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Archive for September, 2007

Think again – about Internet video

September 27th, 2007 Comments off

I like this promotion from the magazine Streaming Media

It expresses the urgency that small businesses should be – but for the most part are not – feeling about the unfolding Internet video revolution.

It’s an advertisement for a white paper on Internet video and education, but it equally applies to anyone who has a story to tell or a product to sell.

The old adage "the more you tell, the more you sell" is as valid as it was 100 years ago. Internet video is evolving into one of the premiere ways to tell. Ignore it at your peril. I guarantee your more ambitious competitors are not:

"Think the video revolution is limited to user-generated content and online movie downloads? Think again.

And you’d better think fast, because learners of all kinds-whether college students, outside sales forces, or technicians in the field-are increasingly demanding the ability to receive both traditional academic courses and training materials on video. They also expect that video to work as seamlessly and easily as YouTube and with the portability of their iPods, but with the kind of interactivity and supplemental materials they’d receive in a traditional classroom.

All of which means that academic institutions and enterprises alike are looking for the most advanced, efficient, and cost-effective ways to teach and train online…"

Categories: Internet TV Tags:

Three business models

September 23rd, 2007 Comments off

Here’s Shelly Palmer, president of the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the guys who award the Emmy’s. Palmer shares some very good business advice for people who want to create Internet TV channels.

Of course, the smartest use of Internet video is for entrepreneurs to use it to sell and educate their customers directly without a media middleman.

This is a hard concept for people from the traditional television and advertising industries (the middlemen) to grasp. They’ll get it – some day. In the meantime, here’s some state of the art advice on niche video publishing.

Categories: Internet TV Tags:

YouTube for the Enterprise

September 22nd, 2007 Comments off

I’m going to keep saying this until it become "common sense":

Video is the new paper.

Some quick history…before the second half of the 19th century, paper was fairly expensive and it not rare, it was not ubiquitous.  There were no mass market books; newspapers existed, but sparingly; and there were no catalogs.

Industrial sophistication made paper cheap and launched the print explosion. Yes, Gutenburg invented the printing press way back in the late Renaissance, but in those days printing presses were like mainframes or television studios. They existed, but they were high capital items.

Moving pictures have been around for a little over 100 years. Video for about half that. Most of the population has been conditioned to think of moving pictures in terms of movie theaters and television screens. This conditioning has been so strong that most people over the age of say 25, don’t get that we are in a Brave New World as far as moving pictures are concerned.

Video is going to be EVERYWHERE.  (It already is for those who use the Internet with awareness.)

Here’s what this means:

Just as print communication became a necessity for businesses once paper became inexpensive, so will video.

Video won’t be a relatively rare experience that only shows up on certain screens according to a railroad- like timetable (how 19th century!) and produced only by specialists in NY and California. 24/7 on demand video will become part and parcel of every day commercial life: to sell products, to provide customer service, to train…you name it.

A little more history:

The web started with engineers and scientists, then migrated to digital artist/activist types, then spread to bleeding edge entrepreneurs and consumers with lots of random time on their hands, then colonized "the enterprise" (aka Big Business staffs), and then became ubiquitous.

That’s the very path that Internet video is on.

The bleeding edge entrepreneurs (and intrapreneurs) are all over it and Internet video is slowly being seen as a useful internal communications tool for The Enterprise. The next stop: true mass market ubiquity, or as I’ve been putting it for the last three years: Video is the new paper.

Here’s a sign of how seriously The Enterprise is talking the idea of Internet video as an everyday corporate communications tool: YouTube for the Enterprise

Categories: Internet TV Tags:

Video reviews on Amazon

September 18th, 2007 Comments off

Amazon has long used its customers comments to help sell books. Customer reviews and recommended book lists have led the way. (I wonder if that makes them a pioneering web 2.0 company?)

Now Amazon has joined the video age.

Go to Amazon, pick any book and select the "review" option and you’ll be given two options: 1) the standard text option and 2) the new video option.

Just like with YouTube, you get an easy-to-use interface to upload your video to Amazon.

Interestingly, Amazon recommends the PureDigital line of video cameras we first reported on a year and a half ago.  I remain amazed that Google/YouTube hasn’t made a similar deal with PureDigital (or bought the company.)

PureDigital seems to be thriving in spite of their low profile. New cameras with new features. Where’s Apple? Micro video cameras is a cool niche that fits their mission to a ‘t.’

Categories: Internet Video Ads Tags:

TurnHere – Again

September 7th, 2007 4 comments

When I started this blog two years ago (after patiently waiting eleven years for Internet video to catch on), one of the first companies I featured was a modest little start-up called TurnHere.com

I really liked TurnHere.com’s model which was to take video into neighborhoods and small businesses and give those otherwise unheard voices a chance to "be on TV."  Video  is, for better or worse, the ultimate marketing medium, but until the cost of producing – and distributing – video messages was prohibitive, for all by the most deep pockets organizations.

No more and I’m happy to say that TurnHere has turned out to be one of the true movers and shakers in this movement. When I first profiled them, they had a network of less than 50 videographers. Now they have thousands.

This video features a somewhat rare interview with Brad Inman the mastermind behind TurnHere.com. Before taking a leadership role in the Internet video world, Brad was – and still is – deeply involved at the intersection of the Internet and real estate. He’s the preeminent publisher in the field and his traveling conferences on the subject are top notch.

Listen to what he has to say about the opportunities in Internet video. The door is wide open, especially for people who are smart about finding niche markets to serve.

Categories: Internet TV Tags:

Download YouTube, Google and Metacafe Videos!

September 2nd, 2007 5 comments

Download Youtube, Google Video, and Metcafe in one application!

VideoPiggy is an Application for Windows XP and Vista that will let you download videos straight from YouTube, Google Video, and Metacafe. This program even has built in Video Conversion to watch videos on your PC, iPod, PSP, or Cell Phone!

Categories: Internet TV, Web/Tech Tags: