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Above: Vu Bui watching Galacticast on the Apple TV (Photo courtesy of Lan Bui)

I just got home from a party with my former co-workers and, just like the day I left, I still find myself explaining how the internet will revolutionize the distribution of television. Although Rudy and I have turned 8Bit Brownies Inc. into a real business, people still ask me how my “little” movies are doing. Zod help me…

Guess this is what happens when you live vicariously through the internets!

Originally by Casey from Casey McKinnon on August 3, 2007, 8:40pm

Far be it from me to defend LA Times editorialists, but I think some critics are missing the attempted irony in their excoriated opinion piece about Google and newspapers — specifically, the new GoogleNews program that enables the subjects of news stories to respond. Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review lead the lynch mob, performing a vigorous fisking of the Times.

The Times wrote: “Many publishers consider the Internet, and Google in particular, a greater threat to their livelihoods than Osama bin Laden.” And Niles harrumphed in reply: “The Los Angeles Times this morning insulted its readers in a stunning editorial that compared Google with Osama bin Laden and showed why Times editors simply do not understand the medium that is growing to dominate the news publishing industry.”

When I read about this kerfufflement elsewhere, I assumed — as you probably would — that I’d agree with Niles. But reading the Times piece, I think that bin Laden line was so over the top it was intended to mock Luddite ink-stained wretches and distance the wise, newfangled Times from those old fools (including, it would seem, their new owner, Sam Zell, who, the editorial reminds us, “once famously asked, ‘If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content, how profitable would Google be?’ “).

In the end, I read the Times editorial as a defense of Google against frequent charges that it is competitive with newspapers.

The Times acknowledges, albeit without enthusiasm, that this new Google feature may expose news stories’ mistakes: “News organizations have their flaws, and the added comments on Google may demonstrate that.” Indeed. But then they go on to argue that journalism is about asking questions and these sources’ comments will go up not as a result of questions and without questioning in response and so this isn’t journalism.

The Times dismisses Google’s new feature and thus says that Google isn’t competition. I would certainly agree with that. Many of those aforementioned Luddite newspaper publishers who fear Google more than bin Laden would disagree. But I say Google is the new newsstand. It is a way to be found and read. It is a reporting tool. It is a presentation tool (with maps and such). It is now a means of continuing the journalistic process by getting response and with it more viewpoints and facts. Google could also be your ad sales force. Oh, there’s much to fret about Google’s power. But as journalistic competition? No, it’s not trying to compete. And I think that was where the Times was trying to get, if by an odd detour. I think.

Now having said all that, I agree with many of Niles’ criticisms — especially of “stenographic journalism” — and I’d say that the editorial was clumsy at best. Irony — if that is, indeed their intent — is hard, especially in L.A.

But more important — and here’s where I vigorously agree with Niles — the editorial was the wrong response to the Google feature. The proper answer from the Times — and every other newspaper in the country — should have been: “Me, too. Good idea, Google. News source, you don’t have to go to Google to respond to, correct, clarify, or augment articles. You can do it right here at our newspaper.com. We don’t just welcome this new opportunity to listen better and get more perspectives and facts. We will beg you to do it. Because it will improve jouranlism.” That is what the Times should have said.

And that’s in essence what Dave Winer is suggesting when he again proposes that newspapers should host the blogs of everyone they quote. I don’t know that I’d want to be hosted by a bunch of newspapers. But I would want them to open up the right of response there and I would want them to link to my own blog (a process we are starting to see in places such as the Washington Post). That’s what the Times should be doing with its editorial: linking to Niles and Winer and me and encouraging the discussion to continue. That is the real lesson Google is teaching.

Originally by Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine on August 18, 2007, 9:49am

The Shorenstein Center at Harvard just released a report arguing that local newspapers are the most threatened by the internet. I’ll discuss how to deal with that “threat” in a moment.

