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AOL UK Mediaspace

17 Feb 2006

AOL improved its UK Mediaspace and profiles it as the ultimate place to be to start your research on ‘everything digital media’. An interesting link on that page is the Web 2.0 section, where I’ve found Mike Butcher’s ‘Web 2.0, The Marketing Nightmare’ keynote.

With new and greatly improved features, UK Mediaspace is your daily resource for digital media. You’ll find everything you need to research, plan and deliver compelling proposals and strategies for your brands. There’s also a wealth of analysis, ideas and insights to inform and inspire you. Everything on UK Mediaspace is free for you to use. Simply take what you need to benefit you, your colleagues and your clients. It’s the ideal tool to help you achieve the results you really want. Take a minute to sign-up for UK Mediaspace now and customise your account. It makes the service very easy to use and ensures you feel the maximum benefit.

In his keynote, Mike Butcher talks about the savvy Consumer 2.O, in which he points out the power of search and the trend of the researching consumer. Indeed, regular marketing tactics seem to fail and more and more consumers turn to search engines to perform research about the products they want to purchase. Word of Mouth and reviews take over from the banners that promote consumer goods. Reputation and trust, powered by the Web 2.0 of social software, has the potential to have far a reaching impact on the worlds of media and marketing

The point of view of eBuyers nowadays is being formulated like this:

It’s communities which are the new feature here. Now, when I want to buy something, I don’t just buy the product, I research what other people have to say about it. If I find one on ebay, again, I don’t just buy it, I see what everyone had to say about the seller first.

In very large part I ignore all “spin”. I avoid adverts, I look for trusted sources, I hunt down the smart view, the community of souls looking out for my interests, and I after theirs. [...]

Assuming most people check the home or work PC instead for now, and that the perfect Google phone turns up soon, that means it is going to be harder and harder to “spin” products and services to the average punter. [...]

The average punter is getting connected. Really connected.

Check out AOL UK Mediaspace
Check out the 2.0 zone
Read Mike Butcher’s ‘Web 2.0, The Marketing Nightmare’ keynote. (.doc, 23 kb)
Or read the article at NetImperative.

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Posted in 2.0 +, Marketing, Search, Trends

Buzz For Bubbles

12 Feb 2006

There’s something cooking, and I don’t quite know what it is yet, but it says it’s going to bring chat to the blogosphere. Sign up if you want to know more. The beta is due shortly. It is told it’s going to be a chat interface in AJaX that you can integrate in your blog. Sounds great.

Check out 3 Bubbles and be amongst the first to know.

1 Comment

Posted in 2.0 +, Trends

Video Search And Making Money

22 Jan 2006

Search Engine Watch has released a special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, December 5-8, 2005, Chicago, IL., written by guest writer Greg Jarboe. A very interesting look on the state of Video Search today.

Moderated by Chris Sherman, this session featured three executives from video search engines: Suranga Chandratillake, the co-founder and CTO of blinkx, John Thrall, head of Multi-Media Search Engineering at Yahoo! Search, and Karen Howe, vice president of AOL Search and General Manager of Singingfish. The session also featured one expert in video search from a full-service interactive agency: Jon Leicht, Senior Project Manager at SiteLab International.

Keypoint made by Jon Leicht :

[...] the key is producing meta information. He added that meta information can include keywords, but should be more descriptive for video search. File naming is critical and the page content where a file can be found appears to have an effect on media search. He also recommended producing a transcript of audio for use in Google.

Very interesting tips, especially the one where he advised to produce a transcript of audio.

Jon closed with some observations about the future for video search engines, saying “Content drives demand.” And, he said only thing preventing video owners and creators from submitting even more content to video search engines was finding a way to monetize video search results.

About this monetizing video search results… I know what Jon was pointing out is from the engine’s point of view, but here’s my two cents on the monetizing from content from a consumer’s point of view : I’ve been contacted recently on YouTube by someone who tried to lure me to motion.tv with the tease of making money from the clips I could upload there. Since I’m kind of a power user on YouTube, I have a rather large archive. Here starts a new moral discussion. The clips I upload to YouTube aren’t mine at all but are regarded as being ‘common property’ -internet videos and viral clips in general- so what gives me the right to make money from them? Violating copyright silently is one thing, because most of the time the owner can’t be tracked that fast, but making money from content you a) do not own and b) did not create… that just doesn’t sound very fair at all.

