AOL Video Archive

At last nights NY Video 2.0 Meetup, AOL demo'ed their new video portal. While some of the content is AOL-specific, most of the videos listed come from other video sites including YouTube. A few questions were asked of the speaker regarding payment to the content producer and the video hoster. He noted that he is a product guy not a finance guy so we did not get any answers. Then there was a discussion about what AOL gives to the video hosting site, it seems to be that they send traffic to them. Or do they?

When Shay from Kaltura presented, he started by sharing a popular ratio, "1% produce 9% might comment, 89% sit back and watch". So this means that 89% just watch. So if someone finds a video from XYZ producer that is hosted on YouTube, but embedded into AOL, what does YouTube really get out of the transaction if the user only watches?

I am not picking on AOL, just using them as an example as it's the most recent one for me. Lots of video sites are doing this. And my question is when are the video hosting companies (YouTube, Viddler, etc.) going to look to monetize the embed?

Let's think about it. I upload a video to YouTube. YouTube displays it. 100 sites embed it and then monetize the page that my video is on. Since we know that most will watch but not go to YouTube, what does YT get in this overall transaction?

My guess is that we will start to see ads within the embeddable players by years end (actually 3Q seems reasonable). Frankly AOL should be returning a portion of their income to the video creator and to the hosting service. So AOL has two choices I see for this future embeddable player:

1. Pay the video hosting service a fee to provide the player on their site
2. Allow ads within the embeddable player

I see non-commercial sites still being able to offer the player at no cost or advertising. Am I offbase? Remember to think with a financial mindset where companies (not mom's blog) need to make a profit to continue operations.

Could the same thing happen with RSS? Maybe.

This evening I attended my first NY Video 2.0 Meetup. Quite a large crowd (about 150ish) with most people raising their hand that this was their first video meetup. About half of the audience work for large companies (AOL, T-Mobile, etc.) and half from smaller companies and startups. A handful are from recruiting firms and a few agency people – yet not as many as I would have thought. If you are in NYC and looking for a job in the new Web space, this meetup might be for you.

Here are my notes… 

• Gary (no last name) noted that his video blog is the best, even better than Ze Frank – winelibrary.com - though I had a chance to chat with him afterwards, seems pretty cool
• Brightcove had 2 people – they seem to be pretty hot in the NYC meetup scene. — not sure why they didn't answer the questions that related to how AOL Video is working with Brightcove
• The idea of the meetup is to bring people together who are in the video scene somehow.
• Viddler recorded the event and I can post audio if someone prefers audio.

There were 4 companies presenting and here are my notes and general comments related to each one. 

Rob Sandie – Viddler (viddler.com)

• We are the best way to host video online
• Our forte is longer and larger video
• Ability to seek anywhere in the video at anytime unlike YouTube
• Rob speaks about timed comments and how this differentiates and is innovative
• He shows the dashboard
• Uses 3 volunteers to show the live recording feature
• Shows their new video commenting feature – this is very cool!
• Check out our other Viddler coverage

Shay David – Kaltura (kaltura.com)

• Starts with a video which had a high production value but didn't say much frankly
• Today they are showing some brand new features
• Tagline – It's the place to create together
• 1% produce 9% might comment, 89% sit back and watch, at Kaltura they want everyone to be part of the show
• Kaltura works by allowing friends to submit videos about a topic, then the producer puts the final video together
• Flash editor – works like a simple timeline
• It seems very user-friendly
• It allows you to pull images from Flickr using CC licensing
• Their hope is to provide a platform to allow people to collaborate on creating content
• They are looking at advertising and commercial licensing for sites

Gino Yoham - AOL Video (video.aol.com)

• Starts with a discussion about something – couldn't seem to get on track with what he was saying
• He speaks about "truveo" and their search product – sounds like AOL acquired them
• Their portal is just an index of video – videos play inside AOL (not sure I like that)
• Next he shows their widget and all of the big video companies are using truveo search
• Overall it looks like AOL's video strategy is to be a search engine for video – I can't say that I was "wow'd" by this presentation. I would love to understand if this is the overall strategy on video or just the search piece? 

James Tilsner from Tilzy.tv (tilzy.tv)

• They just launched – 2 people in the company
• Their vision is to be an entertainment guide to the Web
• They identify what they think is the new entertainment media
• Exploration and discovery – they built a surfing guide experience
• Basically it is a way to tag the brand
• It's an editorial – not exactly sure what James meant by this
• We want to cover this new entertainment medium like Entertainment Weekly would
• Believes it is important to drive traffic to the producer's brand
• My commentary would be that this product needs a lot of work before it can be mainstream. The audience had some good ideas for these guys, I hope they were listening!
• I think the concern here is that it's a completely manual process but could become a directory of video… but what gets in? how quickly can they get content in there. Would the VT massacre have been listed in news as quickly as it was on CNN?
• The two guys have great positive attitudes and that should help them as they grow