Digital Podcast » Digital Podcast focuses on using new and social media to build real businesses.

Can Social Media Make The World A Better Place?

Alex Nesbitt — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:12:52 +0000

Today, I received a email from someone I’ve never met who is involved with involved with International Medical Corp that asked me to post about their project at the American Express Members Project.

I was impressed by their use of social media. It’s good to see social media doing some good things for the world. She sent me a link to their social media news release that was chock full of ways to learn about the project.

In short the project goal is saving the lives of malnourished children. And they need your vote to help them increase the amount of funding they can get for the project.

“Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children” is now guaranteed a share of $2.5 million in prize money. The project with the most votes receives $1.5 million, 2nd receives $500,000, 3rd $300,000, and 4th and 5th $100,000. The funding – made possible by your votes – would bring a vital lifeline to hungry and malnourished children around the world.

But we need your help between now and October 13. Voting is easy and doesn’t cost a thing! In just a click, you can save the lives of thousands of malnourished children. Click here to vote:

For severely malnourished children, we offer a step-by-step treatment program that gives them what they need to recover, including nutrient-dense food supplements like the peanut-based product, Plumpy’Nut. Our comprehensive monitoring system saves more than 90 percent of children being treated in our feeding centers. Being one of the Top 5 would mean our nutrition could reach more children around the world who need our help.

Save Some Kids — Vote Now

Time is short - so Vote NOW!

This is a great example of how social media can be used to increase awareness and do good in the world. These kids need our help, so GO VOTE NOW.

The Crash of 2008 Explained - Podcast of the Day

Alex Nesbitt — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:28:49 +0000

This American Life, a podcast show produced by Chicago Public Radio, dives into the credit crunch and explains the mess in a way you can understand. The hedge funds and banks have created a daisy chain of credit and insurance for credit that depends completely on the chain remaining intact. If the chain breaks anywhere, others in the chain now have risk they may not even know about. And the house of cards collapses. That’s what’s happening now and it’s really, really scary stuff.

The problem is that the hedge funds are both buying and selling this stuff, making money on the spread between what they can buy it for and what they can sell it for. To make the spread bigger, they buy insurance on a company’s debt, then short sell the stock to put the debt in danger, and then sell insurance at a higher price to cover the their position. Making boatloads of money in the process.

Add leverage and we now have a mountain of “fake debt” that inflates the debt market from a real debt market of about $10 trillion to a leveraged debt market of $55 trillion, which basically means that there is something like $45 trillion of this fake debt where the collateral is an insurance policy on some other piece of debt.

This is a money making machine, until the daisy chain breaks somewhere and they have to unwind their positions. That creates huge requirements for cash throughout the system at a time when no one wants to lend cash. That means more players go belly up and amplify the problem.

This is a long podcast, but if you want to understand why the market is crashing, why you can’t get credit and why the government was panicked enough to do the bailout you should listen to this.

Support Pandora - Call Congress Now

Alex Nesbitt — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:36:04 +0000

If you like Internet radio and Pandora then It’s time call your Congressman, to tell them you want them to vote for HR 7084.

Here’s the notice from Pandora’s blog. If you want more background on Pandora, check out our interview with Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.

CONGRESSIONAL EMERGENCY!!!

Listeners we need your help… NOW!

After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, artists and record companies are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio. But just as we’ve gotten close, large traditional broadcast radio companies have launched a covert lobbying campaign to sabotage our progress.

Yesterday, Congressman Jay Inslee, and several co-sponsors, introduced legislation to give us the extra time we need but the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), which represents radio broadcasters such as Clear Channel, has begun intensively pressuring lawmakers to kill the bill. We have just a day or two to keep this from collapsing.

This is a blatant attempt by large radio companies to suffocate the webcasting industry that is just beginning to offer an alternative to their monopoly of the airwaves.

Please call your Congressperson right now and ask them to support H.R. 7084, the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008 - and to not capitulate to pressure from the NAB. Congress is currently working extended hours, so even calls this evening and over the weekend should get answered.

The central congressional switchboard number is: (202) 225 3121

Or to look up your representative, visit: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml

If the phone is busy, please try again until you get through. These calls really do make a difference.

This is a fork in the road. Only massive grassroots opposition will keep us from another 50 years of top 40 radio. It’s time to take a stand and break the stranglehold of broadcast media on radio.