From Motion.tv’s about:

Motion.tv pays its members a percentage of monthly ad dollars generated. Payment is based on the popularity of your videos (how many times your videos are watched by others). The better the video, the higher the ranking – the higher the ranking the more people watch your video, the more people watch your video, the more money you make. It’s that simple.

So in fact, if I were to be a popular forum with thousands of users, like there are dozens, and if I were to upload clips to motion.tv instead of uploading them to ‘putfile.com’ or ‘yourfilehost.com’ or another third party media host, and if I then send all my users to the link I would provide, I could generate a lot of money on the back of the people who made the videos in the first place. Hmmm. Tempting. How ‘allowed’ can this be? It seems very easy to hide behind a disclaimer, but I think this is a grey zone that very urgently needs some regulations.

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Posted in Ethics, Thoughts, Trends, Video

Technology Evangelist Predicts

02 Jan 2006

On his way to convince someone to make a universal remote that’s easy to program, and is intuitive enough to use in the dark, Ed Kohler *[altered] *pointed me to Technology Evangelist, where his colleague Ben Higginbotham* made some predictions for 2006, which I kindly stole from that blog. You should follow the link down under to get the entire list of predictions though, because it’s really good.

BluRay and HD DVDs will finally hit the market with much fanfare, but at a very steep price.
Apple will release a HDTV living room solution. Maybe based on iTunes, maybe not, this system will allow users to download HDTV shows and movies legally and play them on their Macintosh via their Front Row application.
To compete with Windows Mobile 5, Palm will release an all new Treo, above and beyond the Treo 700w, based on a Linux version of the Palm OS.
A VoIP war will be raged between Microsoft, eBay/Skype, Google/AOL, and the traditional VoIP providers such as Vonage. We will see a lot of innovative features, the least of which is video. Expect to start getting WebEx type functionality in these applications.
Applications will continue to move to the web, try Writely, Bloglines and Yahoo Mail and they will become more integrated – think OnlineOffice – so that users can access their data from their Handhelds, Tabnotes, and Media Center PC’s: The web will fundamentally disrupt every industry, while we have heard this before, it will truly happen in Web 2.0.

This and much more on [TechnologyEvangelist]

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Posted in Blogs, Technology, Trends

Expected Trends In Consumer Electronics

02 Jan 2006

The New York Times writes: ‘The flat-panel televisions will be getting bigger, the MP3 players and cellphones will be getting smaller. And almost everything will be getting cheaper. But the biggest trend expected at the International Consumer Electronics Show, which begins this week in Las Vegas, is that these machines will be communicating with one another. The theme of this year’s show might best be described as Convergence: This Time We Mean It.’

Consumers will finally be able to sling images and sound wirelessly around a room or an entire house.
The major electronics makers will be showing TV’s with computer capabilities and phones that will play video and music, as well as the next generation of digital recording and storage devices.
Electronics companies will also be introducing new home media servers and TV’s that can receive digital content wirelessly from a PC or via an HDMI cable (for high-definition multimedia interface).
Companies, like Elan Home Systems, that want to get right in the middle and sell devices to control all the networked appliances.
The transition of entertainment from analog to digital, of time-shifting and place-shifting, is just getting under way.

Read more on [TheNewYorkTimes] via [Customer World]

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Posted in Technology, Trends

YouTube, Veoh & Other Video Archives

28 Dec 2005

YouTube is really on the roll now. Almost daily there are changes to the interface, making it better and better to experience the online video viewing and sharing. Nathan recently posted that YouTube possibly bypassed GoogleVideo in a race for video content on the web, and I’m the first one to agree on that. YouTube is very web 2.0, has thousands and thousands of users and allows those users to add personal value to each clip. From comments to bookmarks, to creating custom playlists, it’s all there. I’m a very satisfied users, and I think I made Nathan switch to YouTube too.

