address for that project, and my team can send all project related emails to one address, and everyone on the team can read them. If someone joins the team half way through, I give them the feed and they have instant archive access to every email that's been sent to the group.

There. I just gave you three great reasons why I love this service. And, of course, more reasons why I love RSS in general.

It's a good day

2006-09-05T12:47:00.000-04:00

FSU beat the 'Canes last night 13-10, and

Season 4 just started on-demand.

Are you ready for some football???

2006-09-04T13:59:00.000-04:00

When you attend a good little film school nestled in a mediocre BIG southern university, you sort of develop some habits. So, you'll have to indulge me...

Tonight... 8pm... BEAT THE 'CANES!!!

How far we've come... or not

2006-09-03T16:24:00.000-04:00

I was dining with a photographer friend on Friday, and he was reminiscing about shooting digital photos for Christie's Auction catologue back in 1996.

Now I used to work for a photo company, and we weren't able to go fully digital until 2003, so 1996 is pretty amazing, especially for fine photography.

They used a 4x5 camera made by Leaf with a three exposure process to create each image! The camera had a motorized filter wheel that rotated when you triggered the camera, allowing the chip to use all its pixels for first red, then green and blue. You could watch on the monitor as each layer of color was added to the photo (which probably would make a pretty cool video art project).

(this photo taken with the Leaf camera)

While the three exposure process is obviously not very practical (try taking three successive pictures of your mother-in-law without her moving a millimeter), it's actually superior to the way digital photos are taken now. Digital cameras use a single chip, dividing up the pixels on its surface so that some read the red, some green, and some blue. How many are allocated to each color is dependant on the manufacturer's "secret recipe", and some cameras extrapolate (fake) additional pixels for one color or another.

Color film combines three separate layers of photosensitive celluloid, and good quality video cameras use three CCD chips (that's why the tones are so much richer with a three chip camera than with a one chip camera).

So while we've come a long way from three different exposures, digital photography still has a way to go. Apparently, there is a chip out there (which has been around forever) that reads light like a piece of color film, with sensors at different depths that read different colors. Look for the first company to integrate that technology or a 3 CCD technology into their camera to start winning the high end digital battle.

technorati tags: camera, leaf, digital, film, process, RGB

Smart People

2006-09-01T14:17:00.000-04:00

Man, I like agreeing with smart people.

Fred came up with a dead on post yesterday that sums up where I think the successful recipe for distribution of web video will be found:

People don't want to link to media like audio and video (and photos), they want to run it right there on their own pages. They want to be the TV station, the radio station, the newspaper.

"Along the way" distribution that reaches the user where they already are on the web,

and "pass along" distribution that empowers your user to become the distributor.

YouTube's embeddable playlist player is a great example of this - it takes you a step beyond playing a video "right there" on your own page, and allows you to embed an episodic series on your page... like Hugh McLeod's postcards are embedded on my sidebar.

But that player has problems:

It's exclusively for YouTube and, like Fred says in his post, we need to be looking at solutions that work everywhere

It's too clunky - it's not elegant, it's very Youtube-ish, and it's not customizable...

Brightcove's player is similar to YouTube's, except the video looks much better. But Brightcove's player costs money to use - their business model is antiquated before it even launches. And just like YouTube, you're required to do everything from inside their walled garden.

Personally, I want to see a widget player that is just a viewing window. You can play the most recent episode, or click a dropdown menu to select other episodes.

And I want it to use RSS as the underlying technology (the YouTube player does use RSS, but not in a way that helps me - you still have to encode and add the media through Youtube).

The folks over at Feedburner tell me they are coming out with a widget that can do this in short order. I'm psyched... Feedburner is a great company, and if anyone can do this right with RSS, they can.

Plus, Fred is an investor in Feedburner... and if no one else gets it, he gets it.

David Brent to succeed Bill Gates?

2006-08-27T16:47:00.000-04:00

I missed this a few days back, but discovered it while catching up on my Smays.

Microsoft UK has hired Ricky Gervais and Stephan Merchant of Office fame (the original, of course) to do some faux training videos.

Normally I think online video should be 5 minutes or less - but I'll watch all thirty seven minutes of Ricky - just goes to show you that sometimes, it just comes down to good content.

As a matter of fact, since you're already here, why don't you watch them with me:

Everything I know about web 2.0 I learned at the strip club

2006-08-26T18:35:00.000-04:00

I have a good friend who's an adult club owner.

A really smart adult club owner.

He runs the most successful club in the Southeast. It's been world famous for about 30 years.

He's been called the father of the lap dance.

He does it all in a 2500 sq ft. building in Tampa, FL.

Why is he so successful? - because he knows when to do something and when not to do something.

What he does is create an atmosphere.

He brings in the most beatiful women, and he makes sure they want to stay and work there. (if you read the rest of the post you'll find out how).

He makes sure the club is clean, friendly and comfortable - no smoking, no booze (which means no fights), security guards who are big but not mean.

He makes sure no laws are broken - no prostituion, no underage dancers, no drugs.

There are no back rooms, so no one has unrealistic expectations.

What he doesn't do is meddle.

He doesn't do the hiring and firing - he has all women managers to do that.

He doesn't make the dancers dress a certain way or even charge a set rate for their dances.

He doesn't schedule the dancers - they come whenever they want so they can work around their other obligations (80% of dancers are single mothers and many are in school).

The dancers aren't his employees, he's their landlord. They rent space to ply their trade (the rent is one cent a year.)

And he doesn't take a cut of the dancers' earnings or require them to pay a house fee.

