Identity and Brand On the Video Internet
I’m sometimes puzzled by business plans for and predictions of the rise of aggregators of premium Internet video. Sure, that will happen to some extent – but generally speaking Internet broadcasters will be like other broadcasters and other Internet companies and want to have their own identity and build their own brand at their own end point. Yes, the cost and complexity of Internet video will be greater than that of establishing a Web presence but my observation is that aggregators are for the most part temporary solutions. Take the Feedroom for example, it’s been around for a while and has had some strong media properties use it as a turnkey solution to get their video online, but most have or are in the process of taking it back in-house for brand, identity and longer term digital media strategy reasons. In other words, as soon as it gets interesting it gets worth doing oneself and building one’s identity and brand online. Even iFilm and Atom Films which are more like the proposed aggregators of the future will disenfranchise themselves as the sites, filmmakers, artists they promote become self sustaining brands on the Video Internet. The better approach, in my view is to enable the inevitable drive toward brand building with stand alone tools that work in the background and become de facto standards for the building blocks of these Video Internet identities. Again, this is why video search will be so important – just like the Web, the good stuff will be widely dispersed and what we will need most will be the tools to find it (and the tools to monetize it, but more to come on that later).
posted by Tom MacIsaac at 6:39 PM
2 Comments:
I think this theory makes some pretty big assumptions about the maturity of search tools as it relates to the “Video Internet”. It appears that a simple Google-type search of Internet video (even if keyed to closed captioning, or some comparable technology) will be a poor mechanism for finding the stuff you want to watch. Audio and Video are inherently different than text in that they are much more difficult (or time consuming) to scan for relevant information. It would seem that some combination of tools that encompass multiple filtering mechanisms (search, collaborative filtering, tagging, community, etc.) will be the most efficient way of driving individuals to the content they are going to want to watch. It would also seem that aggregation sites that simplify the navigation of complex ancillary data that surrounds each nugget of content (in essence a standardized framework) will be helpful in making the user experience more about enjoying the content than looking for it. It is realistic to assume that Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, et al may seize this crown, but I believe these services will look far more like Yahoo360 that today’s Google. And if that is indeed the case, what is the difference between an aggregator and a search portal?
Joe, I don't disagree w/ anything you say. Decent search tools for the Video Internet do in fact remain to be seen and may look very different and the discovery engines may be more community, referral, collaborative filtering like tools -- in fact our CTO at Lightningcast has said the same thing and has even noted Yahoo360 as an object lesson too. I guess a better way of saying what I meant would be to say I have low expectations for aggregators like ones we've seen before e.g. the Feedroom or the aggregators of Web content who came before.
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