Online Media Cultist

This video exploring new features on Google Earth 4.3 is pretty cool, and gets cooler the deeper in you go. The 3D buildings layer is amazing. Baltimore was used as the example, and it had me wishing for more episodes of The Wire!

It’s Friday, and some Fridays are more Friday than others, you know? In any event, definitely time for some videos.

I’ve been talking about Grand Theft Auto IV a lot this week both here and over on Twitter. This video posits what GTA IV would look like on the old NES.

I’m a sucker for parodies that utilize any kind of ’80s-era video game graphics, what can I say?

As online video producers experiment, fumble, and tinker their way toward a model for making money on scripted online video content, an old school premise emerges on the new media scene: product placement.

It makes sense. Because online video needs to be able to be seen where there’s audience (see: YouTube), advertising that is already “baked in” to the video content itself can help producers to monetize their product.

Fred Seibert, creative director of NextNewNetworks, talks about creating programming around “community need” and then finding a way for video content and sponsorship to crossover to meet that need. Interesting stuff.

(Found via Beet.tv.)

Online video advertising is still, relatively speaking, a brand new industry. People only started watching videos on a massive scale over the last three or four years, as broadband penetration peaked and video platforms like YouTube emerged for non-technical people to easily upload and publish video to the Internet. And it’s only in the last year or two that online video advertising has emerged.

Much like for the Internet itself, the idea of advertising for online video was strange at first. But over time, people are getting used to the idea, and depending on the quality of the content, will put up with it in certain forms. Further, if the advertising is contextually relevant and/or blended effectively with the content itself, audiences might actually enjoy it.

Here’s what we know: people are online, they watch video online, they spend money online. Therefore, video producers and advertisers are going into overdrive to figure out a model that works. And as this marketplace matures, we’re going to see higher quality video content online and advertising models emerge that make money for producers.

There are probably many people who will disagree with that last statement, by the way. It’s conventional wisdom in some circles that you can’t make money online from scripted video content. I disagree. It’s simply a matter of time and experimentation.

Mark Cuban wrote a piece last night about “the failings of Internet video and the expectation of free content,” which references a Bernstein Research report called And Now for the News…The Emperor Has No Clothes.” Cuban’s premise is that “the a la carting of video on the net” will force video production budgets to be slashed and video content quality dumbed down, which will only benefit “Google and Youtube and black and white hat SEOs.”

This is an interesting and complex topic, and no one really has all (or even many) of the answers right now, but I find some flaws in Cuban’s thinking.

Let’s walk through this. Cuban’s initial premise is:

* Consumers won’t pay for content on the web, so it will have to be ad supported. - Is this true though? Over the last month, I’ve paid for music and video on the Internet, purchasing both through the iTunes store. The content was high quality (a great 2007 album by The Hives, and episodes of Lost that I had missed) and the price was right.

Consumers will of course be savvy in setting the barometer on what they will and won’t pay for. Most people though will be willing to be subjected to some form of video advertising.

Then we have:

* [Video content] will have to be ad supported, and it won’t be ad supported - Cuban is arguing that video content producers won’t be able to make money back on video advertising that it will take to create video content. This is a tough one, but it makes a number of assumptions. It assumes that video is being produced for web distribution (only?), and that the revenue model is based on some form of video advertising.

There are a number of ways, however, that things may work differently, in whole or in part. Video could be a branding vehicle to drive eyeballs back to television or elsewhere, or it could be a “loss leader” in an effort to get people to purchase video.

Cuban is right in stating that “a la carte” consumption on the Internet is exploding traditional methods of media consumption. In other words, people would only pay for the cable television channels that they wanted if they could, but they’re forced into paying for expensive packages at present. The print newspaper and music industries are flailing because people can purchase “a la carte” or get the content for free online.

So Cuban is looking ahead to see how the television and movie industries are going to deal with these same issues when it comes to video.

