Diary of an online video consumer – day 1

Since I am working on a project about online video, I decided to really test-drive online video this Christmas break. So I abandoned broadcast TV and turned on the TV on the web. I will post my findings here regularly.

My little experiment coincides with the testing of the Dell Latitude D430, an ultra-portable laptop (12.1 inch screen, weighs around 1.5 kg). The reason I mention this is because one of the arguments often used against online video in favor of the old TV is the “lean back-lean forward” user experience. Television is watched sitting on the couch leaning back, i.e. relaxing; online video is watched leaning forward, i.e. being quite active. While I do think that as a metaphor the distinction is very valid, when you take this literally the gap between the two becomes smaller with an ultra-protable notebook like the one I am testing these days. I have watched online video sitting at the table, lounging on my couch, lying in my bed.

 Enough about the ergonomics. Let’s turn to the real stuff: what have I seen until now? Well, I started out with some catch-up TV, series, documentaries and talkshows I missed on regular TV lately. In The Netherlands the public broadcasters have a fantastic portal for this on which they publish their own proprietary content untill one month after the original broadcast on TV. 

I also took a more serious look at Joost and Babelgum. Both are P2P, legal, videoportals/-players/-broadcasters/-enablers. Well any way, you can watch professionaly produced content in a dedicated player which you have to download and install first. Everyone has their eyes especially on Joost since the guys behind this new venture are the founders of Skype, Niklas Zenstrom and Janus Friis, and they were able to get some serious money behind them (last investment round US$45 million). What’s more they struck some remarkable content-deals with CBS, Viacom, NBA, National Geographic, Warner Bros. TV, and many more. But… most of these channels are only available in the US. That leaves me with Ministry of Sound TV (Ibiza clubbing, dance music videos, intervies with DJ’s), Stuff TV (gadgets, gadgets, gadgets), Aardman Animations (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run), Comedy Central, Ripe TV (not even going to explain this one).

All in all I am stuck with British lads TV with some music and clay puppets. Not exactly my cup of tea, but what does it say about the chances for Joost?  

First of all the player is fantastic, although it requires you to have a fast processor, state-of-the art videocard and enough free memory (here are all the requirements). Secondly, the Joost guys managed to recruit some of the best people out there and they are well-funded. Thirdly, P2P is a  solution to server-based video and partly solves the bandwidth problem. And lastly, they did strike some good content-deals, but not in Europe. And I can totally understand this: they first try to build a success in the US which is much easier since you do no not need to deal with localization, translations, and the best content providers are at hand. So I would bet on Joost becoming an important online video provider, at least in the US. Europe is a different story and that’s where Babelgum might come in.

More about Babelgum, but also about Hulu.com, Seesmic, Kyte, and many more on the next episode

How interactive is content on the Web anyway?

The Internet has always been hailed for being interactive. A post on NewTeevee today “how interactive is online video?” triggered me to think about how interactive the web in fact is. Of course the Web is interactive on the level of communication (but so is your phone). And the Web is also interactive on the level of information (think Wikipedia and the likes). But how interactive is the Web when it comes to entertainment? What I mean is interactivity by which entertaining content is being altered, preferably enhanced, by interaction between producer and consumer (or prosumer and coduser). So my question is: How Interactive is the Web anyway?

First of all when we look at sites with user generated content only a small percentage of the users of these sites actually contribute. The rest merely watches, reads, laughs and leaves. (only 2% of YouTube’s user base uploads content, according to Jeben Berg of Youtube)

The same phenomenon can be seen in blogs. In most cases someone writes a post, readers react and that’s it. The reactions are in general not taken into a version 2.0 of the post, so there is nothing like a conversation going on.

And then there is the point made in the earlier mentioned post on online video. How interactive is online video? You watch it, you might share it, leave a small comment but is that interactive? Even the sharing part is not new because in TV people also tell each other what’s on what they should watch.  

Does it matter? Of course not but let’s stop fooling ourselves and talking about interactivity like it’s the holy grail. Let’s stop trying to activate communities to engage in a conversation (huh?). Entertainment content on the Web is good, bad, professionaly made or user generated, but it is not really interactive.

p.s. as pointed in the post on NewTeevee there are some handsome initiatives on creating interactive content like this one, this one and this.

Who will guide us in the Infinite Choice of User Generated Content?

Will it be Google again? 

Today I read an interesting report by Bear Stearns on User Generated Video. Three of their main findings: