Details

Web Video: An Intermediate Case

2009-11-24T13:51:00.001-08:00

Video on the Web is an intermediate case between broadcast video (TV) and page-based Web navigation. Preliminary data indicates that most Web videos should be short - typically 2–10 minutes - indicating a usage velocity between Web and TV, but closer to the Web's velocity of one user decision every 10–120 seconds.

When you develop content, services, and designs for the Web, remember that this medium has a much faster velocity than older media, whether print or TV

(from Velocity of Media Consumption: TV vs. the Web).

Yahoo Abandons More Than 20 Millions Pageviews (Closing Geocities)

2009-10-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

5 years ago I paid 1/3 of my bills with a 1 page Geocities site. Today Yahoo takes more than 4.8 million geocities pages offline permanently. That's about 11.9 million visitors a month, who made about 21,420,000 pageviews a month, now getting some sort of 404 or "we removed this page" site instead of what they expected (data from Quantcast and Alexa).

Yahoo didn't make enough money with Geocities to keep it online because they didn't know how to, because they didn't try.

5 years ago Yahoo stock was trading near $35, today it closed at $16.87, losing 2% of it's value today. It's a shame to see a company misstep as badly and often as Yahoo has, and I'll miss the opportunity to make money with them through their Geocities sites.

19% of US Internet Users Tweet

2009-10-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

Twitter and Facebook have been to big too ignore for sometime now. While estimating pageviews of sites is inexact, some numbers help reveal just how big these 2 sites have become.

The army of Twitterers is growing quickly, per the Pew Internet Project report released today. The report found that 19 percent of all U.S. Internet users now use either Twitter or smaller services, such as Yammer, to share social updates. This was up 8 percent from the 11 percent who used such services in April 2009

(from Adweek). Things change quickly, and twitter is a big part of the audience, as is Facebook:

In the US Facebook accounts for, now get this, 1 in every 4 or 25% of our total pageviews

(from Drake Direct). Drake bases his numbers on compete.com data, which can be imperfect. Alexa estimates Facebook got about 4.5% of global pageviews in the last month. Suffice to say, big enough to be important to anyone doing anything online.

Search Comments on YouTube in Real-Time

2009-10-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

YouTube's real-time search of comments may compete, someday, with Twitter for in-the-moment audience reaction to moving pictures.

Comments Search moves into Test Tube, the place where our engineers and developers test out new features and gather data and feedback before pushing them out to a wider audience. This feature allows you to search the comments people are making on YouTube in real time. The full comment will appear on a continuously updated results page, and 'trending topics' indicates the hottest topics of conversation on YouTube at that particular moment

(from YouTube Blog).

TV Windows Collapsing

2009-10-22T03:12:00.000-07:00

Traditional television viewing patterns are collapsing and the industry needs to quickly figure out how to profit in a world where people can watch TV shows anytime, anywhere, NBC Universal's TV chief said.

The challenge now was drawing viewers to network shows at designated times when people can either record those shows or turn to online outlets to watch at their convenience, said Marc Graboff, Chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios.

Networks need to figure out how to make their content more immediately available in a lucrative way, such as by charging viewers to stream episodes shortly after airing - narrowing viewing 'windows' - or providing them to multiple outlets, he told an industry conference.

The biggest U.S. networks are currently struggling with declining advertising revenue, dwindling viewership and rising production coasts [sic]

(from Reuters, via Yahoo News).

Hollywood's Present is Online

2009-10-09T00:47:00.000-07:00

Many talk of online video as a wave of the future; they are flat wrong. It is now, right now. I know a government employee that 4 months ago discarded their TV and now watches only online. I know a lawyer that uses Tivo as an on-demand that in combination with online TV and DVDs doesn't watch broadcast, cable or satelite live, ever. I have never owned a television, yet I watched three shows tonight and also appear on TV from time to time. Anyone who thinks online entertainment is a future, and denies it is a growing present tense event, is either not paying attention, about to lose their job or both. All things are more online and mobile than ever before and they are right now (I write this post on my phone; please forgive any spelling mistakes ;-).

"Hollywood's future is in Bannen's hands" by Lisa Marks may be over selling a single show as some sort of vangard. I love that this show is being made and am excited to see it, but Sony is not first with web content that costs more than $1 million (Seth MacFarlane, Burger King and YouTube did that over a year ago) and the CEO of Sony Pictures (parent of Crackle) said he "...doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet... Period." This show may be Sony's late, half-supported-by-the-studio attempt to be in the now.