His product is traffic - and it generates 2-3 million per year. 2500 square feet.

He's a pretty smart guy.

It seems that web retailers are finally beginning to understand the simple notion that their traffic is worth a lot.

Monetizing user experience. Monetizing traffic. Web 2.0 is sooooo 1976.

oops! I got through this whole post without giving you a sexy strip club pic. Here you go...

A big idea from CBS

2006-08-25T08:05:00.000-04:00

CBS just announced that they'll be offering free content downloads for your cell phone from billboards:

Because Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology, users must stand within 36 feet of the billboard to access the video clips with their Bluetooth-enabled devices. The video clips are free. They are delivered over the wireless connection directly to the Bluetooth-enabled device without the need to use the mobile Internet, so consumers won't be charged by their carrier for data usage.

I have a love/hate relationship with Bluetooth - it's really cool, but it doesn't work as well as advertised. With that caveat, I think this is a really good idea.

It connects online content with the offline world.

It encourages widespread adoption of mobile video by letting users experience it for free.

And it gives a reasonable answer to the question I'm always asking, "why would I want to download on my mobile phone when I can stream content?"

That answer is geography. Allowing me to grab content at the precise moment I want it is a really good idea.

Go with me for a minute - scale the idea, and what do you have? People going about their day. When they get near the restaurant, they can download the menu and check it out. When they pass a movie theater, they can see a trailer. Drive past a house for sale? You can download the sales sheet and inspection info.

It's contextual ads for the real world... or at least it could be.

From the mouth of the Scobleizer

2006-08-22T21:14:00.000-04:00

... if a Scobleizer has a mouth...

I’ll tell you what executives from big companies (like Kraft, Procter and Gamble, GM, and others) who were at MSN’s OWN ADVERTISING CONFERENCE told me. An influencer is worth THOUSANDS of times more than a non-influencer.

Advertisers are looking for influential content producers because they get better results just by placing their ads next to the content.

So the advertiser is saying, "yeah, I know Scoble. We hang. He told me he really digs my line of shoes, so you should check them out."

And people are checking out the line of shoes.

Now if instead it was Scoble saying, "Dude, check out these shoes. I picked them out
because I dig them. Here's why..."

The number of people who are checking out those shoes and buying those shoes is going to explode.

Affiliate marketing programs typically pay btw 10% and 30% commission on a sale. Some pay up to 70%. That makes sense - it's a very valuable service that you're providing.

You don't have to be a product blogger, you need a sphere of influence.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Scoble's taste in clothes sucks - don't buy the shoes he recommends.

Pimpin' aint easy (or why I like affiliate marketing)

2006-08-20T22:04:00.000-04:00

I'm going to spend a few posts figuring out the angles with affiliate marketing this week...

In recent months, this model is moving from the spambots and pyramid schemers to the content providers - mostly because of Amazon (big surprise).

It's not sexy - I couldn't even find a sexy photo that fits...

But it's got a LOT of merit when you think about ways to monetize content in the web 2.0 marketplace.

Think about it...

Publisher delivers the audience so:

Publisher decides what to pimp.

Publisher knows his brand, so

Publisher decides how to pimp it.

Publisher knows how to communicate with his audience and community so:

His pimping is more valuable ($$$) than regular advertising.

Publisher is busy generating content that draws an audience, so:

Set up is quick, easy and automated - and so are metrics.

Monetizing the trust my audience places in my opinion without degrading that trust or interfering with my content - that's what affiliate marketing can do.

One more "G" could change the world

2006-08-14T07:26:00.000-04:00

The other day, Sprint announced their plans to move forward with a 4G wi-max network to be launched in 2007.

This is a big deal for the content delivery market.

I finally got a 3G phone last week - and already it has absolutely revolutionized my workflow.

It's the speed. Speed makes the web features practical, and the email virtually identical to reading on my desktop email client. And the speed of the content delivery! Streaming and on demand instantaneous programming.

People say that appointment television is dead. They're wrong. It's just moving to your cell phone.

The 4G network will take all this to the next level - to the level your desktop is at right now, or faster.

That means seamless flow of video and audio files from the web to your cell phone to your computer to your tv - with no downloading.

Part of what makes flickr and YouTube work is that you don't have to deal with the media - slap it on your site, view it in an email, put it in your favorites and watch it over and over... it doesn't fill up your ipod or collect dust on your hard drive.

4G is the tipping point where the web experience, and even the computing experience, will become fundamentally different.

Any web service that isn't developing natively mobile components is on shaky ground.

Any company that is relying on their website to be their web presence will be left in the dust.

"Where on Earth have you been?" and other important questions

2006-08-11T09:02:00.000-04:00

I've been very light on the posting this week because I've been busy as hell, and I haven't had a ton to talk about. Here's what I've been working on:

"Psychic" and "reality" in the same sentence: I'm in pre-production for a 5 minute web reality show that we're producing for Beliefnet.com. Psychic Makeover is like a home design show, but instead of painting the walls or selling your couch, our psychic fixes your home's psychic energy. We're shooting the pilot next week.

New media is fun, but old media pays so damned good! Jeff and I are developing a reality show that has a lot of great ingredients. We met with the subject of the show last week and secured access - now we're meeting with production companies and trying to work out a development deal to move forward. The response has been really good, and I think this project has legs... unlike our most recent old media project - a reality show w/ Burt Reynolds that tanked.

