Before I begin I know that in my last post I promised a review of business based video services. I will do that however I want to write about an issue which has been circulating the digital press.
Barack Obama
A lot of media and speculation has surrounded the recent withdrawal of Whitehouse video from YouTube. Read Write Web has reported that this is due to privacy policy. Fair enough. However I am concerned with the mentality of some reports, particularly where the tone is such that it is implied that you must be on YouTube to reach audience. This is complete rubbish. Yes, YouTube has a mass audience, however the interests of its viewers based on its top rating content is highly questionable. In addition it is owned by Google who may be strong in the technical development of clever player bits but again I come back to that audience question.
If I were a young film maker or if my parents just gave me a HD cam for my birthday and I wanted to have a crack at being famous then YouTube has it all. An audience that will watch anything, a mass appeal in viral sharing and so forth. However Barack Obama, a person who could arguably be the worlds biggest personal brand, does not need YouTube. He can quite simply go it alone.
This is an incredibly interesting argument for any brand that already has mass audience. The selection of Akamai by the Whitehouse probably had more to do with capability around delivering that much video anywhere in the world over any privacy issues. And that brings up another very interesting point. Akamai as a content distribution network must have enjoyed incredible press and publicity because some members of the media are too lazy to research it before comparing it to YouTube. They are not the same thing.
So the real point to this is that there are many options where you put your own video content and there are important decisions to be made. And even if you are a small niche content provider you should not assume immediately that you have to sell your soul and content in a major video portal like YouTube. There are alternatives. Contact us if you want to know how. Yes you can!
February 25, 2009 – 5:56 pm
It always fascinates me that we all rely on the internet for so much of what we do, as an essential service, that we all seem so incredibly complacent with the fact that the fail whale is the norm. We accept that the internet and many internet based services go down for periods of time. We complain and move on, waiting for it to come back. I also marvel at the digital people who bark TV is dead and so for that matter is the fixed line phone. But both of these technologies have something the internet doesn’t currently have, mature stability. When was the last time they showed the off-line/broken tv frame indicating a fault and the shows went off air? When was the last time you picked up the telephone and it didn’t work? But the instability of the internet is a fact of life driven by the extraordinary speed with which it grows and the fact that it becomes increasingly more difficult for ISP’s to keep up, by updating hardware while revenues teeter. TV still has the advantage that it just works. And perhaps that is why the download, store and watch model is so popular on the internet. That method is forgiving of fails, when the servers come back the download resumes.
And TV is multi-cast, meaning that one antenna can serve unlimited TV’s in its area. Yet we constantly hear stories about how the BBC iPlayer pretty much choked the internet when it launched in the UK. Internet connections and ISP’s pipes are capped bandwidth services, can only serve a set amount of data per second and for video the internet is unicast. I have been involved in multicast video trials before and even within a single ISP this can be complicated, in fact it didn’t work. The next step for an ISP is IP/TV, the real one, more on that another time.
We have some way to go. ISP’s race to keep up as more and more of us put our personal and commercial video online. But none of this should stop you moving your video content into the web space. The internet is still an incredible self publishing marketplace. Your video content can find an audience anywhere in the world, an audience you wouldn’t find on traditional television.
There are a myriad of self service video hosting options available to you and in our next post we will look at some of the more professional, business focussed sites that let you get your video content online.
February 1, 2009 – 4:36 pm
Welcome to the new look web site for One In Ten. I hope that you like it. I have decided to create a company blog to look at digital video and content production today and to keep you all up to date with some of One In Ten’s projects.
I don’t think I could count the number of times I have been asked this question, “Why should I use video?” and balance that with a lot of people who seem to use video on their sites just because they can. It really is all abot content and audience. Not everything works in video and conversely many people forget that video is a visual format and they produce drawn out and bland content.
But there is no question that video in the IP domain, web, download, streaming etc, is well and truly here to stay.
Internet television is trumping digital video recorders as an on-demand device for the younger generation, according to the latest findings from research firm Solutions Research Group.
The study found that 70% of on line Americans in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic have watched TV on line at some point, compared to 36% who have viewed a show on a DVR or a TiVo. That suggests the young Web users will increasingly watch their shows on the Web rather than via traditional means.
In fact, the number of on line Americans watching television shows on the Web has doubled in the last two years. Half of Internet users in the U.S. have watched a TV show on the Web, up from one-quarter in the fall of 2006.
The data comes from a study conducted in November of 1,200 Americans age 12 and older.
Read the full story.
So exactly how do you decide if video is right for you on your site? Well that is where One In Ten can help you. Just a few minutes on the phone with you is all it will take. The advice is free and realistic.
Why not contact us for a chat?
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