Mark Evans

Video, Video and more Video

Apologies for the video focus today but TechDirt has a great post questioning the proliferation of video-sharing services, which seem to be sprouting up like dandylions these days. What do you expect when the barriers to entry are so low what with low-cost servers, bandwidth and storage? Rest assured, there will be a few winners because every Web-based service sector has one or two dominant players (e.g. eBay, Google, Amazon, Yahoo) and a few mega-deals as the frenzy reaches its zenith (e.g. YouTube will get likely get acquired by Rupert Murdoch or another major media player looking for a Web “foothold”). But there will also be plenty of carnage with many video services disappear without a whimper. Then again, the silver lining about Web 2.0 is it is a giant science experiment that encourages entrepreneurship and some risk-taking given the cost of failure is so low. And that's not a bad thing.

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Lulu.TV Enters Video Fray

Bob Young, who made his fortune from Red Hat, is moving into the video business with the creation of Lulu.TV - a video-sharing service with a twist: it offers a “pro” account in which  it charges content creators $14.95 a month to submit their videos. Of that, 80% is put into a pool, which is split between “shareholders” based on how many times their video is seen each month. For example, if there are one million views, and one person's video receives 10,000 hits, they would get 1% of the pool.
  In a press release, Lulu cites how a “once-struggling video-maker from Manchester” just got $3,966.17 for two videos, and how his success has led to a deal to shoot 10 comedy mobile movies. While Lulu.TV sounds, well, interesting, you have to wonder how many people are actually willing to cough up $14.95 a month for a shot at success - something the company describes as “get played, get paid”. It's like online gambling, and there is little evidence the growing army of online content creators is willing to pay for the privilege of sharing their material. Without dissing Lulu.TV too much, it strikes me as an opportunistic move by Young, who has a panache for marketing. If anything, Lulu.TV puts the focus on Lulu.com, which offers a self-publishing service for aspiring writers. No doubt, Young is aware of all the buzz surrounding video, and figures Lulu.TV is a no-risk way to get in the game and, at the same time, hopefully put Lulu.com in the spotlight. If Lulu.TV works, I'd eat my (red) socks.
Update: Another twist on video-sharing is CNN Exchange - a service that will let people submit their video, audio and stories to CNN. If you think about it, Lulu.TV and CNN Exchange show how companies want to capitalize on user-generated content, but at some point - and I think Lulu.TV is a sign of things to come - content creators are going to want to be compensated for their work. For example, if CNN Exchange gets a great video of a spectacular car accident that attracts millions of TV viewers, doesn't it make sense for the videographer to get some financial reward? Scott Karp has some thoughts on who will make money from user-generated video content.

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How Long Does/Should a PC Last?

A couple of friends at work had an interesting conversation last week about the life span of desktop or laptop computers - stemming from one of them buying a desktop for $500 based on the expectation that in a couple of years, it would either break or be obsolete. This prompted his friend to suggests “computers are disposable consumers electronics; they are not appliances that people keep for years. A computer is pretty much only good for two years”. This struck me as a pragmatic given computer prices have dropped so sharply in recent years to the point you can get a half-decent machine for a few hundred bucks. The big question is whether PC makers such as Lenovo, Dell and IBM can reduce their costs to make a healthy profit margin from each unit. Of course, the downside of our disposable culture is dealing with PCs that people no longer want. While some of them can be re-used, there needs to be more of an effort put into recycling old machines, and dealing with nasty substances such as lead, cadmium and phosphorus. As much as no one  wants to admit it, millions of PCs end up in small villages in China where their components are salvaged. At the same time, however, these computers caused terrible environmental damage. There has to be a better way.

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Wi-Fi Telephony: Possible or a Dream?

The New York Times has sparked a lot of discussion about Wi-Fi telephony - the idea you can make a telephone call over a Wi-Fi network when using your mobile phone rather than burning up your mobile minutes. While Mathew Ingram and Om Malik have their doubts (and the mobile carriers will make Wi-Fi calls a technical challenge, if not an impossibility), it is an intriguing idea. In Toronto, you have to wonder the impact Toronto Hydro could make on the mobile market when its Wi-Fi network is rolled out in September? Can you imagine all those business folks in the downtown core using Skype over Toronto Hydro's network rather than Rogers, Telus or Bell? While telephony is a small part of the utility's plan, it's one area that gets Toronto Hydro Telecom CEO Dave Dobbin excited. He made a point of showing off the technology in action during a roundtable while at the Canadian Telecom Summit last month.