Thanks so much for you ongoing support.

Tim

Founder, Pandora

UPDATE: Pandora is reporting that the house bill passed. Now we need to start thinking about calling our Senators.

We’re thrilled to let everyone know that the House bill passed! Thanks to your incredible support we were able to overcome the NAB’s efforts to derail us. Phone calls rained into the congressional offices over the past 36 hours. Just amazing.

We’re not done. We still need to get the bill through the Senate, which looks like it will be voting on the bill on Monday.

UPDATE 2:The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved the Webcaster Settlement Act, which passed in the House over the weekend and was introduced to allow webcasters to continue to negotiate new royalty agreements with copyright owners while Congress is busy with the elections.

Digital Podcast 56: USA Today’s Podcasts Are a Mess

Alex Nesbitt — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:43:25 +0000

USA Today is the largest newspaper by circulation, so I decided that they would be a great starting point for our review and benchmarking of how well print publishers are approaching downloadable media as a business.

While the review follows the best practice framework framework, it is heavily weighted to the observable factors relating to the overall user experience. I think that how well a company executes on these components of downloadable media is an important indication of how seriously they are approaching the business.

Overall Impression
USA Today is not yet treating downloadable media as a business opportunity. Downloadable content is not presented well and seems to be left to some enterprising reporters who are experimenting with using downloadable media. The individual efforts seem to range from quite enterprising to poor quality efforts. The podcasts were so variable that I had to review them individually. I produced individual reviews for Celeb Watch, Talking Tech and PopCandy.

USA Today has a wealth of content and sub-brands that would make excellent platforms for building downloadable media brands.

I see lots of upside for USA Today if they make the investments required, but right now USA Today’s downloadable media offering is mess that probably doing more damage than good.

If USA Today wants to compete on the new web, they will need to develop a more effective strategy for producing web shows from their content and substantially improve their operating practices.

Presentation of the Downloadable Media Category
At first glance, the site looks good and presents me with an option for videos. Clicking through to the video page takes the user away from the usatoday.com URL to a usatoday.feedroom.com URL. This new page has a different layout and presentation from the homepage. Once there, you find a wealth of video content from Associated Press.

This wasn’t what I wanted to review so I went back a page and searched for podcasts.

I found three results that looked like they might be podcasts. Upon review, two out the three are indeed links to podcasts. The first is to a blog called PopCandy that focuses on popular culture and the second to a video show called Talking Tech.

After poking around the site some more, I stumbled upon one more downloadable media show called Celeb Watch.

The only place I can find a complete list of these three together is a page listing all the RSS feeds on the site. The three podcasts are listed in their own category with links to subscribe in iTunes and links to the RSS pages for the podcasts. There are no links there that point to the podcast home pages or to any podcast archives.

Each of the three shows has a very different look, feel and quality.

Content available
USA Today is currently offering a very narrow range of downloadable media content with only three podcasts available. USA Today is not leveraging its wealth of content and sub-brands that would make excellent platforms for building downloadable media brands.

Use of Micro-sites
Each of the podcast shows had micro-sites that were very different and had significant variations in the quality of presentation. One of the micro-sites was effective at presenting a video podcast. These micro-sites could be improved significantly.

Use of RSS and Metadata
USA Today is not deploying best practices when in comes to RSS and media meta-data. There are duplicate feed links and feeds that don’t validate properly.

Distribution
USA Today is too reliant upon iTunes as its distribution channel. Potential listeners who do not have iTunes or prefer alternatives such as Zunes, mp3 players, cell phones, etc are not able to easily download and subscribe to content.

Content and feeds for devices other than the iPod/iPhone are not available.

Monetization
USA Today’s downloadable media is substantially under monetized and relies too much upon pre-roll advertising. Investments in more advanced flash players that support overlays will be required to monetize the downloadable media collection.

Production Quality
Video production quality is good. The single audio podcast has improved a lot after 100 episodes.