Sundancing: We're working with our frequent client and partner Kontent|Real on a pitch for the Sundance Channel. KR has been asked to pitch a really cool show about green design, and they've asked us to develop an agressive web presence campaign to integrate into their presentation. We're doing a viral video, some web mock ups and some social networking stuff for the pitch. If the show gets picked up, it'll mean a really nice campaign for us.

Mine's cooler than yours: My partner Jeff just up and bought a MacBook Pro this week, and I developed a severe case of gadget envy. So I responded the only way I know how - by buying a kick ass phone.

I bought a Treo 700p and switched from my Nextel service to Sprint. I LOVE the phone. Email functionality is something I sorely needed for my work (the real reason I bought the phone), and the mobile tv features are just amazing. Having it for just one day has made my workflow so much more satisfying - bluetooth synching is da' bomb. I just like using the thing.

And it's so small, even compared to the 600, that I barely notice any difference from my old phone. So text me, email me, or call me - I'll be communicating on my new portable device from now on...

Chris Fabricant goes home

2006-08-08T23:31:00.000-04:00

A couple of changes to announce from the Chris Fabricant Show, a great podcast that Jeff and I produce with Chris.

The show finally has a home to go along with our feed and iTunes presence.

A we've changed the format - instead of doing one 35 minute show a week, we're doing three 12-15 minute shows per week. Much more podcast friendly.

Check it out - and if you have a comment or want to bitch about the new format, email us.

Here's the skinny on the show:

The Chris Fabricant Show is devoted to the low down dirty truth of the criminal justice system -- outrageous, irreverent and fearless counter spin to mainstream media's grandstanding about crime and punishment.

Not just the headlines, The Chris Fabricant Show takes you inside the insane day-to-day of NYC criminal courts, straight from the trenches of the South Bronx, where Chris works as a public defender. We also feature weekly interviews with criminal justice insiders and commentators: cops and robbers, writers and reporters, junkies and district attorneys.

Chris, a graduate of GW Law, is the author of the notorious book, Busted! Drug War Survival Skills (illustrated by R. Crumb). Each week Chris is joined by producers Jeff Marks and Adam Elend. And Tonya Lester, our news correspondent, brings us the week's bad news -- from Duke Lacrosse to dumb ass kids doing bong hits on MySpace.com.

If you dig Nancy Grace, you'll loathe Chris Fabricant.

BrightRED angel investor Joe Redner knows how to debate

2006-08-07T23:18:00.000-04:00

But his opponent has the better arm...

OUT OF CONTROL VID!!!

Google reads queensboundseven

2006-08-07T08:39:00.000-04:00

When Google announced support for video ads on it's adsense network, I said it would enable contextual syndication of content. Looks like they're doing that now... very cool:

Viacom's MTV Networks has agreed to distribute clips from its cable networks over Google's advertising network, in a test of what could become a new economic model for Web-based video delivery, the companies said Sunday.

The project, a year in the making, marks the first time Google will distribute ad-supported videos across its AdSense network from a major programming provider. The ad-supported video distribution project will begin testing later in August.

Here's a 9 minute video I CAN get into...

2006-08-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a place where people are showing off really cool things.

And here's what we'll all be doing with our computers soon. Multi-point touch screen techology.

If you don't have the patience for the whole 9 minutes, at least watch until the photos come up - around 2:46. Frickin' amazing.

Can ad agencies be this stupid about viral video?

2006-08-05T00:17:00.000-04:00

I don't like to use this blog as an excuse to pick on lame ideas. But that's what I'm going to do right now.

As soon as I heard that agency.com's new viral video was 9 minutes long, I thought to myself, "only an ad agency would think someone would watch their video for 9 minutes.

Then I saw it.

Tell me, what is viral about this? It's a bad ten minute reality show.

And I mean that. It's a BAD show. It goes nowhere. There's a story, but there's no plot.

What did they do? What was their pitch? What conclusions did they come to about Subway's brand?

Other than "these agency.com kids are cooky!" what did you get about the agency from this video.

And, just like before I saw it, I'm left wondering who in the hell would want to pass along this 9 minute treasure to their friends.

There's nothing inherently viral about it.

Oh right, it's "insidery" - you get access to the brilliant creative process at agency.com. Great.

But access sells reality tv, not viral video. You're just demonstrating to your client that you have no idea how to make a video viral.

35,000 people have watched that video. I bet all of them are ad execs and new media people.

I think the unboomed one said it best...

hire better consultants, please... ones that are familiar with this space because they live in it not because they've researched living in it.

And, one more time for the cheap seats... How can an industry built on selling the 30 second ad come up with a 9 MINUTE VIRAL VIDEO!!!!

You don't watch tv for 10 minutes without breaking for commerials for god's sake! Who watches their computer screen for that long????

I hope that Subway takes Amanda's advice. But they probably won't.

technorati tags: newmedia, viral, adagency, agency.com,

Stream a little stream for me

2006-08-01T08:54:00.000-04:00

I wanted to mention the "Arrested Development" syndication deal that came down the pike a few days ago.

Fox did a multi-platform deal with HDNet getting HD rights (smart move there Mark), G4 getting cable rights and MSN getting streaming rights.

First off, it's significant that this, one of the first of its kind, happened with "Arrested" - a property with big niche appeal and longtail upside.

Important for content producers, the streaming deal included an upfront licensing fee and a 50% ad rev share for FOX. Insiders speculate that the deal wouldn't have gotten done without the upfront fee, which makes sense considering that traditional synd deals are all upfront.

