online video Archive

Video on demand is a rapidly changing field. Our user research over several projects highlights the wide range of different hardware set-ups and how these set-ups and the viewing environment influences consumers’ evolving habits. For example, service/hardware collaborations such as LOVEFiLM and PlayStation 3 are helping to bring the on-demand experience into the living room where comfort, space and viewing quality are more important. This in turn has an impact on whether the experience is social or solitary, planned or opportunistic.

Despite the proliferation of different set-ups there is a general trend towards wanting a one-stop-shop for all entertainment through services like MP3 Rocket and LOVEFiLM. Clearly the driver for this trend is convenience i.e. one account registration, one subscription, one user interface. However, the complexity and scale of creating one-stop-shops such as the recently delayed TV-on-demand venture YouView that aims to deliver content from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, demonstrates that satisfying this user demand will be far from easy.

Understanding the goals, expectations and attitudes of video-on-demand audiences is crucial to designing successful interactive experiences. This article outlines 5 key behaviours and attitudes with this aim in mind.

1. Viewers are loyal to particular shows

Many people are loyal to particular long-running shows (rather than channels) and often have these shows in mind when consuming video content online. The recent launch of the Sky Atlantic HD channel, although not on-demand, reflects this appetite for iconic long-running dramas. The mere availability of such shows on demand encourages viewers to watch them in a concentrated time frame, sometimes consuming the whole series in one go.

Loyalty need not necessarily be related to sequential dramas. For example, shows like Glee hook viewers with a familiar episode format and a cast of favourite characters. Such a show is perfectly suited to on-demand delivery because it both facilitates stand-alone quick fix consumption and concentrated series catch-up.

The clear formula of a show such as Glee would also facilitate a new kind of consumption where viewers take control, e.g. following particular characters, sub-plots or just the musical set-pieces. Offering a customisable route through content would be another way to reinforce show loyalty. Production technology is on the verge of providing tools that facilitate the making of shows where the content can be customised in this way.

Related to loyalty is a reluctance to try new or unfamiliar content. The huge choice of content and the level of commitment required to follow long-running series are factors that reinforce this. Viewers need persuasion to move out of their comfort zone. Word of mouth is important but our research shows that people are less likely to be swayed by editorial suggestions or the opinions of those they don’t know. Trusted recommendations from friends and family are far more important, which may explain why many people prefer to engage with social networks for recommendations rather than site-specific user-generated content, such as comments, ratings or number of views.

2. Nature of content affects experience

Water-cooler dramas are by their nature taken more seriously than comedy shows, and also since they’re more linear, they’re more likely to be the target of concentrated consumption and watched in sequence than comedy. Online consumption of an episode of a comedy show such as the IT Crowd may be more about getting another fix after watching an episode on TV, especially where the episodes are stand-alone rather than part of an ongoing plot.

Continue reading “Video on Demand – 5 Key Behaviors and Attitudes” »

When I present CloudContacts, I generally receive compliments on my presentation style. I begin with a very short story which discusses two things: first, why we spend time networking and second, why and how I came up with the idea for CloudContacts. I almost always find the product/service demos are stronger when they start with some background on the market and where the idea came from rather than jumping right into what the service does. I think the stories create a connection and interest between the audience and the presenter. It’s also important that the presenter’s passion for the idea come through in the presentation.

Last week at the Austin Co-Founders Wanted meetup, there was one startup presentation that stood out to me. This presentation began with background on the market (in this case foster children) and it was easy to see the presenter is very passionate about helping to create real change. Since the presenter’s at this meetup were specifically looking for potential partners in the audience, bringing the passion and getting the audience excited was critical.

The concept presentation was provided by Chadwick Sapenter and the concept is myfoco.org. You can watch Chadwick’s video below – it’s his five-minute pitch on why you should join his team at myfoco. It doesn’t look like the website is live yet (many of the demos at the meetup were in the initial concept stage). The basic idea of MyFoco is to create a social service to aggregate information and resources to help kids when they leave the foster care system.

Chadwick shared some stats about the foster care system:

• 70% of prisoners in the U.S. prison system were former foster kids
• less than 1% will graduate from college
• 80% of death row inmates were former foster youths

Chadwick notes in his demo that there are resources out there for things like housing, education, relationships, jobs but there’s a big divider for the kids to get to the information.

Chadwick is looking for a “group of superheroes” which includes engineers, developers and other talents on the backend. Chadwick says he has the social service groups around the country behind the MyFoco concept.

If you are interested, you can reach Chadwick on Twitter or at chadwick@myfoco.org.
Continue reading “Co-Founders Wanted: MyFoco Provides Portal For Foster Youths (video)” »

Earlier this month AOL (NYSE:AOL) acquired the Huffington Post blog for $315 million. I posted on Twitter that I wondered if online video hosting service Viddler would be next for the “new” AOL. I still think the acquisition makes sense for both companies.

AOL has a large number of brands (and will be even larger once the above acquisition is complete) and I have to imagine that video will be a large piece of AOL’s pageview generating strategy going forward. Today AOL has a video site and they also own the Truveo video search engine.

Viddler currently works with AOL’s Engadget tech blog for their gadget videos. AOL’s Techcrunch blog uses Ooyala for their video hosting and this hosting could easily move to Viddler if there was an acquisition. It appears that the videos on AOL’s video site are self-hosted.

I am not 100% sure but I think Viddler has only raised some angel funding (which is quite impressive considering they are in the video hosting business). Viddler also received $50,000 from Ben Franklin Technology Partners last April. Viddler lists a team of 16 people based outside Philly and in Poland.

