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?
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