Video Syndication Done Right: PNME Edition

I've been pondering what I think is the most important thing to come out of the Podcast and New Media Expo last weekend. Unfortunately I missed the Kent Nichols keynote, but I did catch the Louderback and Wallstrip keynotes. They were very informative, and it was very heartening to hear that the A-Listers and those that have sold their podcast for literally millions have gone through a lot of the same things us strugglers and stragglers have gone through... building an audience one member at a time, ad representation issues and such.

There were a few meetings and announcements that, I think, I are going to shape the future of podcasting and new media for a while to come.

First of all, Wizzard Media announced an important partnership, which we discussed yesterday on the show (Episode 143). As soon as the T's are dotted and the I's are crossed, downloads from the Wizzard network are going to be certified by Nielson. Yeah, the folks that do the TV ratings and stuff. What does this mean? Well, I may be overestimating the importance of this, but an old media institution attaching themselves to new media in this way, I think, is a very important step in upgrading the marketability and credibility of the medium of podcasting as a whole. I wouldn't be surprised to see podcasters represented at the next NABC.

But am I not supposed to be Podango propaganda boy? What's going on with them? A whole lot, actually. Thanks to a close working relationship with Podango, I can say I know of a whole lot of stuff coming down the pike - quite exciting stuff - that they're working on. But what they've announced at the PNME this weekend is exciting stuff as well. Not only did they talk a lot about the Gigavox Audio Lite acquisition, but working with Kiptronic on certifying and monetizing video downloads. Kiptronic has a strong relationship with Wizzard Media by way of the LibSyn acquisition. The certifications of Wizzard downloads, I'm fairly certain, will extend to Kiptronic statistics since they're on a working relationship and theoretically have an understanding on what constitutes a download and all that (there's more confusion on that concept than you'd think could be possible in the industry at large).

Then, there's UStream. UStream didn't have any mind-blowing announcements, but there were several relationships forged by Brad and the UStream folks (and Mason) that I think have some serious implications for the future. What UStream did accomplish at the PNME was raising awareness about their platform with the general pod-o-sphere and another company that I think is important in terms of actually accomplishing something in the development of video content.

TubeMogul was another offering that I think warrants a great deal of attention as well. TubeMogul had been reviewed elsewhere on the web before, but I never got around to checking them out. They are a service that (for free!) takes your video shot for YouTube or Revver (or pick your favorite video platform flavor) and uploads it to about 20 different video sharing sites. Remember when I was talking about this essential piece of promoting a video last week? I'll say it again - it's important, especially for the less well known video producers.

Keeping in mind that article, and all the ways that I detail are important to get your name and content out there, what's the next logical proposal for these three companies, all of whom connected with one another at PNME, to do?

They need to hook together their backends/APIs.

Here's the flow, how I see it:
You're broadcasting your show live via UStream, interacting with your audience, doing your thing, whatever it may be. You hit the record on server button at the start of your podcast.

That FLV is then tagged, described, and titled after the broadcast via current UStream process of things. You then have two additional buttons available to you after you hit the submit button:

1. Publish to your podcast feed. This converts the file properly, and sends it over to your feed at Podango with all the proper metadata and is then optimised in the various ways that Podango optimises a video file:
• Monetized by Kiptronic technology
• Formatted for the various types of technologies that read a video file (iPod, set-top box, computer).
• SEO'ed with the Podango transcription service
• In so automatically submitting, taking literally hours off of render times at the local machine.
  
• Downloaded by your audience!
2. Publish to TubeMogul. This sends the FLV file over to TubeMogul, when then takes all the relevant metadata you entered at UStream, and submits it to over 20 video hosting services. This allows you to:
• Further monetize your content via Revver downloads.
• Further monetize your content via YouTube downloads.
• Carpetbomb the video viewing world with your content.
• Eliminate a day or two of downloading, converting, and uploading your content every where.
3. Podango to Tubemogul. This is also something I see as beneficial and imperative. Not everyone that creates video content (in fact most people fall into this category) can do so live, so having a hook from the Podango backend directly into TubeMogul is similarly beneficial.

Will this be an easy project? Probably not. As of this time, only Podango has an open API to work with the platform, but all three companies are well aware of one another, I've spoken to two of the three companies about the idea in both public and private (and they have caught the flame of my vision on this, I think), and I'm about to open dialog in the third point of the triangle today.

Will this be available next week? Most certainly not. Will it be available in the very near future? I think almost certainly so. I'm currently lobbying to make it happen as best I can with everyone involved (taking into account that all three companies are startups with at least somewhat limited budgets).

The net result will be almost completely full featured set of tools and monetization avenue that will put the indy broadcaster nearly on par with the big boys. It will then be up to you folks to make the good content.

/rizzn

Questions? Comments? Wanna throw some VC at this idea? Use the comment form below or email me.

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Interview with Brad Hunstable on Politics and Technology

Chances are, you're here for the GPhone story. While you're around, though, stick around for this post, since it's tre interessant, especially with the campaign heating up almost as much as the market for online video.

Brad Hunstable, one of the principals and founders of UStream.tv dropped by the show again today to speak a bit about some major political events going on at his site this week.

His commentary on the future role of technologies like UStream in politics were particularly interesting. We'll comment a bit on that the show today (Episode 116).

Click here to download the interview.



Here's the roundup of what's actually going down there at UStream.

3pm PST today:

Darcy Burner Virtual Town Hall To Counter Bush LIVE on Ustream.TV ( more info here: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/seattlepolitics/archives/120620.asp)

12pm PST today:
Five presidential candidates confirmed they will take part in discussions of key domestic issues before more than 600 representatives of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) on August 27 and 28 at the Disney Yacht and Beach Club in Orlando, FL.

