Pravda on Media, Technology, and Rebel Filmmaking

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- ZDnet published a great article about Mozilla and social media marketing

- Jeremiah Owyang asks if A list bloggers are really bloggers

- And here’s list of online video position titles

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- Apple got a new VP of Product Design - Doug Field from Segway. Tim O’Reilly has an interesting observation about this move.

- Friendfeed is under fire:

• Om calls it FakeFeed
• CenterNetworks Shows that the guys who are followed most are not necessarily the ones who contribute to the conversation.
• Scoble believes that conversation really matters there.
• My view - Friendfeed is a hyped application. It has novelty by showing which topics are the most discussed among my friends, but it is nothing more than that. Maybe after the hype, now comes the phase of sad realization…

- HeySpread provides cool service for multisite video distribution and encoding. Business model is similar to wordpress.com - users buy credits for encoding, watermarking etc. Read more at their blog

Have a great day!

Image by Brnboy313 via Flickr

Good morning,

- Boxee, an open source OS for the living room, goes to Alpha this Monday. Good luck for this group of brilliant guys

- HBO bought 10% of Funny Or Die - another move of TV brand towards the Internet. Rafat wrote a great post about it, and a video here.

- An insightful and funny presentation about Final Cut Server, the new media management product from Apple, by Richard Townhill, Apple’s Director of Pro Video Product Marketing, can be found here.

- Chris Hambly and his social media gang from the UK are organizing another great Media Camp, focused around industry and academia relations.

Have a great day!

 

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- Jeff Pulver gives advice to college graduates

-Cult of Mac has new details about the new iPhone - or not…

- blip.tv hosts some of Revision3’s shows

- MacVideo has an amazing interview with Walter Murch, The Godfather editor, about Final Cut and Avid

Have a great day!

If you see an interesting story that I should refer to, please email me

In my dreams, I was publishing without an effort. The day to day reality is completely differnt…

Let’s look on the workflow for publishing a video podcast. The creator needs to create podcast, encode it to different formats, wait for the videos to be uploaded to his/hers favorite platform, add metadata for different publishing tools such as iTunes, and then promote it in digg, delicious, twitter, Faceboook etc. I estimate that it takes at least twice the time to publish a piece than produce it (for a short and simple video podcast). In blogging it is not that different, as well as for audio podcasts.

So, here is my Dream Publishing Machine (AKA DPM….):

Content Creation

I’d like to have a plugin to audio and video editors that will enable me to send files directly to DPM. I don’t want to look for files on my computer- just to send the files to publishing directly

Content processing

I’d like to define in one location the different processes each content piece should go through. For example, I’d like to define all the required file formats in one place. This process should support scheduling as well - so I could export a file to the system, define which encoding are required, and define this task to start at midnight. This way I could continue working and let my Macbook Pro sweat at night… The same goes for audio files.

Content Publishing

DPM should upload my content to my favorite platform with a click. I could define one or more target sites, and DPM would do the rest. I don’t want to look at a progress bar anymore. This feature should support scheduling as well. It should also support multiple platforms, and allow me to define which file format to upload to which platform. As a corporate user I’d also like a to have a customizable and an embed-able flash player that supports all major blogging platforms and social networks. I’d also like to generically add metadata to my files, and that DPM would translate it for each platform.

Content Promotion

DPM should automatically add my content to all relevant bookmarking and life-casting applications. This is extremely time consuming today.

The Dream Publishing Machine could automate all the annoying and time consuming work done manually by podcasters and bloggers.

What’s your opinion? Is there anything like that out there? Or is it a pipe dream?

He Had a Dream too

Recommended Reading

Avid’s product manager, started to blog, a move towards transparency from a company that is facing many challenges in the market place. It will be interesting to see how it evolves.

LA Times has a great piece about Michael Eisner’s new web series, Foreign Body (a prequel to Robin Cook’s book) and the company behind it. Here are more details about Eisner’s philosophy

Futurescape has an interesting post about interactivity in online video and its effect on the creative process.

Jeff Pulver thinks I’m wrong.

New In My Feedreader

Jamima Kiss’ blog at the Guardian

Have a great week!

Robert Scoble asks if Twitter should charge super users, a concept raised by Om Malik. For those of you who aren’t using this service - it is a much hyped notification platform that I wrote about in the past.