The short answer that anyone can say for sure is that it’s both an exciting and chaotic time for media creation, distribution, and consumption. I would argue though that in the end it’s a great thing because people are able to get more of what they want and how they want it than ever before.

Here are a number of other factors that I see playing out in the years ahead:

* Television will compete with the Internet for a long time - The opposite is of course true. However, if seven or eight million people watch a show on broadcast TV or one or two million watch on basic cable, no one blinks an eye. These numbers are astronomical when compared to numbers of people watching any one show online. That means that television – and that includes premium channels like HBO and Showtime – will be producing high quality content for the foreseeable future.

And really: the last decade has perhaps been the best in the history of television. The Sopranos. The Wire. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dexter. Lost. The Shield. Great shows are managing to be produced. One could argue that the proliferation of cable TV helped to drive this “golden age.” So as a devotee of great TV, I’m confident that that won’t change anytime soon.

* Producing and distributing “high quality” video content on the Internet is still very new - New web enterprises like Funny or Die and web-only shows such as Prom Queen are voyagers on a brand new ocean. Television has been around for decades, so of course many of these newer efforts are going to look and feel awkward, as production budgets and episode lengths are tinkered with to meet brand new economics.

This will get figured out though. Here’s the thing to remember:

* People love to watch video on the Internet - So people will figure out a way to make money on it. Sure, there will be some of the “dumbing down” and SEO plays that Cuban fears, but there can and will be a way for high quality shows to find an audience, and for that audience to help drive revenue for the content producers.

* The video advertising industry is still brand new - Pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, sponsorship, banner ads, companion ads, takeover ads, ad overlays, hypersyndication. These are all brand new tools for video publishers to play around with to find the model that will be acceptable to viewers and will make the most money. If it sounds confusing, it is. But there are hordes of hyper smart folk working on the equation even now. There’s gold in them thar hills, if you follow.

Production budgets, content type, and content length will all be experimented with wildly for many years to come. And over time, expectations and norms for advertising and monetizing online video content will evolve and mature. Let’s remember that a decade ago, online advertising wasn’t respected as a way to make money!

* Creative destruction - If nothing else, the Internet is a powerful force that is still only beginning to shape our daily lives. We’re only a few short years into widespread broadband cable distribution, which is driving the mad wild rush of video consumption.

So, finally, Mark Cuban asks: will it lead to destruction?

Yes. And that destruction will clear the way for what’s next.

Before this week, if someone had brought up the Grand Theft Auto franchise to me, I would have shrugged my shoulders and perhaps offered a vague recollection that some values groups were in a panic years ago when the San Andreas version came out.

That’s all changed now. Grand Theft Auto IV is absolutely stunning, in every way. I’m not a hardcore gamer. I tend to enjoy casual games (like the addictive Desktop Tower Defense), but GTA IV has me ready to go out to purchase an Xbox 360 this weekend.

It’s the storyline, the characters, the attention to detail that I find most intriguing. As I told a coworker, I don’t really care about the shooting and driving parts (though those look amazing to be sure) – I just want to walk around and hang out in that world.

For a huge array of GTA IV message boards, blogs, and resources, check out the Mahalo guide page.

It’s Friday, time for some fun. This video is somewhat derivative of the truly hilarious Internet party, but it’s still pretty good stuff.

Imagine if Facebook were real life, and its human agent was a smug British man who randomly shows up at your door. Enjoy…

Found via Laughing Squid.

Lots of fun stats to pick through from a recent Universal McCann report on social media (found via ReadWriteWeb).

Some quick takes:

83% watch video clips, up from 62% in the last study in June 2007

The maturation of social media tools based around video has just begun. This is going to be an area of experimentation, funding, and entrepreneurship for years to come. Video advertising and video metrics is in its earliest stages as well.

78% read blogs, up from 66%

A remarkable figure, particularly in the face of those who dismiss the blogosphere. It’s here to stay kids.

