This past weekend, everyone had a cow because a bunch of bloggers were paid to endorse a product and did not properly disclose it, basically.
Many felt that this violated a major tenet of publishing with regards to not crossing the wall between advertising and editorial. Some of the accused agreed, some did not, a few were just baffled.
Today Fred Vogelstein published something on the central character of Readygate, Michael Arrington. To frame his story, he used an anecdote that in itself is inconsequential, but proved to be untrue.
Clearly, someone lied. Yes, the matter at hand was irrelevant, but when I tell people “don’t lie, it blows your entire credibility,” this is why. What else is a lie?
While the anecdote was immaterial, it made me wonder, if that is incorrect and inaccurate, what else in traditional publishing is inaccurate, too? Do writers and their subjects make things up because they’re not being taped and can get away with it, or was this an exception, and not the rule…
A lot of very experienced and intelligent people chimed in on Federated Media’s Microsoft’s campaign, but why aren’t these same people asking the question I’m asking today?
Is it ok to blast Michael Arrington, one of the new poster boys for new media publishing but not ok to question what made Fred Vogelstein push the boundaries of accuracy? Or who knows, maybe Arrington the subject of the story twist the facts to embelish an otherwise immaterial detail and Fred had no clue…
I don’t know what to say about this but I think the same people who made a fat stink about the MSFT campaign, even a few days after the fact should be going at this with the same ferociousness they did this past weekend, otherwise there’s a major problem if we care more about what goes around the message than what actual the message is.
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WatchMojo NewsletterGot to hand it to Valleywag and their graphs, charts, and this time, maps.
Makes me think of Risk, frankly.
At a time when once-upon-a-shining-star Friendster reports a 40% monthly gain in pageviews in May, 2007 (skippy: can you check to see if the population of the Philippines grew by 40% in May of this year, thanks!), Valleywag looks at which social network reins supreme across the globe.
I think this is very important, because the US will continue to lose an inch every day as global Internet audiences, broadband penetration and online advertising continues to grow quicker than it does in the US. In other words, while the obsession we have over Facebook and MySpace is warranted, the real race for global supremacy in social networking communities has really only begun.
Apparently, neither Yahoo! nor AOL managed to make a dent in siphoning off any of TV’s upfront ad windfall, Mediaweek reports, and Paid Content comments.
Not surprisingly, when you realize that broadband really just isn’t there yet, this is to be expected:
US Ranked 16th in Broadband Speeds:
The report, based on aggregated data from nearly 80,000 broadband users, found that the median real-time download speed in the U.S. is 1.9Mbit/sec., compared with 61Mbit/sec. in Japan, 45Mbit/sec. in South Korea, 17Mbit/sec. in France and 7Mbit/sec. in Canada.
16th around the world, but in the only list that matters, that puts the Web a big number 2 behind TV. Maybe online ads won’t surpass TV ads by 2021 after all.
Mike Cassidy is CEO of Undertone Networks, an online ad network. I always like reading comments and articles from industry insiders because they have an interesting take on things. I’d say a more accurate, although biased one. That’s not a knock at all cause I write from that vantage point myself. But the flip side is that as insiders, we sometimes tend to be dealmakers who are impatient. We then channel our frustration into articles. That’s good, bad and sometimes ugly.
Today Cassidy penned something asking “where’s the leadership from Google and YouTube?” It’s funny because a few months ago, I blasted Google and YouTube, both as a commentator in general and as a partner by way of being a content producer (I did not say anything confidential, really, but I did take them to task for being slow!).
I wrote a bunch of posts, but the one that stood out was “YouTube/Google Strategy Highlights Why Online Video Advertising Will Never Materialize.” Of course, if that was not enough, I then called Google a Conglomerate.
It was like me telling YouTube and Google that despite their massive success, they couldn’t tell their asses from their elbows. Now trust me, I can tell you that my contacts over there have apparently come to welcome the feedback… but it does not mean that everything us outsiders have to say is brand new and alien to them. Some things are obvious, they just take time. Some things, like sharing ad revenue, took time.
