Came across an interesting article on how the Web changes the rules of the game with Hollywood, it’s true.
Last year we began doing some comedy sketches. We’ll do more this year.
My all time fave to do was Interview with Crazy Preacher Man, not much of a skit, more of a spoof or fake interview.
Here are a couple of the funnier ones, based on feedback.
- Mindy vs. Coffee Machine
- Investigating Discriminatory Hiring Practices
See all comedy clips here.
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WatchMojo NewsletterBrad Greenspan says that by 2009: his proposed WSJVideo site - an open, video-focused, ad-supported site would generate 10 billion video views for the year. Using a $30 CPM rate, the venture will generate $243 million in revenue and $135.5 million in operating profits.
Greenspan is Intermix’s founder, he currently runs a bunch of websites with a heavy emphasis on video. We’re about to partner with one of Mr. Greenspan’s video sites and add them to our syndication network which includes YouTube, Joost, and many more. I sure do hope that Greenspan’s video sites see those kind of rates, too, cause then we’ll generate a decent return on our partnership.
Anyway, I really do wish Greenspan well, he’s got balls, courage and ambition in his quest to wrest Dow Jones away from Rupert Murdoch (check out MetaMojo.com’s video results for Murdoch, by the way) and News Corp.
My real point here is the following:
1- it’s a good thing those numbers are for 2009, because in 2007 and 2008, I doubt any of that is realistic.
2- everyone right now is in a very generous mode regarding video because they either a) don’t own rights to it or b) don’t make money off of it, so no one really minds giving it away.
a) We at WatchMojo.com will be allowing embeddable clips very soon as we inch closer to relaunching next week. I think YouTube showed that the embed function is a no-brainer to scale. Point well taken.
But as I’ve said before, YouTube was all for giving it away because they didn’t own it. It’s a simple decision then. I don’t mind sharing the crack pipe either if neither the crack nor the pipe is mine.
b) Today CBS announced that it was partnering up with 400 or so sites to syndicate its content. Sure, they own the content, but then Quincy Smith pointed to an example of a Sopranos clip which was in fact, a commercial for the real thing. In this case, long term, the revenue potential for said clip is minimal, so naturally they want to extend the reach of that kind of content.
My prediction is that over time as money starts to trickle into video inventory, you will see the opposite happen: either embeds will come with pre-roll ads which will discourage people from reposting elsewhere… or many content producers will refuse to allow for embedding to capture both pre-roll and contextual advertising.
Of course, eventually, someone will come up with the genius idea to allow a publisher to embed ads from another producer and add ads on top.
Guess what, someone already has: Center Networks’ Allen Stern and a couple of developers came up with Revlayer, a product that will definitely do a lot to both:
a) discourage publishers to enable embedding options and
b) become the video’s answer to Gator in the eyes of content owners. It took some time, but Gator fought hard to shed its image.
Until this came along, I was willing to allow for people to embed WatchMojo.com’s content without inserting a pre-roll… the instant I see a third-party publisher insert an ad, I’ll either remove the clip from being embeddable OR insert an ad, creating a mish-mash that will hurt the user experience. That’s me; and old media company will yank the embed feature altogether.
I chalk this up to Google envy, everyone wants to become a middleman in the new burgeoning video space, but very few want to create content, rather, they want to build empires off content creators and owners’ back.
I started off this post questioning the validity and likelihood of Brad Greenspan’s projections for WSJ’s hitherto-non-existent video site in 2009, there was a reason. Even Google has thus far failed to show any revenues despite owning Google and having Ad Sense. We partner with YouTube as a distribution partner, one day I expect them to be a big money maker, but not now, not yet.
People have no choice but to love to learn Google. But all new companies who suffer from Google envy lose out because of it. That’s right, it is extremely hard for any third party intermediary to gain a foothold in any ad market because content owners and publishers with audiences fear creating another Google. So here’s an advice, if you are going to make an attempt, try taking a less dubious route.
I’ll add this:
- 99% of publishers won’t want to trust any third party and will want to be in control of advertising directly, so they’ll pass on Revlayer. And even the publishers that might want to look to a third party won’t trust something that makes Gator looks honest and ethical. Frankly, most sites will not legally feel safe to run with this, if any of the contracts I see are an indication.
- 99% of the smaller blogs that will run this will make a solid $0.31, trust me. So they’ll use this, turn off content producers, get impatient with the lack of revenue… and everyone involved will lose.
Revlayer has a shot at carving out a niche, but not this way. This is a brazen way that will only piss off everyone involved in the value chain.
This morning I asked “is innovation a right, privilege or an obligation?” In a nutshell: is it fair to technology to pillar and plunder rightsholders assets because they could?
I sometimes hope that media companies put more content online, but everytime they tippy toe online comes along a technology company that shows a total disregard for their intellectual property.
Yesterday I commented about MySpace and Harper Collins partnering up, asking if it was a precursor to the model of a 21st century publisher. It was a natural extension, mind you, but something I thought about back in 2004-05 and never ran with, because basically MySpace was a cinch to do it as the leading social network out there (by late 2004) and a sister property of Harper Collins (by May 2005).