Well, NO. Twitter shouldn’t charge super users such as Scoble because they the soul of the service and its best promoters. When Scoble, Pulver and others use this service, they attract cutting edge users and social media addicts - the early adopters of new technologies. Charging them for usage will diminish its popularity.

Is there a business model for Twitter? Open and honest, the only way I see Twitter making money is if they create an enterprise offering. Currently there is no major barrier of entry for twitter competitors. Twitter is a young, unstable platform, and any attempt to charge for it in its current state will be a huge mistake.

Hey, I have a question for you. What are all these discussions about media revolution?

Let’s look on traditional media business models:

Film: production companies raise funds and make movies. They distribute them through distribution companies that has relation with cinema owners across the globe. Marketing companies promote the movies worldwide. Money made from selling tickets goes to the production companies, distributers and license owners. Popcorn profits are going to the venue owners.

Newspaper: reporters create content that is printed by publishers, next to ads. These ads finance the whole operation. Some newspapers also have subscription models.

TV: Production companies make TV shows, that are aired by a network. Networks and production companies sell ads or product placement and cover or profit beyond the production cost.

What is the basis of these industries?

1. Cost - it is expensive to own a film camera. It is expensive to hire a crew to make a film. Therefore, one should raise a considerable amount of money in order to make a film. It is expensive to print and distribute a newspaper, pay reporters and so on. It is expensive to create a season of a TV show. In some cases, more than 100 people are working on one drama show.

2. Ownership and scarcity of distribution channels — there is a limited amount of movie theaters in the world. If you have distribution agreements in place, you create scarcity in distribution of films. True, there are zillion TV channels, but if you are the 500th channel, no one will zap to your channel just like that. The same goes for news stands.

3. High marketing cost — how can you persuade viewers to go to your movie or watch your show? You need to do three things: advertise, advertise, and, well, advertise. Billboards, banners, and TV spots cost money. Loads of money.

Cut to the chase. I am paying you by the hour.

Three important developments changed these industries:

1. Stronger computers - I am writing this post on a Dual Core 2.4 GHz Mac, a machine that render, edit and present HD video. It costs around $2000. The fact that I have on my desktop the equivalent of a computer that used to cost tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars changes the market place fundamentally. Video is the most resource draining technology. When talking about text or audio media products, everybody could be a writer or a radio talent.

2. Cheaper cameras — with $6000 one can buy today high end HD camera, and become a movie maker. But, even with less, one can create content in fraction of past costs. Almost every cellphone has a video camera, every laptop has a webcam, and a cheap point-and-shot camera can shot HD today. Shooting video is no longer an economic barrier. It is all about talent.

3. Higher bandwidth - The increase of available bandwidth means that High Definition video can be distributed over the Internet directly to consumers. That, coupled with the proliferation of computers at homes, made the computer screen a viable source for media and information.

And yes — number 4 - almost everyone in the western hemisphere has Internet access today.

Cool. But how does it affect the media business, or my company?

These developments affected the whole value chain:

1. Strong computer and cheap cameras made content creation cheaper than before. Therefore, more content is created by amateurs, semi-professionals and professionals. Your mom can shot and edit a short movie.

I hope she won’t

Me too.

2. Higher bandwidth made video distribution available to the masses. Sites such as YouTube made video publishing as simple as sending an email. Other companies are focusing on HD and long format distribution. Now, everyone can distribute their videos, for free. So, more content is made, and it is freely distributed, directly to consumers. Slowly but surely, the computer screen is competing with TV sets and Movie theaters on viewers’ attention.

3. The Internet changed the promotion game. Though marketing is still a major expense in the media business, new ways of content promotion are created, through search engines such as Google, and social networks such as Myspace and Facebook. An effective social media campaign is much cheaper than a TV spot.

4. Everyone can publish everything on the Internet. It can be a rumor about your company, an expert opinion, a story, or breaking news.

This is a unique period in time, where the media business is being disrupted across the whole value chain — from content creation, through marketing, to distribution and consumption. This change affects not only media companies, but also corporate marketing, and consumers.

OH MY GOD! Now what?

Well, you’ll need to keep reading this blog for that…