Yesterday night was the first NewTeeVee Pier Screenings. I got the chance to cover it as the official GigaOM photographer. The night turned out to be fabulous, and I got a lot of great shots in, including some long exposure photos like the one above. You can also view the whole set on Flickr.
Tomorrow is the first NewTeeVee Screenings hosted by the fine people at GigaOM. They’ll be showing and judging online videos on a massive 16 by 12 foot screen.
Here are more details:
The NewTeeVee and Metacafe Pier Screenings summer series will be a live extension of NewTeeVee.com, showcasing online video technology and content in an outdoor movie screening format. Community-chosen selections of the best web videos from the Pier Screenings website will be projected on a large screen on an outdoor pier in San Francisco.
The event includes judging by the audience, with commentary from our own American Idol panel of Nick Douglas of Look Shiny, Irina Slutsky of PodTech, and Jackson West of NewTeeVee. In addition, we’ll conduct an interview with a surprise guest who’s uniquely qualified in the area of episodic video success.
And yes, there will be popcorn and other movie-esque treats. It’s free to sign up, so what are you waiting for?
justin.tv, who I met briefly at SFBeta, launched their site about a week ago. 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, we get an intimate view into Justin Kans’ life via his live streaming wearable camera. Call it what you want–Truman Show on steroids, ultra-voyeuristic, or just a waste of time. The truth is that he’s causing quite a bit of buzz here in the valley.
Justin.tv is significant for many reasons.
First, it represents the ultimate incarnation of social media. In the future, our life stream won’t be confined to non-live media like Flickr, del.icio.us, blogs, or even Twitter. Our stream will be richer, more immediate, and relevant. Justin.tv will be known as the first major foray into live vlogging.
Secondly, these guys aren’t just messing around. Justin.tv is probaby just a test bed to launch a service where anyone can stream their media (which UStream.tv is already doing). They’re gaining expertise in handling bandwidth and other technical issues with respect to streaming live video from a backpack around San Francisco.
And finally, Justin.tv has been drawing the whole web community together in a big meta social media frenzy.
They’re streaming social media. They’re deeply connected to the San Francisco web technology social networks. They’re creating a company. They’re interesting to watch for anyone in the community.
They’re doing a lot of things right.
The big question now is, how long will Justin be able to stand having his every move constantly streamed?
Nobody can deny the proliferation of online video within the past year. Time magazine has even named “You” as the person of the year, implying that YouTube has allowed everyone of us to easily broadcast ourselves. Watching these videos are millions of bored office workers needing a quick viral video fix during their five minute break. Online video has proven itself to be a huge industry, and, digg’s redesign addresses this.
Digg’s video section was originally located alongside the other categories. Now, it’s been prominently elevated to the top bar right next to News and Podcasts. I’m happy to see this division, because I don’t consider viral videos of your brother singing his rendition of the Backstreet Boys news.
For certain videos, you’re able to view the videos without leaving digg via a lightbox interface. Simply click the play button next to the video thumbnail and watch. The result? Users have easier access to the videos, and, will have a less likely chance of leaving digg.
Digg’s video section is definitely one of the fastest growing sections of the site, and, the redesign is a good response to the demand. I still find digg’s video portal into YouTube to be much more interesting and effective than YouTube’s own featured videos page. And, I’m one of the many people that are consuming YouTube via a third party site.
The response from users vary from outrage to delight to confusion. One user commented
I dont get it, do you guys work for Wendys. its wierd
I don’t have a problem with these videos being on YouTube–if the videos are entertaining, then people will want to watch them just like any other video on YouTube. If, on the other hand, they become spammy and uninteresting, no one will watch them. I still have faith that in the social media space good videos will rise to the top, while the crap will fall to the bottom.
Certainly, companies like Wendy’s will want to penetrate the social media advertising space, since it’s dirt cheap and easy to deploy. Digg and del.icio.us have already gotten their fair share of dealing with spam. In fact, BuzzShout’s site submission has been targeted by many spammers (luckily, we hand moderate everything, which keeps the spammers at a minimum).
The bigger question is whether what Wendy’s is doing is considered gaming YouTube. Well, you might say yes if you believe that YouTube should be purely about user generated homemade content. But, of course, this isn’t true by a long shot, given the large number of copyrighted professional media that exists on the service. In fact, YouTube’s community guidelines say nothing about spam or promotional videos.
