I believe that there are two kinds of Web videos – those that exist as self-contained narratives, and those that serve a functional external purpose.
Self-contained narratives are iterations of a larger type, what we have classically referred to as “movies” or “films”. Movies can be anything from that 15 second clip of a dog on a skateboard to a two-hour long Netflix stream of Spider-Man 3. To a degree such videos can serve a functional external purpose – for example, the skateboard video could be co-opted by a skateboarding website to help generate pageviews, and we certainly understand a large Hollywood movie like Spider-Man 3 is going to have all kinds of licensed merchandise tie-ins – but invariably, “movies” are, in the old media sense, individual SKUs meant to be consumed on a per-performance basis. By individual SKU, I mean that we think of these movies as products, something we would have traditionally exhibited on the aforementioned per-performance basis; we’d sell tickets or rent the DVD or otherwise distribute, or commoditize, these self-contained narratives for no other reason than to create a viewing experience, or an individual performance of a narrative which, hopefully, would be paid for individually. Moreover, the experience can end when the curtains close and the lights come up.
Now, the fortunate thing about the Web is that anyone, anywhere, even collaboratively over great distances, can produce movies, the 15-second or 2-hour variety, completely unrestricted, and post them almost anywhere on-line. From there, movies can take on new life in the social media space, too, in that they can spread an idea, help build a filmmaker’s portfolio and reputation, foster a meme, and perhaps lead to further work for the filmmakers. Also, movies can become an active part of participatory culture.
The unfortunate thing is that, as digital commodities with a reproduction price of zero, movies on-line are painfully difficult to sell as self-contained narratives. Almost all must (or inevitably will via infringement) be shared for free.
Which brings me to our second variety of Web video, material that serves a functional external purpose… (more…)
Yochai Benkler’s”The Wealth of Networks” is the Old Testament of social media. It’s long, a bit dry, and nobody ever gets through it – despite the fact we all talk about how important it is anyways. It’s not nearly as exciting as some newer books, those metaphorical New Testaments of social media – books that preach pleasant gospels of untold riches to be had by those businesses who get involved in the groundswells of crowd wisdom, where everything will someday be free. Nevertheless, the Genesis (pun intended) of just such newer gospels is to be found in Benkler’s seminal 2006 achievement.
Moreover, a closer examination will reveal that The Wealth of Networks has a vengeful deity, too, one akin to the god found in the first thousand-odd pages of that most famous of Books. Benkler’s jealous Being is seen in the fundamental message of, at least as I read it, Benkler’s text – that the social production of an information commons and the existence of an alternative to the industrial models of the twentieth century, a networked information economy, does not always have to be about the bottom line. That, it would appear, is a scary message for some, indeed. But for those small few of us who have joined with the covenant people and followed Benkler as our Moses in to the World Wide Wilderness of Sinai, there’s a message of freedom and a better world to be had in networks, the kind of wealth in networks that I feel inspires the greatest economic motivation: sharing knowledge, and lifting others thereby. (more…)
This is a video presentation I put together for my Net Economics course, as well as to inspire my co-workers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and everyone else for that matter, to “get in there and play” when it comes to building the information commons through social media.
I’ll explain what this image is about momentarily, but first, let me begin with a prologue. Tuesday night in my Net Economics course at the UW MCDM a lively debate, to say the least, was had over Chris Anderson’s new book “Free”; whether free as a concept was good or bad. I took the free side, but it made me feel a little lonely. I almost felt like I was the only student in the room who believed that it’s a good thing that we’re moving towards a digital economy based on giving bits away, harnessing business models that find alternative sources of revenue. For instance, a fellow student mentioned that Microsoft has a 90% market share of netbook operating systems, a testament to the strength of their software, no doubt. However, I posited that if MSFT went the Anderson route and gave their OS away for free they could have a 100% market share. I’m not going to say what the reaction to that was, but considering our proximity to Redmond and the makeup of the class, which includes Microsoft employees, you can take a wild guess…
Anderson’s “Free” starts out by giving us a quick economics briefing, using that as backdrop to defend the notion of ‘free’. He explains that, for instance, traditional, or old media has used a third-party advertising model to earn revenue while still providing a “free” product. I may not pay for 30 Rock, but when I buy products advertised during commercial breaks on TV or in interstitials on Hulu, I am still giving my money to NBC. It’s pretty basic and has worked for Google, a benevolent empire that has largely amassed their wealth through selling advertising and diversifying revenue streams. Of course, the model isn’t absolutely identical – the web magnifies things by presenting opportunities to apply wisdom gleaned from specific metrics and target users with relevant advertising, as well as ways of satisfying niches with long tail services – but the principle is the same: subsidize one product (free content) with money made from another (paid ad space). Multiply and diversify.
