Dembot

Video platform equality, from the labs of Rocketboom R&D and...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:35:23 -0400

Video platform equality, from the labs of Rocketboom R&D and Mag.ma: In today’s age, we don’t judge books by their covers. We judge them by their thumbnails. We also judge videos, e-books, software, and people the same way. Engaging an audience demands engaging them visually, no matter the medium. Some of our peers in the online video community recently noted that Tumblr allows the display of thumbnails for YouTube embeds on their dashboard, but other popular video sites, such as Vimeo and Blip.tv, are currently left out from showcasing their user videos with a thumbnail image.

Rocketboom R&D, the development unit of the Rocketboom network, has created a simple solution: a browser add-on that allows Tumblr users to see any video’s known thumbnail in their Tumblr dashboard. There’s no platform favoritism; this enables nearly every other common video platform the ability for thumbnail display. The add-on was created using Mag.ma, our own video aggregation service, to do thumbnail lookups for numerous video platforms with our simple API methods. The results? Uniformity for Tumblr users and creative support for content creators.

Get your browser add-on for Firefox, Chrome, or Safari, and visit the Tumblr Video Thumbnails add-on page for information, installation help, and more. Special thanks to our friends at Vimeo, Blip.tv, and Wreck & Salvage for their testing and support.

And big props to Greg Leuch for leading the entire project!

When you think of Rocketboom, you probably think of a daily show...

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:21:59 -0400

When you think of Rocketboom, you probably think of a daily show called Rocketboom. Yet Rocketboom has been quietly growing and we now count four full-fledged shows in our network: Rocketboom Daily, RocketboomTech, Rocketboom NYC and KnowYourMeme. So we’re giving them all a little more elbow room with their own YouTube channels. And they’re pretty good-looking too thanks to our ace lead developer & designer Greg Leuch and photos by the inimitable Diana Levine.

So subscribe to each channel for all things Rocketboom—including both full episodes and exclusive, extra content.

Future Webtrends

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:08:00 -0400

I’ve always wondered about large scale web trends - the over arching movements, or trends, that define certain periods of the web. The Dot Com Boom. Web 2.0. The Real Time Web. The Mobile Web. If you have ever seen me speak, there is a good chance you have seen my talk on The End of Time.

The premise of The End of Time, as it applies to the internet, is that we are there now. The meaning of a “real time web” as its labeled today, is one where the amount of time it takes to get information from me to you is practically irrelevant. The activity on the web recently moved beyond issues of time, now focusing on filtering through everything that is already there. In filtering the message from the noise, today we find ourselves enamored with geo-location service like Foursquare which brings us information instantaneously about our nearby surroundings.

A WebTrend Law?

Each March, I like to recap on my experience of SXSW interactive and focus in on the major movement of the year. I’ve taken special note since Rocketboom came out of SXSW with major steam during the much talked about ‘online video’ movement in 2005. The following year, videoblogging went mainstream with the purchase of YouTube in 2006. The next year, in 2007, Twitter hit SXSW big-time, and the first adopters were talking all about it. The next year, in 2008, Twitter hit the mainstream coming out of SXSW. At SXSW 2009, Foursquare was on everyone’s mind, and in 2010 during SXSW, it went mainstream.

After returning home from my 7th consecutive year at the conference, I decided to take a step back from the trend of the year and take a few more months to congeal an idea I may have stumbled upon here that is much greater than just the trend of the year.

Webtrends, it seems, appear to be happening in exactly two year cycles, and there appears to be two phases to each cycle, each occurring annually. In the first phase of a two year cycle, a new movement reaches it’s tipping point, becoming identified collectively by the first adopters of various internet sectors and subcultures around the world. This leads to the second phase, mainstream adoption.

Funny enough, while its not actually SXSW itself that dictates movements, the conference has traditionally provided the seasonal variables that bring the various first adopters together from around the world, and also the mainstream media, expediting and somewhat pushing over the edge each new boiling trend. It’s important to note that people may have been working on any web trend a decade or more before it’s identified collectively as a trend, yet a trend does not occur by the nature of the right idea, but rather the right idea at the right time.

Consider the following trends, matched by date, as they each appeared collectively in two phases (it gets a bit muddier the further back in time we go, though seems to hold up):

——cycle #4 —-

2010 Geo-Location movement goes mainstream - Foursquare, Gwaolla [March 15, 2010 - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/technology/15locate.html ]

2009 Geo-Location movement is identified - Foursquare [March 14, 2009 - http://dembot.com/post/86411509/foursquare ]

——cycle #3 —-

2008 Social Media movement goes mainstream - Twitter / Facebook / Friendfeed (Presidential Election) [May, 2008 http://dembot.com/post/35935024/the-real-reason-why-friendfeed-is-working ]

2007 Social Media movement is identified - Twitter [ March, 2007 Twitter hits tipping point: http://medialoper.com/twitter-hits-the-tipping-point/ ]

——cycle #2 —-

2006 Online Video movement goes mainstream - YouTube [April 27, 2006: Video blogs ready for prime time http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/05/01/8375939/index.htm ]

2005 Online Video movement is identified - CBS Eve News, [Aug 19, 2005: Vlogging Puts Broadcast in the Hands of Everyone who Wants It: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/08/19/eveningnews/main788618.shtml [Dec 2005 Videoblogging ]

——cycle #1 —-

2004 Online Photography goes mainstream - Flickr launched in Feb 2004, Blogging goes commercial - Howard Dean Scream (Presidential Election)

2003 Online Photography is identified - May 25, 2003: The New York Times publishes an article reporting on the rise of photo blogs, citing the Pancake Bunny phenomenon as a primary example. [flickr, webshots? / digital camera]

——cycle #0——

2002 Blogging goes Mainstream

2001 Blogging is identified - TEXT Blogging movement is identified as finally (after many years) showing signs of worldwide influence - Instapundit, Daily Kos, Drudge….

What’s Next?