USA Today Downloadable Media - Top Recommendations

Develop a downloadable media strategy to focus investment on building successful shows
Develop downloadable media/podcast directory to show case available content
Create compelling destination micro sites for each podcast and work to improve audience interaction.
Fix and rationalize RSS feeds
Provide content formats and feeds for phone(3gp), HD and wmv
Clearly label subscribe links as subscribe in iTunes and add options for subscribing via Google, My Yahoo, Zune and provide link to RSS.
Develop and implement more advanced video player with capability for overlay advertising
Set up channels at YouTube and other video sites and syndicate content
Decide on a publishing schedule for the podcasts and stick to it
Fix id3 tags to add name, use comment field and add album art
Change Album Art to 600×600
Increase distribution by submitting podcast feed to directories other than iTunes

Links Individual Podcast Reviews

Celeb Watch
Talking Tech
PopCandy

Digital Podcast 55: USA Today’s Celeb Watch Review

Alex Nesbitt — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:31:55 +0000

Overall Impression
I liked USAToday.com’s presentation of Celeb Watch the best. It is the one micro-site that is well done. There is significant room for improving off a good start, particularly in the areas of audience interaction and technical issues like feed and tag quality.

Podcast Homepage
Upon visiting Celeb Watch’s page you are presented with a clean looking video player in the center of the page with an attractive photo of the celebrity being interviewed.

The page has links to download the media, download a widget and sharing via email. The download link is actually a link to iTunes, not the video file. I’m not sure what would happen if you tried the link without iTunes installed.

The page also has a nice short brief on what the next show will be about and links to the show’s archive.

The video is complemented by a good article providing background on the celebrity and a summary of the interview.

RSS Links
There is a link to an RSS feed but it’s not the feed for the Celeb Watch. You have to find the link in a separate page dedicated to RSS feeds for all of USAToday.com. There are no RSS feeds for alternative file types for devices other than iPod/IPhone.

Audience Interaction
The page has lots of links to social media sites for sharing. Comments have been enable on the page, but seem to lack participation.

Publishing Schedule
Celeb Watch is billed as being a weekly show, but the schedule seems quite variable.

Playability
The online flash player started immediately. The iTunes version of the show also played well in iTunes. The file was formatted using H.264 with dimensions of 640×480 which works well with iPods. Unfortunately, the video will not play on most cell phones which need dimensions of 320×240.

ID3 tags
ID3 tags were present and used. However, the show description was put in the show name field, the comment field went unused and no album art was included with the tags.

Feed quality
The feed would not validate for me at Feedvalidator.org. The feed was missing a channel description tag. The item tags were also missing image links and media RSS tags. The enclosure length tag was also missing.

File Naming
File naming protocols were mostly consistent using a format of date-cw-celebrity-name.m4v. Replacing cw with celeb_watch would improve search engines ability to index the file.

Google Search Engine Optimization
Search for Celeb Watch lists show in first result.

iTunes Search Optimization
Search for Celeb Watch lists show in second result.

Availability in other Podcast Directories
I checked five leading podcast directories and could not find the show listed.

Monetization
The show I saw had a 4 second pre-roll commercial for TV Guide Broadband. The web page has inline ads and some popup advertising.

Media Player
Plain video player - not use of borders for advertising or advertising bugs on the video.

Sharable Player
The show offers a player that can be embedded in blogs or social networking sites. No advertising on the player itself.

Production Quality
Celeb Watch’s video was good quality video.

Album Art
The RSS has links to a 300×300 image for the show. The 300×300 size image was originally recommended by Apple. Apple is now recommending square .jpg images that are at least 600 x 600 pixels. No album art was included with the downloaded file tags.

Celeb Watch - Top Recommendations

Open up the micro-site to viewer comments and improve audience interaction
Fix and rationalize RSS feeds
Provide content formats and feeds for phone(3gp), HD and wmv
Clearly label subscribe link as subscribe in iTunes and add options for subscribing via Google, My Yahoo, Zune and provide link to RSS.
Develop and implement more advanced video player with capability for overlay advertising
Set up channels at YouTube and other video sites and syndicate content
Decide on a publishing schedule for the podcasts and stick to it
Fix id3 tags to add name, use comment field and add album art
Change Album Art to 600×600
Increase distribution by submitting podcast feed to directories other than iTunes

Digital Podcast 54:USA Today’s Talking Tech Review

Alex Nesbitt — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:28:38 +0000

Overall Impression
While I liked the Talking Tech show’s content and production quality, the presentation of the show on the website and feeds needs a lot of improvement. This video podcast has some great content, but the user experience leaves a lot to be desired. The show page does not provide any information about individual episodes and audience interaction seems very weak. This is the kind of show that could do very well as a podcast, but it needs some major improvements in numerous areas.