It’s been hard as a general business practice to get some of these retailers to step up for guarantees,” says Peter Levinsohn, president of Fox Digital Media. His group represents 20th Century That wasn’t the case this time, he said; several retailers were willing to offer a guarantee/rev-share combo. Fox already had a relationship with MSN; in addition to Fox Sports as the MSN sports anchor, MSN Video streamed some episodes of FX‘s “Black and White.” “MSN really stepped up,” he adds.

But it’s not necessarily a template either. The licensing fee provides the guarantee but Fox is still taking a risk with the rev-share, which will depend on how well MSN delivers on the advertising side. It’s also not the start of a wave of online syndie deals for Fox. Says Levinsohn, “Part of it is going to be is how well does this work?

The deal with cable upstart G4 has significance for web producers too - G4 brands itself as "the most podcasted cable network" and has big web integration.

Also, AOL announced that they will begin a beta of aol video this week at aolvideo.com. This is ad supporting streaming of VOD from content partners like MTV and Warner Bros (remember that big deal AOL struck w/ Warner Bros to stream all their old shows?).

It's obvious to me that the big players on the web are making the deals that maximize their current audience - MSN and AOL are portals, so they go with ad supported streaming in one place, while Apple and Google do download deals.

Yahoo! is still recovering from their failed attempt at content creation, but I'm sure they'll fall into line behind AOL and MSN.

How this market evolves will ultimately be dictated by how the big content producers structure their deals. The MSN development shows that there are Ad Rev deals to be made with MSN right now (they're already doing a lot of those deals).

People who read this blog know that I'm big on syndication as a model for monetizing content, so I'm very interested in what portal sites do in this space.

While I'm at it...

2006-07-29T18:37:00.000-04:00

Here's the opening salvo of the RSS proposal I referred to in my last post:

Why Syndicate?

In the traditional media universe, your reach was limited by space: access to distribution channels (television stations, newspapers, etc) is finite and expensive. In the web media universe, the access barriers no longer exist. Yet they have been replaced by an even more daunting foe: noise. Forget 200 channels on your television set, think about the millions of sites, blogs, articles, interest groups, forums – all competing for your user’s attention.

To thrive in the marketplace of noise, your content needs to be portable. You need a presence not just on your site, but everywhere your target audience is spending time on the web. You need to create monetization opportunities that aren’t dependent on users visiting your site.

Syndication makes that possible. It unlocks your content and allow your users to consume, organize and share it any way they want. It brings your content to the user where they already are. It provides your advertisers with a better way to reach your most loyal users.

With syndication, you build an instant web presence. Without it, your content is a static object in a dynamic space.

Why your subscribers might not love you so much

2006-07-29T09:23:00.000-04:00

I've had my head buried in RSS feeds for the past two days because I've been developing a proposal to create an RSS strategy for one of our clients. So excuse me of this is a little arcane for my small, but high calibur audience:

I've often heard it said that RSS subscribers are your most loyal readers. Not only is this something I've heard from bloggers, but it's an assertion that is almost taken as a given in current RSS marketing analysis.

On it's face, it seems logical - a magazine subscriber is almost always a more loyal reader than someone who just picks the magazine up at the newsstand. Also, there's an element of ownership that comes with subscribing to content.

But I question this assumption when it comes to RSS, mostly because it's not how I operate.

If I want to check out your blog, I subscribe and keep you in my feed reader for about a week. If I like what you have to say, I keep you in there. And if your headlines and descriptions make me want to hear more from you, I click on the link and visit your site.

So the sites I visit are actually the ones I am most loyal to.

I've blogged before about how I'm not a browser - one of the reasons I love RSS. But I think there's a logical argument to be made that RSS is actually a better way to test out a blog regardless of how you like to consume your content.

Reading a post is not the best way to understand the value of a blog. You can't pick up a blog and flip through it. he blogger's style, perspective, posting frequency, originality and variety of subject matter are part of what that blog is, and the only way to get a sense of those things is to sample the blog over a period of time.

As feed metrics evolve, we need to be pretty vigilant about making sure that the assumptions made on paper jive with what we're seeing in the real world - it works out better for all of us in the long run. I don't think my anecdotal evidence or the logic behind it disproves anything. It just means I question that assumption, and wil continue to question it until legitimate evidence convinces me otherwise.

Why the Colbert Report is winning hearts and minds...

2006-07-27T15:37:00.000-04:00

Saw this yesterday on the tube. I laughed so hard I cramped.

This is not your momma's land deal...

2006-07-27T12:39:00.000-04:00

...but she still knows best.

A great quote from today's NY Post about NYC's offer to buy the West Side rail yards for $500 million, and to use the profits from the development to build a two billion dollar extension for the 7 train:

Asked about critics who said the sale price was too low, Kalikow responded, 'My mother always told me that if someone offers you $2 billion, the least you can do is have them over for coffee and cake.

Words to live by.

YouTube has a shut off valve...

2006-07-26T10:48:00.000-04:00

YouTube isn't dead. Not close... But it does have a shut-off valve.

Jeff mentioned this in his post about Amanda, but I want to draw it out a little...

$12 million for bandwidth? A joke. Come on. It's supply and demand. That's like saying mySpace is doomed because it uses too many servers.

Bandwidth is artificially scarce in this country. It won't be if demand exceeds supply.

Boring content? 100 million streams a day says you're wrong.

Look at television. Shows that are good but get no ratings get cancelled. Shows you think are stupid but get good ratings go on forever.

Bad press? Poor resolution? You're wasting our time.

Okay, now here comes the "but"...

Anyone who thinks the whole copyright thing is not a big deal is wrong.

Forget the press, it's about the litigation.

