SplashCast
Blog buddy Marshall Kirkpatrick, Director of Content at SplashCast emailed me last night that SplashCast is going live today. Marshall has a player on his site and of course there are lots of details at the SplashCast launch site. It is a major innovation in that you will be able to create your own channels of streaming video, audio, music, and narration and make it available for anyone to play on their web page or blog.
What is unique about SplashCast is it is not an online video sharing site, it is a service that lets you play dynamically updated channels of content on your web page, blog or social network page. Second of all, it is a mix media service where you can combine video, audio, music and text and narrate your own story. And lastly, it is a syndication service so that when you create a channel and add new content, all those "tuned"Â to your channel get the updated content.
Check it out…Marshall has as an intro to Spashcast and the signup is here. They are unveiling it at DEMO, today. And of course, the SplashCast Blog has the latest. And leave it to Jeneane to add the splish to the party.
Other places to read about it: MacWorld, Somewhat Frank, Designed to Inspire, Technically Speaking, Allied
Tags: Marshall Kirkpatrick, SplashCast, MacWorld, Somewhat Frank, Designed to Inspire, Technically Speaking, Media 2.0, Tags: Jeneane Sessum
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AAF: MySpace and YouTube, Yes; Blogs, Not Really Very Much
An AAF (American Advertising Federation ) survey of industry leaders on digital media trends indicates that advertising agencies are not confident that Fortune 500 companies quite appreciate the effectiveness of digital marketing. Sixty three percent of Fortune 500 companies according to the survey are, “generally behind the curve when it comes to online strategy.” However, the agencies executives themselves acknowledge that fifty-eight percent are “personally “struggling simply to manage existing online efforts, let alone stay ahead of the curve.”
Well, what a shame about that curve; agencies think clients are behind the digital curve but agencies admit they can’t stay ahead of it. While the agencies and the client in this surveys are roundingÂ� Dead Man’s Curve they might want to drive by Todd Copilevitz’ and see why they are Advertising Themselves to Death.. Another eye opener awaits as Todd notes that General Mills has told its agencies that they will now be compensated based upon the dreaded RESULTS.
Might be important to realize that the Future of Advertising is NOW: Its not about whether the advertisers or the advertising agencies “get it.” The consumer gets “it” and that is really all that matters. According to Yankelovich and Forrester, seventy percent (70%) of consumers say they like products such as TiVo that block advertising and ninety two percent (92%) of these users fast forward through advertising. For more data, check out the Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMMA) Research Blog and to experience the future in real time join me next week at the Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMBAT 2) Basic Training Conference.
OK, and how does the AAF regard blogs and “user generated content sites”? “Advertising executives find blogs a riskier, less effective advertising vehicle than user-generated content sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Sixty-two percent (62%) stated that “blogs are too risky to advertise with due to lack of predictability of the editorial content,” while only 53 percent agreed with the same statement about user-generated content. Despite these concerns, an overwhelming majority said advertisers “should exploit the viral marketing opportunities” of user-generated sites and, to a lesser degree, blogs.
Well Yankelovitch did report that 55% of consumers still enjoy advertising “itself’. Of course that reminds me of the oft quoted John Wannamaker comment about the 50% of add dollars that are wasted but he just didn’t know which half.
Tags: advertising, marketing, word of mouth marketing, WOMMA, WOM, digital advertising, digital media, YouTube, MySpace, blogs
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YouTube, NotYourTube, or YourBoobTube: This is What It Looks Like
YouTube users add 35,000 videos each day and viewers view 30 million videos each day according to Newsweek. Anyone can download a video, any video can be emailed; in minutes you can download a DIY video, a TV show, or a commercial or a combination of any or all of these.
Members can set up their own sites on YouTube, make comments, watch whenever and wherever they want and track the popularity of anything on the site. Videos can be tagged and each video has its very own identification number.
According to Media Post, "Its the interface, stupid" that makes YouTube everyone’s favorite tube. The speed of the download, courtesy of the intersection of technology and bandwith, is what drives YouTube. In this part of the model, customers develop and/or create the content, organize and rate it by virtue of the number of downloads while the publishers build platforms that are designed to share well with others. There are no annoying where and whens. And as Media Post points out, this is the Widsom of Crowds personified.
The Church of the Consumer says that, "YouTube has deftly designed itself around what appears to be one of the more significant contributors to the growth of an online product: Enabling a community of users to create content around content."
