Online video innovation from catwalks to tennis courts

Credit: Jim O'Connell

Two great articles in the New York Times have again highlighted how much online video is driving innovation and, "has democratized the access to excellence."

First up is New York Fashion Week and the Times' analysis of how fashion labels are now skipping the middle-man and using the web to take the catwalk to the customer. Livestreaming fashion shows straight into retail stores or websites, many brands from Burberry to Marc Jacobs have embraced online video. The integration of live event and retail mediums means that these labels are now ready to make sales as soon as the new design hits the catwalk.

Second, the Times hits the tennis courts and shows how everyone from the juniors to the agents are using online video to study the professionals and find out what it takes to be the next Nadal. Juniors are using online video to study the techniques of the professionals, searching for videos of today's pros when they were juniors. Talent agents are also scouting the web, taking a short-cut to the courts by scanning highlight reels of juniors from across the globe.

As I've said plenty of times before, we're a visual society, we obtain so much meaning from what we see and I think these two examples further prove how online video is driving innovation across the board.

User ratings and its influence on consumption

Along with all the cosmetic changes going on at YouTube at the moment one of probably the most symbolic changes has been the removal of 5-star ratings and addition of like/dislike buttons.

The change is for the most part unsurprising, the majority of YouTube clips probably only require a like or dislike, critical reviews of videos are not generally a done thing on YouTube.

The symbolism of the change shows that YouTube's two major stakeholders - publishers and consumers - are not interested in monitoring ratings or worrying whether a video is 3 or 5 stars. This acceptance of a lack of critical consideration of videos on YouTube is essentially an admission by YouTube that it is a 'fast moving video portal' - users consume high volumes of short videos with little consideration in-between.

If this is the way that YouTube is going then good for them on selecting such a model. The only problem I have with this is that it totally dis-regards its whole YouTubeEDU educational portal. YouTubeEDU was created largely in response to the likes of iTunesU and Academic Earth, video portals for long-play academic presentations.

Academic Earth for its part has taken a very definite line in its user ratings that sets it way apart from the new YouTubeEDU. Academic Earth users get to rate the presenters as if they were students, with typical A to F academic gradings.

iTunesU is a little more varied in its approach and from what I can understand individual users can rate academic presentations via their 5-star iTunes rating system they use for all iTunes media.

As can be seen though, the user ratings system you choose for your media can inform the consumer how they are to consume and consider their consumption. Give a consumer a throw-away ratings system and they'll follow suit.

I may be making a mountain out of a mole hill but I really think that the YouTube user rating changes has signified the wane in its experiment in long play educational videos. It will be interesting to see how it continues.

Continued rise of online video for work and play

From my posts you've probably realised that this year I've really fallen in love with online video and the various ways it can be used for business.

A couple of things have happened in the past few months that I think have strengthened my argument for an increased focus for online video for information dissemination and broader learning goals.

Firstly, Cisco, the behemoth that provides much of the infrastructure the Web lives on, has puts its money behind online video with the purchases of Flip Video maker, Pure Digital Technologies in March, and now video conferencing company, Tandberg, in October.

Supporting this strategy of pushing money and effort into online video collaboration is a report released by US Internet Network Management company, Sandvine, that online streaming video like YouTube and Hulu now accounts for up to 27 per cent of global Internet traffic. This is up from 13 per cent in 2008.

The Sandvine report has some great insights into the growth of "experience now" entertainment like streaming media and the decline of "experience later" applications such as peer-to-peer downloading.

In light of this trend and having the chance to big-note myself, here are some vox-pops videos that our team at work created for our annual CPA Congress event that takes place across Australia. As a team we filmed, edited and uploaded the videos to our YouTube channel and CPA Congress blog all within 48 hours of each event. I think it shows a really positive vibe for the conferences and is a really great promo for anyone considering going to other CPA Australia events or to CPA Congress next year.

I hope you enjoy!

It's baby steps for Sony with online content

Ok, ok. Last post I may have heaped praise on Sony for doing the right thing by Jill and Kevin on YouTube. Maybe it was a little premature.

Today I read in the Guardian Rhodri Marsden has had a take-down notice from Sony slapped on one of his videos. Turns out Sony doesn't like it when their artists are put up in a humorous light.

The video Rhodri describes highlights the somewhat bizarre ramblings of young up-and-comer Ray Gun. I can see why Sony would have slapped the take-down notice on the video if it doesn't show Ray Gun in a good light, but you can't blame Rhodri for trying.

If Sony are going to go ahead and profit off videos such as Jill and Kevin then they should be willing to let others that might be a little left-of-centre go online too. The very least that can be said is that by profiting off a select few user-generated videos Sony has given implicate permission to all online users to use Sony content whenever they want.

Changing of the guard for online content recognition

YouTube and Read Write Web have both commented this past day on Jill and Kevin's wedding dance and the subsequent news that Sony has actively profited from the 'improper use' of the Chris Brown song that Jill and Kevin danced to.