So what’s in store for 2011? Having run it’s two-year course already, Geo-Location will become a darling. SXSW 2011 is going to be chock full of Geolocation services, no doubt, and these companies will be in style, continuing on for years to come as will filtering services of social media, online video and blogging, etc. The next movement is not easy to see this year, even to the most astute Digerati. This week, we will see SXSW release its panel picker, with more submissions than ever before as the conference continues to get larger and larger every year. This will give a bit of a window into some things, but much of this will change. Whatever it will be, we will see it congeal over this year and it may become evident this March. Personally, Im not willing to take the risk in suggesting the next movement this early - I don’t expect to see it until I experience it next year.

But darn it, I do have a hunch which I can’t help but consider just for fun. I don’t believe it at this point, but simply wonder if the next big movement will involve ‘Personal Banking’, or person-to-person business tools like Jack Dorsey’s credit-card reader, Square, which easily allows people to transfer money to each other. Dorsey’s fob already seems a bit antiquated to me for what can be done with today’s image recognition and a simple photo, or what could be done to bypass the credit cards all together. The credit card companies have been jumping in lately too, it’s the obvious next step. Aside from the government which seems to always need it’s tax, it should be easier for me to transfer money to you if I owe you $20 from last night, or want to buy your TV. Currently, the credit card companies make too much of the $ and it’s too consolidated into just a few companies. What about other forms of electronic money? With the upcoming political election happening over the next two years, the focus of all of that activity will center around one main objective: micro-donations from individuals. The easier it is for me to give money to my political party, the better. The political parties are setting theses systems up now.

Whatever happens, we shall see.

Magma Voted Best Viral Video Chart By...Silence

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:35:00 -0400

The other day I put out a challenge via Twitter & Facebook to put forth the URL of a better viral video tracker and no one had anything.

I wanted to make sure the authorities and the haters saw my challenge.

I sent out those tweets because I feel Magma is working really well in this regard, and I wondered who else is doing what we are doing. I don’t think anyone is, and so I put out this challenge. Knowing haters ganna hate I was prepared for anything, but have not heard from a single person yet refuting my claim that Magma is doing the best job at finding videos early in their rise to fame. I think its also the very best video discovery system out there, hand’s down.

Just based on empirical evidence alone, I think anyone would agree and thats why I’m putting out the challenge. Here are two neat examples that show how we do it:

Mary Carillo’s Badminton Rant

http://mag.ma/mustwatch/712042

The other day I saw this video on Magma’s Must Watch. Jason Kottke apparently found this http://kottke.org/10/08/badmitton-rant

Unbeknownst to Jason, we created a Kottke channel because we think Jason has a real knack for finding videos. We took the RSS feed from his blog and set it up as a channel to look for any posts that have videos mentioned. If there is a video, we add it to the http://mag.ma/kottke channel. [anyone can set up a channel of their own here: http://mag.ma/settings/import — we did the same thing for BoingBoing http://mag.ma/boingboing TechCrunch http://mag.ma/techcrunch …all kinds of great sites. As you can imagine, if you strip out all of the videos from the CrunchGear blog, you get a pretty interesting channel: http://mag.ma/crunchgear

Regarding the video Jason found (see screenshot above), a few minutes later, it was on Magma. Then Magma noticed it was heavily passed around on Twitter and two hours later, by the time Magma found it on BoingBoing, the video moved into the top Must Watch section, eventually then hitting the Huffington Post a few hours after that and then becoming highly active around other blogs in general an hour after that. It’s also clear from looking at the history of it’s spread that the few Magma users who found this video (including myself) did not find it until it hit Magma’s Must Watch section. Though I do follow the Kottke feed myself, I don’t exactly have alerts going to my phone every time he posts a new video to his blog :) But you could set that up if you wanted to, every channel also has its own RSS feed out, or you could use the open API.

Love Me

“Video for the Fans”

http://mag.ma/mustwatch/711221

While the example video from Kottke is a bit off-beat, maybe even absurd, Magma is also excellent and finding the very most popular viral videos that are ultimately propelled through the Mainstream. Ju

st the other day, this video with Justin Bieber was the catalyst for sending out my tweets because I was wondering who else is doing this? Magma had this video all the way to the Must Watch section when the view count was just four thousand. We found it was hot on Twitter, then it was found on a YouTube channel, and then by the time Videogum found it, all within such a short period of time, it entered into the Must Watch. And as you can see, later, it made it through the blog charts and eventually the Viral Video chart found it last.

So I’m looking around at all of these aggregators, there’s getting to be more and more of them, and yet I don’t see anything like Magma.

Magma is many things, and its still got many more on the road map though one thing I think we have tuned exceptionally well — the best in fact — is our ability to find videos early in their rise to fame. I think our home page and the Magma Must Watch page are the best charts out there for finding the most popular videos of the day. http://mag.ma/mustwatch The RSS feed for this channel is here: http://mag.ma/mustwatch.rss

Also, see the explainer video on Magma:

http://mag.ma/minuteforce/211919

So, do you know of a viral video site that finds videos sooner?

FDA TIME STAMP

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:31:54 -0400

I think it is really strange that no one knows where their food comes from. You have no idea usually from what farm or what region the food comes from and when it was harvested or added to the store. I imagined it would be nice for someone to set up an FDA backed system that stamped all products each time they changed hands, so that if you were in the grocery store, for example, and picked up a package of bread, you could see all of the stamps such as:

07/03/02 Fairbanks Idaho FarM ID
07/03/02 Mac’s Trucking, Fairbanks, ID
07/04/02 CRISCO distribution NJ
07/09/02 Sam’s Delivery, NYC
07/09/02 Corner Market, NYC

Oh Chatroulette

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:50:00 -0400

What to make of it? Those who know me, know I’ve been skeptical. Right from the start, I didn’t think that this Chatroulette thing would ever turn into something more than a bell or a whistle. I was working on a blog post suggesting as much a couple of weeks after it hit the news in February, noticing that the hype was pretty far reaching. But then something happened which caused me to back off from my predictions: Silicon Valley and NYC investors got interested. When I read Fred Wilson’s post, I thought, “You know what, maybe we’ll just wait and see what happens.”