Podcast Homepage
The presentation of Talking Tech is disappointing when compared to Celeb Watch. The page has a picture of the show’s hosts, a short blurb about the show and short bios for the hosts.

There is a picture of two laptops and a play button. The description of the episode is in a faint font and easy to overlook. Lower in the page are links to the last ten episodes presented in streaming video.

RSS Links
There is a link to an RSS feed but it’s not the feed for the Talking Tech. You have to find the link in a separate page dedicated to RSS feeds for all of USAToday.com. There are no RSS feeds for alternative file types for devices other than iPod/IPhone.

Audience Interaction
The page has lots of links to social media sites for sharing. Comments are enabled for the show, but seem to lack participation.

Publishing Schedule
The Talking Tech podcast schedule seems quite variable.

Playability
The iTunes version of the show also played well in iTunes. The file was formatted using H.264 with dimensions of 640×480 which works well with iPods. Unfortunately, the video will not play on most cell phones, first generation Zunes. PSP players and Tivo?

ID3 tags
ID3 tags were present and used. However, the show description was put in the show name field, the comment field went unused and no album art was included with the tags.

Feed quality
The feed would not validate for me at Feedvalidator.org. The feed was missing a channel description tag. The item tags were also missing image links and media RSS tags. The enclosure length tag was also missing.

File Naming
File naming protocols were mostly consistent using a format of date-tt.m4v. Replacing tt with talking_tech would improve search engines ability to index the file.

Google Search Engine Optimization
Search for Talking Tech lists show in second result.

iTunes Search Optimization
Search for Talking Tech lists show in first result.

Availability in other Podcast Directories
We checked five leading podcast directories and could not find the show listed in four of the directories. Podcast.com had the show in its directory.

Monetization
The show I saw had a 15 second pre-roll commercial for Microsoft. The web page has inline ads.

Media Player
The online flash player took 5-10 seconds to start playing. In Firefox browser, the player then got stuck downloading from something called metrics.feedroom.com. The video player was plain, with no use of borders for advertising or advertising bugs on the video.

Sharable Player
There were a number of links for sharing in sites like Digg or Mixx. There was also a link for sharing in Facebook. No links to a sharable widget for blogs.

Production Quality
Talking Tech’s video was good quality video.

Album Art
The RSS has links to a 300×300 image for the show. The 300×300 size image was originally recommended by Apple. Apple is now recommending square .jpg images that are at least 600 x 600 pixels. No album art was included with the downloaded file tags.

Talking Tech - Top Recommendations

Create destination micro site for the podcast and improve audience interaction
Fix and rationalize RSS feeds
Provide content formats and feeds for phone(3gp), HD and wmv
Clearly label subscribe link as subscribe in iTunes and add options for subscribing via Google, My Yahoo, Zune and provide link to RSS.
Develop and implement more advanced video player with capability for overlay advertising
Set up channels at YouTube and other video sites and syndicate content
Decide on a publishing schedule for the podcasts and stick to it
Fix id3 tags to add name, use comment field and add album art
Change Album Art to 600×600
Increase distribution by submitting podcast feed to directories other than iTunes

Digital Podcast 53: USA Today’s PopCandy Podcast Review

Alex Nesbitt — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:17:06 +0000

PopCandy is a blog about popular culture that also publishes an audio podcast. The podcast focuses on music and interviews and the podcasts are intermingled with blog posts. I liked the content that was produced as a supplement to the blog. However, there is lots of room for improvement in many aspects of the overall user experience and presentation of the PopCandy podcast.

Podcast Homepage
Each episode is presented as a blog post describing the contents of the episode and links to “Download the free podcast via iTunes” and “Stream the podcast as a .wma file”.

There is no inline audio player for the wma file.

RSS Links
There is a link to an RSS feed but it’s not the same RSS feed that’s listed under the RSS directory. The RSS on the blog home page validates, but does not contain any iTunes tags.

To find the podcast RSS, you have to find the link in a separate page dedicated to RSS feeds for all of USAToday.com.

Audience Interaction
The permalink page has links to Yahoo Buzz for sharing. Comments are enabled for the show.

Publishing Schedule
The Pop Candy podcast schedule seems quite variable.