But, who owns the content? Businessweek said that YouTube could be another NBC or another Napster. Hmmm? The article states that "Hurley and Chen think they are working on the future of TV." Lots of the content on YouTube is user created. Think Bowiechick’s Breakup. But, lots of the content is user downloaded. Think SNL. (Yes, its not there anymore)
Hurley states in Businessweek that they want YouTube to be a destination that promotes content from "these guys, " meaning copyrighted content and has tools and technology to protect against copyright infringement.
Om Malik says, I believe that the growing popularity of You Tube (and other online video sites… about 95 in total as per Mary Hodder of Dabble) has less to do with amateur content, and more to do with copyright infringing content. Well, I guess it depends on which side of the copyright one sits and the definitions of ownership and control that one adopts.Or, is that even a relevant question anymore?
Robert Young writing as a guest on Om Malik’s Blog says "The thing that I find most compelling about the Internet as a whole is its power to turn well rooted, traditional business norms upside down on its head." Repeat after me, the Internet has changed everything….we have stepped through the looking glass .Individuals, collectively, control the content.
Consumers are producing content and consumers are distributing content. If you have a URL, you are a content distributor. As Young notes, "if NBC.com puts up a video on their site and I point to the URL in a blog entry, I have exercised my influence over the distribution of that content. And if my blog post subsequently starts a huge viral redistribution of that URL to millions of other people, my control and influence over the distribution of that NBC video will have been at the expense of all other distribution outlets that are under the control of NBC.
He nails it when he writes, " As the worlds of media and technology collide with a force that can split an atom, such cognitive dissonance is a natural by-product of the fact that more and more content (and code) is being produced by the people themselves. At the same time, with the increasing digitization of media, the definition of “distribution†is also changing from channels previously rooted in the physical world to one where people themselves become the new distribution channels via tightly and loosely-coupled social networks connected together by the universal language of IP and bits."
The SNL clip on YouTube drove traffic to YouTube but also did much to generate a renewal of interest in Saturday Night Live.SNL said, Our goal on this is that obviously we want to find a balance between supporting the fan base that’s out there for these shows but also protect a significant amount of copyrighted material."
But wait, there is another issue.You Tube as the BoobTube. Lance Ulanoff coins the term iVideoism, and describes an addictive type state that viewers suffer from; the ivideoits will become alienated from others as well as from reality, which he declares a social problem. Did he possibily miss the reliance on the social network that drives the video sharing?
From the intersection of anthropology and economics, Glen McCracken disagrees and says that it is the same argument that was applied to TV in the 1950’s. Early TV he says had only a few channels, only a few brands to advertise and the advertising did not require deep thought. The process was that content was uniform, this induced conformity and social alienation would soon follow.
He says, "No, the reason YouTube is interesting is that it offers a fountain of invention from many thousands of people, pursuing a vast number of, some of them, deeply strange and cryptic projects. YouTube is a mad house of inventiveness."
Ulanoff disagrees, and essentially says that the content on YouTube is stupid and watching it will make us stupid, ala TV as the Boob Tube. He writes, "Those sorry folks have no patience for the humor, sometimes subtle, of viral video or the "gee, wasn’t that amazing" response elicited by videos like the one of the autistic kid scoring 20 points in 4 minutes in his high-school basketball game. They just want skin and lots of it."
So, is YouTube the BoobTube or a mad house of inventiveness? Are the videos user generated content or copyright infringement content? It’s all of the above. More importantly, I am not sure that it matters. The value of the community to the individuals may not be in the content, anyway but in the social network that develops over time. Further, as Jeff Jarvis notes, its all about filtering and aggregation, "
"Value lies at the aggregation point." - I forget who said it, but it rings in my head daily. Newspapers’ value lies in aggregating readers for advertisers (not in some high-horsed journalistic elite). Google’s value lies in aggregating viewers. Conferences aggregate audiences. MySpace aggregates teens. Facebook aggregates college students. O’Reilly aggregates developers. Aggregation is where the value lies."
Filtering: Pure "news" (items being pulled off the AP wire) are along the same lines as stock prices, they’re commodities. But filtering, perspective, a trusted voice — that brings tremendous value. And people flock to the filters that appeal to them."
In other words, YouTube is a community of aggregated users and content creators providing a filtered perspective to other creators and users.
So, to repeat the quote from the This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics," the reason YouTube is interesting is that it offers a fountain of invention from many thousands of people, pursuing a vast number of, some of them, deeply strange and cryptic projects. YouTube is a mad house of inventiveness…this is what it looks like. This is who we are."