In all of my own business experience, I kinda missed the boat on the whole world of investment. Everything from angel investment to full on venture capital and IPO’s is a new topic to me. I have taken a lot of time over the last year to meet people and I’ve been learning a lot about it. One thing I quickly leaned is that investors can do a lot for a product that a product otherwise could not do on it’s own.

This of course got me thinking beyond the merits of the product of Chatroulette and more about the potential, and the man behind the site, Andrey Ternovskiy. I read several interviews during his trip to America, asked some questions, heard some rumors, followed the story, and it left me with the impression that he was a very young, conservative, impressionable young man who had not yet thought through the implications of where Chatroulette could go, or how to turn it into a business.

But that is just my outsider impression. I never met Andrey and thus have never asked him specifically about it. But because he seemed to be in a good position to attract the interest of the US tech scene, and because of the enormous wealth of brain-trust investors can bring to a business, I imagined it was possible we could see this product evolve into something.

So far, there has been no sign of any such evolution.

Nevertheless, an investor does not a success story make, and because the technology is so simple, and because the reach of any user’s effort on the platform is close to only one, by design, it seems the product will need to evolve significantly in order to establish itself as a significant business, inside of a significant market, for which Andrey himself could corner, if he or anyone else ever decides that’s what they want to do. More than money, this project appears to need a plan. Why not shoot for the stars with a big one? The biggest plans can often become realized from simply adding the smallest features.

I do believe this type of a platform, as is, will endure the times on a small scale, even if it doesn’t ever turn into a big business or something more influential. Not just because some people need a place to expose themselves but because there are other important uses that this kind of random-peer to random-peer video platform enables for strangers who want to talk. This is essentially a type of social video blogging not much different than uploading a video of oneself for the world to see, or talking to anyone who will watch one’s live stream, for example.

The “what would you do” scenario is one you sometimes cant help but ask yourself. I put this out there as more of an interesting perspective, one I have been thinking about all year because I have been intreguided by it and I would encourage others who are intrigued by the idea of Chatroulette (minus the porn) to let Andrey know what YOU would do. I’ve read a lot of articles criticizing the site but I have not read a single article or comment suggesting any ideas for where to take it.

First of all, adding penis recognition technology and threatening users with the cops is not really where I’d be spending my time right now. This is definitely a problem but there are other more elegant ways to keep the dregs out of the rest of the non-porn content.

One of the greatest challenges of this platform, should an objective be to scale up adoption, is the dilemma of accepting that the essence of the site provides the user with a one-to-one broadcast proposition, by design, thus limiting the growth that any one individual can experience, the kind of value that otherwise gets users excited in other social platforms when broadcasting one-to-many, like on YouTube, or Ustream for example.

The site could maintain it’s core one-to-one essence while also supporting some consequential activity around a one-to-many design, in parallel. For example, what if users who received a thumbs-up, or a positive score of some sort, could rise-up, and thus based on merit within the community, work their way up to the top of the chatroulette charts where their broadcast could be watched by many. Thus, a user who entered into Chatroulette, could have the option to (A) dive in as a participant, as it is set up now, or (B) dive in as viewer only. The participants could begin with a one-to-one relationship with each other and, whereupon reaching a certain threshold, could opt to enter into the one-to-many broadcast section of the site, beside other interesting live content being viewed by a passive audience.

The site or community could also categorize the various feeds. Categories could also uphold the integrity of the one-to-one broadcast model while still providing value for more people to suit specific needs. People could get categorized into various interests and thus if you wanted to meet a random stranger to have a one-on-one conversation about a movie you saw, you could find someone under the movie>inception category, for example, to chat specifically about that interest. The site could obviously be used for dating (in the right way) in a local region which is big business, as we know from the successes of Match.com, etc.

There are lot of different directions to take this, what would YOU do?

Note above that the US is absent from the top 10 regions. Below, re: note that NY/California users typical of first adopter startups are not very active.

The Next Phase of TV Will Look Like This

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:06:00 -0400

Steve Cheney outlines a compelling example of how Apple’s new Facetime feature on the iPhone will likely bring the much awaited video phone calling action to the mass market due to Apple’s ability to integrate the hardware and software just right, but especially now due to Apple’s advantage of a massive user base on standby ready to adopt it.

It’s also interesting to note, as Cheney pointed out, “FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this.”

In other words, Apple not only does it best, it now has a new massive market share in which to instantly do it best for.

When Apple introduced an entirely new category with the iPad, the stage had already been set and the platform would be easy to adopt because Apple used it’s iPhone Operating System (iOS), the ever-so familiar, yet newly interfaced world into utilities, games, music, books and all kinds of other “apps”. Even a two-year-old knew just what to do for the iPad is essentially the same exact experience as the iPhone, the only difference being that the screen is bigger.

As the difference is in screen size, it’s not hard to extrapolate where this is going next. By extending the Apple iOS from the iPhone to the iPad to the Apple TV, people would be able to turn on their TV screens and see what essentially looks like their iphone, a set of customizable apps. While you may have your favorite apps that are useful for your mobile activity on your iPhone easily available from your start screen, such as email, maps, foursqaure, etc., when you open your iPad, you may have it customized a bit differently, say, with ibooks, games and video apps ready to go on your home screen.

Personally speaking, when I open up my TV, I’ll want to load up my Magma app first because that’s how I’ll want to dive into watching TV (I do this now via the magma boxee app). Some people will turn on their TV and open up their iTunes app because they’ll enjoy that. Some people will have a hulu app, a netflix app and a YouTube app sitting right there ready to dive in and out of on their TV home screen.

Of course platforms such as Boxee are at it, and their on-screen experience with software is a similar gist.

There is a risky problem however for Netflix, Hulu, NBC, boxee and all networks of content that don’t own their content. These companies currently rely on the fact that they, like Apple, have built a large user base for distribution and that they continue to offer what others can not offer. Unfortunately this will be relatively hard to maintain without exclusivity or ownership of their content. Meanwhile, Apple is poised to take over the entire TV and home-film distribution market just as they did with the music industry, now singlehandedly setting the market prices on “app” sales, and taking a heafty split in the revenue no matter if a show is direct or via a network app like hulu.