The YouTube post discusses how rights holders of content such as music can actively manage their content through YouTube's click-to-buy which has been live for a year or so. YouTube highlight's the direct correlation between the appearance of J&K's wedding dance and the Chris Brown's year-old song rocketing back up the iTunes and Amazon charts.

Read Write Web then goes on to highlight the change in tactic Sony has employed going from restricting use of their content in these User Generated (UGC) videos to identifying themselves as the content owner of the music and adding in a click-to-buy advertisement pointing people to either iTunes or Amazon to purchase the song.

I think it's a great move on Sony's behalf and the proof can be seen in the dollars rolling in. YouTube's ClaimID system that can automatically identify a song and notify a rights holder would really be an ace up their sleeve if all major and independent labels encouraged the method Sony has taken.

Imagine all the machinima creators, vloggers and other creative types out there being encouraged to take their pick of any song they wish instead of a limited amount of home-study productions. I think we'd see a whole new wave of UGC being unleashed onto our screens.

This is a real win for fair-use and share-alike on the web and I only hope it can extend further. If logos such as Facebook and YouTube could have a ClaimID type system attached you would no longer have to fret about whether some big-bad lawyer is going to serve a take-down notice on your site because of the improper use of a logo or content.

I can also see Internet radio having a great time with this. One click to purchase any song playing live online right now.

Maybe for artwork and design too? One click on an image to go to an online shop to purchase the original creator's work.

Text? Could it go too far? Should we all just freely use each other's work and share-alike?

Maybe this new tack from Sony poses more questions than it answers, but the fact that everybody seems to win from the deal makes it such an appealing option.

Rewarding community involvement online

Community involvement in an online space can take many different forms. From forum communities to blogging communities; social networks; wikis and IRC. The commonality amongst many of the online communities is that people that associate themselves with the community can place themselves and others in an order within the community based on subjective or objective scales.

Subjectively, people might rank themselves or others within a community based on the number of followers or friends they might have. Others might place themselves on a scale based on the number of contributions they have given. Others still might rank people on a value scale whereby it is not the amount of content given to the community rather the quality of the content they provide.

Objectively, a community might decide to craft the behaviour of its users by providing rewards for users that undertake specific actions. These rewards are clearly defined and people can associate themselves with other reward holders within a community objectively. Community members can also clearly identify eachother and their relative position within a community based on the objective rewards or status symbols received by eachother.

To best understand the variety of rewards and recognition available to members of online communities I have divided the rewards into four distinct categories as illustrated below.



You can see in the chart that the scales of subjective versus objective relate to "who" provides the reward: is it the community owners/moderators (eg reviewer of the month) or the community members themselves (eg Barnstars). To better define the rewards for the community it is probably wise to outline how rewards, if subjective, are chosen.

The periodic versus perpetual scale can benefit community owners in defining how and how often members engage in the community. YouTube, a community that can be somewhat fickle and transient, uses periodic/objective rewards to encourage YouTube-ers to continue to engage consistently weekly and monthly. Likewise, Amazon and eBay encourage consistent participation with their periodic ranking of the most proliferent reviewers. Again, like above, if you rank members over a periodic time-frame it is best to outline how this ranking is conducted and over what timeframes.

This scale has come from researching online and trying to understand the millions of inherent behaviours we all share. I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to define and measure rewards and recognition in online communities. Post me a comment and let me know any other great examples of rewarding communities online.

Kleenmaid's foray into YouTube

Kleenmaid Appliances, an Australia whitegoods retailer went into voluntary administration on April 9 with an estimated debt of $73 million.

To provide Kleenmaid customers with an update on what this meant, the directors, Bradley Young and Andrew Young, took the unusual step of broadcasting a message via YouTube.

View it here. I have linked rather than embedded it because embedding permissions have been turned off.

As well, comments and response videos have also been turned off. What this says to me is that Kleenmaid had the best intentions for using YouTube as an engaging medium in what must be quite a stressful time. But the stress may have been too much, by turning off all forms of two-way communication this has meant people have circumvented this non-communication by other means.

Here are the examples to be found on YouTube today:





Yes, YouTube is full of weird and wonderful people, but like any other new media/social media platform, an inherent part of its purpose is to facilitate two-way communication. As seen in this example, people will call you out when you "don't play by the rules". And yes, going into voluntary administration must be stressful enough without having to respond to all the people of the interwebs. But if you choose YouTube as a form of communication then you should obey the etiquette and its reason for being.

Take for example GE. GE is a global manufacturing and financial services organisation that no doubt angers many people for various reasons. However, though its communications arm it has bitten the bullet and agreed to allow customers, shareholders and the public to comment on everything from its products to its financial performance through its GE Reports website and YouTube channel.

