Could YouTube be in Big Big Trouble? The official numbers on YouTube's dominance in the video sharing space are out. Online video as a whole attracted 75% of US Internet users according to ComScore (via Mashable) that watched 158 million minutes of online video in May. The average stream is about 2.5 minutes. 35% of users use YouTube and YouTube accounted for over 20% of the online video stream total. Wow.
And now the bad news. Dailymotion a large French video sharing site was ordered by French courts to pay $32,000 in damages to a French director (along with the producer and distributor) who's CLIPS were on the site. After the clips were uploaded did Dailymotion begin to use Audible Magic which is seemingly becoming the standard in detecting copywritten clips. But what does this mean? Is this the end of the DMCA as we know it? (As an aside the DMCA stands for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and basically says that a Web site has no jurisdiction over what its users do, hence YouTube has been claiming as one of its defenses against Viacom). Will YouTube have to give up its users private information if they are caught infringing? Were all those Zidane Mashups from last summer considered copyright infringed?
We saw earlier this year how Digg went down with users posting the HD encryption key on its site. Will YouTube users also contribute to the backlash by posting copyrighted clips, causing massive lawsuits against YouTube and its parent, Google? And while $32,000 is small change for Dailymotion the video in question were clips. Was this fine some type of relative measure?
Lots of questions here. We're digging to get to the bottom of this and what this means for the future of online video sharing. But we do know one thing. Video sharing no matter what is here to stay.
Brave New WorldTechCrunch alerted me to a very interesting YouTube video created by Davide Casaleggio that appeared first on Read/Write Web. The video talks about the future of the Internet in a 1984 / Brave New World style. A bit creepy where everyone is connected online via avatars or as the video puts it Agav, an agent avatar. Second Life, Amazon, and Google are the short term winners but Google eventually rules the world in 2050. The Agav's have five senses built in so that you can trade experiences with anyone (i.e. Joe's European vacation can be yours too!)
The video is definitely creepy and I hope that avatar interaction never replaces real life interaction (although for some MMORPG's this is already reality). However, it really gets you to think about where the Web is going and how much more we can exploit by making the World "flat." Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat, already discusses how small the world is when you can pick up your VoIP and call around the world or email or IM someone in India for example. With Agav's this will give you the feel of knowing someone without knowing someone. However, the video also brings up an interesting point that "No one on the Internet knows that you're a dog." I think that if this is the main way that we begin to do business, there will be ways to assure folks that you are who you say you are. Stronger security and identity measures will need to be in place.
And then finally we run into this cultural problem. The root of all of our problems right now. (I don't want to get political here but...) Online culture will be dominated by who has the most dollars. At this point, its the USA. Will US culture be the dominant one online? And if so, what are the repercussions? With information and culture so available, will other cultures be completely forgotten, destroyed, or wiped out?
Interesting points here but I think one thing remains is that one mile is one mile and that local news will always be of interest to the users. I spoke about local and the big market opportunity that this is. I think that overall the Web will be used for understanding of culture (hopefully) but the ability to broadcast your culture online and for others to respect and learn about other people. After all, like the movie Babel, misunderstanding is the root of most problems. Could the Web be that next Tower of Babel? Remains to be seen....
I think that most small businesses have felt closed out of the Internet loop. Many don't feel the need to advertise or promote to a global audience when the majority of their business comes from a radius within a few miles of their physical location (or in Manhattan a few blocks!). However, with the relaunch of Google Maps, meaningful online advertising for the small business may be possible. With their Mapplets Preview (via Mashable), the big business known as local search may become a reality.
Craigslist is one of the largest properties on the web. With no graphics, no fancy Ajax, and a staff of a dozen, Craigslist is a true success story which is focused strictly on content. What makes Craigslist so successful that fancy sites don't have? Sure, Craigslist is free and that's a big factor but the other one is the locality of Craigslist. Just like other local tools, like Citysearch, Meetup, and Yelp, Craigslist turns an online conversation into an offline transaction/encounter/meetup etc. Why is this important? I don't know if I need to answer this question, but we are social creatures and while we've been talking about great tools like MySpace, SecondLife, and YouTube, we still need to meet each other physically and not just through our computers! So enter the Local Market, which to date has felt shunned by the Internet. Very few tools out there cater to the local market and most have to do with restaurants, tourist attractions, and / or movie showtimes. Enter Google Maps and their contextual AdSense. With Google's new street views program, this will really allow ALL businesses to have a virtual storefront. Could this be an integration of a virtual world like Second Life with the other intricacies of the Web? Could you be walking down a virtual Fifth Avenue and enter into all of the big department stores and then make a turn down 45th street and also enter the mom & pop deli? I think that Google Maps might be the key to Google's growth especially with local search, since most local businesses do not have domain names or websites (most of them still use a hotmail address if they even have one!). It could be truly interesting times, except that it might keep you in front of your computer more instead of being out there with real people like we were programmed to do!