I still think that at the time a lot of the things that I said in that post were 100% accurate, but I think that one needs to put it in the context of Google is a $160B company that scares everyone.
As a partner of YouTube I guess I am aware of some things that I can’t necessarily disclose blindly, but the simple fact is that Google and YouTube have come a long way, and there’s far more work to be done. But to quote Colin Powell, before you go on the offensive, make sure you have a sound foundation in place at home. Just integrating Google into YouTube (or vice versa) took some time… and yes, I am pretty sure that GooTube staff gets frustrated when they see other search and video companies make inroads… but this is really a long game and it’s way too early to say anyone is failing to innovate etc.
When Google sneezes, technology shakes; when it coughs, media rattles; when it sniffles, investors roll.
With YouTube in particular, for no other reason than not alienating people that are or could be suing it, Google has to act very, very slowly, and carefully.
But this post has more to do with our own problems with YouTube and Google. Why do we hold these entities - now joined - to a higher standard?
I know,
- “Google’s market share in search gives it a lot of power, blah-blah.” Yeah, well we gave it that market share.
- “YouTube is the video platform of the future, blah-blah.” Yeah, well who told you to upload your entire collection of legal and illegal video content, then copy and paste the embed tag on your blog and spend hours commenting on it and making it such a freaking success?
The point I’m trying to make is that these companies became forces of nature through competitive forces, and not any government intervention or preferential treatment.
Why do we expect things from Google that we don’t expect from anyone else?
That’s something that we can’t seem to find a result for no matter where we search.
Mediaweek’s Mike Shields reports that ManiaTV.com has decided to drop user-generated content in favor to focus on professional produced video:
“Hype doesn’t necessarily equate to profitability,” said Peter Clemente, ManiaTV’s chief marketing officer. Clemente said that over the last few years, Mania has landed blue-chip advertisers such as Ford, Sony and Verizon specifically due to its professionally produced shows, and that the majority of brands aren’t interested in user-generated fare. UGC “may lead to a bunch of traffic, but not much loyalty,” he added.
Shocking, absolutely shocking, to see that user generated video content is failing to light up advertisers’ interest. This is one of the main arguments we’ve been making at WatchMojo.com, where we produce original video content.
UGC is great to scale as it’s cheap and readily available, but it’s just not what marketers want. In fact, when marketers want to embrace UGC, they’ll ask a production house to create something that looks like it, even if it’s not the real thing.
And apparently, we’re not alone in that assessment:
“Our stance from the beginning is that professionally produced content is the way to go,” said Ryan Magnussen, CEO of Ripe Digital Entertainment, a male-oriented broadband/ VOD company. “Advertisers are really clamoring to get their brand around professional content.”
But video is still so young and its industry so nascent that there’s not only one way to slice the pie (something tells me that’s not an actual saying, but oh well). A company like Break.com is fully drinking the UGC koolaid:
Yet Brian Tu, vp West Coast sales, for the young male-aimed video hub Break.com disagreed, despite the fact that the site has recently signed high-profile deals to produce more original content. “It more about diversifying,” said Tu. “What you have seen is a shift away from repurposing towards more original content…but our audience is built on [UGC].”
Of course, the article is somewhat biased in the sense that it’s asking video content producing companies whether advertisers prefer professional content OR user-generated content. That is an obvious question to ask if I’ve ever heard one. The simple truth is that you really need to know what you’re doing to scale professional video production though a user-generated site can scale with one hand tied behind its back, just look at the number of companies trying to ride YouTube’s coattails and that have managed to build multi-million audiences.