A month online is equal to a year offline, and to not learn from history a from a year ago (like 12 years online) is to retrace steps taken by many before, and risk being obselete before you've begun. In 3 months, the generation referred to as digital natives will be the largest and most important demographic for entertainment. This demographic is already watching, listening and experiencing their entertainment where and when they want to and media companies are only just now pretending this will happen? That is like acting as if the wheel or fire might catch on when it's already the year 1500. People's careers and livelyhoods as employees and stockholders are suffering because of antiquated thinking (yes, 3 month old is antiquated). Get present or be irrelevant; there is no half way.

Scarcity and Social Media

2009-09-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

In social media and in fact online in general many are trying to create scarcity as they would in the off-line world. This is a mistake that will, in pretty much every case, lead to destroying businesses and brands.

Seth Godin has written some interesting Principles of Scarcity and points out that with scarcity the ...danger is that you can kill long-term loyalty. You can annoy your best customers. You can spread negative word of mouth. You can train people to hate your scarcity strategy.

Signal to Noise Ratio for Social Networks and Social Media

2009-09-21T21:30:00.001-07:00

The more the recipient wants the message you are sending, the better. As with all online communications, it is more important to send what they want to read/view/hear than to send what you want them to read/view/hear. This is by and large what being a good producer is in the offline world as well.

Typically a email list with a growing subscriber base only sends messages that make people want to subscribe and/or stay subscribers. It is the same with social network profiles. A social networking profile only communicates with its friends/connections/people-who-opted-in-and-gave-you-permission-to-communicate-with-them when the communication will make them want to remain your friend/connection or become your friend/connection.

I've heard people refer to doing an "email blast" to get the word out about something, or to try to connect with key bloggers or online influencers.

As Seth Godin said:

Don't bother engaging with customers unless you are prepared to invest enough to exceed expectations and delight them. It's better to do nothing at all.

In social networking, your friends/connections/anyone you communicate with are your customers.

Twitter Analysis Tools

2009-08-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

Here are three useful sites for analyzing your tweets/twitter accounts:

TweetStats - reveals frequency and timing of your twitter behavior
TwitterFriends - examines how and who you connect with and converse with on twitter
TweetEffect - shows what impact your tweets had on followers starting or stopping following you

These ought to be only used to organize the underlying realities of what you tweet. Getting lost in the numbers and graphs and forgetting it is about communication and people will not be good.

Distribution Is Part of the Show

2009-06-16T01:41:00.000-07:00

Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one

(from gapingvoid). The old school way to put it is: The Medium is the Message. Perhaps I can help you figure out how to get your work out there /plug.

Viewership Growing On YouTube

2009-06-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

Basically, we took the top 100 all-time most-viewed "mid-tail" or "new media studio" content creators (i.e. Next New Networks, Howcast Studios, The Wall Street Journal's videos etc.) and looked at their viewership growth. The results? Over the past six months, publishers saw their daily average views grow by an average of 4.98% per month. Although there have been several recent failures in the space (60Frames, ManiaTV), overall the sector is growing in terms of viewership

(emphasis added, from TubeMogul's blog).

Social Media Salaries

2009-06-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

There are no surprises, but I can tell you that consulting fees range from $20 an hour to $400 an hour, salaries range from $24,000 a year to $170,000, and the difference is based almost entirely on your non-social media employment background

(from Social Media Headhunter).

Social Network Dominance by County

2009-06-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

While now some months old, there is a map of the world with the dominant social network for each country shown. Might be useful as a starting point if trying to reach a given country's audience.

Page Rank Is Not What It Once Was

2009-06-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

Google's pagerank is shown most commonly by the green bar in the Google toolbar in your browser (if you have it installed). While Wikipedia says this ...numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet... denotes a site's importance in the eyes of Google, this is no longer true. Pagerank is now a deceptive, essentially useless number leading many to make bad decisions (e.g., buying ads on sites based on pagerank, when foreseeable results will actually disappoint).

There was a time, a few years ago, that Google's pagerank was a great indicator of how much traffic Google would send to a site. After that traffic got to the site, the site would have a chance to connect with, or sell things to those visitors. That is no longer the case, pagerank is no longer very important and like so many things online and in life, numbers aren't everything.

In all things, the shorthand of a number seems convenient, but is likely useless for revealing the most important truths (e.g., "I love my parents 72" is fairly meaningless).

Printed Newspapers Are Yesterday's News

2009-06-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show pointed out online news is faster than print. This is part of what makes people prefer online news, and by extension, makes advertisers shift their focus and spend from print to online.

Market Value of Content Hard to Assess

2009-06-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

There are new untried ways to make money with moving pictures with synchronized sound, and lots of other ways it's currently being done, but I think who pays for the means of distribution and how is interesting and worth noticing. Substitute "moving pictures with synchronized sound" for "journalism" in this quote and interesting ideas form.

So long as our information economy treats journalism as overhead, valuable only as advertising-bait, then our economy will be glutted with free, low-value journalism. We won't be able to study specific indications of value - in terms of price or quality - so long as it's produced as a subsidized commodity. The Web merely revealed that truth

(from The fire that frees the seed).

