Fast Company Archive

Update: I was able to catchup with Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV and asked him about the move today. He said, “I love REV3 and the people there and sometimes you need to adjust to the market and see what works and doesn’t and I love those guys and wish all of them super well and hope they Kill it and do nothing but awesome things! As for Wine Library Tv I will continue to Crush it on winelibrarytv.com everyday!”

Update 2: On the TWIT podcast last night, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis said regarding the staff size at Revision3, “30 (staff) is kind of high for that kind of company.”

Revision3 has announced some major show changes today. Epic-Fu will no longer be carried by Revision3 at the end of December and the Wine Library TV show will be removed as of today. Several other shows have also been cut. CEO Jim Louderback also noted that they are working on a variety of new shows that may hit the lineup soon. Wine Library TV joined the lineup back in June with a slimmed down version of their daily show. Louderback notes the huge popularity of Diggnation as one of their “winners”.

Mashable is also reporting that some staff members at Revision3 were fired today including their head of business development Damon Berger. It’s important to note that we will never know the real reason for these people being let go.

In other online video news, Robert Scoble has announced that he is “restructuring” his WorkFastTV show which is broadcast live from the Revision3 offices. No further details have been provided about this restructuring. I think the show has made some good overall progress since I provided my initial commentary and suggestions for improvement this summer. I’d like to see them make the site a bit more friendly. Remember that with video you could be sitting on the site for quite a while, make the appearance relaxing and engaging.

Have you considered a career working with Robert Scoble? Are you having sleepless nights wondering what it would be like to work at Fast Company TV with the master of FriendFeed Robert Scoble? Well then, have I got the job for you! Here are the job details from Director of Social Media Lynne Johnson:

Looking for a senior or executive level editor passionate about the intersection of social media and journalism.

The ideal candidate will be able to jump start conversations in our community. The person will work closely with the president of Mansueto Digital Edward Sussman, Lynne D. Johnson (FC Director of Social Media), Robert Scoble, our managing director of FastCompany.TV, and the print team of Fast Company magazine.

The job is fun and high profile and right on the edge of what’s happening in publishing. We are looking for someone who can spit out loads of story ideas about innovation, the web, social media, sustainability, and other core FC topics — and then make them a reality.

Contact email: lynne@fastcompany.com

To be honest, it looks like a pretty strong social media opportunity. Their office has one of the best views of lower Manhattan out there!

Fast Company TV launched back in March and when I reviewed the initial launch, I had some comments about the technical side of the house. Most of my comments still stand today, especially the one about getting a better video player. It would be great to see segmented shows where I can jump to sections that I might be interested in or comment inside the video or tag the video where needed.

WorkFastTV is a live show that Fast Company TV added to the lineup last month. The show features Robert Scoble and Shel Israel and a variety of guests. This week they had author Timothy Ferriss on the show. Shel asked for feedback on the show, so here’s my two cents.

They are partnering with Revision3 on the show so they have great video equipment. The set is actually quite nice as well. Robert says it’s plain but it’s ok as-is. I think putting up posters or photos would be a distraction more than anything.

Here are some other critical thoughts:

• Don’t show the guest until you introduce him or her – it creates a lot of awkwardness when you show the guest, then refer to the person in the 3rd person as if they weren’t there.
• Cut the intro banter down – people are coming to hear your guests, not you (no offense!) – the intro on today’s show was way too long and it didn’t work. Test your jokes ahead of time! And never talk about the budget – no one cares :)
• Work on your chemistry – there really seems to be no chemistry between Robert and Shel. The two of you should be spending many hours a week together working on the chemistry (maybe you are already). When I compare your show to the GigaOm show, that show started off boring but Om and Joyce had chemistry from the beginning – I hope they bring that show back because it was quite good at the end.
• Until you have the above worked out, I’d almost suggest a GigaOm style layout and have Shel run the computer
• Play a commercial in the middle of the show – this will give a play for SAP plus it will give you 30-45 seconds to reset – this is an important piece of time for both the advertiser and for the show guests
• I don’t know if the chat you have after the live show is over is recorded or posted somewhere, but it should be. The user questions and the guest’s responses are great content that I’ve missed now because I wasn’t in the Kyte chatroom.
• Last thing is to figure out if the show is a business show or a geek-tech show. If business, drop the stickers and keep the suit. If geek tech, keep the stickers and lose the suit. It feels like a weird mix – like spaghetti and ice cream. Great on their own, not so great in one bowl. If you stick with the suit on Scoble, Shel should be in one too.

