Supernova 2007: because technology is everyone's business

Friday, June 23, 2006

Rise of the Videonet

Starting with a Mentos and Diet Coke videos by eepybird.com, moderator JD Lasica of Ourmedia talks about the future of consumer generated video content on the Web with panelists:

Jeremy Allaire, Brightcove
Jonathan Taplin, USC Annenberg Center
Mary Hodder, Dabble
Robert Levitan, Pando

Here are a few highlights of the conversation:

Q: What does the current IPTV universe look like?

Brightcove: The UGC sites aren’t generating meaningful revenue yet. Media are experimenting with video ads. Any organization that wants to communicate on the web will have to have some sort of video presence. Traditional media are launching TV networks on the web.

Q: How big a role will Hollywood play in the IPTV landscape?

USC: As founder of the first video on demand service in 1996, we had subscribers paying for content until the producers stopped licensing content to us and launched their own site. In the long term, people will want to watch the Hollywood movies. Until we get video stores online, Hollywood will play a blocking role. With Steve Jobs getting closer to Disney management, we’re getting closer to advertiser supported content.

Q: How are companies differentiating themselves in the online video space?

Dabble: There are sites where users can upload content and sites that are only for downloading. Users have flocked to YouTube, where 35,000 videos a day are uploaded. YouTube has 42 percent of traffic. MySpace is second with 24 percent. The activity that happens bottom up is different than top down. Top down production has a budget, unions and top-down controls. When users make something, they just shoot. There’s a lot of garbage, but non-professionals also make some incredible stuff. A number of hosts offer a free site for uploading, then generate revenue on the backend by hosting commercial video sites like the National Hockey League video site.

Q: With high def video starting to hit, will we be talking about P2P next year?

Pando: The Internet can’t be the distribution platform for the very large files like TV shows and Hollywood movies. On the other side is the UGC. Not everyone wants to publicly share all their videos. P2P, from desktop to desktop, will be all about the bandwidth.

Q: Social norms around rich media are shifting. What are the implications for copyright holders?

Dabble: If you look through the videos that have been made around mentos and coke, there were an number made before the ones that got the publicity. One producer put videos on Revver, which does a revenue split. If a referring site sends traffic, they share revenue with that affiliate. The video got them a chunk of revenue. But then the video file was spread around to other sites. The producer loves that others are watching it, but they’re not making any money.

Q: In the question of Hollywood or UGC, where will the most activity be? Will anyone care about UGC in 10 years?

USC: Hollywood will start to use mashups in interesting ways, and let people post them for free. They shouldn’t fight them. In two years, will anyone care about mentos and coke? I don’t think so.

Brightcove: Copyright holders want to empower consumers to use that content, but drive revenue through that use. The challenge distributors have is, they’re held hostage by the upstream groups – screen actors guild, directors guild, etc. They don’t want the art destroyed. The legal and business conundrum needs to be solved so creators, talent and consumers and all generate revenue. Creative pirating will continue until then.

Dabble: Friends watch video productions by their friends. They’re not concerned about production values. The askaninja video about net neutrality has been viewed by about 5 million people. But you need to separate the good stuff from the bad with better filters.

Q: Will we see remix phase out or take off?

Dabble: Most of remix culture now is parody. The issue is control. People want to be compensated for their contributions. The harder issue is attribution. Do you let someone chop up something and remake it, and thereby assume ownership of it? The younger generation has a different media literacy than the older generation. They may be OK with loss of control and care more about attribution. Other types of videos we see are genre, indie film makers and documentaries, interviewers and anime music videos. Each genre is strong, but they don’t get play at the top down media. It’s highly watched.

As production costs come down, every web site will become a video producer and distributor and allow consumer participation in that by having them contribute training films, etc. The creative marketers are asking people to take their brands and do something with it to generation excitement.