The schedule for the IAM's Conversation with the Candidates is as
follows:

Mon. Aug. 27, 3:30 pm New York Sen. Hillary Clinton
Mon. Aug. 27, 7:30 pm California Rep. Duncan Hunter and
former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee
Tue. Aug. 28, 7:30 pm Former North Carolina Sen. John
Edwards and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich

The candidate conversations will be moderated by Erin Moriarty of CBS
News.

The event will be streamed, live, via uStream.

/rizzn

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Hello World: How NOT to launch an Live Video Website

Hey Rizzn-ites,

I've been dancing around talking on this topic directly on the show and here in the blog, but essentially, here's the scoop: my involvement, and the involvement of N-Ventive Studios with the UBN broadcast has come to an end. I've not wanted to talk about it publicly here for fear or souring certain business relationships, with Paul Darby, and with those that work with him. I enjoyed my tenure as a consultant for him, but as I mentioned in my last post, our working relationship was peppered with intense communication failures.

Essentially, what I think the biggest mitigating factor, if I try to read between the lines, is the decision of Unimax, Paul Darby, and UBN to go with the live video broadcasting service HelloWorld.com. It baffled me why Paul had the impulse to go with them in the first place, especially considering two major factors: A) HelloWorld is not a free service, it's a pay service and B) UStream.TV treated us like celebrities for the numbers we brought into the service during the broadcast (and a wonderful working relationship with Brad Hunstable from UStream has grown out of it).

Here's the problem with HelloWorld - it's primary business model is MLM based, so it's very difficult to find any negative press about it in the general wilds of the internet. As someone who was enlisted to make this software work for a professional solution, let me be the one to give them their first and most widely read piece of negative publicity.

Hello World... it sucks!

Under no circumstances should you for any reason subscribe to this service.


To be fair, though, let's go over their positive side:

• They have a really slick studio side. Every bit of the JavaScript performs quickly and efficiently.
• They have a full set of features.
• Blogging, a barely index-able text representation of a blog.
  
• Podcasting, the strongest of their tools, but very limited for reasons I'll go over below.
  
• Video IM,
• Video Mail,
• Live Broadcast,
• They give you a web cam when you sign up.

My experience was mostly with the Podcasting, Live Broadcast and Video Mail functions.

That's more or less where the good stuff ends. Again, in bullet-point style, a few of the ways that HelloWorld stinks:

• Unless you are an Internet Explorer user, the site will not work. At all. Don't even think about it.
• The broadcast module is written in Active-X. This basically means it works about 50% of the time - and we tested this on really solid hardware (the box we tested on was a $10,000 Video Toaster).
• The browsing interface tends to work intermittently. It's not clear how to create a free account from the front page, and unless you are logged in, you don't have access to look at the directories.
• The broadcast plans are metered.
• $9.95 /month - the Cast Plan
  
• Your broadcasts are limited to 20 minutes at a time.
• 3 Simultaneous viewer limit.
  
• Video emails are limited to 2 minutes.
• Once your bandwidth hits 1 GB, you're downloads are cut off from the public
• $19.95 /month - the Agent Plan
• 40 minute broadcasts.
• 5 Simultaneous viewer limit.
  
• 3 minute video emails.
• 2 GB bandwidth limit.
• $39.95 /month - the Producer Plan
• 60 minute broadcasts.
• 10 Simultaneous viewer limit.
• 4 minute video emails.
• 3 GB bandwidth limit.
• $2000 down, $200 /month
• Unlimited everything.
• There is no free version that allows you to do anything but watch video.
  
• Their marketing arm is deceptive.
• They promised that there was a flash player. There isn't.
• They promised that there was a way to embed the player. There isn't.
• They promised cross-platform compatibility. There isn't.
• They promised the ability to interface directly with the programming department. The closest we came to this was yelling at the supervisor for customer service.
  

If you're not particularly well versed in bandwidth lingo, you may not see the inherent problem in those plans (and that's what they're counting on). Just to give you a basis of comparison, though, my daily podcast is recorded in mono, and a low bitrate, and therefore a very small audio file only. On a monthly basis, we're shipping out Terabytes worth of data.

If your video broadcasts experience any kind of success whatsoever (which is why you're doing it, right?) then you'll run out of bandwidth in a matter of days. 1-3 GB is a joke when it comes to video.

If the bandwidth question doesn't trip any alarm bells off for you, the viewer limit should. A Skype call with a good broadband connection should afford you the ability to broadcast to 3 to 10 people. 10 might be pushing it, but there are many other free solutions if all you're trying to reach is single digit numbers. This is not a good solution for what they sell it as in the marketing department: a solution to launch your video to the world.

What if your an internet marketer? You're probably looking to create an MLM program out of this. Beware: the marketing folks will tell you it's possible to create a 3-up system out of this, but what they will lead you to believe that even the $9.95 a month customer can refer new sign-ups. They cannot.

This is a deceptive organization built on out-moded, out-dated, and generally bad technology. I absolutely do not recommend this service - and anyone who is pitching their expertise in video technology that uses this service should be treated with extremely suspicious eyes. Only a complete internet newbie with no experience in the space would look at this company and think it's a good idea to use this as their video platform of choice.

Bottom line? HelloWorld is not a Web 2.0 app. It's not the best solution for online video. In fact, I'm willing to stake my name in saying that it's a solution for suckers. If you are willing to pay out the nose for something that's now free, go right ahead. Otherwise? Avoid like the plague.

Later this week, we'll take a moment with Brad and talk a bit about UStream, a service that I've evaluated against every other live video service out there (yes, even the ones in private beta). I'm rather close (especially after the recent updates) to name them the best of the best out there.

More on that later though. Stay tuned!

/rizzn

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