And what is YouTube for marketers and advertisers? Well, as USA Today, the New York Times, and Business Week all note, advertisers are seeding YouTube with commercial clips. According to USA Today, Nike’s Ronaldinho clip was downloaded over 3 million times. Cost to Nike? The cost of the digital video. The value ? Priceless.
Other uses can be seen at Brand Autopsy. And then of course, YouTube is a virtual goldmine for market research and trend spotting.
Tags: YouTube, Video, User Generated Content, Media, Advertising, Copyright Infringement, Social Media, Social Networks, TV, Intermediation
Join Us For The Debut of Media Slaves Podcast…Life in Permanent Beta
                               
We are very excited to announce that the Media Slaves Podcast series is up and running! What is the topic for the first podcast?
Glad you asked! User Generated Content is a label that has been the subject of many blog posts…some of them even our own.
What’s in a name? Or label? How do the labels that we use or that are used by others impact mainstreaming of new media and perceptions of what blogs, podcasts, and video blogs/podcasts and other new media are about?
Speaking of names and not that they need an introduction, the other producers of Media Slaves are Zadi Diaz, the documentary filmaker, video blogger and editor who vlogs at Karmagirrrl; Debi Jones, mobile expert, blogosphere trend spotter, and designer of our wow, now, and its happening, baby! Media Slaves Blog who blogs at Mobile Jones; and Nicole Simon, European podcast expert who blogs and podcasts at Cruel to be Kind and Bloxpert. We are also the Blogging and Social Media Editors at Blogher.
So…join us at Media-Slaves at http://media-slaves@blogspot.com. We are there 24/7….
                               
Tags: podcasts, blogs, social media, media, Zadi Diaz, Mobile Jones, Marianne Richmond, Nicole Simon, blogher
Trust in User Generated Content: Youth Say Yes, Adults Say No
Forrester has released a new study that says that although three fourths of on line adults access user generated content their confidence in the content is declining; conversely, the over 90% of on line youth that access user generated content indicate that their trust in the content is increasing.
Forrester’s report on Social Computing concluded that technology had made the top down model obsolete, that value was in experience not ownership, and that power was shifting from institutions to communities. This report spoke of connected buyers with less brand loyalty, less trust in institutions and more reliance on peer-to-peer networks and user generated content.
User generated content is proliferating. Trust is important. Brad Feld in a post called, Its The Trust Stupid says there are three principles for user generated content, trust, attention and relevance.
So if trust in user generated content among adults is declining but increasing among the young what does this mixed message mean?
Here is some of the available data on user generated content among the young and among adults:
Teens Create Content: An earlier study by Intelliseek indicated that Teens lead all segments in the creation of CGM; almost 30% of teens send photos via mobile devices, 45% have created a blog, and almost 10% subside to RSS feeds.
Young consumers rely on friends and families for purchase recommendations:
According to an earlier Forrester study, 50% of youth rely on advice from those they know and 65% report giving recommendations or information regarding products to others.
Social Networking sites are user generated content. YouTube users add 35,000 videos each day and viewers view 30 million videos each day according to Newsweek.
My Space is the 7th most popular English language website. If you need more data, see If You Don’t Get MySpace, You’re a Lametard at Mashable! or The Site That Ate the Blogosphere at Mobile Jones and Blogher.
MMOG (Massive Multi-Player Online Games) are user generated content. Participation is growing dramatically. There are 10 million people playing. They defy any preconceived demos one might have about gamers being young and male. Games such as Second Life The Sims, or The Movies are driven by the creation of user generated content. Included in the content development tools of MMOG is advertising. Players have the ability to put up their own advertising in the games such as promotions of in-game events or businesses.
Forbes reports that Mind Ark, creator of Project Entropia, and the first advertising tool built into a game has announced a collaboration with the distributors of ads from Coca-Cola and Warner Brothers that will appear in over 100 games. Clickable Culture reports that the Coca-Cola "will make its first official appearance at a live music event as part of the corporations sponsorship of the event’s real-world counterpart." OK, I admit…I am a little confused here between the real world and the counterpart; nonetheless, user generated advertising content is part of the real world and part of this virtual world. Something like life imitating art, imitating life imitating art….Coke’s tagline becomes the virtual thing?
Politicians bypass the mainstream media and turn to blogs: According to the Salt Lake Tribune and increasing number of politicians are using blogs to provide information directly with their constituents. However, a trust warning is included, "Of course as blogs spread, readers need to understand what they are seeing and what is behind it…when searching for information on a candidate or a lawmaker, readers should be wary of what site they peruse because some information may be missing our skewed….some of these blogs are controlled by parties or by parties or by political candidates." Yep, just like that other media source that we don’t trust.
