VideoNuze Posts

Hearst-Argyle Television will use KickApps' social media/video platform to power its stations' new "u local" initiative according to an announcement this morning.

Hearst-Argyle's goal is to allow local residents to discuss news topics important to their community and to upload their own photos and videos. The first u local area was launched in Dec '08 by WMUR in Manchester, New Hampshire and according to Hearst-Argyle generated tens of thousands of submissions in the first week alone. The other stations in Hearst-Argyle's portfolio will roll out u local in the coming months. For KickApps, the deal follows one with WorldNow, announced last year to drive social media into WorldNow-powered sites.

The question begs: can a local TV station become a social media hub for its local residents? In the Facebook-MySpace-Twitter-YouTube age, we seem to be on the cusp of social media saturation. Yet despite all these engagement opportunities, focused local social media initiatives could well find a place. People are extremely passionate about their local communities and the social bonds are very tight. Sharing common experiences, concerns and passions online with local neighbors seems like an updated version of what's been happening over backyard fences since the beginning of time.

The key is execution, not just in the user experience, but in the positioning of what the local broadcaster's brand will stand for. Striving to be a social media hub is a new positioning, and to incent viewer behavior, Hearst-Argyle will need to embrace the capability, heavily promote it and then manage it so it's a safe, well-lit area of its sites.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

Summary:

What: Clearleap has introduced a new technology platform for distributing broadband video content directly to TVs and an accompanying ad management system.

For whom: Incumbent service providers (cable/telco) and new over-the-top entrants (device makers, aggregators, etc.), content providers and advertisers

Benefits: For service providers, a flexible, cost-effective system for offering broadband content to their subscribers with minimal technology integration; for content providers a scalable system for distributing content across multiple providers and platforms; for advertisers a new method of targeting on-demand audiences.

More innovation is coming to the ongoing quest to bring broadband content to TVs as Clearleap, an Atlanta-based startup, pulled back the curtain yesterday on its ambitious technology platform. Last fall, CEO/founder Braxton Jarratt gave me a glimpse into what the company was working on and yesterday he explained it more fully.

Clearleap aims to do multiple things with its "clear|flow" and "clear|profit" products. For incumbent video service providers (cable and telco operators) and new "over-the-top" entrants (device makers, aggregators, etc.), Clearleap enables delivery of broadband and other video to the TV including integrating with existing Video-on-Demand infrastructure when present; for content providers, it improves the process of distributing of content across multiple providers and platforms; and for both service providers and content providers it offers an ad management solution that allows flexible ad insertion and business rules for ads running with Clearleap-delivered video.

That's a mouthful, so to break it down a bit, here's my interpretation. First the delivery side. Obviously there's been a lot of discussion, particularly just since CES in January, of new entrants delivering broadband content to TVs, thereby presenting potential alternatives for consumers to "cut the cord" on existing cable and telco providers. One way for incumbent to combat this is for them to offer the best of the web (like TiVo has been doing with TiVoCast for a while now) in one seamless package delivered through the existing set-top box.

To date incumbents haven't pursued this strategy much though. Braxton attributes this intransigence to lack of adequate technology, than to lack of interest. Braxton says Clearleap has a couple of small deployments active and other announcements pending. The key to success is allowing the incumbents to control the process of what content they acquire and to present it in context with other VOD offerings. clear|flow ingests video from content partners into Clearleap's data centers, transcodes it and properly formats it for target devices, adds metadata and business rules and then enables service providers to subscribe to whatever content they want. The video is either served from Clearleap's data centers or pushed to an incumbent's own hosting facility.

On the other side of the coin, another goal of clear|flow is to become the glue that allows content providers who want to distribute across all these emerging platforms to do so with minimal work. Just upload your content, specify business rules and the service providers take it from there. Of course, there's a "chicken and egg" challenge here that content providers will only take an interest when there's sufficient distribution. Braxton recognizes this issue as well and said they've been encouraged by the willingness of certain "friendlies" to get involved, which he hopes will provide validation for others to come on board soon.

Last, but not least, clear|profit allows ad avails to be created and properly divided between the content providers and service providers according to specified rules. Ad management and insertion has of course been the Achilles heel for existing VOD systems, rendering today's VOD a largely revenue-free pursuit for most service providers. Cost-effectively solving the ad insertion process for VOD alone would be a major win.

Netflix confirmed for me that the first 9 seasons of "South Park" are indeed coming to its "Watch Instantly" streaming service. This was mentioned by South Park's Matt Stone in a longer NY Times story yesterday about the program's digital activities. However, since there was no formal announcement yesterday and I couldn't add South Park episodes to my Netflix Watch Instantly I followed up to verify.

A Netflix spokesman told me that a deal has indeed been signed, and that the formal announcement will follow later this month when the release timeline has been finalized. He did not comment on the Times report that Netflix is paying for the episodes, though I assume this is almost certainly the case.