Today MySpace took it one step further by announcing a partnership with Virgin Comics… building on what I think could really work: a social network/community/marketplace for intellectual property. I think MySpace is way too chaotic for that to happen, but as a community of writers and creative types? Definitely… it already is, anyway, adding some bells and whistles only makes sense.
Brad Greenspan, the former founder of Intermix, is trying to derail Rupert Murdoch’s $5B bid for Dow Jones.
I came across this on Paid Content, here’s his open letter to shareholders, in it, he concedes:
I can speak from experience regarding missed opportunities. In 2005, as a 10% shareholder I tried to educate other shareholders of Intermix Media (which owned MySpace) of the future value of MySpace and convince them to reject News Corp.’s bid to buy the company for $580 million, thereby enabling Intermix shareholders to reap the benefits of the future growth of MySpace. Unfortunately, my efforts were muffled by directors and senior management rushing to endorse the sale and cash out. Today, less then 24 months later, the value of MySpace is estimated to be $20-25 billion according to UBS analyst Aryeh Bourkoff.
Technically, given that Rupert Murdoch came out recently and suggested that 25% of Yahoo! could be swapped for MySpace, he too admitted that MySpace was worth $10B in his eyes. Considering Greenspan once spoke out against one of Murdoch’s offers, it’s not a crazy idea to openly admit that Greenspan’s been burned once and he does not want DJ shareholders to suffer the same fate.
A lot of what he says is highly speculative and theoretical. But let’s face it, online, anything is possible if the right people get behind an idea and a project.
Will Greenspan defeat Murdoch? I don’t know. All I know is that Greenspan is making an otherwise mundane “bidding war” exciting.
Joel Spolsky has an interesting post up regarding comments on blogs. Some highlights:
When a blog allows comments right below the writer’s post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody … nobody … would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.
Of course, I’m not sure I fully agree with the following, where he refers to Dave Winer, the “father of blogging and RSS” according to BBC and the “protoblogger” according to the NY Times:
The way to give people freedom of expression is to give them a quiet place to post their ideas. If other people disagree, they’re welcome to do so… on their own blogs, where they have to take ownership of their words.
The reason I disagree with that slightly is that comments tend to add context when done right.
The problem is that indeed, comments have hitherto dumbed posts down. Digg is the extreme example of commenting gone wrong, but on some blogs like TechCrunch and Valleywag, in all fairness, the commentors seem to know as much if not more than the writer (that’s not a knock at the writer - whomever it might be - but a props to the quality of the readership). Fred Wilson’s blog is similar; a lot of smart people read it. Sure, you get a lot of people promoting their own stuff (present party included and guilty of that sometimes) but so long as it’s relevant, it adds to the overall content.
Of course, with all due respect to both Joel and Winer, I think that argument misses the major points:
- it’s easy for someone like Dave Winer - who ranks as one of the earlier bloggers - to do without commenting. Comments are a way for new blogs to engage readers and get a discussion going. Once you’re established, I’m not sure you need it. To some extent, it’s like waiting around after a gig and signing autographs. The new band needs to do it, not sure Elton John does it.
- for non-blog sites that add comments, let’s face it, it’s generally speaking a cheap but very effective way to drive up ”average time spent on a site per visit by a user”. And since so many want to kill the pageview in place of that metric, then expect a lot more noise on otherwise quality sites. Problem is that on sites like CNN and BusinessWeek, they moderate comments (which is fair, smart and reasonable) but they then approve comments at the expected pace of an old media establishment. On this blog, I approve blogs as they come in throughout the day and the first thing I do when I wake up (I do sleep, despite the 5-10 posts per day, folks).
So, all to say, the argument about whether or not comments add to the quality of content on a blog or website in general really is secondary to the impact adding comments has to the profile of a site. Over time, adding comments will both hurt and help a site: it will help it by increasing time spent on a site visit but hurt it by making the site look dumb.
Right off the bat, let me say that all three media companies are fantastic companies.
They’re not going anywhere (as in they won’t disappear), and if their TV executives can get over the reasonable envy and angst fearing that what happened to print media companies can happen to them, they will definitely be going places (as in growing and thriving)…
But it’s very interesting to see just how differently CBS is handling things versus. News Corp. and NBC. News Corp., by the way, was my former employer. I’m not sure if there is any one way to proceed, but while News Corp./NBC have been planning a YouTube killer for months and spent one year fine-tuning it (effectively giving YouTube and Google one full year to ramp up further, create new features etc.), CBS has proceeded to adopt an open strategy. In the words of Quincy Smith, CEO of CBS Interactive:
“CBS is all about open, nonexclusive partnerships,” CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith said. “Just CBS.com is not the answer” to reaching viewers, he added, so the network is devoted to going out where the viewers are, not forcing them to CBS.com.
The network already partnered with 24 sites including TV.com, Comcast’s The Fan, Slingbox and Brightcove to offer clips and other CBS content.