With the notion of one product funding the other in mind, I further illustrate the point by explaining how I helped inadvertently save ABC, Monday Night Football, and the Disney company in 2004. Maybe. Or not. But keep reading! I think you’ll enjoy the reasoning anyways!
I have finally completed and submitted my final paper for this summer’s Web Strategies for Storytelling course in the UW MCDM. Hopefully Professor Keller takes a liking to it! If not, well, I’m still very excited about Adobe releasing its Flash platform to high-def TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players and the like. I’m anticipating a revolution in how we consume web video! But, time will tell.
Is there a need to classify web video the way we classify TV content (e.g. shows, series, specials, dramas, comedies, etc.)?
No.*
Ok, let me elaborate a little. Drew Keller put to us students in the MCDM’s Summer Web Storytelling class the same question, after being inspired by an article about the subject from Tod Sacerdoti at the Online Video Insider. In his post, Sacerdoti explored the question: what is the most-watched show on the Internet? What even defines a “show” online? Drew also pointed us to an article in the New York Times discussing the growing popularity of longer-form videos on the web. The TV business has after decades established standard terms for categorizing and classifying its content – serials, series, dramas, sitcoms, sports, primetime, latenight, and so on and so forth. This serves many purposes, the most notable of which is to help measure viewership by timeslots and types of programs and sell advertising accordingly. This doesn’t really work on the web, with a major exception (see asterisk below).
Heidi Sinclair argues that big brand names like Nike or Home Depot could be in an excellent position to enter the media business as content generators. Nike could be the next ESPN, Home Depot could tackle the home improvement news realm, etc. This is in keeping with Paul Gillin’s contention that a company like Staples could be a content source for information and resources related to small business, and so forth.
I completely, respectfully disagree with both Gillin and Sinclair.
I spent nearly two hours trying to get the OpenID I supposedly have via my Technorati account to allow me to post a comment on a BlogSpot (aka Blogger) blog, and I just couldn’t get it to work. I looked around the web and it seems the word on the street is that OpenID is a work-in-progress that is very much in its infancy. You see, I personally don’t want an OpenID from a place like wordpress.com or livejournal.com or Yahoo! or even Technorati because I don’t want to always signify my web presence as something that is attached to any one service to have stewardship over it. I don’t want my ID to be something like matthewstringer dot wordpress dot com, for example! I just want to be Matthew Stringer. I understand the process of “delegation“, but the trouble of setting that up seems less than worth it, not to mention the inherent disingenuousness of the concept. And it seems much of the web is still not on board with OpenID, not to mention the security issues which are, have been, and will continue to pose problems with it. I know Facebook just latched on, but they’ve got walled garden problems that I think will become an issue down the road.
I love the concept of one-click sign-up and sign-in, but it’s not going to happen for some time. The closest thing we have to something like it in the real world is government issued photo ID. Maybe we can get some government intervention and make something interesting like that on-line? Bah, it’s all hogwash! For now, I want nothing to do with OpenID. Gravatar, on the other hand, is pretty great because it has a much more defined focus and purpose – establishing one identity for the purpose of commenting on blogs everywhere. I like that much better. Now, someone tell Blogger to get on the Gravatar bandwagon!
Entertainment within new media is probably my central mental focus – I’m sure that I think about it in one form or another on a daily basis, because I enjoy storytelling, comedy, the cinematic arts, narratology, and all things related to them. Although I am often blogging (and almost always for a class) about sundry digital media topics, and will continue to do so, I feel that for my term project in my Evolution and Trends in Digital Media Technologies course I need to stir clear of the subject of entertainment this time. I need to challenge myself, particularly as a budding scholar wannabe, and dive in to subject matter, while still fascinating to me, I do not have a clear cut understanding of from an analytical and evolutionary perspective. The idea that came to mind was on-line dating systems. You know what I’m talking about, and it’s got nothing to do with the calendar. (more…)
Hi, I'm Matthew Stringer and this is my blog. I'm an online producer, focusing on generating and curating video content. This blog is about (just insert buzz word here) media. Like, digital, social, Web, new, multi-, interactive, mass, convergent, emergent, ad nausea. Plus, occasional musings on old media - film, TV, print, news and pop culture.
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