Playability
The file is in an mp3 format and should be playable on all mp3 enabled devices including iPods, Zunes, Mobile phones, and PSPs.

ID3 tags
ID3 tags were present and used. However, the show description was put in the show name field, the comment field went unused and no album art was included with the tags.

Feed quality
The feed from the blog page validates at Feedvalidator.org, but does not include iTunes tags. The podcast feed from the RSS directory page would not validate for me at Feedvalidator.org. The feed was missing a channel description tag. The item tags were also missing image links and media RSS tags. The enclosure length tag was also missing.

File Naming
File naming protocols were mostly consistent using a format of date-popcandy.mp3.

Google Search Engine Optimization
Search for Pop Candy lists show in first result.

iTunes Search Optimization
Search for Pop Candy lists show in first result when the podcast filter is used on the search.

Availability in other Podcast Directories
I checked five leading podcast directories. Pop Candy was not listed in any of them.

Monetization
The show I heard did not have embedded ads. The web page has inline ads.

Media Player
No online media player. The podcast is available for streaming via Windows Media player using a wma file.

Sharable Player
There is an embeddable widget available that lists blog posts and has a podcast player built into it. I could not get the player to play any podcasts. The player also has a link to the show on iTunes. No evidence that the player is being used to carry advertisements.

Production Quality
Pop Candy’s audio quality could be improved significantly. The podcast needs to be normalized and leveled.

Add a flash based player to the blog page
Fix and rationalize RSS feeds
Decide on a publishing schedule for the podcasts and stick to it
Fix id3 tags to add name, use comment field and add album art
Change Album Art to 600×600
Increase distribution by submitting podcast feed to directories other than iTunes

Want an alter-mego?

Alex Nesbitt — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:59:22 +0000

One of the most interesting presentations at the VentureNet show, was given by Mego. They make a portable widget that contains your user profile. The widget is completely customizable and can be plugged right into any social network or blog. Wouldn’t it be nice to have one place to update your info and have it published out to all your social network sites.

I spent a few minutes making an example Mego widget. It was a pretty easy four step process.

Here’s the result:

You can make your own at Mego.com

Downloadable Media Widgets - A New Tool for Advertisers and Podcasters

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:01:02 +0000

I spoke with Susan Bratton, CEO of Personal Life Media, the other day and Susan told me about an exciting new widget that they are launching. Normally, I wouldn’t pay much attention to a new widget, but this one seems really interesting because it introduces a new distribution mechanism for downloadable media that has the potential to make downloadable media much more attractive to advertisers.

By way of background, Susan told me that they were working on ways to connect more effectively with brand advertisers and found real interest from the marketers in putting content from Personal Life Media right on the brand marketers’ web sites. That led to the development of Personal Life Media’s new brandable player widget which can be loaded with up to five RSS feeds for audio podcasts and customized by color and size to match any web site. Just like most widgets, the player can be embedded in blogs, Facebook, Myspace and anywhere else you want to use it. Not only can you customize the player, the widget enables the the brand to be the exclusive sponsor of the podcast content in the customized player.

Imagine the new pitch to advertisers, we give you content you can use on your site, you get your own branded player that your enthusiast supporters can reuse and you get to the be the exclusive advertiser on content played through the branded player. This gives the marketers some really interesting new ways to engage visitors to the site and gives Personal Life Media the ability to reuse its content on other players with different marketing programs.

At launch, they will have a number of brands using the widget including

AccuQuote has integrated their “Life Insurance Podcast” along with four shows from Personal Life Media including “Aging Gratefully,” “GreenTalk Radio,” “Living Green” and “Coaching by the Life Coach.” The player can be found on their multimedia page and their corporate blog.
CardScan is distributing “Evolutionary Sales,” “Conscious Business,” “Money, Mission and Meaning,” and “Coaching by the Life Coach” in their customized player.
Oceanus Naturals is providing “Just For Women,” “Tantra & Kama Sutra,” “Sex Love & Intimacy,” “Expanded Lovemaking” and “Fearless Lover” to site http://oceanusnaturals.com site visitors.
Sinclair Institute is offering a series of five relationship shows on their Sinclair University site at http://www.bettersex.com/t-bsu-university.aspx.
Zen by Design, makers of meditation chairs, is featuring “Buddhist Geeks,” “The New Man,” “Living Dialogues,” “Living Green” and “GreenTalk Radio” on their site at http://zenbydesign.com along with a group of relationship shows on http://tantrachair.com.
Music discovery publisher IndieFeed is using two customized players to distribute their 7 weekly music shows on Facebook and MySpace in addition to offering the widget for their fans to get and share for free at http://indiefeed.com.