In the case scenario here with Apple iOS TV, what hulu offers now is a $9.99 per month ($120/yr) app to get a handful of great TV shows, like Scrubs, which is also part of the ABC network, btw. But if you just want Scrubs, you can buy individual episodes or whole seasons of Scrubs through iTunes right now for way less. And in the future, if there are millions of people watching Scrubs on the Apple iOS, why wouldn’t Scrubs wise up and cut out ABC, hulu, and everyone else besides Apple that stood in their way of doing direct sales to their audience? It’s natural to have middle people when they provide value, like access or service, but if you don’t need them, what’s the point in continuing to pay big for them in the future? And why should hulu, e.g. get to control the audience for Scrubs, their user feedback, communications, mail list, sales, PR, etc?

Imagining TV as an open computer platform based on software is not hard at all and people have been talking about this for decades. What’s becoming more apparent is that specifically right now, Apple’s iOS ported over to the Apple TV could be the tipping point for bringing the computer and the TV screen together at last.

So next time you notice an update pushed to your favorite show app on your iPhone and then point your iPhone at your TV to press play, it may not work that way, but it may work even better and show you just what you wanted to see. If you are a fan of Android, perhaps you’ll be a step behind, but you will get there too. Google already said that Google TV will be based on Android which is essentially saying they are already pushing the idea that this whole phone/computer/media/TV sync thing with developers building TV specific apps on their OS is going to work out.

It’s sad for the rest of the world that it takes Apple to make it happen but what that really means is that it takes an expert in identifying the right interface design and then taking it to market in the right way. If TV becomes an experience you like and can understand, like your iPhone, it will be pretty easy to buy in. Now that Apple has all the TV networks, popular tv shows, podcasts, hulu, netflix, and so on, it seems to me as if the big Apple already won.

An Open Letter to the The International Academy of Web Television

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:03:00 -0400

It’s been unlike me to be completely quiet about this. I received the first email and have ever since been on “the list” I guess. I’ve been invited to participate in the Streamy’s which you are concerned about and possibly run, I’ve been invited to vote on them, Rocketboom has been nominated on some counts, I think we were supposed to win one this year but we were unwittingly disrespected while accepting an award on behalf of Weird Al, but I think it’s all been said and everyone else started off their rants saying it had already been said so I think it has. And I personally didn’t say anything before because I could care less about awards shows.

Rocketboom did not participate in the Webbys this year because we did not want to pay the $200 entry fee per category required to nominate ourselves. This being public information, the fact that you have to pay to nominate yourself, I can see that the world has a different take than I do on being honored for their accomplishments. It’s certainly worth it’s price in the marketplace though. When we go out we always mention it because people seem impressed by it.

Anyway, so be it. Perhaps Rocketboom will apply in the future, whatever everyone wants to do, I’m going to remain indifferent on a personal level. I told the Streamys I wasn’t going to be there personally and to count me out with Woody Allen who tends to stay away from these kinds of things for similar reasons. I’ve never been to any of the meetings and never paid any dues.

If that was all you were doing at the IAWTV - the business of awards shows - I would have continued to bite my tongue.

But the organization apparently has another mission which is much more drastic, a mission that may jeopardize the most important aspects of this newly democratized medium you purport to protect. For your organization desires to promote single sets of standards, and exclusive methods along with best practices for the industry as a whole, as if there were such a thing, or for content creators or some other particular kind of exclusive group, a dangerous, controlling, limited and monolithic motivation to have in an otherwise vast sea of welcome openness and differences. From your bylaws:

The purposes for which this Corporation is organized shall be:
(a) To promote advancement of the web television industry;
(b) To further the common good and general welfare of the people engaged as
professionals in the web television industry;
(c) To encourage the maintenance of high professional standards for web television professionals and to cultivate cordial relations among them;
(d) To act in a representative capacity for the web television industry;
(e) To develop specifications and standards for the web television industry;
(f) To encourage rapid and broad support across the web television industry for the use of the specifications and standards developed by this Corporation;
(g) To foster the development of high quality web television content; and
(h) To promote excellence in the web television industry through awards and other forms of recognition.

It’s unclear where the line is if there is any line at all with regards to who the iawtv is comprised of now and who it will end up being (i.e. who the people are behind the organization) and who the iawtv is supporting, and thus who you are by default going up against. Is it up to you to decide if everyone in the world should use a particular standard, like Flash, e.g.? Or an open-standard? Or no standard at all? How can you be sure you are supporting the right system when you encourage broad and rapid support of the specifications and standards that you develop? Already, there is one power struggle going on for control over your organization and separately, another power struggle happeing over who owns the Streamys. Please do not create yet another power play over the whole industry.

If online video was part of the Industrial Revolution I could understand the need for a union. People with dollar signs in their eyes can get kind of nuts and we must insure that workers are not getting their arms chopped off in machinery and that kids are not doing 80 hour work weeks at asbestos plants. Unions help protect employess from unfair conditions.

Or consider the recent news with ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers which has as their mission to protect and manage the rights of musicians. Unfortunately, ASCAP is now encouraging its members to fight against organizations like Creative Commons and the Electronic Frontier Foundation because ASAP thinks these organizations are harmful.

And remember the writers strike? People who are members of the Writers Guild were forbidden to work by contractual law during the strike. Many writers discovered the internet because they had no other outlet suddenly. The writers who disagreed with the negotiating tactics of the Writers Guild had no choice but to go along with it, exclusively, right or wrong. They were stuck in a power struggle with no personal freedom beside a new world where there are no such rules.

I’m not suggesting that the IAWTV cease to exist. If people are interested in assembling to get things done to help support a new world of TV, even if the motivation is to be in control, then I would suggest, first, you 1) NOT create exclusive clubs with memberships that require payment to join, 2) NOT focus on awards shows that are competitive and leave behind in your wake 999% more losers than winners, 3) NOT try to determine what the market should be doing by promoting any one direction, 4) NOT try to determine what is supportive and what is not supportive for online video content creators or the market as a whole, 5) NOT create an organization that supports any one group while excluding other groups that are directly relevant, 6) NOT use antiquated methods of picking and choosing what is right and what is wrong for what is no longer a small league of players 7) NOT hamper the freedom of expression, technology, healthy competition, or the open market we have in place now called the internet which TV is only just begging to understand how to use.

Instead, DO create a place where people can go to get good information. Do aggregate data. List job opportunities, list online video resources, create a contacts database of people in related industries. Hand out awards for reaching predetermined technical benchmarks like a billion views or a $1M annual revenue, fund studies, establish conferences, expose what is inadvertently hidden…It’s so simple how you could help in a way that fosters positive value: provide a place to go for people to get data. This is not the age of mechanical reproduction. This is the information age. Provide information. Don’t create a charter of power, then find the people to manage the power, and then find the right issues, do it the other way around. Don’t start pushing your secular ideas on to the world and suggest what is right and what is wrong yourself. Do expose the options and display the aggregate totals without determining the action. Let others come to their own conclusions. Might I suggest you inspire but do not try to lead. No one should lead and everyone should be able to participate. Aggregate and filter.

Techcrunch TV Launches

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:02:00 -0400

My expectation is that Techcrunch TV is going to work out well. I am somewhat surprised there is not more press around the launch, this being Techcrunch. There are a few blog posts on Techmeme only (and without commentary) and I dont see any main stream media mentions. I’ve noticed no matter how cool an online video play is, and no matter how ahead of the game it is, if it’s not YouTube and if there is no money being talked about, the press doesn’t really care. It’s a sad but relatively popular scenario. I’m assuming there must be some ad revenue deals underneath Techcrunch TV but it’s not apparent, and apparently there was no special launch sponsor that was rolled out with the programming, which I am surprised about too. If the headline included a budget price, a VC get, or even a launch sponsor, the press would have had more to say about it. After all, this is a very expensive kind of effort.

The network only hosts 40 minutes of live programming a day, but you can see where this is going. Obviously they will continue to add more and more shows into pre-fixed time slots. They’ll design new shows with regular spots, likely interrupt for breaking stories, and probably pitch the camera to experts spread-out around the world.

There is one major risk I foresee, and that is time vs. the marketplace. It’s the right time, and Techcrunch TV is getting in early which is a major win, but running a station with live programming for more than 40-minutes a day takes a lot of talent and a lot of talent takes a lot of money.

I foresee the need for significant investment to ramp this network up and that investment would be risky coming from Silicon Valley VC’s because it might take a much longer period of time to ramp up than anyone can predict. And you wouldn’t want to burn through too much, too quick. I think it can work without VC, based on the now maturing ad market and my guess is that the network will scale up in minutes over time at the rate they are able to garner more sponsorship funding.

One other challenge that is not so much of a risk is the interest people will have in watching the content. While I can imagine tuning in for those special breaking events, it’s going to be hard to commit the time to what is ultimately the most boring kind of content you can have on camera - talking heads. If you are a total geek for the people on camera, you may very well watch but wouldn’t you rather get the headline and read the story right quick on Techcrunch.com? On the other hand, look at YouTube - its filled with super-popular talking heads and this is just the beginning. As the network scales up, the possibilities for where to take the creative content in the future are limitless. Congrats to Techcrunch, this is a major win for everyone involved in online video.

Rocketboom: 125 Million Served

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:31:00 -0400

Congrats to Next New Networks on reaching a Billion views, that’s quite a few views! We just went through the exercise of putting together stats on views served here at Rocketboom and couldn’t get to an exact #. Greg spent a couple of weeks on past logs, we interpolated a bit on some early data, and when we came up with a general range, we decided to go ahead and pick the lowest number of the low end of the range just to be confident, and set our markers.

Rocketboom has served over 125 Million videos views to date.

One thing that’s important to remember about video views is that they are becoming less and less of an indicator of how well your media is doing. While we have never bought a single view, it’s common place for companies to buy views, and this essentially hacks the system in a negative way for everyone. 100k views for only $189 is a pretty good deal. Another common view inflation trick occurs when companies buy banner ad traffic for pennies, which drives traffic to video ads that sell for dollars. It’s a lot like Twitter where you can often see the scams more transparently, and the value of the content and the audience is not really of concern. The web is infested with spam accounts that are created for the sole intent of manufacturing traffic.

I used to blog regularly about Rocketboom updates, and market updates, and then it kinda fell by the wayside as the company has grown and I’ve just gotten busier and busier, a typical excuse. While the world has certainly changed over the last several years with regards to more audiences and more predictable content online, surprisingly, the market is still developing rather slowly and it’s often much more deformed than it appears — I’ll try to chime in here with more comments more often.

The Winnebago Man Meme

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:08:45 -0400

The story of the Winnebago Man meme is an interesting one that warrants special historical consideration for making its way via much harsher environmental conditions than memes travel through today. While memes can flourish more naturally now through internet distribution, the Winnebago Man meme, spawned from a set of out-takes filmed in 1988, was originally passed around through the physical act of dubbing VHS tapes.

[original cut]

Even when at its technological prime, most end users of VHS tech did not have the regular capability to dub tapes, but when they saw the Winnebago Man tape, they found it to be so awesome, they became compelled to figure it out and linked up their VCRs, dubbed copies, and snail mailed them to friends and family around the world. Of course this meme was just WAITING for online video to happen and sure enough when video arrived, so did Winnebago Man. In 2009, film maker Ben Steinbaur re-introduced the take via a documentary he completed on the topic. Steinbaur had searched for and found Jack Rebney (the real name behind the legend) living as a hermit in the mountains of California and brought him to speak in Austin.

After a year of rounding up awards on the international film circuits, the documentary is hitting pervasive availability, as promoted recently with the following new trailer and updated website:

Everybody's Got Something To Hide

Mon, 17 May 2010 21:46:00 -0400

I grew up listening to the Beatles and was such a Beatlesmaniac, I knew every lyric to every song they ever released. I would get my sister Courtney to quiz me with a book to be sure I got every word. I also knew everything about them and had a box full of Beatles memorabilia that was so special, one day when my school burned down, they found that the only thing in tact from the entire school was a small closet that had my Beatles collection in it.

As the world changed, and music changed, The Beatles’ music would continue to be remastered and even as a kid, I was amazed that their recordings sounded so good, on each new medium.

The Beatles are timeless and I am inclined to think that their music is so wonderful, it will make it’s way into future generations on it’s own, but I worry about the resistance it’s up against, and wonder if it will make it’s way with as much popularity as it has had in times past.

I suppose if you still listen to radio you will still have The Beatles as a part of your life, they get a lot of airplay, even today on classic rock stations for example. And they continue to sell ALOT of albums.

Yet as MG Siegler from Techcrunch pointed out, they have been missing from the digital age for a long time. iTunes has been around for 7 years and they have not been able to strike a deal. While it’s hard to see the impact of their absence now, I worry that they could be skipping a crucial generation where any gap could be enough to lead to a major a loss in cultural relevance.

The Beatles have done an immaculate job at keeping their music, photographs and other media away from the internet. If there is a gray area on legal use for media with The Beatles, they’ll probably pursue it and win. So yeah, unfortunately most of the young people I know these days are not very familiar with their music. It’s hard to imagine; I continue to be surprised everytime someone doesn’t know a popular Beatles song.

I wonder if the lack of existence in internet culture will harm their relevancy for future generations to come.

As you can see from the video, The Beatles are pretty famous still today.

gleuch: mememolly: bradofarrell: Mememolly is the “meme...

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:52:51 -0400

gleuch: mememolly: bradofarrell:

Mememolly is the “meme expert” meme now.

Molly: why.
BradOFarrell@gmail.com: molly
BradOFarrell@gmail.com: you’re a legit meme now
Molly: no.
Molly: why does this exist.
BradOFarrell@gmail.com: you can’t “no.” this one away
Molly: hahaha

Someone made a Molly meme generator: http://memegenerator.net/MEME-EXPERT

rocketboom: @alyankovic this Streamy’s for you!! Congrats /cc @...

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:04:27 -0400

rocketboom:

@alyankovic this Streamy’s for you!! Congrats /cc @ and Weird Al Yankovic won the 2010 Streamy Award for Best Guest Star in a Web Series (via knowyourmeme)

Why The Daily Show Left Hulu

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:04:00 -0500

Today Hulu announced that John Stewart and Stephen Colbert would be departing the service. The content will however be available at The Daily Show and The Colbert Report websites.

As many note, this is a serious blow to Hulu in terms of losing a major performer and content draw.

Brian Stellar from the New York Times added some additional facts surrounding the relationship though suggests this move to depart Hulu “does not represent a strategic shift for Viacom.”

I would suggest that this move *is* part of a strategic shift, specifically for Viacom and The Daily Show in particular, and in general, part of an invetiable trend to centralize a brand’s online audience. In an article a couple of months ago entitled “Video Distribution Tending Towards Centralization”, I noted the following observation:

“Along with this…..is a trend with reverting back to the pre-social network days of placing an emphasis on your own domain dot com. The NYTimes and CNN for example have been putting more development into their own on-site and single-point-of-distribution strategies….This centralizing trend has always seemed inevitable for preserving as much of the revenue share as possible. “

In other words, whatever they get for ad sales over there at Hulu is going to be split up between Hulu and Comedy Central. Why should Comedy Central cut in Hulu on their ad money? They can sell their own ads for a premium and make 100% of the share if they do it themselves. Some shows may be glad to give Hulu 50% or even more of the rev share because Hulu brings an audience they dont already have. But eventually, for any top show, the leverage tide will turn and the middle person will be the first to go.

I remember the period of time Robert Scoble transitioned away from placing an emphasis on his own destination webiste at Scobleizer, and began doing most of his work via Twitter and Friendfeed. He essentially became decentralized. I used to suggest he was diluting himself and destroying the great SEO juice he had built up for himself. If he could somehow get all that chatter back onto his own destination at scobelizer.com, I imagined, he would be able to maximize the value for himself, his audience and his sponsors. It used to be that his name and his website would pop up in a search for the latest tech news, though soon it would be link-juice that got attributed to Twitter, and then eventually he lost a lot of search rank (there are pros & cons, but this had some negative impact against the same principles he had employed in prior times). For those who know exactly what I’m talking about, you’ve probably also noted that Scobelizer has in the last year really centralized his presence back towards his own site where he has complete control of the experience. It’s the natural thing to do for advertising, SEO, etc.

As you can see below, The Daily Show can still be everywhere (embedded right here on my blog for instance), but it’s in control, gets all the money for the advertising and has all the marketing space.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c Intro - Olympics Hockey Game Bet www.thedailyshow.com

A Decade In History of Online Video

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:44:00 -0500

Aside from a few notable uses of video by the likes of jennicam, Justin Hall and the archive.org, you could play around with video online, but for the first half of the decade, the audience wasn’t there. As war often begets technology, US political campaigns often begets online trends and with the 2004 presidential election, Howard Dean’s campaign took the online world by storm not just by chatter, but because micro donations became significant and challenged traditional means of hitting up only the established elite.

Coinciding with the election of 2004 was the prevalence of broadband speeds, and with half of American homes reaching better than dial-up transfer rates, along with all the noise created by the blogs and pundits of the internet, an audience was born, capable and accustomed to online payments (i.e. market potential) and finally able to watch video, on demand by the masses.

However, this perfect storm would not occur until nearly the end of the election and 2004 can be seen as the end of flash animations and the begging of online video. It was really this year, in 2004, that online video would be born. The difference is only in frames per second. The star of the 2004 election was Jib-Jab which made fun flash animations at just a few frames per second, after loading. With broadband speeds, the world moved on to 15 full color frames per second. Any less than 15 frames (13 or 12 frames for example) can be detected by most people as frames of consecutive images, like a flip book. 15 is a magic number of frames that allows almost all humans to see a video as fluid.

2004

+ The first organized group of online video enthusiasts congealed throughout 2004 and solidified in the beginning of 2005 with a conference called Vloggercon. This group was identified as vloggers and videobloggers and toiled over the technical methods of serving video online, naming conventions, the philosophy of, production methods, etc.

+ On May 7th, a group associated with Al Queda released the Nick Berg beheading video which was readily passed around on blogs and was seen by many people who had never seen, and would of preferred to never see anything so intense. This kind of content previously had no outlet as it would not be shown on TV.