Right now, YouTube is arguing fair use, and that's fine. But when they start selling ads based on the content, that argument is out the window for them period.

And that means that huge multi-national corporations with millions of dollars dumped into tv and movie franchises will sit and wait.

And when they're ready, they'll say, "I want to buy Youtube for $200 million dollars."

And YouTube will say, "no, we want a billion."

And the media mogul will say, "okay, never mind." and slap the biggest lawsuit you've seen in your life on their asses.

And then YouTube will go away and the Multi National will start their own YouTube...

A shut-off valve. Anytime they want.

That's why Youtube isn't worth a billion dollars. And won't ever be worth more than the big content owners feel like paying for it.

Unless they find a solution to the copyright problem... a tech solution or a legal solution.

If they can do that, the rest is gravvvy.

technorati tags: youtube, videosharing, socialnetworking, jeffmarks, rupertmurdoch, arresteddevelopment, video, maintreammedia

Holy crap, it works! (Maybe...)

2006-07-24T16:35:00.000-04:00

This is spreading like wildfar around the blogosphere, so let's hope it's not all hype...

but Jeff Jarvis says that AdAge will report tomorrow spectacular results for advertisers from the tests ABC did with streaming their shows online with a single advertiser.

Apparently the research showed an 87% recall rate, as compared to an average 24% recall rate on TV.

With a single sponsor, I should hope you'd remember who they were. Still, good buzz is good buzz.

On Integrity...

2006-07-24T12:14:00.000-04:00

Noah Brier's got an interesting post today about the economics and ethics of accepting money to talk about products.

He's got some good points, but I pulled out the following quote because it's dead on and he says it very well:

Journalistic integrity is bullshit. Now that's not to say that journalists don't have individual integrity, but if you ask me it takes a lot more integrity to stand up and admit to your bias than pretend you don't have one. Reporting both sides of a story when the other side is all but non-existent isn't fair and accurate, on the contrary, the situation you're creating is one where two unequal sides are given equal attention.

Excellent. Well said.

On Integrity...

2006-07-24T12:12:00.000-04:00

Journalistic integrity is bullshit. Now that's not to say that journalists don't have individual integrity, but if you ask me it takes a lot more integrity to stand up and admit to your bias than pretend you don't have one. Reporting both sides of a story when the other side is all but non-existent isn't fair and accurate, on the contrary, the situation you're creating is one where two unequal sides are given equal attention.

Excellent. Well said.

Writers Strike... Back

2006-07-24T08:17:00.000-04:00

technorati tags: americasnexttopmodel, tyrabanks, writersstrike, writer, wga, union, hollywood, entertainment

I was in L.A. during the short Writers' strike in 2001. The television writers were striking because they wanted higher residuals from cable and Fox.

The Studios responded to the strike, and to the threatened SAG walkout, with a whole new kind of show... "Don't need writers, don't need actors, we can still make money."

You guessed it. Reality shows. The scabs of the television industry. And America LOVED it!

Well, I guess everything comes full circle, at least when it comes to getting paid. Here's what Cynopsis is reporting this morning:

The majority of writers on America's Next Top Model went out on strike Friday, just 8 weeks before the scheduled premiere on the CW. The reality show writers have signed to be represented by the WGA West writer's union, and plan to stay out on strike until the show signs a guild contract, recognizing the union's basic benefits and protections for its members. The CW network said they fully expect the issues to be resolved and the show to premiere on time. While numerous writers have signed up for representation by the WGA, the guild has yet to successfully get any signed guild contracts.

Fred gets some digg love and some SFGATE love too

2006-07-23T19:36:00.000-04:00

My favorite vc blogger Fred just popped up on my digg rss feed:

digg - Catch-2k6: Bubble2.0 or not?

The story is actually an SFGate posting that basically just restates Fred's post yesterday.

I liked it then, and I dug it today.

Brilliant!...

2006-07-21T08:09:00.001-04:00

technorati tags: music, mp3, drm, compatibiiity, jessicasimpson

This is a long time in coming, and I think it will be a huge success. I still buy cd's, and so do most of my friends, because of lame DRM's. This would eliminate the only barrier to an all digital system for me.

Besides, Fred over at A VC's got to be smiling!

Yahoo sells Jessica Simpson single sans DRM | CNET News.com:

Yahoo announced Wednesday that it is selling Jessica Simpson's latest single in MP3 format--in other words, with none of the usual copyright protection coding.

Because the song, a party-pop track called 'A Public Affair,' has no digital rights management (DRM) protection coded into it, it will be compatible with just about every type of digital music player, from the iPod to the iRiver, as well as with film- and music-editing programs that may not have been able to read DRM-encoded files.

The F*cking Short Version

2006-07-21T08:03:00.000-04:00

From the Entertainment Newswires:

2006-07-21T07:49:00.000-04:00

Hot off the presses:

Has Youtube.com become the internet version of Schwab's Drugstore? The defunct WB comedy pilot Nobody's Watching showed up on YouTube.com about a month ago, and has now been "discovered" by NBC. The network is expected to announce today that it has ordered six scripts and will create a series of viral videos to promote the show, says Variety. The videos could be seen on the internet as early as this fall. The pilot stars Paul Campbell and Tarran Killam as two fans of sitcom TV who end up in a reality show. The project is from NBC Universal TV Studio.

Discovery Communications has added a new component to its Discovery News service: daily video webcasts featuring breaking news on topics that pertain to Discovery's programming, such as the story about the discovery of a baby triceratops skull fossil in Montana. The news service will offer viewers quick informative stories about science, nature, health, travel, environmental issues and current affairs. Links to the webcasts can be found at www.discovery.com or directly at the Discovery News site at www.discoverychannelnews.com.