But first, I have to say that I think the report’s methodology — and, a few cases, its analysis — are seriously flawed. They relied on just one source of data for news sites’ audience, Compete.com, and in my random check of its data versus the stats I know for various services, Compete wildly undercounts audience — by half or as much as two-thirds. Like all sampling methodology in a broadly distributed or fragmented universe, it cannot possibly accurately measure smaller, nicheier sites — that is, it will be biased against local sites because their audiences are smaller. In other words, its undercount for local news sites I know is worse than its undercount of NYTimes.com. And that comparison is critical to the study’s conclusions: that big, national brands are better off than local brands. They say they picked Compete because it is free and U.S.-based and that its rankings are relatively in line with other services. But rankings are not the basis of this report; absolute numbers are. So it is a pity that they did not also approach the sites they analyze to get server data and compare that with the samplers’ data. It also would have been helpful to go to services that have a broader view of traffic, such as Tacoda, to triangulate their data and also deal with issues of audience overlap.

Having said that, let’s still take the Shorenstein report’s conclusions at face value and talk about how local newspapers can deal with this alleged threat.

But first, I’ll challenge the notion that it’s a threat. As I see it, local newspapers are, for the first time since the advent of network news in the ’50s, in competitive markets. And I’ll argue that competition is good and healthy. The continuing growth of the national brands the report points to comes in a highly competitive national news market. So while the report notes that some of its small sample of metro papers are suffering flat or even declining traffic, it also notes growth in local TV stations’ sites — now that they are getting competitive and now that video is a workable medium on the web. And so, adding newspapers’ traffic with TV sites’ — and the many other local sites that are starting to blossom and that the report acknowledges are nearly impossible to measure using sampled data — isn’t there a net growth in local news traffic? anticipated. The report wonders: “[I]t is not clear just how much Internet traffic a particular community can bear. If local newspapers, television stations, and radio stations all compete strongly for residents’ Internet
time, are there enough users to go around?” That’s the wonder of competition. It’s not as if we pick one news site and stick with it; that’s even less likely in a medium built on links and search. No, I say that more news means more interest in news.

But let’s still accept the Shorenstein conclusion that national brands will have an easier time than local brands in attracting traffic. Says the report: “The Internet is also a larger threat to local news organizations than to those that are nationally known. Because the Web reduces the influence of geography on people’s choice of a news source, it inherently favors ‘brand names’—those relatively few news organizations that readily come to mind to Americans everywhere when they go to the Internet for news.”

I think they have a point. In a portal economy, the big guys get bigger. But I’ll keep arguing that the most successful internet company — Google — isn’t a portal but a distributed network and there are lessons in that for local news: WWGD.

So given present circumstances, are local newspaper sites screwed? Let’s take the Shorenstein report’s worst case and say they are. But the response to that should not be to lie down and die but to figure out what to do about it. This isn’t an attack on local newspapers. It is a new market reality. The only responsible response is change. A few humble suggestions, linking to posts on the subject I’ve written here:

* Get distributed. Get aggregated. The Shorenstein report marvels at the growth of Digg — growth so great (2-to-15 million users in a year) it wouldn’t fit on their chart. But the report’s authors come at this with an old-media prejudice: that aggregators are “free riders” that compete without bearing “an equitable share of the production costs.” Wrong analysis. These aggregators are your distributors — and they’re even better than newsstands because they’re more efficient and targeted and they don’t take a cut of your circulation revenue. So the natural question the report should be asking — the one that more and more wise newspapers are asking is: How do we get on Digg more often? How do get more links and audience Digg?

A while ago, I had lunch with a big-paper executive and brought son Jake along. The executive was pooh-poohing Digg, saying nobody really uses it. At that very moment — swear to God Google — Jake was sensibly bored and was engrossed in his iPhone. What was he doing? Digging. And how does Jake find the news he reads — and it’s a lot of news? Through Digg and friends. Aggregators and links, the magic combination. Jake told the executive that he doesn’t even go to blogs to read them anymore. He gets his news not from portals and brands but from links.

Keep in mind that I’m a partner at an aggregator, Daylife. Part of my reason for getting involved is that I believe aggregation and links are the keys to success for news organizations online. Without aggregation and links, all you have is marketing costs to attract users to a portal that doesn’t fit in their online lives anymore.