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Amanda's So Yesterday, Ze Frank is So Now

Now that Amanda Congdon has left the video-blogging world (at least temporarily), the medium's new star is Ze Frank, whose in-your-face (literally), smart, rapid-fire commentary has become a must-see for many people (Rob Hyndman calls Ze Frank one of his first stops on the blogosphere). Ze Frank's star should burn hotter now that Blogspotting has put him on its radar. Not sure where the guy gets his inspiration each day but his video blog is darn good.

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Freedom of Speech Event in T.O.

Rob Hyndman, one of the mesh gang, is chairing a roundtable on online freedom of speech on Aug. 5 in Toronto at the Rivoli featuring Jon Newton of p2pNet, Michael Pilling of OpenPolitics.ca, Jason Young of Deeth Williams Wall, and Russell McOrmond of Digital Copyright Canada. More details on the event can be found here.

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Wordpress Playing With Ads

Since Wordpress burst onto the blog publishing scene, it has been a free service but this status may be poised to change. The company, which took some angel financing, earlier this year is experimenting with “contextual adsense” advertising. Here's Matt Mullenweg's explanation:

In many ways, Wordpress adopting some kind of advertising platform is no surprise. With the service growing and investors now on board, Wordpress needs to evolve from a cool public service to a revenue-generating business. Mullenweg has talked about his company, Automattic, selling value-added services to Wordpress users but that could be a challenge given Wordpress users are used to paying nothing. So, advertising seems like a natural way to generate revenue given the advertising market's growth and Wordpress's popularity. If Mullenweg can convince Wordpress users (like me) that the introduction of advertising will be a win-win scenario, he may not have much resistence.

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It's Bubble Time, Baby

Well, it's now official: we're in the midst of dot-com boom 2.0 so get ready for another wild ride. The market finally turned the corner when YouTube CEO Chad Hurley was asked about an IPO by MarketWatch's Bambi Francisco. His response: “If we have an opportunity to go public in the future, that would be very exciting for us”
   I have no doubt that if YouTube went public today, investors would be chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action. The sky's limit if you're serving up 100 million videos a day, right? While Hurley's answer to the IPO question was reasonable, the fact he was asked the question even though YouTube has little revenue and a yet to be determined business model (sponsorships, banner ads, subscriptions?) makes it clear the Web 2.0 environment is getting frothy. It's not unlike the dot-com boom 1.0 when companies with lots of eyeballs and lots of red ink did IPOs.
  What has keep the market today relative even-keeled is most of the excitement has been focused on new, cool services and the occasional deal by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Other than Vonage, IPOs have few and far between, which has kept enthusiastic retail investors from jumping into the fray and getting burnt. As for YouTube's potential IPO, it's highly unlikely the company will ever go that route. Why go through the hassle of an offering and the scrutiny that goes along with filing quarterly results when you can attract a nice, clean acquisition for $1-billion or so?

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Surprise, Surprise: Canadian Telecom Market Grows

Amid the doom and gloom of the telecom landscape, the CRTC issued a report yesterday Canada's telecom market grew 3.5% to C$34.5-billion last year while operating profits rose a healthy 8% to C$12.4-billion. That's that bad considering competition, particularly, within the enterprise market, is brutal. Most of growth came from the high-speed Internet and wireless markets where prices hikes can be passed along to consumers without too much of a hassle. Rogers, for example, is apparently going to introduce a $5 a month increase for its Extreme high-speed service soon, which would generate another $60 million a year in revenue.

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As the Rocketboom Turns

In the latest installment of the ongoing Rocketboom soap opera, the site is being upgraded and a new version will be unveiled July 31 with a “consistent format, timely news stories of Internet culture (editor's note: what's that?) and many new features along with additional content on a regular basis.” Sounds like a case of out with the old and in with the new.

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