video 2 zero

Al Gore’s current.tv is out of the user-generated video business: “Approximately 60 positions have been eliminated in the company’s three U.S. offices….company is going to drop its shorter (user-generated content) videos in favor of the more traditional 30-minute programs that have long dominated television programming across all channels” cnet
AOL is “shutting down the AOL Video […]

David Eun VP of Google/YouTube  talking yesterday  at the VideoNuze breakfast panel in NYC
“…about the “head” and the “tail” of Chris Anderson’s “long tail” model. He said that in between the two (basically, between big hits and narrowly-focused content that appeals to a tiny audience), there’s a “torso”: high-quality specialty niche programming. “That’s what drove […]

Following up on the Context is King follow-up:
Further proof that with 25c and killer content, you’re only $3 short of the price of a tall latte. This time from the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference:

Jessica Guff, executive producer of ABC News Now and a veteran of ABC News, explains the new paradigm to PR honcho Richard Edelman:
PR people must pitch stories differently. Specifically, she said we need to offer fully formed four minute segments, with visuals, spokespeople and news hook all conceived. “Don’t just send me a pitch letter […]

Following up on Context is King below - this from Philip Trippenbach’s Three Rules for Online Video:
The 3 rules: Simplicity, Authenticity, Currency.
And the greatest of these is Authenticity: The BBC know this, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to be reminded.

There are two Tripod Rules. The first - Never Shoot with a Tripod, and the second Always Shoot with a Tripod - may seem to contradict one another.
Ignore them unless you are entering a competition of some sort. For everyone else just go with whatever improves your confidence, flexibility, confidence, efficiency and confidence.
- Number […]

This is the flipside of Connect Emotionally. Talking Heads don’t make for riveting movies or TV - but they work just fine on the web. Gary Vaynerchuck, Andy Plesser (beet.tv) and Michael Tomasky (guardian.co.uk) prove the point across a wide spectrum.
washingtonpost.com has extended the Talking Heads gestalt with its Voices series. The subjects […]

Michael Eisner on What works in Online Video:
Sex seems to work. User-gen, sports, news, anything with Sarah Palin works. At the end of the day, like in all the other industries from movies to TV, long-form, story-driven content is what ultimately works. paid content
Time is the currency we use to pay for online video. […]

YouTube Cofounder Chad Hurley spoke at the MIPCOM Conference in Cannes, France yesterday.In the talk, which is transcribed here, Hurley compares the current state of online video to the nascent years of television. In 1941, he says, “CBS has just launched its new television network amidst cries that it means the death of radio.” […]

“Video content on the web must differ from TV. It should be shorter, less intermediated, less heavily produced. It should be raw and direct, not like sitting back and watching TV” Richard Sambrook interview with Richard Edelman
Fairly conventional wisdom in 2008 I think, but why is it that so much online news/PR video ignores […]

As newspapers and regional TV stations continue to be blinded by Youtube and the creative excesses of the “people previously known as the audience”, advertisers are forced to take things into their own hands -
The study compares corporate adoption of social media between 2007 and 2008 by the Inc. 500, a […]

When it comes to online video innovation, “big media is the tail of the dog,” says Rich Moran, a partner with Venrock, the venture investing fund of the Rockefeller family.
As newspaper and TV websites flail in the morass of “citizen journalism” they have created for themselves, advertisers (the folks who pay the bills) are forced […]