RSS consumption is growing rapidly up from 15% to 39%

Many inside the web-obsessed folk take RSS for granted these days, but we see that it’s really starting to tip over into mainstream consumption for the first time. That’s great news for innovative plays like Readburner, which harnesses RSS feed reading and story sharing and creates community features around it.

China is the world’s largest blogging market with 42m bloggers versus 26m in the US

Social media is worldwide and growing. It will be fascinating to see if and how social media and blogging adoption in China will affect government policies and reaction.

Overall, it’s easy to conclude that the social media monster is growing with no signs of slowing anytime soon.

B.J. Novak of The Office fame brings us a hilarious reading concerning Wikipedia Brown and the case of the missing bicycle.

“I’m not perfect,” said Wikipedia Brown. “I never said I was. But I’m pretty damned good and I’m getting better by the second, and it’s all because of people like you.”

Found via Time’s Nerd World blog.

This keyboard from Optimus Maximus is pretty sick. And you have to give extra points for the incorporation of Oingo Boingo into the demo.

I titled this piece very deliberately in response to Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb’s Video Comments? No Thanks – 5 Reasons They Don’t Work.

Now, I’m not a maniac fan of video comments; they don’t turn me on tremendously on a personal level. Also, not that many people have webcams so they’re not going to hit massive scale anytime soon.

That said, they add a really nice wrinkle and option in the way that people can interact with a blog or website (for a bunch of examples, check out TechCrunch, which rolled out video comments through its partnership with Seesmic yesterday). Think about it: if someone’s going to take the time to turn on a webcam and say something in front of it that the whole world might have the potential to contemplate, isn’t that a pretty cool thing? And when we’re talking tech and media-related blogs, I think in the vast majority of cases people who leave video comments are going to at least try to be thoughtful and intelligent about it.

Below are the reasons that Catone feels that video comments don’t work, and my responses.

* You can’t scan them - Josh says that video comments take longer to watch than video comments take to view. But for people who don’t want to watch them, it’s effortless to skip them. Further, I’d argue that video thumbnails always give a page some visual flavor and help to break up dry-looking text. Finally, it will be rare for any site to get a huge number of video comments on any given story, so for the present they are more garnish than main dish anyway.

* Harder to moderate - As I mention above, it will be rare for any site to get a lot of video comments, so the time to watch and moderate them likely won’t be excessive. And there are always going to be spammers, flamers, and trolls on any popular site, so whether they exist in print or video they’ll need to be dealt with. And I imagine that people who flame via video will end up looking pretty hilarious in many cases!

* They’re inaccessible - I’m confused about what the point is here. Perhaps that video comments will be difficult to access for handicapped people? “In order to make video accessible, you need to add captioning — which is probably not something you’ll see on Seesmic anytime,” Catone writes.

* You can’t leave links - If a publisher wants to, it’s easy enough to attach a unique URL to every comment, thus providing a unique URL (if not embed code) for every comment on a site, including videos. I get what Catone is saying, that a wonderful thing about comments is the ability to link out to related content, but a workaround here of course is to let people leave a text description sit with their video comment, in which you can write something like: I blather on insanely about my obsession with Twitter on this video. Check out Twitter at Twitter.com, y’all! Or some such.

* They increase load time - They don’t though. A well developed video comment system will simply load a little Flash and a thumbnail image, so that it’s not that much heavier than publishing a small .gif to the page. Catone mentions that using a service like Seesmic will make the load of the video comment a third-party call, but think about how most blogs are jammed to the gills with widgets and ads. Those are all third-party calls too!

I actually think that a big time video blogging platform will emerge over the next year or two. Viddler is one of the closest plays I’ve seen in this direction, a video and social networking site that is stronger than YouTube in terms of creating a home for videobloggers to promote themselves.

Video content and video feedback from the community will become an increasingly essential part of dialogue on the web. So in my view we might as well embrace the video commenting beast.