Trying something cool...

2006-07-20T13:05:00.000-04:00

Using YouTube for syndication:

It's High Time

2006-07-20T07:56:00.001-04:00

My partner Jeff Marks is back to blogging, and came out full throttle yesterday with a ton of good information.

Check out High Marks.

Mac Attack With Guns Blazing

2006-07-20T07:56:00.000-04:00

My completely uneducated opinion has been that Apple's profitability and (eventually) their revenue will explode because of the new intel chip, and the bootcamp software that allows pc users to buy a cool mac and still run their windows software seamlessly.

It's all anecdotal evidence, but I've read the blogs of scores of dedicated pc users who hungrily snapped up a MacBook Pro as soon as they became available. Smays and A VC, just to name two who are on my blogroll.

Well, so far so good. This is from CNET News.com:

Apple Computer's third-quarter revenue fell a little short of expectations, but profitability was far higher than expected and Mac sales increased at a healthy clip.

Interesting to me in this is that Apple compensated for the downturn from stagnating iPod sales with computer sales.

Gawker and Yahoo will syndicate no more...

2006-07-19T19:52:00.000-04:00

This is old news - I saved it as a draft until I had time to get to it. Gawker and Yahoo are ending their syndication deal: "We're letting our content partnership with Yahoo lapse. The bald truth is that the deal, which we announced in November, garnered way more attention than we expected, but less traffic. "

For those of us who are very interested in how syndication works online, this is significant. To me, the underlying syndication model has always been:

a) I provide you really interesting content,
b) you provide me space on your site and access to your users' eyeballs
c) my great content keeps your users happy and brings you more users,
d) the eyeballs you're giving me access to allow me to sell embedded advertising, increase my brand, or do what ever else I'm trying to do with my content. And money balances it all out (if access to your traffic is more than my content warrants, I pay you... and if my hot content is more valuable than your real estate, you pay me.)

This model will work well for video, and audio too. After all, audio and video has been syndicated successfully offline forever. But I think that text is more a medium to be bought and sold with links than with syndication. Not because it can't be syndicated (look at the AP!), but because the return just isn't good enough for either party. This deal gone dead is more evidence to support that assertion.

It's also further evidence of a real problem for the big boys like Yahoo! and MSN! (I think MSN is planning on adding a ! this fall, as part of MS's Zune strategy). The internet is getting narrower and nichier, and they're as b r o a d as they can be. MSN can't have a Rocketboom style news show even though it would fit in great with their style because as soon as they put a face up there, no matter what the face looks like, it's narrowing their brand and alienating their customers. This puts these big branded bohemoths at a disadvantage when competing with a company like Amazon or Google, aggregators that are focused on facilitating the niche.

This is What's Happening in My Neighborhood Today...

2006-07-19T17:48:00.000-04:00

Con Edison Distributes Ice to Residents in Queens:

NEW YORK – While Con Edison crews work to restore electrical power to residents in Queens affected by power interruptions, the company is distributing ice to customers.

Bags of ice are being distributed at 41-15 46th Street in Sunnyside and dry ice will be distributed at 4:30 p.m. at Ditmars and Steinway in Astoria.

My apartment is one of the few places in the neighborhood that still has power - my office is NOT. and it's SUMMER in NEW YORK. DAMNNNNNN.

Viral marketing? Try Avian Flu...

2006-07-19T13:50:00.000-04:00

The New York Times is reporting that CBS has a grade A plan for Marketing their Fall line-up:

The network plans to announce today that it will place laser imprints of its trademark eye insignia, as well as logos for some of its shows, on eggs — 35 million of them in September and October. CBS’s copywriters are referring to the medium as “egg-vertising,” hinting at the wordplay they have in store. Some of their planned slogans: “CSI” (“Crack the Case on CBS”); “The Amazing Race” (“Scramble to Win on CBS”); and “Shark” (“Hard-Boiled Drama.”). Variations on the ad for its Monday night lineup of comedy shows include “Shelling Out Laughs,” “Funny Side Up” and “Leave the Yolks to Us.

If CBS is going this far, it shouldn't be hard to convince our clients to do something daring with a viral video campaign.

You know what they say... you gotta break some eggs to make a cake... errrh... which came first... okay I'll stop.

Rocketboom deconstructed...

2006-07-17T17:56:00.000-04:00

technorati tags: Loren, 1938media, Rocketboom, amandacongdon, rocketboom2.0

...as only Loren can...

Find more of Loren at 1938media.com.

Major Paypal Security Flaw

2006-07-17T14:33:00.000-04:00

technorati tags: ebay, paypal, bank, money, security, flaw, login, logout

I've been offblog for a lot of the weekend due to Blogger maintenance and a project I had due this morning.

What better way to make a re-enterance than to bitch about something:

Yesterday my wife was using my laptop to shop on eBay. She opened firefox and logged into eBay with her account. After she found what she wanted (buy now!) she went to pay, and decided to use her paypal account. So, quite logically, she selected "Pay with Paypal". She didn't have to log in to paypal, and the transaction went through no problem.

A few minutes later, I got an email receipt from my company's Paypal account for the purchase. My wife Ciara has no access to this account - she's not a user on the account, she doesn't know the password.

It's been at least four days since I logged into my paypal account. Last time I used it, I must not have logged out, and simply shut the window. Here are my issues with what happened:

1) the fact that my paypal account did not logout automatically when I shut the window, or more appropriately, after 15-20 minutes of non-use, is completely unacceptable. That's a bank account. There is no excuse for paypal not to follow what have become standard practices in the online banking industry. Imagine if I had logged in at a library computer!