With Robert’s connections, he will be able to get great guests for the show and I am sure the show will be tweaked over time. I look forward to learning from the show’s guests over the next episodes and hopefully learn how to work faster.

Here’s the interview with Timothy Ferriss:

Robert Scoble, star of Fast Company TV’s flagship show has a column in the upcoming edition of Fast Company magazine (the print version). The edition should hit newsstands today or tomorrow but we have the details today. He suggests that if you use these tools, your iPhone will become a "genius phone" – what a stretch that is!

Scoble polled his 20,000+ Twitter followers to compile the "best of" list. So just what were the favorites among the crowd? (actually most of the recommendations are his personal picks)

News: Google Reader and PimpMyNews. PimpMyNews is an audio application which reads your favorite feeds to you – we interviewed CEO John Atkinson earlier this year).

Photos: Scoble likes SmugMug, his followers prefer Flickr. Scoble suggests if you prefer Flickr that you try out Twitxr and iflickr. It’s important to note that to use Flickr apps you will need to "jailbreak" your phone – meaning that you will need to unlock it – check your warranties and liability before doing this – it could void them. Scoble even offers sites that help you jailbreak your iPhone – we will pass on sharing those.

Music: SeeqPod appears to be the favorite. Scoble also suggests MobileScrobbler which attaches to Last.fm.

Video: Only one offering – Videora which takes basically any video clip and makes it iPhone friendly.

Social Media: Robert’s favorite is Facebook’s iPhone app. Meebo is his pick for instant messaging (I’d suggest the eBuddy mobile app is more robust (they are a cn sponsor)). Another chat app Scoble recommends is Beejive.

Twitter: Recommendations include iTweet, Hahlo and PocketTweets.

Backup: Scoble suggests DataBinge’s Time Capsule application to backup all of your information on the iPhone.

Lastly, check out iPhoneAtlas for more iPhone applications. And don’t forget to check out our comparisons of the Apple iPhone versus the Samsung Ace.

Fast Company TV has launched this morning. The initial rollout will have two channels: Fast Company Live and Scobleizer TV. I’ve embedded Robert Scoble’s welcome video below in which Scoble sits on some rocks and explains how the network will work. The site is sponsored by Seagate, the same sponsor from the PodTech days.

Fast Company Live will let Scoble use his mobile device to send in live video from his travels using what appears to be Qik as the technology provider. The site claims a new video will be added each day — not sure if it will actually be live. Scobleizer TV will be more like his previous work with PodTech and will not only focus on technology innovators, but also business innovators. Scobleizer TV will use HD cameras and high-end equipment for production.

You can interact with the videos by traditional text commenting or by linking to a YouTube video comment. They should be working with Viddler to implement their new in-stream video commenting feature we wrote about last week. Small annoyance but there is no volume control on the videos. Also, there doesn’t look like a way to stream a feed of videos which should be added.

I met with Fast Company TV’s development team last week in NYC and they were very excited about the launch. The site is built using Drupal as is the new Fast Company Web site (and CN is as well). From what I can tell so far, it’s a good implementation of the CMS. The search isn’t working yet though the Drupal search function isn’t up to par in general. Scoble says the search will be implemented later this week.

Here is Scoble’s welcome video:

Back in August, we covered the NYC Drupal meetup at the Fast Company HQ in lower Manhattan. Fast Company showed off an early version of their new Web site which is built entirely in Drupal (as is CN).

As of this morning, the new site is live. While we normally don’t dive heavy into the backend technology, I’d say that the new Fast Company is utilizing the full power of Drupal. Lots of strong caching is in place, along with some other options within the config that help with loads. It looks like not all of the pages have been converted yet.

Here is an example page: This one asks users to provide input on who is the most creative mind in business today. Looks like Kevin Rose of Digg fame is a popular choice. I like the way they have worked to get site visitors involved in the site.

They are also using user profiles and groups — something we haven’t implemented yet. Once registered you can also setup your own blog within the Fast Company Web site.

Lastly, new acquisition Robert Scoble has his own section of the site. It includes his latest links from his link blog and other posts and videos by Scoble. While this looks like it was also part of the old site, I am guessing this will be a main piece of his online home when FastCompany.tv launches next month.