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Filtering by Category: "video"

Google video - where to next?

Added on by Chris Saad.
Jeremiah Owyang (Fellow Media 2.0 Workgroup Member) has a great post about his predictions for the future direction of Google Video.

For me, and from the perspective of an aggregator, it still surprises me that Google does many of the things it does. There are plenty of obvious reasons for any company to buy YouTube, but Google started its life doing things differently. I am not clear why they are letting themselves become so distracted.

Buying YouTube will never be a bad idea. It has awesome potential in almost every way. Traffic, branding, buzz, revenue, partnerships, distribution. You name it. It's hard to say no to that sort of revenue potential.

What it doesn't have, however, is the key ingredient that made google a killer. Open Search. Searching YouTube brings back YouTube results.

Google was an aggregator, their goal was to 'get you off the site as quickly as possible'. Yet they are increasingly building or buying destination sites/applications.

While I agree with Jeremiah's assessment of their strategy - it seems to me counter productive to a long term strategy as a benign aggregator of the worlds information.

If you want to organize the world's information, it is, in my assessment, best to avoid conflicts of interest.

Going Viral - By design

Added on by Chris Saad.
Interesting article was published in Ad week on the 19th called "Clients try to manipulate unpredictable viral Buzz" about clients asking ad agencies to create viral videos for them.

Ad agencies are spending a lot of time and creative juices trying to manufacture stuff that people should 'Pay Attention' to each time having mixed results. They are seeding blogs, commenting, creating content and faking YouTube stats all in an effort to get noticed.

From the article:

"The move to bring a measure of predictability to the still-unpredictable world of viral marketing is being driven by clients trying to balance the risks
inherent in a new marketing medium with the need to prove return on investment, said agency executives."

Some campaigns work - like the one below:

But many don't. While the video above got millions of impressions (and is still going - even getting linked on Blogs dedicated to the subject of Attention!) other videos that would (on paper) be expected to get a lot of attention don't.

"Then there's the seven-minute film by Leaving Las Vegas director Mike Figgis of Kate Moss in her underwear for Agent Provocateur, a lingerie maker that had what would appear to be the recipe for a viral sensation. But it was viewed fewer than 75,000 times in the three months after it was uploaded last September."
There is a fight going on out there. To win hearts and minds. And I am not talking about the War on Terror.

Actually what they are really fighting for is Attention. Once they have that - its yet another battle to actually convert Attention into Engagement.

In the mean time. I am having a very hard time uploading a screen-cast of Touchstone in action. Google Video and YouTube seem to compress the heck out of it so you can't read the screen! This should be easier.