And of course, when it comes to platforms, sometimes UGC is a very viable market: Video Egg for example serves a lot of video in the UGC community space. Even if selling ads is a challenge and the rates are lower, the volume can spike enough so that the business becomes large enough. A cynic would wonder why Video Egg would need more financing if everything is rosey, but the fact is that some advertisers will embrace UGC content, others won’t… and successful business can spawn around both types of content.
I think it’s all about “those who can create businesses around professional content will,” those who can’t will deploy some commoditized community features and create a community around UGC. Both can lead to successful places in the vast online video market.
It’s very interesting that candor and accuracy are always thought of as the cornerstone of reporting… why are we getting two sides to the story?
If that is the case, who do you believe?
Fred Volgelstein/Michael Arrington or the guys from Fleck?
Version 1: “One Tuesday morning in early May, Michael Arrington was sound asleep in his bedroom in Atherton, California, when three men burst in. Naturally, he was startled. His first reaction, he recalls, was to tell them to ‘get the fuck out.’” | From Wired.com’s piece on Tech Crunch, which we just commented on.
OR
Version 2: Fleck’s version, incidentally, backed with a video!
p.s. no clue what Fleck does… but that’s besides the point… came across this off Brad Linder’s blog.
Last week I wrote that mainstream media’s coverage of blogs, bloggers and blog networks was only going to accelerate, and indeed, that seems to be true.
Today both Wired and Newsweek write glowing pieces on Michael Arrington and Tech Crunch. Wired’s piece has a lot of good tidbits on Arrington, the landscape and the overall traits of entrepreneurship, and I could write a dozen pages right here, but the one thing that should be emphasized, really, in my humble opinion is this:
In 1999 — at the peak of the Internet bubble — Arrington took just such a chance himself. He left the law firm and went to work as head of business development at Real Names, a hot startup with an idea that seemed sexy at the time: Replace long, nonintuitive Internet addresses with simple, natural-language entries. Teare was the Real Names founder and CEO, and Arrington was captivated by both the idea and the entrepreneur.
Everyone talks about Tech Crunch’s overnight success, and indeed, its overnight success has been nothing short of mezmerizing and impressive… but when you consider that Arrington first left the corporate life in 1999 and did a bunch of projects, you have to add persistence and determination to some of the traits that explain TC’s success. Also, something I covered in Persist, Persevere, Profit.
Something that hit me though, it this passage:
Some TechCrunch readers, like Reid Hoffman, founder and former CEO of Linkedin, believe that Arrington may need to decide whether he wants his new blogs to be stocked with journalists working from the outside or players working from the inside. When you combine the two roles, Hoffman says, no one knows how to behave around you: Are you a journalist or a power broker?
That’s a conflict I face every day. I have always, always said that this blog gives readers a vantage point into an executive’s perspective. But as the readership grows and people ask me to write stories… should I maintain that role or does the baggage need to go?
I really don’t see myself competing with anyone, I compete with myself etc., but the second I write something on search, video etc., am I not blatantly conflicted (I do after all, run a company that has interests in these fields)?
Of course, on that I tend to agree with Arrington (did I just say that?) when he says: “”Human interaction is simply too complex to pretend that we are all objective.” On the surface that’s a lot of spin, but it’s true. Does it make us less conflicted when we disclose an interest. I don’t adhere to John Doerr’s “No conflict, no interest,” but all journalists seem to have some form of conflict.
My take is that what makes this blog interesting is that insider’s perspective; the Wall Street meets Madison Avenue meets Silicon Valley is not just a tagline, it’s a reflection of what makes this site unique… so long as the disclaimers and disclosures are there, it should not be an issue, I think.
In fact, if you’re honest and sincere in what you say, sometimes people would be surprised to hear you say something that goes against your interests. Take for example me bashing YHOO!, where I own shares, or mentioning the launch of SlateV.com or Revision3’s funding, both video producers who on the surface at least would be competing with our WatchMojo.com web video unit… The fact that I operate in the space only adds more street cred to what I say, because I know some of the details of operating in them.