* Think beyond the link: Widget it. Perhaps a link isn’t enough. In relying on the link, we are still making people come to us. We should be going to them. Listen to CBS’ Quincy Smith: “We can’t expect consumers to come to us. It’s arrogant for any media company to assume that.” What does that mean? I’m not sure. But think of it this way: The more that we can find ways to put out content out there — and benefit from branding and monetization via advertising or other means — and the more we can get people to distribute us (in which case, we are the free riders), the larger we will grow. So if we can come up with those means, we should encourage the aggregators and portals and bloggers to take our stuff and spread it around. If.

* Network. Network. Network. We need to network in every sense of the word:
1. Just as we need to be aggregated, we need to aggregate. We need to pull in a broader network of content from our communities. We can’t do it all ourselves, not anymore.
2. We need to set up networks that benefit these new producers so we can gather more and produce less. I mean ad networks.
3. Get involved in our communities. If our value is local then we have to get local and mean it. We need to crack the hyperlocal nut and that’s not just about content. That’s about enabling a community to do what it wants to do. That’s about human relations in our communities. Local is about people.
So in the long run, to measure our success and influence and loyalty, you don’t just measure one site, you measure our presence in the community online.

* Promote while we still can. Rather than fretting about cannibalization, we should be using our diminishing promotional power to push people to what comes next. Invent it. Promote it.

* Report, damnit, report. The most important thing we can do is, of course, bring journalism to the community: report. We need to become known as the indispensable sources of local help and information and I’d argue — contrary to the Shorenstein report — that this comes not from trying to compete with the big guys in national, commodity news but by putting all our resources behind what we do best and what no one else — including, ferchrissakes, local TV — can afford to do: report. We have to make our value absolutely clear and we need to increase that value even as our resources are diminished. How? Do what you do best and link to the rest.

: LATER: And while we’re screwing newspapers, let me finally get around to analyzing Henry Blodget’s eulogy for newspapers now that he is tossing more dirt into the grave arguing that the big only guys only get bigger while the once-big offline guys only get smaller. Jack Schofield does a great job summarizing reaction from Seamus McCauley, not to mention Steve Yelvington.

Blodget’s first analysis — in which he purports to run the numbers and show how the New York Times is screwed — is flawed for many of the reasons these others point out (the Times is the Grand Exception to all rules, for example) and others’ I’ll point out.

First, he far underestimates the savings that would result from the hypothetical death of print. I don’t have current numbers for the Times, but use the San Francisco Chronicle as an example: It has 3,000 employees, 400 of whom are editorial. Blodget said that if paper died at the Times, only 25 percent of labor costs would disappear. Hardly. Ink, paper, printing, handling, distribution, circulation marketing, accountants who audit sleazy distributors, plants for all this, trucks… lots of costs would disappear. I’ve heard it said that this would amount to $1 billion a year at the Times.

Second, there are other savings that papers other than the Times can execute — getting rid of commodity news, for example.

Third, there’s no reason to say that some highly profitable print products could not remain — specialized publications, free papers, hyperlocal publications, and so on.

The fundamental problem with both Blodgett’s and the Shorenstein report’s analyses — not to mention the worldview of too many a newspaper executive still — is that they essentially define the product as it is, steady state, without the innovation, change and growth the internet enables and demands.

Who says that a newspaper is just news? It can also be community. Who says all the content is produced by expensive staff? Much of it can be produced in a broader network the paper doesn’t have to pay for. Who says that the only inventory to be sold is on newspaper.com page? Build a bigger network and you have more to sell. And who says Google has to own the world?