Video Video Everywhere
Everywhere I turn, every story I read, someone is getting funded in this online video space. Earlier in the week it was WallStrip's $5 million cash out. Previously it was Will Ferrell's company starting a comedy site. Today its Rooftop Comedy receiving $2.5 million from Azure Capital Partners to bring stand up comedians to the Internet. Again, no one wants to be deemed the "You Tube killer" as they do not accept user generated content. Instead they take on the rest of the content creators out there with somewhat professionally created content.
Great concept as comedy seems to be the one aspect that can be controlled in online video. The other is shock which usually comes from UGC. Prom Queen probably falls under suspense/thriller and I'm curious to see if there's any drop off from last month's reported numbers. However, as Mashable pointed out, Rooftop Comedy provides an outlet for comedians to get their funniness out there and they have links to the comedians own website. I mean, that's all well and good, but what's the business strategy? I'm smelling Web 1.0 e-commerce bubble where everyone would put a storefront on no matter how much money they lost (Pets.com anyone?). Now there's a Web 2.0 online video bubble where we can simply place a niche targeted website up that plays back some content. Are we really going to serve up that many banner ads? Are people really going to click on your AdSense that's next to the video?
I think that the real winners are going to be the TV Guides in this new world. Is it Blinkx (which IPO'd overseas by the way)? Is there a way for us to find the content we want online? In the world of the long tail, this will be the company (Google?) that emerges from the dust as the broker of viewers and content.
Everyone's a Star
The ever popular live webcast Justin.TV has turned Justin Kan into an overnight web celebrity. He's opened his life up to the entire world, everything from police raids, landlord eviction, even things in Justin's personal life. Justin Twitters his goings on and keeps everyone in the loop about what he's doing. At just two months old, the site has really gotten some great traction. So, what's next for Justin? They are opening the site up for other live webcasters to become the next Justin. Via TechCrunch, you'll be able to create your own URL's, broadcast your own Twitters, real time chat, calendar, everything.
This idea is really really interesting. I'm not sure how much traction it will gain, although as hardware costs continue to drop a decent webcam attached to your hat (ala Justin) would set you back about $50. Further as we are already impatient enough when you don't respond to an email immediately (and hence IM is so popular) we can actually see what you are doing as to why you aren't responding. Could Justin.tv be the next MySpace?
I don't know about Justin, but I know that the majority of us can't stand to be "on" all the time (like in the Truman Show). Even some stars need their alone, quiet time. Justin is really sacrificing his life by broadcasting 24/7. I think college kids could probably get away with putting a webcam on your head, but what about when you "grow up" and get a real job? I don't think your employer would be too happy.
But the real value in this then becomes who we are putting our webcam on top of. While the rest of the magazine industry has been shrinking, we've seen growth in celebrity gossip magazines. We've seen "glimpse" type shows like Curb your Enthusiasm (look into a day in the life of Larry David), or Entourage (look into a day in the life of a movie star) really take off. However, these are things that are made to entertain. Could you imagine the laws that would be broken if we put a Justin.tv on Donald Trump's head? All of the deals that he would be doing would be known before they were announced. Sergey Brin's head? You'd be able to know what other medium sized company he was going to buy next, run up the stock price, and wait for the official announcement (although I'm sure GOOG traders are watching Sergey's Justin.tv page too). So it really comes down to celebrities and Hollywood celebrities at that, otherwise I'm sure alot of information that we don't want out there will get out when we forget to turn off our Justin cam.
The Power of the Blog
Yes there are two posts today! I had to write about this (via IRWebReport) because it really supports how powerful the blog is, who is reading them, and what a popular blog can do to a big company. Engadget, a very popular blog about technology, wrote about how Apple's iPhone would be delayed as well as the new Mac OS X Leopard. The post was at 11:49am yesterday and accordingly Apple stock dropped nearly 3% from 107.89 to 104.63. Wow! Since then its been outed that the email in which Engadget derived its information was a fake and has been retracted. However, this is a good sign for tools like Monitor110 that look at the blogosphere for various tips that could give you an edge in trading and that information is moving faster than ever. Sometimes there won't be time for an editor to read something over and that's why the blog is a great tool for communication (as long as the information is accurate). But in the dense world of the blogosphere, the tools to find the information you need are going to be more and more important and hence tools like Google and Technorati are going to be playing a big part in determining what is information. Could these new tools be the new Bloomberg of Wall Street? Time will tell.. It just goes to show you the power of the blog, the investors that read them and the power one blog has over a very successful and powerful company.