Those have already resulted in a huge lift in unique viewership to CBS.com — from 21 million unique users per month in May to the current 134 million — from people linking in from partners.
To be fair, Smith is widely hailed as a dealmaker from venerable Allen & Co., but before that he was at Netscape when Netscape was morphing the Web experience. He has also lured in Patrick Keane from Google and Mike Marquez from Yahoo! Those two hires get less media attention but make no mistake about it, CBS Interactive is “outwebbing” both News Corp. and NBC in many ways.
The one thing that I find most interesting, in all of this, is notice the word Web in “CBS Aims to Spread Web Content”. While many people jump on the convergence of media on the Web bandwagon, I for one do not see that happening any time soon.
In other words:
- the content you see on TV will look different than the content you see on the Web, mainly due to economics and partially due to technology.
- the content you see on the Web will look different from the content you see on Wireless, both due to economics and technology.
TV is a $75B ad industry in the US, if you add filmed entertainment and licensing, it becomes a $250B industry. Why on earth would the TV networks cannibalize all of that for the Web’s $17B ad industry, of which 40% comes from search?
All to say, I fully expect TV companies to adopt a strategy of taking morsels of content and putting it online, but keeping the meat on TV:
Smith added that the network may reach out to fan-site producers to program CBS’ Web-site content. He cited a fan clip he admired: a digest of every season of The Sopranos in seven minutes, now available on YouTube. That clip might be too long, violating guild contracts and causing rights issues, but the network might take such an example and create a version running two minutes, he said.
Seven minutes? Two minutes? Close, but no cigar. In my daily position at web video producer, publisher and syndicator WatchMojo.com, I’m starting to think that the Web vs. TV tug of war will probably see the better web video content producers take the offensive to the TV producers. Economically, it makes sense for us to extend our distribution to TV, whereas it makes little sense for TV networks and cable companies to extend their actual content (noy 2 or 7 minutes folks) to the Web where they splinter their TV audiences and shrink the advertising revenue they can covet.
This is something that I only realized now - 18 months, 4,000 clips and 100 hours of programming later - not only do web video producers have a cost advantage, we also have a distribution advantage and by virtue of being digital and not in a 22 minutes out of 30 minutes format, we’re simply leaner and more agile in this contest…
Any thoughts.
Facebook might go on to become far more than a social network to connect with old and new friends… but seeing some of the headlines this morning made me wonder: “do us writers really have any credibility with readers?”
Just a couple of weeks ago, at most a few months, we were all writing about how Google was the next Microsoft, etc. This week’s flavour du jour? Facebook. See some of the headlines: “Could Facebook Become the Next MSFT?”
Wow. For the record I’m not really criticizing Duncan Riley or Tech Crunch since I am plenty-guilty of it too… I just wonder how readers view the lot of writers out there that write some of the more progressive things out there and occasionally end up saying things that are, well, foolish.
Examples of my posts include: August 2009: Facebook larger than MySpace and 2010: Google to be worth more than MSFT? It does not mean that both of these things are false or impossible… but you have to wonder: one earnings miss by Google and one small acquisition for Facebook, and suddenly, Facebook becomes the second coming of Christ?
VCs and tech entrepreneurs have a convenient way of justifying products that media companies allege infringe on their rights: it’s innovation. Fred Wilson, one of the classier VCs out there, argued in my earlier post “When Does Being Cavalier Become Criminal?” that:
The “disdain” [between media companies and tech outfits] comes from the fact that the traditional media companies don’t want to see innovation, new business models, and platforms that opens up their content to massively new markets. If they were more open minded, so would I be.
I’m biased in the debate in that as a web entrepreneur, I am all for innovation.
As a consumer, I encourage it and embrace products like Napster or YouTube that cross the line.
Yet as a content producer I also recognize and understand that media companies are less than thrilled when such disurptive innovations are unleashed: Napster and its successors hurt the record labels. I understand that the record labels inflicted a lot of damage to themselves for being defensive, but it’s not just rich record label executives that got hurt in the file sharing stampede, artists did too. Of course, artists largely re-engineered themselves to generate more money from tours etc., but the fact remains, blaming the RIAA solely is unfair (though we sure do love to do so). Anyway, I surely don’t want to come across as being on the side of the content-owners only, I think they need to update their modus operandi and understand that social and technological advances (be it opportunities or threats) are a fact and reality and they need to be on the front lines, not in the rear seats.
But despite that argument, I wonder: is innovation an obligation, a right or a privilege? In other words, just because one can, does it mean they should? Of course, if one does not, then someone else will… that was way too philosophical for my liking… theory is one thing, practice is everything in business.
And, I guess that’s the ultimate lesson.
Technology is akin to the cat being out of the bag, you can’t slow down the pace of invention, and that means that someone will come along and innovate. It is a case of survival of the fittest. If the media companies don’t adapt and embrace new inventions and innovate, someone else will. It’s not a matter of is it right or fair, it just is.
In that context, it’s not so much a question of whether is innovation a right or obligation, but a fact. Just do it, or someone else will.