I think ultimately, mainstream media is great in many ways and not so great in some, and if folks like Arrington, yours truly etc. can carve a niche to differentiate and offer a good product, the rest falls into place. In Arrington’s case, that niche has proven very profitable and influential. Whether he remains relevant (not a knock, just an observation) in 1, 3 or 5 years depends on how he lets his admitted “hotheadedness” get to him. Though surely even critics would admit that this is part of his charm.
Ultimately, phonies are easy to spot. Readers aren’t dumb in that regards, so so long as TC publishes good content, everything else is par for the course. Content is king, after all.
UPDATE: This is too funny.
Any thoughts?
Slate, one of my favorite online magazines covering politics, entertainment and lifestyle today launched SlateV.com, a - you guessed it - video site. I love Slate, but since I started WatchMojo.com I have not checked it out much. Why that statement is relevant is that WatchMojo.com produces video, and today, Slate entered the space, too. So technically, broadly speaking they’re our new competitor, though in fact I’ve long argued that online video producers are by and large in the same boat… and of course, we don’t really have the same editorial topics or style.
This is interesting for a myriad of reasons:
Naturally, like TheOnion.com, Slate can leverage its traffic, editorial know-how and brand to move into video, but they’ll learn soon enough that video is a different beast and it takes different skills to excel in video.
Recently, TV executives mocked the attempt of newspapers to move into online video. We called this oldmediacide (link below).
Why this is relevant is that Slate was acquired by Washington Post from Microsoft. We’ve actually encouraged MSFT to acquire digital video content firms, arguing that it’s the new software, in many ways.
Here’s the lead video today:
Incidentally, I took a look at the site and it’s typical of a magazine or newspaper that allocate more space to pat one another on their backs as if they discovered gold instead of giving users content and plenty of it. Notice the letter from the editors below the video screen. Ok, I get it, it’s a major step in the history of the site, but get over it, you’re users really don’t care. I doubt your advertisers do either.
Speaking of that, props to Slate for luring Nissan as advertiser for the first 10 months. Not bad at all.
The site’s navigation and layout will hopefully change. And a word of advice, you’ll have to reduce that Brightcove player because that will kill the user experience. But these are all part of the learning curve of doing video online. Here’s some advice we parted to the industry standard for digital media when it came to online video. Indeed, sometimes despite the hyperbole, online video really doesn’t pose much threat to TV, yet.
Ultimately, I commend WP and Slate for diving in. If it works, great. If it does not, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Text to Video: Good luck!
This is a fantastic experiment in the migration of text media to video media. Trust me, a lot of text companies strive to move into video but it’s not obvious. My old colleagues (a text-based online content producer) made a huge stink last year about getting into video and it’s been with 18 months since I left, they’ve yet to produce a single video, I assume it’s a matter of time, but the 18 months of inactivity shows that moving from text to video is not obvious, or maybe they’re just not very creative. Either way…
Here’s the press release. Check out some pertinent posts we’ve made on this matter here:
- Video might be killer, but not in good way, for all magazines.
- Newspapers embracing video as salvation.
- Should print go free?
- Old Media-cide: TV vs. Newspapers?
Some news out of our WatchMojo.com Web Video unit, Blinkx - who today launched a contextual ad network - is the latest distribution partner we’ve signed onto join our syndication network. We’re quickly building our web network to pretty much make out library of 4,000+ videos ubiquitous across the Web, and while it’s very premature, we’re also trying to expand in both wireless and out-of-home digital networks. More news on these to come.
Anyway, what this means is we now have some of our content on Blinkx, which is great, and we leverage their network, too. So if Blinkx powers Ask.com’s search engine, for example, then we get in front of InterActive Corp.’s audience, too, overnight.