Some users have clamored for a “mark as spam” flag. But, if the so-called “spam” is highly entertaining, why wouldn’t YouTube and its users want to showcase it? If Wendy’s goes through the trouble to make a popular viral video based on its content, I don’t think it should be penalized just because a corporation is behind it. As long as Wendy’s isn’t somehow hacking the pageviews on their videos, they’re in the clear.
That being said, it takes a careful balance of promotional and entertaining elements in a commercial for it to be popular on YouTube, and still effective for Wendy’s purposes. Because, as we all know, it can be highly unpredictable what will make it big on YouTube, and what won’t. On a side note, does anyone else think that Wendy’s is trying too hard to be weird in the video above? It’s as if they think viral videos will never take off if there’s not a combination of weird sounding voices, shoddy camera work, and a penchant for alien masks.
Community video sharing is already hitting its stride with the likes of YouTube, Vimeo, and vSocial. But, what about traditional TV media and the promise of IP/TV? Jeff Pulver has a great post detailing some places on the net where you can get access to clips and videos from everyone’s favorite dinosaur tube.
Unlike TVU networks and other bittorrent style TV streaming, the list sticks to media that can be legally obtained. In many cases, the content providers are directly allowing access to a limited number of clips, and sometimes full access with a monthly fee.
The real issue here is that all this TV content is spread across too many sources. For example, when I think of looking for clips I don’t immediately head over to the UPN video spotlight. It would be great if someone took up the task of aggregating all the videos on one site. Companies like Gotuit Media will be the ones dominating the broadband video market.
It will certainly be interesting how the online video storm will shape up. Will traditional media companies successfully make the jump to the web? Or will smaller startups like YouTube eventually integrate professional media within their system?
There are already a bunch of sites that mashup video streaming giants like YouTube, everything from digg-like video ranking to automatic downloading. Another natural type of mashup is the video aggregator. YouTube does a good job of categorizing and tagging their videos already, creating online channels (although I hate to use that word in the context of the web). But of course, there will always be people who are unsatisfied, and attempt to make their own remix. Thus was born videws, which aggregates videos from YouTube and other video services to form their own mix of “cool videos and better news.”
Videws grabs news items from the AP newswire and other sources, and finds videos that are similar in nature to the article. I’m pretty sure it’s a simple keyword analysis, because more often than not, the videos are only slightly related. The interface is in a two-column format, which shows a YouTube video on the left, and a stream of news items and video links on the right.
The idea behind videws is that “news is dull without videos.” I really like the idea of aggregating video news clips, which ideally could be a video version of TechMeme. In its current state, videws just isn’t compelling enough for me to use, due mostly to its poor relevancy algorithm, and perhaps also to the relatively few user uploaded news items. The site is also rather slow.
As users upload more content to YouTube, which is serving upwards of 100 million videos a day, services like videws can really start leveraging the massive amount of content through aggregation. Bloggers are increasingly linking and embedding more videos from services like YouTube, and, tracking the popular video discussions with an aggregator like TechMeme will be valuable.
I’m one of the few people in the US that doesn’t own a TV. It’s been years since I’ve owned one, and, after the first few weeks, I haven’t really missed it that much. But, there are still some instances when certain media is best delivered through television. A friend of mine recently pointed me to TVU Networks, which provides streaming television through the web. All legalities aside, the service is actually bearable to watch when you’re desperate without a television.
Now, I must warn you that the service as it stands is a little on the shady side, as is their webpage. Based in Shanghai, TVU Networks aims to be the definitive Internet TV company:
TVU networks is a new global live TV service that enables TV Broadcasters and private individuals to broadcast TV channels to a global audiences over the Internet. TVU uses a new application-level multicasting technology (similar to peer-to-peer file sharing) that allows broadcast costs to be exponentially lower than those of today’s streaming technology.
The technology behind the content delivery is like BitTorrent, but with streaming content. Basically, the more peers that are watching the particular channel, the better your stream will be. Currently, they have about two dozen channels, ranging from ABC to HBO to Asian language channels. The player itself is no frills, allowing you to specify a channel, refresh a channel, or enter in some commands via a textbox (there doesn’t seem to be a manual for this, so you’re on your own).
