VideoNuze Posts

And for Brotherhood, a program set in Providence, Rhode Island, they landed a cardstacker to create the state's capitol building out of 22,000 cards. Posted on YouTube 3 weeks ago, it's generated 350,000+ views.

For Showtime, and for any other premium content providers, broadband's ability to expose potential viewers to their shows is huge. Doing so with novel approaches like the ones above continue to demonstrate how broadband opens up a whole new creative palette for marketing and programming teams. More evidence that traditional marketing equations are changing.

Ok, no gloating, but hey, maybe time to spell D-Y-N-A-S-T-Y?

When I was in NYC earlier this week I caught up with my old buddy Lewis Rothkopf, who's now the VP of Biz Dev at PaltaIk. I got to know Lewis when he was at Lightningcast before it was sold to AOL. Lewis and Joel Smernoff, Paltalk's COO/President gave me a demo of their latest offering Paltalk Scene.

This product allows full video chat and interactivity in private or public rooms, with up to 5K participants per room. It enables what Paltalk calls "social-casting" which means that all chat room participants can watch the same video in the main window and comment/interact around that video. Kind of like a "virtual bar".

I think this kind of engagement around a specific video is very cool and is certainly going to become more popular going forward. Paltalk has already implemented with a bunch of partners including Lifetime for its new Lisa Williams show. And Paltalk is creating a slew of its own "programs" including comedy specials, celebrity "talk shows" and sporting events (wrestling, tennis, etc.).

For Paltalk the goal of these events is to upsell basic members to subscribe to the premium service so they can see video of other members. Down the road there are certainly many other models (PPV, subscriptions, software licensing, etc.). Any user is able to access Paltalk Scene to create their own room.

Paltalk also has an Active X control right now so content partners can embed the video chat window right into their web site, to both retain branding and also offer sponsorship opportunities. Soon there will also be a Flash embed version, which will allow Mac users to enjoy as well.

In short, Paltalk Scene seems like an easy-to-use system for content providers to deepen engagement with their audiences around specific video events creating a totally new user experience.

It seems like half the world I know is coming to Boston next week for VON and the other half is going to LA for Digital Hollywood. Some of the unlucky ones are trying to make it to both. Too bad that two good shows are overlapping.

Though I'm based in Boston, I'll be heading to Digital Hollywood and will be there from Tuesday morning through Thursday morning.

It's always a great networking event, and I'll be around to meet up. Just drop me a line if you'll be there too.

Based on answers to several questions of mine that Metacafe executives answered, I sense that behind all those words Metacafe is trying to create its own "virtuous cycle". This is a concept taught in all MBA programs, which describes how various elements of a business can act to reinforce one another. When it occurs, both operational and financial results are optimized.

Here's how I think Metacafe's virtuous cycle, as exemplified by "Director's Cut", could work:

By showcasing their highest-quality producers (as determined by Metacafe's own users) in a prominently highlighted section of its well-trafficked site, Metacafe will no doubt drive lots more views of these videos. These views count for their producers' in Metacafe's "Producer Rewards" program, which in turn results in more earnings for the producers. In theory, greater earnings will result in more loyalty to Metacafe among their best producers. Ultimately this yields an overall better-quality user experience and more overall ad revenues.

If successful, this kind of self-reinforcing program could be a real differentiator for Metacafe as it pursues the short video segment which is its focus. All UGC/video sharing sites, led by YouTube, are trying to ratchet up their video quality from their roots as pure UGC sites. Yet doing so is elusive. Even with the proliferation of the number of video producers, there's always going to be a finite number of really high-quality ones. So helping them genuinely earn a living from their work is a real key to winning their long-term loyalty.

All content providers or aggregators should be thinking like Metacafe in terms of how they too can create their own "virtuous cycles."

Today I had a pretty interesting meeting with The Fifth Network, a company which I'd only been minimally aware of. TFN's been focused on media services for the past couple of years, but is now poised to launch a pretty comprehensive solution for broadband video delivery.

We didn't get into too much detail or extensive demos, but what I did see looked impressive, especially from a video quality perspective. They shared a preview of a deal being implemented for a big brand advertiser and also for a potential film studio.

I thought all the companies that had planted their flag in the content/ad management and content publishing spaces were now declared, but TFN shows that there are still some stealthy efforts out there, which when released will continue to push further innovation in this space. I'll have more details on TFN's deals just before they go live.

Two conversations yesterday, one with a broadcaster and one with a cable operator, had the same basic theme with regard to broadband video: "hey, we understand this broadband stuff is happening, but we don't see it as a threat to our core business YET, so we're not going to be very aggressive in pursuing it for now." Instead they are each focusing most of their resources on defending their incumbent businesses, while only dabbling in broadband projects.

With broadband revenues still nascent (the biggest concern I hear), is it wrong to "play defense" by focusing on defending current businesses instead of investing more aggressively in broadband? I think so as it leaves these companies quite vulnerable down the road.

At least three macro trends suggest that ALL companies currently in the video business should be aggressive with broadband:

Consumer behavior is changing: consumers love broadband for its convenience and choice. Just last week, TNS and The Conference Board released a study indicating that 16% of Internet users now watch TV online. Usage will only increase going forward, the "horse is out of the barn."

Technology risk is minimal: broadband video already works well, is accessible to tens of millions of users without any further investments by them and video quality is improving all the time.

Competition is escalating: capital is flowing into the industry to fund more competition. Not all of these will become winners, but at a minimum they will create lots of headaches for incumbents.

For these reasons and more, I think it's essential for companies involved in video to play offense and invest accordingly to ensure they're properly positioned for the coming broadband era.

I saw an early version of this product at the NAB Futures Summit last April (CNET's Brian Cooley brought one along) and for simplicity it's hard to beat. You download the Fanfare software (a snap), plug the device into your USB, download files, and then plug the device into its cradle, which is connected to your TV. What I haven't seen is the UI for the TV, so I can't comment on that.

Considering I witnessed my 8 year-old nephew figure out how to plug his digital camera into his TV to do slide shows, I'd expect Sansa TakeTV to appeal to a pretty wide audience of non-techies. And at $100 for the 4GB model (saves about 5 hours of video), it's a solid "stocking stuffer" for the upcoming holiday season.

Sansa TakeTV is another example of the limitless innovation underway to converge the PC/broadband video world with the TV world. To date most of the solutions here (except AppleTV and Xbox probably) have been pretty techie, requiring some degree of user intervention to marry the PC and the TV over the home wireless or wired network. It's safe to say that none of these devices has yet caught on.

Sansa TakeTV's issue is whether it can be anything more than a short term, low end solution. A lot of the answer is wrapped up whether USB Flash storage can scale up to inexpensively handle lots of video. For example, the low-end AppleTV holds 40 GB and costs $299, while the 16GB USB Flash drives I found online approach $200 alone, never mind the software and other component costs in the Sansa Take TV package. (see below).

However, if anyone's going to figure out how to make USB Flash storage competitive for video, it'll be SanDisk. In the meantime, there's nothing wrong with accepting Sansa Take TV for what it is - an easy-to-use, low end product for the masses to watch high-quality broadband video on their TVs.