A screen shot for example of our content on Ask.com’s search engine (this popped into my inbox this morning, via Google Alerts, I don’t really spend that much searching for “Car Imports Japan” but I digress):
Anyway, here is the release:
Blinkx Joins WatchMojo.com’s Original Web Video Syndication Network
World’s Largest Video Search Engine Blinkx is latest distribution partner to join original video producer WatchMojo.com’s syndication network, getting access to 4,000 professional, informative and entertaining video clips.
(PRWEB) June 25, 2007 — http://www.WatchMojo.com - a leader in short, informative and entertaining video programming for broadband platforms and out-of-home-digital networks - today announced a partnership with Blinkx, the world’s largest video search engine, whereby WatchMojo.com’s content will be hosted and distributed within Blinkx’s website and through its syndication partners across the Internet via full-screen, high quality playback.
The agreement provides Blinkx with original, high-quality online video content on topics including Cars, Fashion, Film, Food, Health, Music, Sports, Technology and Travel from WatchMojo.com’s library of 4,000 informative and entertaining video clips.
Launched on January 23, 2006, WatchMojo.com has scaled to become one of the largest producers, publishers and syndicators of original video content with 4,000 clips, ranging from 1 to 3 minutes each.
Since its launch, WatchMojo.com has also built one of the largest syndication networks of any online or offline video content company, reaching tens of millions of viewers with relationships with YouTube,MySpace, Joost, NBBC, Roo, GoFish, Canoe, Revver, Veoh, Blip.tv, Daily Motion, Yahoo!, Brightcove and many more.
By 2010, the US online video advertising market is estimated to grow to $3 billion while the entire online advertising marketplace will generate $60 billion. Today, television garners $75 billion in advertising revenue each year in the US.
In 2007 WatchMojo.com has aggressively adopted a multi-platform distribution model, by moving into wireless entertainment and the out-of-home digital video market. Wireless entertainment is slated to grow into a $77 billion marketplace by 2011 on the strength of mobile TV; the out-of-home digital market itself was a $7 billion marketplace in 2006 alone and is a rapidly growing segment.
About Mojo Supreme
http://www.WatchMojo.com is the Web TV unit of Mojo Supreme, a privately held digital media, technology and services company launched in 2006. The company’s other units include the MetaMojo.com search unit (which includes both a vertical search network and video meta search engine), the StreetMojo.com community for the sweepstakes, prize and contest market as well as a number of media properties in the following verticals: Cars, Education, Fashion, Film, Food, Gambling, Health, Music, Politics & Economy, Space, Sports, Technology and Travel.
About Blinkx
blinkx plc (LSE AiM: BLNX) is the world’s most comprehensive video search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 12 million hours of audio, video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on demand. blinkx’s founders set out to solve a significant challenge - as TV and user-generated content on the Web explode, keyword-based search technologies only scratch the surface. blinkx’s patented search technologies listen to - and even see - the Web, helping users enjoy a breadth and accuracy of search results not available elsewhere. In addition, blinkx powers the video search for many of the world’s most frequented sites. blinkx is based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at http://www.blinkx.com/videos/mojosupreme.
Contact:
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan for WatchMojo.com
514-827-2532
Ash(at)MojoSupreme.com
Tim Turpin for blinkx
OutCast Communications
415-392-8282
tim(at)outcastpr.com
###
Via PRWeb.com.
Related:
- YouTube and WatchMojo.com Make it Official.
- Joost What Does WatchMojo.com Have in Common with Viacom, CNN, Turner, Sony, CBS, NHL, Warner?
- WatchMojo.com Partners with GoFish.
- WatchMojo.com celebrates 1-year anniversary with move into wireless via Sprint partnership.
It’s crazy to think that Rupert Murdoch wants to buy Dow Jones and open up the site and make it free (to boost ad sales), so when you click on to read something, you don’t get the first sentence of the article and then “the rest of this article is available to subscribers only”. Yet, the majority of the world is against that. Yes, I know, it’s more complicated than that etc., but that says a lot about the state of matters.
Anyway, looks like talks are progressing between DJ and NWS.
PLAY