Blodget’s latest analysis argues that Google is “sucking the life out of media.” That’s because we in media are letting Google do that — indeed, helping Google do that. Newspapers make it painfully difficult for advertisers large and small to buy them — because they spent so many years operating as monopolies (I honestly know people in the classifieds departments of newspapers who spent their days telling advertisers what they could not do with their money). And they have no idea how to serve the limitless mass of small advertisers who couldn’t afford them before but who can now afford Google. Add to this the general behind-the-times stupidness of advertisers and, yes, you do have a formula for Google world domination. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Newspapers and media companies can create and sell new value to advertisers and can band into networks to make it as easy for those advertisers to give them money as it is for them to go fill in a form at Google.

If they do nothing, I agree that newspapers are screwed. But there’s still time to do something. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Originally by Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine on August 17, 2007, 9:54am

Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation wonders about extending the idea in the infrastructure project into her territory: tracking Congress.

I wonder what the analogue to what might be in our world of Congressional activity? A Google map of earmarks? A map that reflects where lawmakers have their fundraising events with lobbyists? (Yes, still permitted.) A Gawker Stalker effort that tracks lobbyists visits in the halls of Congress? A map that shows the land deals lawmakers have that also shows earmarks from the same members? A map of lawmakers daily schedules, each point representing the location of the group/business/person the lawmaker is meeting with (not the location of the meeting). More ideas?

ping a politician’s donors to see how much comes from local support vs. outside interests (i.e., how much comes from Washington itself)?

How about mapping that against corporate headquarters in industries (e.g., someone on a health oversight committee gets lots of donations from New Jersey because there are so many pharma companies there)?

How about timelines showing how active each congressman is, visualizing their productivity: bills introduced, votes, and such?

How about mapping that against the timing of donations from various industries, showing the correlation (if not cause-and-effect)?

I’d like to animate the Washington Post’s wonderful candidate tracker against time to see who’s paying attention to what states when and what pays off.

What else?

Originally by Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine on August 15, 2007, 2:37pm

I think it’s wonderful that The New York Times did a deal to bring Freakonomics under its wing — hosting it, selling ads on it, promoting it, but not buying it or hiring its creators and not treating it like so much freelance fodder to go through the Times’ editing mill. That’s new. This follows my somewhat similar deal at PrezVid with the Washington Post and another big-media outlet to be named shortly, in which they also leave PrezVid as an independent entity (in this case, we keep our site and URL) but take up some of the content onto their sites.

What I like about this is that we see big-media services starting to act like members of networks. They are beginning to realize that they can’t — and don’t want to — do everything themselves. They are also recognizing that creators want to keep ownership of their creations and so hiring or buying isn’t always the best option.

But so long as these services still want to serve content from their own sites, there will be issues. In my deal, the sites pick the posts they want; if they don’t like something, they just don’t take it. But in the Times’ case, all of Freakonomics is now served under the Times umbrella but without the usual Times process. I think that’s a good thing. But some folks didn’t a few days ago when the Freaks started a discussion speculating about the best ways for terrorists to attack America, something that quite a few commenters and bloggers thought was dangerous and just stupid and unbecoming the Times.

And this leads me to suggest that syndication is still not the best relationship for big services and the new independent players. I’m delighted that there’s marryin’ in the air. But I think the independent guys are better left independent. And the proper relationship, I think, is a network. Imagine, instead, if the Times declared Freakonomics part of its quality blog network. It could sell ads there, telling its advertisers that it had found the best of the blogs just for them. It could direct its readers to lots of great new content. By promoting that content, it also increases its ad value: a virtuous circle. But there remains a distance that defines independence: The blog is free of the worries of what happens under the Times address and brand — though if they go too damned far, they can be dropped. And the Times has a certain deniability — it is clear that this content was not a product of the Times, though, again, if advertisers don’t want to be on that blog, it will be dropped. The further advantage for the big guy is it can grow much bigger much faster by becoming a member and enabler of a much larger network. The Times doesn’t have to create or pay for or host or be responsible for all the best content around. It can find it and help support it and bring that new, larger world to its readers and advertisers.

Be a network more than a site, that’s my advice.

This is what Glam has done, creating an ad network across independent sites and growing hugely, bragging that it is the no. 1 women’s site (service, network?) with 19.1 monthly uniques, growing faster than MySpace and larger than iVillage, AOL Living, and all of Conde Nast combined.