"YouTube, founded by Internet commerce pioneers from PayPal, has developed a new service that allows people to easily upload, tag, and share personal video clips through www.YouTube.com and across the Internet on other sites, blogs and through e-mail. The service also allows users to create their own personal video network." All you need is a Flash Player, which almost all of the surfers nowadays have installed already.

I remember Nathan asking me a little while ago why I didn’t upload all these clips from my archive to the GoogleVideo site, and I said it was far too complicated to then access them afterwards. With YouTube, I can browse on the tags I gave the clips, I can embed the clips into my blog, I can subscribe to RSS feeds from users, or have RSS feeds being generated on a specific tag or a combination of tags. It’s not just the amount of videos online, it’s the way I can use them. You can also add or invite friends to your personal friends list, making it even more easy to track recently uploaded clips by people you want to stay in touch with or of whom you like the things they’ve uploaded so far. Another thing that comes along with adding friends is that you can also access their favorites, so you even have a lot more clips to look at. Also very popular is the starred rating option which allows you to express your fondness of clips other people have uploaded.

I made my own archive on YouTube, uploading every funny/shocking/deranged/sexy clip I’ve received this last year. I’m up to 488 clips, and it’s still growing. I did this because I got tired of the forwarding, with my ‘out’ box always filled with ‘pending sending’ mails. Also, due to spam regulations, a lot of companies are blocking video clips or file extensions for their employees, making a lot of emails to former colleagues bounce or just redirect to the junk folder. Forwarding a short (especially compared to GoogleVideo !) URL to someone is a very good way to bypass this corporate rule and doesn’t cause my email load to exceed human limits.

You can also use YouTube to share private videos with friends or family, making it very easy to upload clips from family reunions, dinner parties or birthdays and share them with other loved ones online. Yeah, YouTube really gets to it. It’s a perfect community. No doubt. If Google should decide they want some web 2.0 action, like Yahoo has it’s Flickr… they should buy YouTube and forget about their GoogleVideo stuff. To be honest, I haven’t really used GoogleVideo since I came across YouTube in July because the time between uploading a clip, and actually being able to use it somewhere online is just way too long. With YouTube, depending on the filesize (max 100 mb), it only takes a few minutes before it’s available. And instantness is a very high-valued quality of any web service.

Adult footage isn’t allowed, and the self-regulation between users is pretty high. You can flag a clip for unreasonable content, and be sure it’ll disappear very very soon. Not at once, but the review monkeys over at YouTube are very alert and step in very often to remove copyrighted or obscene material. And another wonderful thing about YouTube is: there are no porn ads, no adult friend finder ads or whatsoever, making it a very clean site for all ages.

I can recommend YouTube to all of you, so y’all can broadcast yourselves.

Links :

* Signing up at YouTube (for free, of course)
* Coolz0r Videos

So now what? Well, YouTube is a perfect online sharing tool. But there’s offline fun too. And in comes Veoh, an initiative very much like YouTube, but with some extras. I’ll take you through the extras and explain a little how it works.

Veoh is an Internet Television Network that is able to reach anyone with a broadband Internet connection and a PC or a Mac. All you need to do is download and install the Veoh software, and you’re off. (Took me about a minute to set it up, downloaded .exe file size: 2.38 mb)

Veoh allows anyone to create and broadcast their own TV show or a Channel full of shows. Not small streaming videos, but FULL-Screen, TV-Quality video. Veoh does not transcode the content, whereas YouTube renders it all and makes a Flash clip of it. Veoh offers it in it’s native encoding, and does not limit the file sizes/length of video. YouTube has a 100 mb limit. Veoh’s goal is to become the platform for producers of all sizes (from individuals to studios and everyone in between) to have a democratized TV broadcasting system. Democratized means unfiltered, thus including adult material.

Veoh has over 10,000 shows available for immediate consumption. If you’re worried about being exposed to Adult content, Veoh has a built-in family filter that is on by default. You can choose what rating not to go above. Filters are: TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14, TV-MA, Adults Only and ’shocking & offensive’. Altering those filters requires the password to be re-entered.