Even more exciting is that Personal Life Media is making this brandable player available to other podcasters. Here’s a sample of the player I built using their widget builder.

According to the press release:

The widget creator at http://personallifemedia.com/widget is free for any company, podcaster or content fan. Fees may be involved if a marketer wants to offer shows from Personal Life Media that exclusively feature the brand’s messages. Otherwise, the shows will feature existing sponsor’s ads.

Three simple steps customize your player:

Select up to five RSS feeds for audio podcasts.

Customize the player’s color and background, pick a size and add a logo.

Click “Get” and insert it directly on a blog, website and more than 20 social media services. Any time a visitor to the brand’s site wants to “get” the widget for their own site, blog or social media page, the sponsor’s logo will be displayed along with the podcasts that include the sponsor’s marketing messages.

I look forward to seeing how this changes the way marketers think about downloadable media.

How Much Do Internet Video Producers Make?

Alex Nesbitt — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:28:19 +0000

TubeMogul, a interesting company that helps you distribute videos around the web, recently asked that question to 11,919 video producers and 1,119 responded. 51% of those said yes they are making money with Internet video earning on average $12.39 per 1,000 views.

This money making group splits into 3 groups. Group one (47.4% of the money makers) relies entirely on third parties like YouTube to monetize their content. At the other extreme, group two (23.4% of the money makers) rely on their own exclusive direct sales. The rest use a blended approach. I asked TubeMogul if they could determine CPM by group, but have not yet heard back from them.

These money makers seem to use everything they can to make money. Here’s the breakdown by ad format:

So for those of you making videos online, what works best for you?

Social Media: Strategies in Content and Commerce

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:13:48 +0000

I spent yesterday at NATPE’s LATV Festival enjoying some interesting discussions and presentations from the Digital Day. This report is a synopsis of one of those sessions. This session focused on social media and how digital media executives are using it to their advantage.

Ben Grossman, Editor in Chief, for Broadcasting & Cable led this panel discussion.

Danny Kastner is founder of Fan Rocket. Fan Rocket provides services to media companies that help promote media via viral videos.

Stephen Andrade is General Manager of NBC.com with a mission to promote TV shows, provide online advertising opportunities and create content for NBC.com. He shows a clip of what he calls creative social media that shows how The Office’s Dunder Mifflin Infinity website provides tools for fans to build content. The goal was to create a really deep community for fans of the show. The site presents creative tasks to “branches”( user groups) each week.

David Glover is CEO of Or Die Networks. The company is a online creative company that partners with celebrities to build new shows, such as Funny Or Die, and combines that with user generated content and social network tools to build community. He views it as a pyramid of content with the celebrity partner at the top, advanced users producing high quality content and then the mass user generated content.

EriK Flannigan, EVP of Digital Media at MTV Networks, runs Comedy Central and a few other sites. He says that consumers will form groups with or without you, so you need to decide if you want to participate. MTV is trying to embrace the social web using things like the Facebook activity feed.

How does an aspiring producer play in this? Stephen says that it’s important to understand the economics first. He says there are no barriers to entry so it doesn’t make a great area for investment. It doesn’t work to make things with TV type budgets. TV is a hit business where 1 hit can pay for 10 failures. On the web, there is a much lower cost of failure and therefore many more people trying.

Erik says that the industry has come a long way in the past few years understanding how users want to and will mash up content. The biggest stumbling block is letting go and letting users make their own choices. You don’t really have much choice because you can’t control what happens. He says you occasionally get into trouble with copyright issues, but you keep on going.

Dick says he met last week with one of the premier writer producers in comedy television. They were working on a concept and the writer said it would only work if there were no comments allowed. Dick says they walked away. You can’t fight reality.

Dick says they have less issue with copyright problems because their content is short and some what self contained.

Danny says this is really an area of opportunity as TV shows start hiring people dedicated to making extra content and making it viral. Stephen calls it a writer producer in training role, where when they go on to write/produce TV shows they will get the online side of this. Erik and Dick concur saying that new jobs are being created to re-purpose existing content for the digital space and new marketing jobs are requiring digital experience.