User generated advertising seems to be everywhere. It is used by Jet Blue, Sony, MasterCard, Converse, and Tahoe. Results and opinions are mixed.
Consumer generated health and medical content have and important influence on decisions:A study by Cybercitizen Health (r) v5.0 indicates that consumers are increasing
relying on the Internet for health care decisions. They report a market of 99 million US adults. The Pew Internet & American Life Project confirms that direction but indicates that 52 million Americans or 55% of adults with Internet access use the Internet to get health or medical information. Regardless, the numbers are huge.
Importantly, Cybercitizen Health reports that there are a "small group of health
consumers (20 million)" that have tremendous influence on those using the Internet for health information. They speak of a "zone of influence, ranging from spouses, children and elderly parents to extended family and friends. In fact, other health consumers are very
likely to seek out advice from this group of highly influential health consumers, who are more likely than the average consumer to be using interactive media such as the Internet."
An aside, GE Healthcare joins and sponsors the delivery of consumer generated health care content. See also GE Imagination at Work.
So…there are many more data points indicating an increasing reliance on consumer generated content which doesn’t track with the reported decrease in trust among adults…at least as yet. In fact, a increase in reliance on user generated medical advice would indicate that adults are trusting the advice of their peers with something quite valuable….although a decline in trust measurement might precede an actual change in behavior.
The marketers who get the importance that consumers place upon the recommendations and opinions of their peers combined with the extent of the connections are already building new relationships with consumers and revising their marketing to foster collaboration and participation.
Clarence Fischer of Remote Access while drawing some comparisons between MMOG and classroom learning makes an interesting point about what makes these games
successful, "For a game to be successful, the secret is often not to make the game better, but to make the community which surrounds the game better. Empower them. Give them responsiblities and the power to personalize their experience." This might also be applied to marketing within the context of social computing.
Cory Treffiletti says that user generated content is a viable ad medium and makes the point that once a brand is in the public domain it belongs to the consumer, is controled by the consumer, and if they are provided with a sense of ownership for the brand and the ability to provide input that is responded to, will be a successful brand; if not the brand will suffer the consequences. He refers to this as brand democratization and says it is the wave of the future.
Technorati Tags: consumer generated content, consumer generated media, marketing, advertising, media, social computing, trust, MMOG, MySpace, blogs, advertising,
User Generated Content: Selling Naming Rights for Your Baby
An article in the Wall Street Journal notes, "A little boy came into the world last Friday at 2:19PM, weighing 6 pounds, 11 ounces. His name: ChamberMaster Mead–after a software company that won the naming rights in a charitable auction mounted by his father….for two weeks, paying $375."
Horizon Industries, a consulting firm, according to the WSJ has offered to purchase naming rights to the baby for the next two weeks…."Young ChamberMaster would then be called Horizon Industries." The article says its all in good fun and for a good cause.
Yes, I see. But according to an American Baby poll mentioned later in the article, 49% of respondents said they would consider accepting money in exchange for naming rights to their babies. Sounds like lots of fun in the name of good causes!
Enough fun for now?.. Is this the ultimate example of user generated content? Newsweek in their recent cover story on The New Wisdom of the Web, which is all about user generated, not only provides a start up crib sheet (pun intended):
- The smartest guy in the room is everybody.
- Tom Sawyer was an early adopter. Fence painting was an early example of user generated content.
- It’s all one web.
- It’s not an audience, it’s a community.
Newsweek ends with the statement, "The web is where we live." Of course, now sell naming rights to your baby and go home. Hmmmm, now I wonder if all those people who asked me in 1994 if I named my son, Forrest, after the Tom Hanks character in, Forrest Gump were onto something? Run Forrest, run.
Debi Jones in a great post, at Mobile Jones and at Blogher, states that User Generated Media Must Die and discusses a post by Derek Powazek where he writes, "Calling the beautiful, amazing, brilliant things people create online "user generated content" is like sliding up to your lady, putting your arm around her and whispering, "Hey baby, let’s have intercourse." Or selling the naming rights for the "outcome" and making the baby into media.
Debi poses some interesting questions about ownership, copyright infringement and rights to content. As everything, including babies, become a media channel it will become more and more important to understand these definitions in disintermediated media.
Technorati Tags: consumer generated content, CGM, consumer generated media, web 2.0, media channels, digital rights, copyright infringement
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