2) Logout issues aside, the last time I logged into my account was to manage it, not to make a purchase. The fact that I could make a purchase from a third party vendor without entering my password info is ridiculous. I realize that eBay is not technically a third party vendor, but since they don't cross reference the eBay account and the Paypal account, they might as well be.

3) My wife was able to complete the transaction without ever being made aware that she was using my account. She didn't want to buy her pens with my money, in fact she had no idea. There's got to be more transparency in the process.

I appreciate that eBay is trying to make paying with your paypal account easy and convenient. This is not convenient - it's identity theft waiting to happen. How about making the eBay and paypal log in simultaneous? How about allowing you to add paypal accounts to your ebay account like credit cards? That would be convenient.

Take care of my money!

The Blogging Times » Two cops filed for criticizing superiors via blog

2006-07-13T15:21:00.000-04:00

Found this on the Blogging Times

Two cops filed for criticizing superiors via blog:

Two Newark, New Jersey, police officers have been fired for anonymously criticizing their superiors on a popular local Internet blog. The officers, Darious Smith and Yessenia Montalvo, were told to turn in their badges after posting the comments on Newark Speaks, a widely read by local public employees.

A lawyer hired by the police union says the actions against them violate their constitutional right to free speech. “I don’t believe that public employees lose their First Amendment rights as citizens, particularly when the speech pertains to matters of public concern,” attorney Rubin Sinins said.

Unfortunately, this term the Supreme Court ruled that gov't employees don't have the right to criticize their bosses when they OK'd the firing of a Los Angeles Assistant District Attorney after he criticized their use of a faulty search warrant in a prosecution.

Yeah, if your employee is so disgusted with your unfair treatment of a defendant that he stands up to you - just fire him. It's cool with the S.C.

Vive Zidane!

2006-07-12T23:35:00.000-04:00

Vive Zidane!

Fresh take on the Boom

2006-07-12T16:09:00.000-04:00

technorati tags: rocketboom, broadband, programming, television, amandacogndon, andrewbarron

Jeff Jarvis has a fresh take on the Rocketboom saga (yes it is possible to have a fresh take on a tired story).

It's in a guest post from a vet TV producer. Here's a taste:

Here’s what I do know — based on a lovely lunch that Amanda, Andrew, Jeff and I shared last December: Andrew had the idea for Rocketboom. He placed an ad on Craig’s List for an actress. Amanda (among others) answered. He hired Amanda.

Note to Andrew: have you ever DATED an actress? My god… at any point, did you ever think that you were going to get someone who wasn’t totally self-absorbed? That’s what they DO! That’s why we pay them the big money!!! But we don’t tell them they have some control over our business!

And Rocketboom 2.0 is definitely worth checking out. My take - this is an excellent opportunity to see if a little more television vet polish ruins Rocketboom's authenticity or takes it to the next level. From the perspective of a web content producer, that's what I'll be watching with interest.

Pay no attention to the man in the...

2006-07-12T15:41:00.000-04:00

This caught my eye on Digg today -

Apparently the FBI is pushing for a backdoor feature on all new routers that will allow law enforcement to enter your network anytime they want without a warrant.

Bad for us, of course. As Kobe learned in Colorado, you don't go in the backdoor without permission.

I'm not saying he did it, but...

2006-07-11T13:39:00.000-04:00

technorati tags: enron, ken, lay, dead, heart, attack

If you were Ken Lay. And you decided to take that poison pill...

... you held out long enough to find out that you weren't going to be found innocent

... you didn't hold out too long because you kicked it before you were sentenced, meaning that your entire conviction is thrown out and you died with a clean record

... you gave a nice shout out to your banks because your estate is worth 9.5 million and you owe 9.5 million

... you stuck it to the gum'ment one more time because they would have collected your assets before your creditors, but now that your conviction is thrown out, they have to get in line behind your creditors (meaning they'll get nothing)

... you flipped one last bird to your investors and employees because all those civil suits get a piece of your estate after the creditors, and 100% of 0 is still 0.

... you got the last laugh on Skilling because now the restitution payments that you would have split with him all come out of his swiss bank account

... and you did your woman right because she gets a ten million dollar life insurance payout that the creditors and the prosecution and the civil litigants can't touch because it doesn't go through your estate.

I'm not saying he did it but... ooooh that worked out sweet for the Lay Posse.

Starbucks Radio and Beyond (echo, echo, echo)

2006-07-11T08:24:00.000-04:00

technorati tags: amazon, oprah, target, fishbowl, bill, mahr, smays, broadband, video

Steve Mays compares Starbucks to a radio station:

As I listened it occurred to me that Starbuck's was sort of like a radio station. A radio station that sells music. And coffee. And a nice place to enjoy both. All nicely wrapped in the Starbuck's brand.

I'd add that they're also a film company, as they have started financing movies and selling them the same way they sell cd's. "Ahleeyah and the Bee" is the first test run, and a very successful one. They're marketing the film in Starbucks, selling the soundtrack and will be soon selling the dvd.

Steve also points out that they have an xm satellite radio station.

Other than Oprah, Starbucks is the best example out there of extending a popular brand into an entertainment machine.

And it's a brick and mortar example of how I believe networks will emerge on the internet.

Just like Starbucks, highly trafficked, well branded websites, like Target.com, ESPN.com and Amazon.com for example, have a built in niche audience, built in distribution infrastructure, and built in cross marketing opportunities.