Music Video Long Tail Ever since Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail came out, there's been a lot of news and buzz about it. Whether its the irony of Pirates of the Carribean setting a blockbuster record (since broken by Spiderman 3) or the reality of the Long Tail happening (Rhapsody, YouTube, etc), the Long Tail has become a part of our vernacular on the ability to pull up on demand any piece of content ever created. Amazon.com is already a Long Tail for books, iTunes could be a long tail for music, eBay is a long tail for other people's stuff, and Google is a long tail of the Web. Last.fm the popular social network music community, has launched a long tail not only for music but also (soon) for music video. Via their press release, "Last.fm aims eventually to have every music video ever made on the site."
Content creators out there can do nothing but rejoice over the Long Tail. After all, in the TV business, for example, while they make money on the initial run, real money is made in syndication, see Seinfeld, where advertisers are putting up new money for the space every time. In essence, Last.fm is providing a distribution platform for artists to be available when the consumer wants to see it. So, if someone mentions A-Ha's Take on Me video, you'll be able to call it up on demand and A-Ha (if they're still around) should be able to get a cut of the advertising served up against their content. Marketers should also rejoice over the Long Tail since content now from various eras or genres can now be identified. So, if you are trying to sell a product to a certain age group or demographic, music tastes could be identified to pinpoint that target. Radio has done a great job of that but no one has the time to sit through a radio commercial anymore. Perhaps, Last.fm could partner with Poptopus for a fairly interesting business model and since they have an embeddable player we wouldn't be stuck with the latest iteration of a revenue model that YouTube has come up with.
Widgets Everywhere!
Widgets are the hot new thing of Web 2.0 - everything from YouTube embeds to mashups to music players and so on. Widgets are basically Flash or javascript code that authors can simply place on their site and users can interact with them in some way (whether its answering a poll, e-commerce, watching a video, listening to music, etc.)
The e-commerce aspect is hot topic now on widgets since the interactivity of them and the portability of them allow for some really interesting applications. WidgetSense (coined by Steve Rubel) allows for Flash or javascript enabled Google Adsense to be embedded into widgets. Two new companies, Tumri and Mpire, (via Techcrunch) have announced e-commerce widgets. Coupled with eBay's widgets and the plethora of other widgets out there, it appears as if we have a widget revolution.
Marketing wise, what does this mean? Well, I think that we can now have those interactive, flashy (not Flashy if you get the difference), and interesting ad campaigns that we've always wanted to. Targeted and completely relevant to the content of the page, these new widgets are more catchy than Adsense and hopefully will provide more value to the advertiser. Time to rethink your SEM strategy!
Power of the People Even Digg couldn't withstand the power of the people or the so called Wisdom of Crowds. Digg, traditionally against any type of DRM, monitors its posts and takes down anything that they feel is morally wrong. Yesterday (via TechCrunch) someone posted the decryption key to HD DVDs. After the Digg team took it down, someone reposted it. Pretty soon, the entire Digg site went down with a deluge of the decryption key posted all over it. Kevin Rose, Digg's co-founder, says on their blog:
But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.
So that's it, that's what happens when you try to turn against popular opinion. Digg (valued at $60 million per Businessweek's cover story) could become the next Friendster, where users left at the blink of an eye. Fickle consumers have the power and especially online where the butterfly effect is magnified ten times over. It's a scary place to be right now for Digg as many of their million plus users have revolted against them.
What does this mean? Well, I've touched on it before, and again, I'm not sure how this phenomenon happens but if you think about companies out there Apple, Google, and Craigslist are the "good guys" while Microsoft, Yahoo, and Dell are the "bady guys." It's a connotation that can most likely be traced to a few choice events (Microsoft knocking down Netscape, Yahoo charging for email, and Dell's customer service debacle.) While Apple has come clean with its iPod batteries, Google discloses all (or wants you to think that), and Craigslist doesn't make that much money only through its job postings. Since then Dell has apologized, Microsoft has been a bit more open, and Yahoo provides free unlimited storage. However, the damage is done, and just like Gladwell's book Blink, these corporations are the evil empire while our knight in shining armor are the former companies. Stay open, make sure that your PR team has experience in damage control, and address your customers because the power of the crowd is too much to handle (at least for a $60 million company).
Loving Google Ok, I admit, I've been bashing Google a bit on their quest to take over the world and its probably a bad thing because the traffic to this blog from non-subscribers will probably plummet, but I couldn't ignore the incredible earnings release last night as well as their announcement of purchasing a WebEx type company this morning. Everywhere I turn Google this Google that, and now with a market cap that is about half of Microsoft, Google is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Coupled with Yahoo's drop in earnings, Google is the leader on the Web. But the interesting thing about Google is that for all of the neat little things they put out there, nearly all of its revenue comes from Search. How many times have you seen someone fire up their web browser go to Google and type in the URL? I bet Google (or some derivation with a Google search box) are on 70% of a person's starting (home page).