Netflix's move demonstrates the beginnings of what I think is real power in its Watch Instantly model, namely the ability to pay to get great content which itself can be a subscriber acquisition and/or retention tool. I expect we'll see a lot more of Netflix cherrypicking programs and or specific networks to build out its Watch Instantly feature. As it does, it will become an increasingly appealing alternative for early adopter cord-cutters.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

Summary

For whom: publishers, ad networks, monitoring services, PR professionals

There are many exciting uses of MediaCloud's metadata, but two resonate most strongly for me. First is how it enables more universal publishing and multimedia search results for content providers at scale. For example, when you consider how much video is being created by so many different providers (e.g. broadcasters, cable networks, newspapers, magazines, online publishers, brands, etc.), you begin to realize how critical it is that they be able to cohesively deliver all types of assets to users. A scalable way to produce high-quality metadata which pulls related content together and allows each user to consume in the format they prefer is becoming essential.

Second is how contextual ad targeting is enabled at a whole new level. VideoNuze readers know that one of my fixations has been untargeted and/or redundant video ads. Everyone agrees there's much improvement to be made to the video ad value chain. Allowing publishers to expose their videos' metadata to ad networks in particular would provide significantly improved targeting, resulting in better CPMs and making pay-per-action models much more viable.

What do you think? Post a comment.

Yesterday, Reality Digital, a player in the white-label social media space, announced "Harmony," a new self-service social media/online video sharing platform targeted to small-to-medium sized businesses. SMBs are getting a lot of love recently as more and more technology providers are realizing there's opportunity to serve them (see post on Jivox and Pixel Fish earlier this week for more).

Cynthia Francis, Reality Digital's CEO/co-founder explained to me that Harmony was borne out of interest that smaller prospects were showing for its Opus platform (which powers such projects as the NFL's "Replay Re-Cutter"). However, with its cost of $50K or more per year, Opus was out of reach for many.

Reality Digital was also seeing a lot of SMBs simply using WordPress and YouTube to cobble together a community/video presence. So Harmony's goal was to improve on this, enabling SMBs to go beyond template-only social community building and video sharing. Among the differentiators Cynthia sees for Harmony are full drag-and-drop configuration, 100% branding control and self-service advertising in addition to the core community-building and video tools.

Most big media companies have now embraced social media to one extent or another. The main challenges with these efforts are keeping the community vibrant, safe and engaging. For resource-constrained SMBs, these issues will take on even greater importance. Still, with video so inexpensive to produce and all businesses striving for customer loyalty, it is appealing to give social media a try. Harmony makes it easy for SMBs to dip their toe in and test to see if it is right for them.

What do you think? Post a comment now.

I'm constantly mindful of the length of VideoNuze posts and these are good suggestions. I try to do my best to keep posts as tight as possible, while still trying to be thorough. Some days I can do so in 300 or 400 words. Other days it may take closer to 600 or 700.

Regardless, I'm sensitive that readers have a lot on their plates and so finding ways to make VideoNuze content more accessible and usable is super-important to me. I'm wide open to suggestions for how to do so. If you have thoughts or suggestions, please leave a comment or just drop me an email at wrichmondATvideonuze.com.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Below is the 8th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for Feb. 20, 2009.

This week Daisy Whitney and I discuss the recently-revealed plans by Comcast and Time Warner to offer their subscribers online access to cable TV programming. I wrote about this at length this week in "The Cable Industry Closes Ranks - Part 2."

We're now just 2 1/2 weeks away from VideoNuze's Broadband Video Leadership Evening, on Tuesday, March 17th in New York City. There are 160+ people registered and the event will be a premier opportunity to meet industry colleagues and learn from top-tier digital media executives on the front lines of the video revolution.

We'll start with a "VideoSchmooze" cocktail/networking reception from 6pm - 7:30pm, followed by a panel discussion I'll moderate from 7:30pm - 9pm titled, "Broadband Video '09: Building the Road to Profitability." The panel includes:

• Albert Cheng, EVP, Digital Media, Disney/ABC Television Group
• Greg Clayman, EVP, Digital Distribution & Business Development, MTV Networks
• John Edwards, President and CEO, Move Networks (new)
• Karin Gilford, SVP, Fancast and Online Entertainment, Comcast Interactive Media
• Daina Middleton, SVP, Moxie Interactive, Publicis Groupe (new)

Click here to learn more and register now!

There is so much happening in the broadband video world these days that we'll have lots to discuss. We'll certainly dig into the implications of Hulu's recent decision to pull its content from Boxee and TV.com, Comcast and Time Warner Cable's intent to bring cable TV programs online for their subscribers and Nielsen and comScore's recent data around video viewership trends. It's going to be an exciting and insightful panel for sure!

The event will be held at the Hudson Theater on West 44th Street just off Times Square. NATPE, VideoNuze's partner since launch, is on board for the event. And I'm extremely grateful to lead sponsor Move Networks and supporting sponsors ExtendMedia, Horn Group, mPoint and PermissionTV who are making the evening possible.

I've set up a Facebook group so you can start meeting other attendees and also keep up to date on all the recent broadband news we'll discuss on the panel. I also created a short video with key highlights of the evening (thanks to PermissionTV for production assistance).

Click here to learn more and register now!