By contrast, sites like MSN.com and Yahoo! are so broadly diversified that they have to worry about narrowing their brand with programming.

Amazon's already trying this niche strategy with the Bill Mahr driven Fishbowl (which, by the way, will never be a success unless they start marketing it. It's practically buried!). It's shows like this, directed to a niche and placed where that niche is already spending time on the internet, that will be the first broadband programming to achieve success.

The Internet Owns TV (or why it should)

2006-07-10T13:00:00.000-04:00

technorati tags: broadband, tv, reality, interactive, insider, video, content

Interesting Article in the NYT last week about the emerging interaction btw mainstream television and its internet fans.

Here's an excerpt referring to a recent exchange btw the exec producer of "Rescue Me" and the fans on Television Without Pity:

That type of controversy might have been easier for writers and producers like Mr. Tolan to ignore in the past. Internet fans — and occasional writer interaction with them — have existed since the birth of the Internet, although until recently they were mostly confined to science-fiction or cult series, like 'Star Trek' and 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'

But in the age of widespread broadband access, iTunes video and video sites like Youtube.com, television viewers are migrating en masse to the Internet, looking not only to watch their favorite shows online but also for ways to discuss and engage with those shows.

As a result, the blogs, communities like livejournal.com and message boards devoted to television shows are becoming more popular — and mainstream — forums for viewer discussion and feedback. And the people behind the shows have taken note. 'As fractured as the media market has become, the Internet has become a great means of rising above the noise,' said James Duff, the creator and executive producer of 'The Closer' on TNT.

Television property owners need to be thinking about entertainment that leverages these fans - podcasts, video diaries, message boards - all that's great, but we need to have a strategy to deliver actual entertainment through this medium.

Lost does a good job of that, 24 has done some, but the real opportunity right now is with reality programming. I think this particular genre is reaching a oversaturation point, b/c it's so much cheaper to produce than other television programming.

But if you can intermix what's on tv with what's online in a way that allows internet viewers a more complete and insider view of what's going on, you could really have something interesting and attractive to viewers. The reality programming, at least the doc style stuff, promises to reveal what's behind the curtain in a given person's life - be they a celebrity, bounty hunter or a custom motorcycle designer. With good internet programming, the same show can reveal what's behind the curtain in making a reality program, giving audiences a bigger stake in the action and much more content to consume.

Just a thought.

RSS 2. Ohhhhh

2006-07-08T22:17:00.000-04:00

technorati tags: rss, user, experience, email, browsing

Ok, so there's a few things I wanted to say about RSS that didn't quite make it into the last post on the subject.

Yes, I see true promise in RSS is cross platform syndication and as a background technology.

But I also see promise for it as an end user technology. Why? Because I use it. It makes my life better on the internet. And though I like to pretend I'm a geek sometimes, I'm not one. If this technology didn't have the potential for mass adoption, I probably wouldn't be using it.

Here's how RSS makes my life better:

I like to get my news from lots of different places. The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian, Alternet, etc. etc. etc.

Before RSS, I had all these bookmarked on my browser. Do you know how often I went through and checked them? Never. Never, never, never. I read the paper.

That's how I got my news. If there was a story I was interested, THEN I used my bookmarks to go browsing.

I know there are tons of you out there (not really tons of you out there because there aren't tons of you reading my blog)... But humor me... Tons of you out there who browse every morning for your news. I know because I read your blogs. I know because my partner Jeff does it.

But I don't do that. I can't stand it. I hate browsing. And then I just feel guilty for not browsing because everyone else is browsing.

And I know there are more people out there like me. I know there are plenty of people who want to be worldy and informed and beating other people in their office to the story... But they wind up just reading Yahoo! News because it's their homepage.

That's why RSS is so great... it's everything you love about email... In a browser.

An email newsletter - it's just like a feed, right? Wrong. An email newsletter comes to me whenever the sender wants to send it, just like a feed. BUT... Then it sits in my inbox until I DO something with it.

I probably got 50 email newsletters today... And it's a Saturday. Each one I have to read it, delete it, move it to a folder, do something with it.

In an era when some people send out an auto response that says, "if I haven't responded to your email in a week, I've deleted it. Please resend." We don't need more things in our in boxes.

But with RSS, I don't get anything in my inbox. I don't have a stored message. I just have an indication that there's something new, and a headline. If I like the headline, I can click on it, and read a little more, or go straight to the site. If I don't like the headline, or don't read it for a few days because I'm busy, it just goes away. It's ephemeral. Just like browsing.
That's what I like about RSS. I get notified when there's something new, I don't have to get junk in my inbox. It's neat, clean, and user-centric.

And it passes the "makes my life better" test.

How true it is

2006-07-08T12:33:00.000-04:00

"The barrier to entry in Internet media is low, the barrier to success is high."

-Nick Denton in the NYT.

Blooming Ideas

2006-07-08T08:44:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we interviewed Steve Bloom for the Chris Fabricant Show. Steve is the editor-at-large for High Times Magazine. He's got a blog called Blooming Ideas that he started in April and is his main occupation now, besides writing for the magazine.

Between great stories about how the High Times team got celebrities to appear on the cover (They had to kick a whole-baked Snoop Dogg off the couch 5 hours after his photo shoot, and he showed up the next day looking for more weed), he had some pretty interesting thoughts on new media and rss.

Also, he's got a battle royale going right now with the Black Crowes about giving comp tickets to music press.

Interesting guy who is agressively embracing the blog medium. Check him out.