Does every new show need a social component as well as a digital component? Stephen says he’s not sure what “digital” means. He says it probably means both, but it really depends on the content.

Erik says that the social component depends upon the show. He describes the difference between The Daily Show and The Colbert Show. One is about presenting content, the other is really social.

The panel had some interesting advice to people in the audience who are interested in the space. In short, think beyond video. Erik pointed to an example on the Huffington Post that was an interactive view of how a conservative views the NY Times. Stephen concurred saying they want interactive ideas beyond video because they can really drive page views. Dick closes by saying think about what the technology can do, and video is just one of the things the technology can do.

Crowdsourcing: The Killer Development Tool

Alex Nesbitt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:49:40 +0000

I spent yesterday at NATPE’s LATV Festival enjoying some interesting discussions and presentations from the Digital Day. This report is a synopsis of one of those sessions. This session focused on how audiences and content are interacting like never before.

Moderator: Wayne Karfalt - Editor, Cynopsis: Digital

Panelists:
Eyal Hertzog Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Metacafe
Melanie Hall - COO Quarterlife
Kevin Chou - CEO Watercooler
Justin Cooper - Chief Innovation officer for Passenger

Crowdsourcing has it origins in things like WikiPedia where people can collaborate and develop content together. How can crowdsourcing sourcing techniques be applied to entertainment?

Melanie discussed the social networking site for creative people and online show. She says they have many opportunities for crowdsourcing at Quarterlife. They use the audience to discuss characters and story lines. The principles of the show were used to build out a social network so that the show and the site can play off each other. They launched the show on Myspace, Youtube, Bebo and other sites which then referred people to the site resulting in a fast growing online community.

Eyal described how Metacafe now serves up over 300 million videos each month to over 35 million people. He says the internet is introducing a new low cost of failure which means many more experiments and allowed many more people to participate in the creative process. They have recently allowed people to edit the metadata about the videos. The members can edit the tags, titles, descriptions etc connected with the videos.

Kevin introduced Watercooler, a company that makes widgets for social networking sites. Watercooler’s mission is to bring fans together online. People have allows gone online to discuss entertainment. They started online forums to discuss TV shows. They launched in 2007, growing to 25 million registered users in 12 months.

Kevin says that their users are using the site to find out what others are thinking about when they watch a show. The communities can be very different. Lost, for example has a community of 600,000 with very different involvement, while the online community for Jericho is 10,000, but very passionate about the show.

Justin described Passenger, a company that provides a crowdsourcing application for large corporations and media companies. Major networks like ABC and Fox use the application for collaborate with their most passionate users. These super fans can drive storylines and changes in shows using Passenger. These audiences are built from either web sign ups or email lists that the clients have built up over the years. Filtering tools are really important to allow people find the content they want and for the clients to sift through all the information provided by the users. Justin says that Lost has been an active user of crowdsourcing to steer the show and for what content should be submitted for Emmys consideration.

The panel discussed the future of pilots. Eyal says that the whole model for pilots is changing. It used to be that because of distribution constraints there was a filter, then publish model for testing new content. The change of the distribution method has changed the model. We are moving from filter, then publish model to a publish, then filter model.

Eyal says that about 50% of videos are found via search for the first video you watch. The second video is more likely to be the exploration of the related video.

In another example of crowdsourcing, Wayne described how Digg is building a recommendation engine based up your Diggs. This will makes for more active recommendations based upon the collective input from the crowd.

A question from the audience - how to use input from the community when it conflicts with the creative direction of the show? Melanie says that in any successful relationship there is compromise. Justin describes how the creative commons process where other can build upon existing content and generate fresh content.

Want Engagement? Two Technologies That May Redefine Interactive Media

Andrew Krainin — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:46:31 +0000

If you follow digital media, you’ve heard a lot about the importance of creating and measuring audience engagement (Forrester’s recent marketing conference centered on engagement - see our posts). After all, the difference between broadcast media and interactive media is the interaction part. But most engagement conversations focus on audience interaction with linear content – viewing, commenting, and sharing.

Imagine instead that as a member of the audience you were part of the action – you enter the video, talk to the characters, and they talk back to you. Or that the story was about you and your family members. Or that the characters in commercials cared about what you have to say instead of just shouting at you.