Various forms of infrastructure are needed for video/film/TV distribution, for example:

physical DVDs and shipping
movie theatres and their films which can cost >$30,000.00 per print
cables/wires/wireless systems that carry the internet to you
etc.

The costs of the moving picture distribution infrastructure are covered directly and indirectly in different ways.

Movies in theatres can have the physical reels of film paid for by the distribution company which often affords to pay for the prints by getting a part of the box office receipts (charging the viewer directly). The final stages of distribution, like the projector and screen/speakers, are paid for by the exhibitors that get part of the box office but make most of their money through concessions (candy, popcorn, drinks).
Broadcast television through the air has its first stages of distribution paid for in the early stages by the station (transmitter and licensing fees) which it sells ads to pay for. The final stage, as with online video, is a viewing device usually owned by the viewer.
Video uploaded online, say to YouTube, has its hosting and first stages of distribution paid for by a web site (an internet company) like Google, which often sells ads to make the money to afford do so. The final stages are covered by the telecommunication companies (which charge the viewer) and finally the display device which is usually owned by the viewer.
On-Demand, be it iTunes-like or through a cable or satellite company, is paid for by charging the viewer directly.

This is not a complete list. All of these models can change, with the last two changing most quickly today (internet ad supported and on-demand).

Paid-Content for Newspapers Not a Solution

2009-06-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

Quality journalism is expensive, and to the extent that it provides a public good, we will find ways to fund it. But top-heavy, poorly run, arrogant-to-the-bitter-end media companies? This is their crisis, not our crisis, and it certainly isn't about journalism.

Newspapers that are turning to paywall plans today are gambling on a risky revenue stream that even the experts aren't predicting will provide a replacement to their lost advertising revenues (their biggest financial problem is the rapid decline in advertising rates, not the slow decline in print circulation). It's a "well, we've got to do SOMETHING" solution, not a logical, do-the-math solution.

They don't get it. They don't want to get it. And in many cases, they're literally paid not to get it

(from The newspaper suicide pact).

Google In Upfront Marketplace

2009-05-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

Google is now buying and selling TV ads in a big way.

Google TV Ads has begun booking upfront deals with major agencies and advertisers for the first time.

Marketers are committing upwards of seven figures to buy ads through the TV spot buying system in the year ahead, with agencies like Deutsch and Saatchi & Saatchi and advertisers like Coldwell Banker coming to the table, said Mike Steib, director of Google TV Ads.

Steib explained that marketers can still buy or tweak their campaigns daily; they're simply agreeing to use Google TV Ads throughout the year.

What our customers told us if the planner can put us into the upfront plan, then the buyers are free to utilize the platform in the way they works best for them, he said.

They can also buy ads on YouTube now using Google TV Ads

(from The Hollywood Reporter).

Legal Terms of Video Hosting Services

2009-05-18T06:07:00.000-07:00

...I was researching a video hosting service that would match my requirements of:
Which rights of my work I would have to give away,

what usage rights I could assign to my viewers,

what level of privacy I could expect in terms of disclosure of my data,

and where a service had its legal residence in case of a dispute.
I’ve decided to collect and extend my findings in this post in the hope that it can help others in choosing their preferred video hosting service

(from Owned? Legal terms of video hosting services compared). Since these can change at any time, double check, and consider speaking with a lawyer; caveat producer.

Numbers and the Net

2009-05-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

But the great thing about the internet is that it allows every minor interest, every academic specialism, every rare and refined hobby a place, so the numbers really don't matter in the same way as the old media

(Emphasis added, from Codecs and Capability).

Never 'Sorry for the Mass Email...'

2009-05-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

If you begin with "I'm sorry for the mass email, but..." you clearly aren't and everything said after should not be trusted. Don't say that.

Video Release Timing: Go Live Early, Announce Late

2009-05-18T03:48:00.000-07:00

When first releasing any online video, it is best to make it live (soft launch, push live, etc.) well before you expect the audience to want to watch it. Usually this means at least a few hours before. For web shows targeting North America as a main audience, put the episode up (publicly available and live where you want it to be) at a few minutes after midnight pacific time on the given release day. This accomplishes many things at once, including:

This is 6 hours before East coast prime time begins (Weekdays 9am-5pm local time) allowing time for people and computers to react to the upload.
If the video is incomplete, corrupted, or simply not the right video, there are 6 hours to trouble shoot or delete and re-upload before large numbers will begin to try watching the video.
Titles, descriptions and tags do not always appear on the live site as originally written or intended; these can be checked and rewritten or fixed as needed.
Many computer systems take time to encode, transcode and syndicate the content. Give them time to finish their work and have the video fully live and available on all platforms before the audience wants to watch.
Search spiders and third party video search and syndication systems have automated components that need time to discover, process and make useful the information about the video that they discover. Since you can't know every system that may need time to react to your upload, give time for these unknowns to prepare so they can support your show. Make it live early to both give them a chance to respond and give yourself a chance to notice their reaction.