Certainly, the legality of all this is questionable. HBO’s lawyers wouldn’t be very happy to know that someone is seeding a live stream of their content for free over the web. Nevertheless, the technology itself is impressive. On average, I saw about 12 to 15 peers, which gave a pretty consistent video quality.
When researching about a city before visiting for the first time, it can be hard to get a sense of what places to try, and what places to avoid. Sites like Yelp and CitySearch can only go so far in conveying the essence of a place. TurnHere lets visitors vibrantly see places with streaming videos backed by professional filmmakers.
Similar in style to the recently reviewed Rooftop Comedy, TurnHere focuses on quick and easy video browsing, except this time, the topic is travel and locations. Basically, they hire filmmakers with either professional or prosumer equipment, and with a passion for travel, to submit videos documenting cool places to visit. Businesses can also buy shooting time from TurnHere to promote themselves.
This all sounds like a pretty typical film production company, but, what’s different about TurnHere is that they make all the films available free on the web, supported by ads. Currently, most of the videos congregate around New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with a long tail sprinkled around the rest of the US. Most videos are around 5 minutes long, and try to be entertaining while providing relevant information.
The interface is spot on, allowing users to easily browse videos in different cities. The videos are delivered using a flash based player, and they’re fast to start.
What we’re seeing is traditional film production companies turning to the web for content delivery, which is great for the consumer, since it gives them more flexibility and options. But, in the end, companies like TurnHere have not scratched the surface of user generated media (which is what YouTube is solely focused on). Not everyone can be a TurnHere filmmaker.
What I would love to see is a video-based Yelp. Alongside textual reviews and photos are user-uploaded videos reviewing businesses. I’ve already seen many videobloggers doing it on their individual blogs. Heck, I’ve even done a video review on my blog about a popular sushi restaurant in Palo Alto (don’t laugh, I used my dinky little Canon Elph). I believe that there’s enough passion amongst the video blogging crowd to make a very valuable video reviews site. Someone like YouTube just needs to provide the bandwidth and infrastructure, and we’ll be set to go.
Rooftop Comedy has the goal of becoming the leading interactive media distributaion and syndication site for up-and-coming stand-up, sketch comedy and comic films. Launched in February of 2006, they currently have a large collection of comedy videos that are hard to find anywhere else. In addition, the interface is slick and the videos load quickly. Comedy fans that are looking for an alternative to traditional comedy channels should definitely pay attention to this site.
RC is powered by a comic, a computer geek, and former broadcasters (some of whom were from the interactive agency IconMedialab) who have realized that the traditional media channels haven’t been fully successful in connecting comics with comedy fans. There simply isn’t a place for comedy fans to enjoy a wide array of comic videos–RC is currently trying to fill this space by providing an online comic video vertical.
Users are able to search videos by comic, rating, or club. With literally hundreds of comics and thousands of videos to choose from, comedy fans of all tastes should be able to find videos worth watching. The interface for watching videos is intuitive and familiar, with a right hand menu allowing users to browse top clips and related clips. All videos are delivered via Windows media player, and they suggest that your connection be able to sustain a 600kbps downstream. In my experience, the videos started quickly, and were on par with the other video giants like YouTube and vimeo. They are also working on delivering content via podcasts. What I would like to see are options for video podcasts and audio podcasts, which would allow users to choose the best option for them.
When viewing clips, you’re also able to rate them and send links to friends. They mentioned that commenting would be available, but I didn’t see any forms for that on the video page. Being able to comment and discuss clips would be a great feature for fostering a community on the site.
RC’s business model is based on a combination of advertising, merchandising, and premium subscriptions. Right now, there is no cost to join, and they will never charge to view the newest content. Premium subscriptions (which have yet to be established) will allow users to access the entire video archive. There will never be a cost for comics to participate. Rooftop Comedy could be very successful, especially if their content keeps growing. They could potentially be the iTunes of comic media.
As RC matures, they say that they will be rolling out some never-before-seen interactive features, and they are hoping to expand their video content to even more comic performances around the world. They are doing this by partnering with local comedy clubs, allowing them access to syndicate their content.
Overall, Rooftop Comedy excels at bringing quality comic content to users. Watch out for them as they trump the traditional comedy media outlets by providing the long tail to users who are just craving for that comic that they saw at a small club that will never be broadcast on TV.