We’re not as far as you might think from this kind of convergence between media, video gaming, and artificial intelligence. At the most recent Digital Hollywood conference, Andrew interviewed Jonathan Strietzel, Founder of BigStage and Peter Hodge, CEO of Virsona, whose companies offer intriguing components of this future that have the potential to create big value for brands and media companies today.

BigStage’s technology allows users to create and integrate life-like 3-D avatars of themselves into movies, videogames, commercials, and other digital video content, using just three digital face photos. Virsona offers artificial intelligence technology that can recreate and automate any personality after just a couple of weeks of training – allowing characters to personally interact with an unlimited number of audience members.

If you are part of a brand, media, or other company with the vision to imagine what moving from linear to interactive content could do for your business, these interviews with BigStage and Virsona are must-listen conversations.

Technorati Tags: Interactive Media, Big Stage, Virsona, Advertising

Digital Podcast 52: Everyone Can Be a Star

Andrew Krainin — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:08:58 +0000

In Digital Podcast 52, Andrew interviews Jonathan Strietzel, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Stage, whose breakthrough technology allows users to create and integrate life-like 3-D avatars of themselves into movies, videogames, commercials and other digital video content using just three digital face photos.

Imagine if you and your friends could star in a music video, famous movie clip, or commercial as realistically as if you were around for the shoot. Jonathan describes the company and the potential that its technology has to transform advertising and the audience relationship with movies, television and videogames.

In the interview, Jonathan describes his early start as a wunderkind discovered by SoCal VCs (0:00), his insight into the coming importance of personalization as he discovered the technology behind Big Stage (2:45), and how he helped move the technology to become consumer internet capable and fundable (7:05).

He talks about the current business, his monetization model through brands and content partners based on the technology’s dramatic impact on advertising effectiveness (11:35), and what the big media networks are seeing in terms of monetization and CPM rates (16:12). He also describes privacy considerations (17:40) and the other cool non-advertising stuff, like videogaming and short internet adventures, that Big Stage will be making possible (19:05).

Jonathan Strietzel is co-founder and chief creative officer of Big Stage. He brings 10 years of experience as an entrepreneur in the entertainment and technology industries, including founding Stritz Studios, a boutique special effects studio. He has also invented multiple systems for delivering digital advertising and currently holds a U.S. patent for his work in particle-based advertising. In addition, Jonathan has worked with numerous TV studios and Fortune 500 companies, including developing the highly publicized online clue delivery system for NBC’s “Treasure Hunters.” Jonathan graduated from Chapman University with a Bachelor of Science degree.

Technorati Tags: Digital Hollywood, Big Stage, Jonathan Strietzel, Virtual Reality, Avatar, 3D

Digital Podcast 51: Bringing Personalities to Life Virtually

Andrew Krainin — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:50:45 +0000

In Digital Podcast 51, Andrew interviews Peter Hodge, CEO of Virsona, about Virsona’s new artificial intelligence technology that can bring any personality to life.

Imagine if anyone could have a personal conversation with Iron Man, the Michelin Man, or their great-great-great-great grandfather. Peter describes his new company and technology that is about to make these ‘holodeck’ scenarios a reality – at least the conversation part.

In the interview, Peter shares how he founded Virsona after being inspired by his desire to continue conversing with a recently deceased friend (1:21), and why the internet will accelerate the development of artificial intelligence based on his meeting with David Levy, a foremost AI expert (4:10).

He describes how we’ll be able to interact with Virsona’s technology shortly (6:00), including re-creating our own personalities (11:05). Here are some screen shots of the site:

Perhaps most importantly, Peter describes how Virsona’s platform can be leveraged by Hollywood, brands, and others to deepen relationships with consumers and audience (11:55). He even gets into some of the complexity and norms that may evolve with virtual personalities, especially the need to keep some information and aspects of our personalities more private, as well as the future capabilities we might see from virsonas (19:05).

Peter Hodge is CEO of Virsona Inc. Peter has worked with and for some of the biggest names in the Technology, Telecoms and Media industries over the last 20 years both in the US as well as globally. He brings significant experience to Virsona with over 20 years in technology including development, sales and management experience. Peter holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Greenwich, London and lives in Boca Raton, FL.

Technorati Tags: Digital Hollywood, Peter Hodge, Virsona, Interactive Media, Artificial Intelligence