+ Rocketboom launched in October and is still running, considered by many to be the first online daily news show and the longest running online video show to date. (Im obviously biased for including this as important)

+ In December Numa Numa was released onto the website Newgrounds which was a turning point for another kind of video that previously had no outlet. People were charmed after watching it’s down-home sincerity and many were compelled to create their own video responses.

2005

+ The Asian Tsunami that hit at the end of 2004 surfaced several amateur videos several days later and they would go on to be talked about and heavily viewed in January of 2005. This signified to people from all over the world who went online to watch the videos that we had entered into an age similar to the one digital cameras had recently transitioned into as now phone video and consumer video cameras had become pervasive. This content is yet another style of content that was too poor and too difficult to get copyright clearance to run on TV, yet was probably the most watched set of video online up to this time.

+ 2005 was also the year of the video aggregator. FireAnt.tv was the first RSS based media player optimized for download and viewing of online videos. Followed by Miro (then DTV) and a million more which were previously working on audio podcasting.

+ In April the first video is posted to YouTube. Along with Blip.tv which launched a month later in May, the two hosts are largely responsible for providing the only feasible hosting solution as most online hosts regularly charged $.50 cents per gigabyte of video transfered. Because Blip and YouTube would provide free hosting, it set the stage for the democratization of online video to truly occur so that anyone could participate freely.

+ Beyond ‘vidoblogging’, ”video podcasting” became popular, especially with Tikibar (March), Diggnation (July) and Ask A Ninja (Nov).

+ By the end of June, Apple launched a video podcasting aggregator in iTunes which would essentially wipe out all the other aggregators.

+ In October Apple releases the Video iPod and thus ushers in an era of portable video content, including popular, contemporary TV shows and movies, on demand via iTunes.

+ In December Tivo launches online video content to it’s boxes.

2006

+ Throughout the year, a major shift would occur from file downloads like .mov and .wmv to connected flash player views with the rise in popularity of YouTube.

+ In June, lonelygirl15 launches on YouTube and becomes an international sensation due to the uncertainty of it’s reality.

+ In September, Revision3 and Podtec rolled out multiple independent shows as the first new independent networks to obtain venture capital, hoping to become a new form of ABC or CBS for the web. Next New Networks would announce funding a few months later.

+ Google buys YouTube in October for $1.65 billion which is essentially the biggest moment of online video of the decade.

+ In November 2006, the Vloggies would recognize many online videobloggers. This somewhat represents the end of an era for videobloggers and the vloggies would also die. The videobloggers were mostly interested in the tech and the spreading of the word; by the end of 2006, the tech was no longer a question and the word had been spread.

2007

+ Politicians would embrace video to get out their messages, each creating a videoblog. John Edwards was the first, announcing his run for President on YouTube before TV (I was going to say spare the jokes, but why not, go nuts)

+ Sites like Metacafe, Dailymotion and Veoh would all fight for their lives as YouTube would dominate the market.

+ Political Mashups would take the form of actual video, often from video found on TV and around the net of the actual politicians and their respective clans of extremist supporters.

+ On March 19th Justin Kan launched Justin.tv by announcing he would wear his camera and stream his life 24/7. This essentially launches a new era in online live broadcasting. Ustream also launched in March. Livestream is another popular one currently.

+ In June, It’s Jerry Time won an Emmy Award, the first ever for an online series.

+ In November, Marshall Herskovitz launched Quarterlife on Myspace as an independent online production which was the first time a major Hollywood talent had taken to a web-specific series. By almost all accounts the series failed for not being in touch with the online culture it was targeting.

+ From the end of 2007 until the beginning of 2008, the Hollywood writers strike brought the internet to Hollywood’s attention as union talent found themselves unable legally to work anywhere else.

2008

+ Coming out of the writers strike, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog would go on to become a big hit online due in part to it’s creator Joss Whedon having already built a significant online following.

+ Beyond ‘podcasting’, many “Youtubers” came into prominence by ranking amongst the highest on the YouTube charts for subscribers and views, from Brookers (Sep 2005), Smosh (Nov, 2005), What The Buck (May, 2006), Nigahiga (June, 2006), TheHill88 (Aug, 2006), Sxephil (Sep, 2006), Mememolly (Nov, 2006) to the more recent Shane Dawson (Mar, 2008) and Fred (May, 2008) who all rival the million-dollar online efforts of the main stream media even still today.

2009

+ In March, The Streamy Awards honored online web series from 2008. The Streamy’s somewhat replaced the Vloggies in spirit.

+ At the end of 2009, YouTube remains dominant with over a billion streams per day - and growing - while Hulu has gained a significant market share of audience with almost a billion streams per month. Not much in the way of innovation though for video in 2008 or 2009.

The Tsunami of 2004, Online Video's First Major Event

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:04:00 -0500

Today marks the five year anniversary of the great Asian Tsunami of December 26th, 2004. This was a turning point for online video as it was the first time people from all around the world went online to watch. For all who now take online video for granted, this was even before Google Video. Here is a story I wrote about my own experience which happened just two months after I had launched Rocketboom:

“On a Sunday when I was writing the script and looking for news stories for the following Monday, I witnessed the tsunami go down online via the main stream media like cnn.com particular. So I knew the issue was so intense that there would be nothing else to say on Monday and so I spent all day looking for images and video and personal accounts - anything that I could find to “show”. This was something I had never done to this degree because I had never really had an impetus. But looking around for footage and pictures was what I would do for any event, big or small on a daily basis for Rocketboom so it started as just another day.

Anyway, I couldn’t find any videos on the day of, but I found two sites in Singapore that had about three people total who had posted a whole load of photos. So I believe I created perhaps the first tsunami video online that was a montage of the images with intense background music. While we did not have as much of a reach with our content at the time, we gained very high search return results for “tsunami video” apparently.