The worst that can happen is that you get a bad comment which, if defamatory, you can moderate. The best that can happen is that you can control the debate via responding to comments and centralising the debate.

Savvy businesses are realising that YouTube and two-way communications platforms are providing a whole new level of engagement with their customers and shareholders. By using these platforms to craft and moderate the debate much of the fire that comes out at retail outlets or shareholder meetings can be abated.

And on a final note out of all the saga of Kleenmaid and its stuttering foray into YouTube, here is my pick for the winner. Amos, a Kleenmaid technician from Adelaide that has had the foresight to respond to one of the negative Kleenmaid spoofs. Well done!

How to choose the delivery format and channel for your news and information

These past few weeks I've been thinking a lot about online media. Actually, more like learning and online media.

I'm going to take it back a step and start on a tangent with long-players and short-players, the old dames of the music industry. You might remember the initials, LP, EP, SP; they denoted the length of the music.

That's where I'm taking my cue from when, now in the 21st Century, I think about not so much music, but news and learning media. You can break down news and learning (learning being podcasts, lectures, etc) media into the LP, EP, SP definitions by time, so that a 40min lecture is an LP; a 20min podcast is an EP; and a 5min news clip is an SP.

The LP,EP,SP analogy can be seen as blocks of concentration too. I might only have time for a short news clip or I might be on a train ride and have time for a whole lecture.

Back in the ol' 45 era you didn't have much of an option for media. You had the transistor for the news or the record player for the LP. The Internet has changed all that. using an iPhone as an example the one device can deliver you short-play and long-play audio and video.

The trouble is that this abundance of choice from the one device means that the content publishers need to think carefully about the manner in which they deliver their content. Delivering the right content but through the wrong channel might mean that your content never gets seen. Likewise delivering the right content in the right channel but in the wrong format could also be disastrous.

Just to give an example of the variety of channels for delivering your content here is a small selection:

SP media
Short bites of information, high volume and frequency.

YouTube

Yahoo! Video

Vimeo

Wikipedia's list of video services


EP media
mid-length media, once-a-week volume as example

The Podcast Network

Podcast.com

The BBC World Service

LP media
Full length lectures, keynote presentations, etc.

iTunes University

YouTube Edu

Academic Earth

That's just the tip of the iceberg my friends. Take your pick. It's a consumer's market out there.

So when you're a content publisher where do you start? How do you pick the winner for the content you want to put out there to the world? I'm still learning myself, but what I have learnt is that there are a few key factors that will determine your choice:

Length
Choose the length of your content delivery based on a consumer's appetite for knowledge of the topic.

Medium
Audio or video, choose based on what's required. There's nothing more frustrating than an podcast that refers to images or slides, similarly, a video of a guy standing behind a podium is pretty dull.

Frequency
News topics require constant periodic updates while specialist topics can have infrequent updates.

Streaming or download
You must accept that LP media will frequently be consumed over a number of sittings, therefore you should allow for downloading of this media, while SP media can be seen as disposable media and therefore streaming only is fine.

Delivery channel
This is totally subjective, but to me YouTube is a SP delivery channel, as it is streaming only I will only choose to watch SP media via YouTube. Whereas something like iTunes and iTunes University is an EP/LP delivery channel as it is a download channel.

The consumer is spoilt for choice, the information age has truly arrived, as a publisher your voice is fighting amongst the cacophony of the whole world. Choose your format and channel wiseley!

International business news - #002

In this installment of International business news, we look at the world in 2020 as envisaged at the World Economic Forum; hear Rupert Murdoch defend free markets and easy cash; watch Al Gore promote the global fight against Climate Change and; find out who in Asia will come to be the dominant power.

When content and advertising collide - head on

So it's official then, AMP is "nothing special". I've had this YouTube advertisement bugging my browser for the past week or so and never really paid much attention to it. Maybe because it is outside my F-shaped pattern of reading but more likely because I'm not interested in financial products.

Now that I have taken a better look at the advertisement I notice that, in fact, it allows ratings. I guess the question is then, is this sponsored content or is it advertising?

The fact that it is sitting in a traditional advertising right-hand column suggests that it is an advertisement, and when following the link you get to AMP's YouTube channel which is, for all intents and purposes, advertising AMP with informative content.

But, the fact that it allows ratings would suggest that it is more closely related to content, because heaven help the advertising industry if we could publicly rate every advertisement we see! So what is this picture sitting in my browser? Content or advertisement? If it is an advertisement as it would seem should we ask to be able to rate all advertisements online? Imagine that!

Conclusion? AMP's YouTube channel is a great attempt at advertising through content, but by having ratings in the advertisement portion of the campaign leaves it open to vandalism (by competitors?) that will lead to a negative impact on consumer perception.

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On a side note I see that AMP has had its YouTube account since 2005. Looks like some foresight on someone's behalf as no doubt 'AMP' would be a popular account to have!

International business news - #001