Here’s a video that’s not only entertaining and about seniors using the innovative Nintendo Wii video game, but it is also a clever form of viral video marketing which subtly promotes a senior assisted living company. Expect to see more of this kind of thing in the future. This one is unusually well done, and they save the low-key pitch for last. Appropriately putting the fun first…
Yesterday, I had a pro bono client who wanted to demo a new voice mail system at a conference. I came up with the idea of using Skype to record the call and found Call Recorder (for Mac).
Today, because I had Call Recorder demo installed, while I was on a video conference call using Skype with a client, I had the idea of recording a message to my designer/producer having the client acknowledge his work in a video clip. Presto. Easily done with a click of a button.
Nice software. It works. Does what it’s supposed to as far as I can tell and only costs $15. Nice.
PS. Bonus, because Call Recorder records the calls as Quicktime movies, I can easily go into iMovie and add visuals to enhance the voice mail demo. Very nice. 🙂
Beet.TV is calling this a “boom time for niche media” as in Believe It: Boom Time in Niche Media is Now: Mediapost Sells for $23 Million….WallStrip Producer Explains the $5 Million Value Proposition for CBS..and More! Impressive sales for producers who started their own thing, only on the web. Real sales for real substantial dollars. Nothing pie in the sky. Unquestionably, internet video programming has become a REAL market.
What’s a video producer to do? We all want to have as many people as possible see whatever we produce… So should we upload our clips to MySpace, to YouTube, to Google Video, etc. etc. Or, wouldn’t it be nice to have a simple web-based service that does this kind of distribution for us?
Well, now there is. It’s called Hey!Spread. Get it? They help you spread your video around the web.
It’s a basic, practical, straight-forward service (but you do need to set up accounts at the services you want them to populate with your clips) and most importantly, it’s immediately useful. I like that. 😉
If you still don’t believe that there’s money to be made, not to mention good marketing buzz to be generated, with online video clips, then you better check out The New York Times coverage of the competition between video sites to make revenue sharing deals with producers and talent who can develop a following using online video. They call it, New Hot Properties: YouTube Celebrities.
One nice thing about the online video explosion, revolution, or whatever you want to call it, is that it does have signposts. (FYI, I’m still waiting for some professional publisher to ask me to write more about all this… hello?!).
But meanwhile here are a couple of recent articles and/or posts that I found to be of interest and encouraging re: the re-emergence of my own “video-video” enterprises (videos about video and online communications) which are percolating in the background:
> VideoEgg Hits 3 Million Uploads — TechCrunch insights on the growth of this online video leader vis a vis GooTube (Google-YouTube) who may have the best ad platform of the moment. I said “may.”
> All The World’s a Stage (That Includes the Internet) — NYTimes writer Scott Kirsner offers a nice overview with examples of how user-generated content can and is making money, at least for a few leading edge folks.
Sighting a pressing TV industry need to monetize the “massive interest in online (video) content,” eMarketer.com summarized an Informa Telecoms & Media research report (which I could not find on their site) including numbers that would make almost any venture investor salivate. For example, “In the US alone, revenues are forecast to rise from $538 million in 2006 to nearly $4 billion in 2012.”
“These trends are now so pronounced, that the term ‘social revolution’ no longer seems too much of an exaggeration,” said Adam Thomas of Informa.
Personally, today, I was checking out VideoEgg.com which boasts an easy to use video upload, Flash compress, and, yes, video editing platform as well as a pretty impressive online video ad network that’s focused on social networking sites.
Does anyone have a good comparison of all these new Web 2.0 video platforms?
TechCruch seems to think that SplashCast may have the ultimate player platform.
I wish it was like the Videography days when I could get paid to research and write about this stuff. Who knows, if I can find a way to monetize it, maybe I’ll be doing some video clips soon. Potential channels would include internet marketing, online video, and the joy of golf. But should I do SplashCast channels, distribute via the VideoEggNetwork, BrightCove, all of the above, or what?!?
The battle for the distribution of broadcast programming via the Web is heating up. Apple’s iTunes Store has made big waves by selling TV shows at $1.99 each. Now NetFlix is rolling out what is essentially a perk for membership. Free downloadable TV shows.
Here’s the TechCrunch overview of this announcement and the official NetFlix press release and the NYTimes perspective.
(Sometimes I still feel like I’m covering the “Video Web” the way I did in my “old days” at Videography, yet I know not how many of you readers even know or care.)
I not only think that AdBrite’s new InVideo service is useful and practical, but I really like the fact that they’re walking their talk with a quick, clean and illustrative video that does a good job (see below) of explaining the advantages of and how this new way to place ads in your internet video clips works (still in invitation-only beta).
Maybe some day I’ll get around to producing some online video content? Especially now that I know that I can produce video clips with easily self-embedded video ads that are not offensive and which will travel with an embedded video player to anyone else’s website. Nice!
I’ve been talking about how hot the online video business and content is getting for months, but it’s now beyond my comprehension. Not only are the Skype founders testing a new broadband video service and the NY Times is reporting a new online video service being put together by “a handful of giant media companies, like NBC Universal, the News Corporation, Viacom and possibly CBS,” but user-generated content a.k.a. “you” is the person on the year and the cover of Time magazine’s year end issue. The real story behind this is Web 2.0 and, of course, YouTube. For example, the article explains that last year users were downloading 10 million clips a DAY from YouTube. This year: 100 million video clips a day… read more of Time’s perspective… (including the list of related articles.)