There was another major factor that led to the endurance of tsunami traffic: When Waxy and others like myself had accumulated the videos the next day, the same that also became really popular, I decided to turn them all into quicktime videos because there were none. As a result I was the only one serving the Quicktime files for several days and so probably all of those original batch videos that are out there that are quicktime, are generations from me (not to say that makes me special or anything, just pointing it out because i think its interesting), coincidentally. A few sites took these files and re-seeded them in bittorrent sites and then they quickly surpassed our search authority as it stacked against the time, I reckon. I assume Robin Good has an interesting tale to tell because we received a huge amount of traffic from his massive roundup as just one example.

[**aside: Of course I could not pay for the bandwidth and had the videos on the Parsons.edu server space. I brought the graduate multimedia sever down to a grinding halt (the same server that everyone uses to experiment with all kinds of wacky and powerful stuff). We couldn’t even get the server to deliver a 5k gif file until I renamed the videos and brought them back on slowly over days.

[**to the other aside: I watched as iFilm, the massively obnoxious and ad invasive leech site, learned a thing or two during this time as well about search return results. Of course with their link authority, they became the mainstream site to watch the tsunami videos as the only known option to a lot of people to start with. I remember later, on the day before the Superbowl this year, iFilm had posted all of the superbowl commercials, including all of the text and even video and image placeholders for ALL of the commercials in order to get them up first and to receive the best search results. So if you went to iFilm that night before the game, you could click on a bunch of superbowl commercials, which of course never loaded. But all of the advertisements surrounding the commercials were there and they were already making big bucks before they even copied the broadcasts and then posted the videos. Thats crummy of them and you can predict their behavior to be like this in the future too I suppose. I have noticed that over the last few months the obnoxiousness had gone way down, but its still pretty out-of-control for my tastes]”

Here are a couple of note now on YouTube:

For one of the best historical accounts of the various tsunami videos now, see:

http://www.asiantsunamivideos.com/

Favorite Video of 2009

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:46:00 -0500

In 2006 I started a personal tradition of naming my favorite online video each year. Then, it was Weird Al Yankovic’s White and Nerdy, as explicated here. (this became popular on Google Video just before Google bought YouTube).

Unfortunately, I would go on to break my annual tradition each year until today, as I name my favorite video of 2009, JK Wedding Entrance Dance.

The video continues to be enjoyed for all to see freely online due to the binding union YouTube arranged between the music industry and the video owners though the reason why this is my favorite video of the year has everything to do with the emotion it evokes, only possible because it was truly real.

When I think back through every wedding scene I’ve ever seen in the movies, this wedding dance video is in a class of it’s own for provoking the emotions that just simply can not be re-recreated.

The wedding dance video with it’s out-of-sync dancers and shaky lo-res handheld camera footage brings out the real love in the occasion with just the right song, in just the right space and from just the right perspective. This was not a movie where the orchestra swells and the camera pans ideally, this is a slice of reality captured nearly accidentally.

I continue to show the JK Wedding Entrance Dance video to countless people on my iPhone and universally, everyone totally lights up!

Platform Explainer Video Surprise

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:36:00 -0500

I was going to title this “Magma’s Recent PR Event”, but it wasn’t exactly a PR event, we just made a video and put it on Rocketboom. Though it turned out to be so important, it’s worth mentioning. Rocketboom is a content studio, but Magma is a platform for content, two completely different businesses. We have a small but growing user base on Magma and putting out a video that explains to people what the site is and how it works has always made a lot of sense, it’s just that I had no idea how much of an impact it would have…it literally doubled our user base within a week after posting it.

A philosophy many people believe in (me included) is that a very simple platform with one very simple idea is a very good way to start. Being the best at something very special and ultimately simple is key here. Google often likes this idea, e.g. their search page is very simple as it’s just one thing to begin with, a text box. Twitter is a good example of a seemingly simple platform too as it’s just a simple box where people type in some characters and hit enter. If Twitter started out looking like Tweetdeck however, a popular complex tool for twitterers, Twitter probably wouldn’t of caught on the way it has.

Other platforms are relatively complex in terms of feature sets, like Facebook for example. Facebook has so many features and so many things going on there, even the regular users are still learning about the various capabilities. Magma fits in this complex category too, especially in terms of where it’s going. And different people use it for different reasons right now so discovery of new ways to use the site had been slow.

When we put out a video explainer to the site, it was like a night and day difference in terms of how people have been talking about it. Instead of load of questions questions, suddenly people are writing about it and commenting with excitement and ah-ha’s as if they suddenly see where it fits in.

This is one of the neat things about the video medium, especially theater-house movies. People tend to come in, sit down and all go on the same-exact ride through the full course of thoughts and emotions the director intends. No detractions along with no time to reflect, you just get sucked in and come out with the painted story.

I was just reminded again that I wanted to post about this after seeing that Jamie had whipped up a quick integration to Boxee for Rocketboom, Know Your Meme and Magma and made a demo video explainer on how to install them. Though another reason for this post to include “press release” in the title, we hear there are big plans for the Boxee directory so soon you wont need a video to figure it out I think but until then, once again, the point I think by now is clear: Video explainers for can be VERY helpful.

Considering our video is a whopping 6 minutes and 23 seconds long I would highly recommend a much shorter video in most cases. I have no regrets for us because as I mentioned, Magma is pretty darn complex and we wanted to get it all out there. It’s just that in our case, we had Molly who singlehandedly scored the intent just by her awesome performance alone.

Magma to Tumblr: Can you hear me? Tumblr: Copy.

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 16:01:00 -0500

Magma now supports full integration with Tumblr! When adding videos to your Magma account you can automatically cross-post toTwitter, Facebook and now Tumblr simultaneously, with support for any of your Tumblr blogs, including group blogs.

We are excited to announce a few other new features too:

New Add to Channel Interface

We’ve also redesigned the channel video add experience, making it easier to see and customize the videos as you add them to your channel.

Customizable Share Message

Based on your feedback, you can now also customize the share message each time you add a video.

Explainer Video

The Magma user base has been growing rapidly over the last month, if you haven’t seen the Magma explainer video, have a look at http://mag.ma/211919

An extra special thanks to our lead developer Jamie Wilkinson and to head designer Greg Leuch for their extra hard work in building and operating the Magma platform.

http://mag.ma