No two shows are the same and no single formula can address all the unique artistic and business needs, but in all cases: make sure the audience will be able to successfully watch the show how and where they want to before asking them to do so. This means send emails, publish blog posts, micro-blog (e.g., twitter), status update and make all forms of public requests for people to watch only after the video is fully functional and available.

Failing to give adequate time can mean you send audience to watch and they can't. When the audience can't watch what they want where and when they want to, they will blame you (even if it isn't your fault). Simple timing can save some of the disappointment from ever happening.

For example, YouTube needs a non-trivial amount of time to make a video available on cell phones in addition to the time it takes to make it available on the website. If, as I witness many producers doing, you send am email asking people to view your video on YouTube only after the video is live on the website, iPhone users who click on the YouTube link in the email will get a disappointing message telling them the video is not yet available. Rarely will they then make a special effort to seek out the video later or on a computer. Sending the email too soon loses viewers and fans just because it was too soon.

There are many other factors impacting video release and announcement scheduling, but usually doing a soft launch (it's up and works) significantly before a hard launch (hey everybody, come watch!) solves many problems.

Once It's Live, Leave It Live

2009-05-14T17:27:00.000-07:00

About a year ago a highly rated TV show built a fictional company's web site to tie in to real life events at Comic-Con, the convention in San Diego. The finale of the newest season was this week. Just a few minutes ago a friend on Twitter and Facebook changed their status to say he wanted to work for that fictional company, and I wanted to comment/reply to my friend's status with the link to the fictional site. The site is down, offline, 404.

I wanted to share a part of the show with a friend, and they won't let me. I wanted to promote their product for free, and they stopped me. Instead of allowing all the money spent on the site and its very good videos and promotions pay off forever, they took it down. Estimated annual savings in taking down the site: $2000 (which ought to be lower, but for various reasons in this case is not lower). Estimated loss of audience engagement, good-will and ability for the franchise's value to increase over many decades: infinite.

The stock of the parent company that owns the network that carries the show has lost about $20,300,000,000 of market value since mid September (admittedly this may not only result from company wide failure to understand or capitalize on the internet).

A Google-less World

2009-05-14T09:11:00.000-07:00

Starting at about a half hour ago, I noticed that the adsense ads I have run on some of my sites weren't loading. Then I began having trouble connecting to the blogging platform blogger. Hoping to stay productive while the network hopefully adjusted, I went to YouTube planning to change the avatar image one of my various YouTube accounts. YouTube wouldn't load. Remembering these are all owned by Google, I tried to load google.com. It was also was sluggish/non-responsive. I checked my gmail, nothing.

While navigating my cable company's phone system seeking a person to see if they were having a problem keeping my cable modem connected, on a lark I tried yahoo.com and it loaded, immediately. Still holding for an operator at my cable company, I checked twitter. Others couldn't get to google services either. And not just near me but on other continents too. This surprised me. Thursday morning (in North America) is not a time anyone would chose to have their sites off-line, and while a few on twitter seemed to still have Google's sites running just fine, it highlights how enmeshed we call are with Google's systems, and how good they are at keeping them up for people like me to assume they will be up and available virtually always.

For a few moments I had to mentally step back and assess how I'd react if Google, and all of it's wonderful products, vanished. It reminds me of an article I read years ago asking how much of your business Google controls. Between search traffic they provide, videos they host, email, and the myriad of other products they offer, what would you do if they simply stopped? I know what I would do: I'd grouse, whine and moan for a few minutes, and then swap the services of theirs I use for other, in almost every case inferior, services offered by others. The fact is Google is as successful as they are because in so many ways they do what they do better than anyone else. Yet still, with all the bright people, deep pockets and prestigious name, if they stop being what the audience expects, in minutes the audience will begin replacing them.

Not quite an hour later, the hastag #googlefail is already the number 6 trending topic on twitter, with "gmail" the number 3. That's some of the most active users of technology on earth already reacting to this hiccup. This does remind me to back up things offline ;-). I wish the best to the Googlers I imagine are already hard at work fixing things.

Update: Google's systems seem to be working again and coming back online for most people. Worth noting: spread your content widely, exploding your content makes you less susceptible to problems at any one company or on a single site.

Presidential Press Conference Without Broadcasters

2009-04-29T17:23:00.001-07:00

Right now I'm watching the Presidential Press Conference live on YouTube. There are no 20th century broadcasters (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, etc.) involved in the distribution. I hope this gives them and their news divisions pause, and they realize that business as usual is not an option.