Veoh has a stand-alone function built in, so what you’ve downloaded is also viewable when you’re not connected to the internet or on the move with your laptop. Prior to watching, the show must be downloaded to your computer. Veoh makes this process as easy as clicking a download button. Most shows will download within minutes or even seconds, others may take longer. Once a download is complete, you can watch the show. If you like the show, you can “subscribe” to it, and automatically get every new episode that the broadcaster publishes. It is FREE to subscribe to all shows . Think of this as a TiVo for Internet TV.

One of the coolest features is that you can manage your Veoh video queue remotely. So if you have Veoh installed on your PC/Mac at home, you can log into our system from work, and add stuff for your Veoh to download, so that you have it when you get home.

Veoh also has an integration for iPods, with over 3000 videos ready to download and play.

Veoh is based in San Diego, CA, is venture capital backed, and built by some pretty cool guys :-). CEO- Dmitry Shapiro built Akonix Systems, (an IM/P2P security company with over 1 million deployed enterprise seats), Chief Scientist – Dr. Ted Dunning built MusicMatchâ€™s recommendation engine (sold to Yahoo). Full bios can be found here.

Getting Started :

* Download the tool for Mac OS X (10.3.9 and +) or PC (WinXP)
* Take a Tour, hosted by Veoh’s CEO, Dmitry Shapiro
* Learn how to make Veoh use iTunes to download videos

What other Video Archives are there left?

Not really plenty. I haven’t found or heard of any others that are building upon social networking, but there are some cool places where you can access pretty funny viral material.

* Viral X
* iFilm
* EatMail.tv (register)
* ViralMeister
* Lycos Viral

4 Comments

Posted in 2.0 +, Reviews, Search, Social Networks, Technology, Tools, Trends, Video

PostSecret Update

04 Dec 2005

A few months ago I posted something about PostSecret, a project that encourages people to come clean with their conscious by sharing their dark secrets with the rest of the world. The project grew quite fast and became rather popular. Last month and this month added up together, I had more than 500 incoming searches on this topic, so I thought it was about time I’d write something new about it. The only thing I miss on their blogspot, however, is an archive of the stuff that has been released online, although I understand that it might not be possible to host all the images.

Meanwhile the PostSecret site came up with a book that bundles most of the entries and a lot of unreleased material. You can order it on Amazon and it’s titled: Confessions From Ordinary Lives. The PostSecret book is a hardcover with 288 pages published by Harper Collins/Regan Books. All the postcard images are in color and many have never been seen before. It seemed a very good idea to do, and it made it to my wishlist right away.

Every sunday, new secrets are posted on the site, and old ones are removed. You are invited to anonymously contribute your secrets to PostSecret. Each
secret can be a regret, hope, funny experience, unseen kindness, fantasy,
belief, fear, betrayal, erotic desire, feeling, confession, or childhood
humiliation. Reveal anything – as long as it is true and you have never shared
it with anyone before. Make sure you put it on a mailable material and send it to :

PostSecret

13345 Copper Ridge Rd

Germantown,
Maryland

USA 20874-3454

PostSecret is a therapy for people who need to get something off their chest. If you carry around something that you can’t share with friends, family or relatives… PostSecret is the answer. It’s a public statement without revealing your identity. It’s not going to solve the problem, but knowing you’ve shared it with the rest of the world might take off the load just enough to make it all just that bit better to make it bearable.

PostSecret became a cultural phenomenom, people all around the globe are talking about it. It’s even on the 43 things list and the Google SERP returns over 4 million results. To say it’s a good running project would be a very big understatement. There’s buzz, and it ain’t small.
I even read about PostSecret exhibition starting on December 15th. How the diversity of human behavior -secrets and shame- can have such a success :)
There are also Technorati Tags, del.icio.us Tags and Flickr Tags. Give it a go. Share your secret and be anonymously famous.

Previous post : Dark Humor & Confessions

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Posted in 2.0 +, Blogs, Ethics, Social Networks, Trends

Cool Marketing Thoughts

Archive for the ‘Trends’ Category

AOL UK Mediaspace

Buzz For Bubbles

Video Search And Making Money

Technology Evangelist Predicts

Expected Trends In Consumer Electronics

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