That being said, as a marketer, SEO (search engine optimization) is becoming more and more important. The first three pages must be positive about your firm and its products. And if they are not, get a PR team and an SEO to make sure that they are. However, the beauty of Google is that it is a true meritocracy. Just because you are throwing more money at a problem doesn't mean that it will go away. If a product is truly faulty, and appears negatively in a blogger's blog, and is linked to many times, you will have a tough time pushing that mention off the first page. Wikipedia no doubt will be on that front page as well (if you are popular enough to have a Wikipedia entry) so hope that that has a positive spin on you as well. We haven't even spoken about SEM or search engine marketing, Google's bread and butter. Monitor your entries and make sure that you aren't overpaying for clicks that can be had for less. And while I'm not going to go into a whole lesson on SEM I think the most important thing: Make sure the landing page is relevant and ready to purchase. Imagine, you clicked on the link for the book The Tipping Point and it just brought you to Amazon.com's home page (where you'd have to redo the entire search). Sounds small but you'd be annoyed and you'd have a smaller chance of capturing that conversion. But the lesson today is that search is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives especially via Google (the numbers are our evidence) so please don't ignore that as part of your marketing plan.
eBay, PayPal, Skype, Stumble Upon? EBay's latest acquisition, Stumble Upon has been purchased for $40-$45 million as reported by GigaOm. So eBay has bought Paypal, which makes great sense given their close integration with auctions and online payments, then Skype for a few billion dollars and now StumbleUpon? I'm not sure how Skype fits into eBay's core business of auctions. Would you ever Skype a person that you were buying the latest Nintendo Wii game from? And where does StumbleUpon come into play? Unless....eBay plans to take on the evil empire that is slowly brewing in Google. With StumbleUpon, which is essentially a repurposed version of Google's "I'm feeling Lucky" button, eBay users have a smart search at their finger tips. Users are taken right to a page instead of banner ads or even contextual ads, bringing some decent brand awareness at the very least. Connected with eBay's auction system, you can browse for similar items using the StumbleUpon mechanism. As for Skype, how does this VoIP system fit in? I think that eBay wants to claim some desktop real estate similar to that annoying uninstallable Google desktop. With the acquisition of StumbleUpon, eBay's positioning of finding everything new and used, and a communication tool more intimate than IM, eBay is also building a complete desktop to compete against Microsoft and more likely Google (who announced their own "rolling of the dice" product as well). Keep this in mind as eBay who was once the garage sale of the Internet could become a viable player in the online space.
Google Rules the World So in addition to their purchase of Doubleclick and their announcement of the Clear Channel Radio ads roll out, coupled with Google TV and their purchase of YouTube last year, Google seems to be the major force in the new world of targeted advertising. Google's database is going to stretch across all media which will truly be either a scary thing or an extremely good thing.
With Doubleclick, Google now has a presence in serving up banner ads and other display media. Coupled with their AdWords product, Google hopes to serve up relevant ads not just in text but also via banners. Overall Google is hoping that you have one crossover Google account. You can be hit with advertisements for your favorite foods and mainstream brands on TV, your favorite restaurants while on the road via Radio, and anything else they've missed via the Internet. One area where Google is lacking (although I'm sure they can find a small fledging company in this space that would LOVE to get bought by them) is mobile. Could Google be going the way of Apple and their iPhone product? Mobile is the hot new area of growth especially in the advertising front. Mobile gaming has grown in triple digits, nearly everyone has a cell phone (80%), web access is coming up on 50% and so on. While Google has their text messaging feature, it will be a matter of time before Google offers you free service, but only if you listen to an ad or if someone interjects during your conversation about different goods and services from some type of voice recognition pattern. Scary huh?
One last point. With this inevitable big brotherliness about Google, why does everyone still cower down on Microsoft? Why is Microsoft evil while Google is always the good guy? It's clearly not David and Goliath anymore but rather a battle of two near equals. I think it comes down to the fact that Google doesn't charge YOU the end consumer and for the people that they do charge, they have guaranteed results. Google is open source everything, opening up their API's, and integrating their revenue source into it. Microsoft meanwhile is more old economy by selling IP and closing off the rest of the world to their monopoly. Lesson here? Be open, be liked, and also take over the world while you're at it.
, already discusses how small the world is when you can pick up your VoIP and call around the world or email or IM someone in India for example. With Agav's this will give you the feel of knowing someone without knowing someone. However, the video also brings up an interesting point that "No one on the Internet knows that you're a dog." 