My guess is that AOL could acquire Viddler for a very reasonable price and bring a strong base of video hosting, video analytics and monetization inside the company. If there was an acquisition, Viddler would become the corporate hosting platform. This central repository would help AOL cross-promote videos across all of their channels. There is tremendous opportunity in cross-promotion that AOL is losing everyday by hosting with so many different video partners. For example, when you are finished watching the latest iPad 3 unboxing video on Engadget, you could jump over to Techcrunch to watch the latest TechCribs video.

AOL would also gain the ability to use their internal ad sales team to sell and integrate video ads across all of their properties.

The only question I am left with regarding a potential acquisition is whether Viddler would remain open to other companies to use — they currently host video content from a variety of companies including Gawker and the Cheezburger Network.

During my time in San Francisco this week for the Dreamforce conference, I had the chance to meet with TaskForceApp founder Niccolo Pantucci. If you read CN regularly, you know I like productivity apps – those apps that save time or save money or both. What I liked about my conversation with Niccolo was our focus on utility and not on the next Twitter fart app.

TaskForce provides a utility to take emails and convert them to tasks with one click. The service currently works with Gmail but Niccolo notes that other email tools and mobile tools will be coming soon. I asked Niccolo about a desktop app (see video below) and he said to stay tuned. Once you install TaskForce inside Gmail, a set of buttons will appear which you click when you want to turn an email into a task.

The service is social so you can share tasks with your colleagues. If the person you share a task with also has Taskforce, they (and/or you) will be notified when a task is complete.
Continue reading “Interview with TaskForceApp Founder Niccolo Pantucci (video)” »

Former consumer social media aggregation software Seesmic (they are now apparently targeting the enterprise market), will shut down their video service effective December 1st. The Seesmic video site features the following message at the top of the site, “Seesmic TV will close starting with the 1st of December. If you want a copy of your videos, please email (redacted).”

Seesmic began in late 2007 described by CEO Loic Le Meur as a, “video conversation platform.”  Many called it the video Twitter. I interviewed Loic in September 2008 (video here) where he shared that Seesmic had over 500,000 videos and just under 1 million visitors a month. Eventually Seesmic morphed into what it is today, a social media aggregation tool.  I am sure it costs good money to keep the video site running and that money can be better spent on their new direction. The newest version of Seesmic, which launched in September, allows developers to build plugins that can be utilized by users of the Seesmic Desktop tool..

It will be interesting to watch how Seesmic moves going forward with their new enterprise focus. Few startups have been able to get the press and excitement Seesmic has — for example, they were able to get an exclusive, standing room only, Facebook executive-led, launch of their Seesmic for Facebook client at SXSW 2009. In another example, Loic was able to get a large press crowd for the partnership with Microsoft on the Seesmic Look launch at the Times Center in NYC. Whatever happened to Seesmic Look? – I haven’t heard much about it since their launch suggesting that it was the new “phenomenon.”

Continue reading “Seesmic To Shut Down Video Service” »

It’s been interesting to watch the DEMO conference evolve since Techcrunch50 began. First there were the wars of words between the two conferences, then it got quiet, this year Techcrunch50 has been replaced by two individual conferences while DEMO continues on in the same format as before the Techcrunch50 conference began operations.

During the spring version of DEMO, I wrote a column that infomercial conferences (those where companies pay to present) should always be streamed live. In today’s search market, it’s critical that companies can gain the bonus exposure of a potential trending topic on the different social networks or on Google’s new realtime search. By posting the videos a day later, that buzz will have already evaporated.

It also makes it hard when people at the conference share how excited they are about one of the companies because those on the receiving end of the message, can’t easily jump into the presentation to watch for themselves.

This season DEMO has moved the event to San Francisco. Over 60 companies will present their products and services. It appears DEMO generates their revenue several ways:

• They charge each company that presents on stage $18,500
• They charge “alpha” companies that want to present their idea for 90 seconds a fee of $5,000
• Attendees pay $3,000 to attend
• They have a large list of sponsors (somewhere around 50)
• This season of DEMO, you can now watch the live stream for $299 ($250 if you register before the conference) for both days.

For reference, Techcrunch50 never charged companies a fee to present. Their revenue came from ticket sales and from corporate sponsors.

I received an email this afternoon from Fora.tv who are apparently handling the online ticketing and viewing for the DEMO conference. I can’t tell from the email whether you will be able to watch the company demos the next day as in the past or if you will be required to pay to watch the demos at all. It does appear that the panel discussions (those with the CEOs of companies including Twitter and Groupon) will only be available if you pay.

I will attempt to contact DEMO to further clarify how the live streaming will work although their contact page is not working currently.

My hope is that the DEMO organizers will read this post and reconsider charging a fee to watch the event live. Or at a minimum, allow the demos to be broadcast live and cut the video when the panel discussions are on stage. It’s one thing to charge a PPV fee to watch a wrestling event or a Katy Perry concert, it’s another thing to charge a substantial fee to watch a conference where the participants are paying for exposure.

Lastly, if you are one of the companies presenting, good luck, come out and kick major butt and remember to make sure your presentation is memorable.

I’m sure there have been times when you’ve wanted to link to a particular part of a YouTube video but, if you’re anything like me, you had no idea how to go about doing so. Well, you have two options:

1. You can link to the video on YouTube and specify the minute and second at which you want the video to start playing.
2. You can embed the video and specify the second at which you would like the video to start playing.

Continue reading “Two Handy YouTube Tricks” »