At TechCrunch, Mike Arrington ridicules Glam’s claims, saying: “A minimal amount of research into their business shows that the company is an ad network, not a content site.” With respect, I disagree

I say that’s what makes Glam so smart. As the web becomes more and more distributed — more widgetized with tchotzkes of content and functionality spread everywhere — the idea of measuring size by just measuring a site becomes obsolete. And here’s the fringe benefit: it’s better and cheaper to take your content to the people rather than marketing to bring them to you. This is the essence of CBS’ audience network strategy.

This is, dare I say it, the essence of 3.0: join and enable a network instead of trying to buy content and eyeballs on a site.

WWGD. What would Google do? Google would network.

There are still issues of quality. As both Arrington and VentureBeat point out, a network can grow too big by including junky traffic; that is why networks have gotten less respect and thus lower value.

But now let’s return to the Times and Freakonomics. No junk there. It’s quality, albeit sometimes controversial quality. The Times wouldn’t have embraced it otherwise. Its advertisers and readers know that. So there’s a power in the Times and the Post (which also runs a travel blog network) and a major wire service that’s about to launch a network of its own and other of the big guys growing bigger not by hiring and buying and building but by networking.

And by the way, I’d like to hear the Freakonomics guys explore the power and value of networks vs. closed content systems.

Originally by Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine on August 14, 2007, 6:45am

Xeni Jardin:

[ Image: Fakir Musafar, “modern primitive.” ]

PART 3 OF 3

Louis Rove, the man identified as the adoptive father of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, apparently lived the latter part of his life as an out gay man who was deeply involved in body piercing culture.

That’s what we’ve learned this week, through a first-person essay posted on BMEZine by Yard[D]og, who identifies himself as a former friend of “Louie” Rove, and through an audio interview posted here on BoingBoing with Jim Ward.

In 1975, Ward founded The Gauntlet, widely considered to be the first professional piercing shop in America. The “grandfather of the modern piercing movement,” as Ward is known, personally administered 37 (mostly genital) piercings to Louis Rove.

Another pioneer in those early years of ampallangs, dydoes, and nipple rings — intimate ornaments we now take for granted in alt circles — was Fakir Musafar. As you can see from the image above, he is most committed to the art and experience of piercing, beyond mere ornamentation.

Musafar began experimenting with body piercing at age 11, growing up on a Native American reservation in South Dakota in the 1930s. Now, at age 77, he teaches body modification workshops at the Bay Area school he founded: bodyplay.com. Image at left: a live piercing event overseen by Musafar.

Musafar also knew Louis Rove. He photographed Rove’s piercings (in great detail) for a 1983 issue of the fanzine Piercing Fans International Quarterly, or PFIQ. Rove wrote an essay about his piercings for that same issue (links to scans at the foot of this post, images are very NSFW).

In this audio interview with BoingBoing, Fakir Musafar tells us about what drew him to his lifelong fascination with body modding; about the formative years of the piercing industry; and about the quiet, curious, friendly, and very heavily pierced man he knew as Louie “Indy” Rove.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

AUDIO interview: FAKIR MUSAFAR
(duration - 23:12)

[Browser-compatibility note — The audio link in this post appears as embedded Flash, and is brought to you by our sponsor: HP’s iPaq 510 Voice Messenger. If your web reader doesn’t allow you to access Flash, here’s the
MP3 LINK. ]

Section index:

* 0:00-5:23 (Growing up in Indian country, childhood experimentation)
* 5:23-9:34 (Early piercing photos, moving to CA, new “modern primitives movement,” Muzak founder whose nom de kink was Doug Malloy provided essential funding)
* 09:34-14:00 (Meeting Louie Rove, “T&P parties,” early ’70s WeHo piercing scene, first piercing shop The Gauntlet)
* 14:00-18:00 (Contents of a 1983 PFIQ issue in which Mr. Rove, and his pierced genitals, were cover story)
* 18:21-23:12 (Piercing goes commercial, but Musafar and others work to preserve the esoteric aspects)

- - - -

“Back in the early days,” Musafar explains in our interview, “people who were interested in piercing were a very small, insular community.”

