Hot off the presses

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?

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.

The rise of the internet video networks

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.

Embedding your name on my face

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.