Not anymore. Body piercing is big business now, and a more visible part of popular culture.

“Back then, none of us dreamed it would come to this,” Musafar says. “Kids these days who come to my [piercing] school haven’t a clue how this started, they don’t know who Jim Ward is. They should understand and appreciate something about their ancestors, people who lived 20 years ago at least.”

- - - - - - - - - - - -

SCANS of Piercing Fans International Quarterly
Issue #17, 1983
Cover story and 6-page feature on Louie Rove (aka “Indy”). Photos by Fakir Musafar, contents shared here by permission of PFIQ founder Jim Ward.

NSFW warning: contains graphic images of genital piercings. Inappropriate for children, and may be disturbing for adults. Do not click if you are easily offended, or squeamish about body piercing.

* SCAN #1
* SCAN #2
* SCAN #3
* SCAN #4

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Previously on BoingBoing:

(1) Essay: I’m the proud owner of Karl Rove’s father’s solid gold cock ring

(2) Karl Rove’s Pierced Family Jewels: Jim Ward interview (audio)

(Images in this post provided by Fakir Musafar. Very special thanks to Shannon Larratt, founder of BMEzine.com, who kindly offered to host the PFIQ scans on our behalf, and who introduced me to this story in the first place — and to Mr. Ward and Mr. Musafar.)

Originally by Xeni Jardin from Boing Boing on August 26, 2007, 4:48pm

David Pescovitz:
As regular BB readers know, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machines that scan the brain in real-time are now being used for a variety of unusual and interesting purposes, from studying fear to “neuromarketing” to lie detection. Yesterday’s New York Times looks at the trend and profiles start-ups Omneuron, which plans to treat pain, addiction, and depression, No Lie MRI, a firm that sells “truth verification” via brain scans. From the article:

Ed Boyden, an assistant professor at the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a researcher in neuroengineering, distinguishes sharply among different brain-scanning ventures. “If you want to commercialize this technology,” he said, “then the use has to approximate real-world situations.”

In his view, tests of fMRI truth verification don’t meet that criterion. For instance, in studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002 and 2005, subjects were told to conceal the identity of a card under questioning. FMRI was able to distinguish falsification 77 percent of the time.

(No Lie MRI chief exec Joel) Huizenga was so inspired by this research that he decided to start his company, confident that fMRI would soon identify lies 90 percent of the time.

But Dr. Boyden says he believes that being asked to tell a falsehood that everyone knows is a falsehood is not the same thing as lying to deceive someone. Thus, whatever brain patterns fMRI detects when a person constructs such a requested fiction may be different from whatever happens when we lie.

By contrast, Dr. Boyden says: “What I like about Omneuron is that it’s working with real-world situations. They gave people visualization strategies which they could monitor — and which produced real, measurable results.”

Link (Thanks, Marina Gorbis!)

Previously on BB:

• Reading minds with fMRI Link
• Neuroscience of altrusium Link
• Shocking Pac-Man-like game used to study fear Link
• Neurology of humor Link
• Science of forgetting Link
• Neuromarketing soda Link
• Brain scans predict buying behavior Link
• This is your brain on Super Bowl ads: research conclusion Link
• Neuroscience of branding Link
• Lie-detection via fMRI: mind-reading or coercion? Link
• Neuroeconomics: sub-prime mortgages exploit a bug in our brains Link

UPDATE: BB reader Karen Green points out that an article from the New Yorker last month about fMRI and lie detection is now available free at the magazine’s site. Link

Originally by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing on August 27, 2007, 1:46pm

In January, a tattered paperback fell off the shelf in Powell’s bookstore. Since then, I’ve inhaled a genre of books with a zeal I can’t explain. Thus, while researching my presentation, Creative Value-Added Marketing for the Tilth Producers of Washington conference my heart kept saying, “Tell the truth.”

What’s this? In my workshops I always encourage the audience to be caring and “mindful of each step,” as Bob Griffiths puts it. But this was different. My heart was telling me I could no longer pass off what I was learning, as messages meant only for me.

On one hand, Gandhi, Dr. Wayne Dyer and others* were whispering, “Don’t hold back, Marion.” Yet their wisdom flies in the face of what we accept as moral business practices; tactics that cause dividedness, not unity; doubt, not fear; anger, not love. And we wonder why we still go to war.

Originally by marion@ptialaska.net (Marion Owen) from Acorns on November 25, 2006, 7:37pm

OK, so you love Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. But did you know that Ben & Jerry’s Organic is owned by food and personal care product company Unilever? And when you sip Celestial Seasonings tea did you realize you are dropping pennies into the pockets of Cargill, the giant agribusiness-chemical giant? For an eye-opening look into the Who’s Who of the organic food industry, post this Organic Industry Structure Chart on your fridge.

The chart (in a pdf format), compiled by Phil Howard, PhD, illustrates companies and their–often large–parent corporations. It may change the way you shop for food.

Originally by marion@ptialaska.net (Marion Owen) from Acorns on July 20, 2006, 5:48pm

Veoh and founder Dmitry Shapiro are the subjects of an article in today’s NYTimes about the upcoming release of their VeohTV player, which is similar to Joost in that it’s a downloadable app that offers a more television-like experience in viewing internet video. Unlike Joost, however, and as TechCrunch notes, Veoh isn’t asking permission and striking deals with all the content creators up front — if it’s available on the web as Flash video, the promise is you’ll be able to shift it from its original website it and watch it with VeohTV instead — from YouTube videos to Heroes episodes from NBC.com. Hence the NYT article: Veoh’s basically onto something I think people will want — a convenient single way to watch their favorite web videos — but we won’t know until the software’s out whether the many content owners on the web will cooperate, or whether the public will respond in droves.

For one thing, I feel like the world is moving away from downloadable apps, and towards the browser for everything, whether its technically feasible to power something like VeohTV in a browser or not, and this could limit early adoption. More importantly, when Tivo disrupted the TV industry, there was a prevailing business model and billions in advertising revenue on the line; Veoh’s now offering similar tools for online video viewers at a time when most major media sites make very little off advertising on their television content online, and instead use the shows to attract visitors to their own destination websites, and keep them there. Many will see the idea of web users watching individual shows elsewhere, whether advertising goes with them or not, as a threat to their web traffic and banner advertising, which they use for cross-promotion and merchandising as well. Rick Cotton, the EVP and general counsel of NBC Universal, already has a starting position in the article to that point, stating, “this material has value… The notion of taking it and generating traffic with it needs to be negotiated and needs to be done with the agreement of content owners.”

But big media could benefit by letting Veoh run free for a little while, especially because their download-only experience will limit the application’s use to early adopters and tech-savvy customers who probably avoid or dislike watching video on big media’s portal sites already, and are sophisticated in how they avoid and ignore online advertising. You can pretend not to see the elephant in the room and try to lock your customers to the way things are done now — or you can take a risk and try to give them something new. That’s what little startups are supposed to do, and what big companies have a very hard time doing. So if VeohTV’s any good at all (I confess I haven’t had enough time in front of a Windows PC to try it myself yet), they’ll be the first of a wave, and should inevitably create new opportunities for big media to do what it does best, and make even more money. I think there’s a direct line between the availability of Tivo — which allowed people to easily find their favorite shows on their own time and grow incredibly loyal to them — and the explosion of TV show DVD sales, which are now a major revenue stream for networks and studios. Making web video easier to watch could create a lot of opportunities for all of us, big and small.

Of course, my company is partnered with Veoh and distributes our videos there, and we share some investors in Spark, so I’m rooting for them. What they’re doing is so natural, it seems inevitable — but big media companies are extremely well-practiced at fighting the inevitable, so Dmitry’s probably in for a scrap.

Originally by tim from shey.net reboot on July 15, 2007, 7:13pm