Mark Evans

The End of Ze Frank..of the Beginning?

One of the Web’s most creative - and unique - shows has come to an end with Ze Frank’s final episode -a strangely emotional farewell given Ze Frank’s confident demeanour). (Hat tip to Will Pate). I saw Ze Frank in action last November at ad-tech in New York where he attracted a SRO audience for a panel while causing a buzz in the meda room. One thing Ze definitely has in spades is presence, which should keep him in good stead whatever he does next. Good luck, Ze.

One more thought: there’s a lot of talk about the democratization of the Web, and how the barriers to entry within the media industry have been been eliminated given anyone can become their own publisher within a matter of minutes. In many ways, Ze Frank is a perfect example of this thesis in action. A year ago, he had no public profile. Now, he’s a media superstar. Not bad for a guy talking into a camera for a couple minutes every day! Of course, Ze has talent and was able to build an audience in a short period of time. But the reality is there’s plenty of room for lots of other Zes to jump into the spotlight - whether it’s for 15 minutes or 15 years. With a global distribution platform available to anyone, the gap between obscurity and fame can be pretty small if the stars and moon align properly.

Update: Speaking of people who have emerged on the Web scene out of nowhere, TechCrunch major domo Mike Arrington has made a huge strategic step forward by hiring Fox’s Heather Harde as TechCrunch’s CEO.  Rob Hyndman has some thoughts, and looks forward to Arrington’s keynote at the mesh conference.

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mesh Video, Anyone?

It’s nearly impossible these days to avoid the growing amount of video on the Web. At mesh, we want to put the spotlight on video with a contest complete with $1,000 for airfare, a ticket to mesh and two nights in a hotel in happening downtown Toronto. All you need to do to enter the contest is put together a video that captures the essence of Web 2.0, and submit it by May 10. All the details can be found here.

Technorati Tags: mesh

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Google-YouTube: Buyers’ Regret?

Do you think the M&A folks at Google are maybe having second thoughts about the decision to spend $1.6-billion to buy YouTube, its 21-million unique visitors a month and, unfortunately, its mountain of legal woes? Viacom is the latest content owner to jump on the legal bandwagon by suing Google for $1-billion for unauthorized use of copyrighted material. If you think about it, Chad Hurley and Steven Chen aren’t the only ones getting rich from the acquisition given a bunch of lawyers are now seeing a tsunami of bill-able hours hitting their desks.

In its lawsuit, Viacom alleges that nearly 160,000 unauthorized video clips of its content have been uploaded on YouTube and viewed more than 1.5 billion times. If you want to capture someone’s attention, $1-billion is a pretty effective way to do it - even for multi-billionaires such as Sergey Bryn and Larry Page. For more thoughts, check out IP Democracy, which is disappointed Viacom’s legal efforts aren’t focused on testing the legal weaknesses of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Instead, IP Democracy describes the Viacom lawsuit as “puffy and fluffy”. Paul Kedrosky describes the lawsuit as “entertaining”, while Between the Lines suggests this is just the beginning of YouTube’s lawsuit woes.

Technorati Tags: Google, YouTube

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No One Watches TV on a Computer, Right?

“Nobody believes that people would choose to watch a computer instead of a TV”.

Want to guess when this quote was made? Five years ago? Wrong. Two years ago? Wrong? A year ago? Wrong. This week? Right.

So who’s the smarty-pants behind it: TSN president Phil King, who either has no clue about how TV distribution and consumption is changing, or his words were taken out of context when he was interviewed by the Globe & Mail. King’s quote was based on his rejection of a suggestion that his station’s ratings for the National Hockey League trading deadline fell 18% compared with last year because the shows were streamed on the Web at the same time.

I suspect King is smart enough to realize the TV landscape is changing, particularily for a sports channel whose audience - 25 to 49-year-old males - are pretty tech savvy and more likely than the general population to watch sports on the Web. That said, Canadian broadcasters have taken a far more conservative approach to the Web than their U.S. counterparts. CBC, for example, has a major Web presence but almost non-existent video streaming or video archives (On the other hand, CBC Radio has done extremely well with podcasts with many of its shows topping the iTunes charts).

It may be that Canadian broadcasters are being pragmatic and waiting to see how U.S. broadcasters make out before they jump into the market. This is standard operating procedure for the industry, which watched from the sidelines as the FCC pushed the U.S. broadcasting industry into the digital age. (Ironically, Toronto-based Leitch Technology thrived by selling all kinds of expensive equipment to U.S. broadcasters). Still, it would be refreshing to see Canadian broadcasters become just a little more aggressive.

For more thoughts, check out Sports Business News, which has a long post on how sports leagues are gravitating to the Web.

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If You Can’t Beat ‘em, Join ‘em

In what appears to be a deal with the devil, Hollywood (20th Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers) has decided to join forces with the popular peer-to-peer technology maker, BitTorrent, to create an online store will offer thousands of classic movies and television shows, as well as a large library of PC games and music videos.

It an important development from a number of different angles but one thing resonated with me is how the movie/video industry has addressed the P2P issue in a much different way than the music industry. Rather than try to bludgeon the video world legally, Hollywood has decided to play ball and create win-win situations. These deals don’t mean free video downloads will evaporate but at least Hollywood is trying to address the P2P in a pro-active way rather than following the music industry’s nasty legal agenda.

Can you imagine what would have happened if the music industry has co-oped Napster, which was a wonderful discovery tool (see my earlier post today on the need for discovery tools), instead of treating it like the devil? Napster’s emasculation was a sad development for a service with so much potential. Who knows, maybe Napster could have been a bigger and better iTunes if it was nurtured rather than neutered. Who knows whether the alliance between Bit Torrent and Hollywood will be successful but at least they’re trying.

For more, check out Mathew Ingram, who believes the Bit Torrent-Hollywood deal is doomed to fail, and IP Democracy, which points to the fact DRM issues could stop consumers from using the new service.

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Revenue Beyond the SlingBox

I’m a big Slingbox fan but have been puzzled about the company’s business model beyond selling $200 hardware to consumers. So, I figured I’d address this issue while meeting with Greg Wilkes, Sling Media’s VP of sales, earlier today in Toronto. But before I could dive into the business model question, Wilkes spent 15 minutes talking about the new Slingboxes in the market or about to launched. Depending on your needs and budget, Sling plans to have a Slingbox to meet your needs, which is pretty impressive. (If you aren’t familiar with a Slingbox, it’s a device that you attach to your TV and/or satellite-cable box that lets you watch your TV using a computer while in another room or away from home. If you spend $100 on cable or satellite service, buying a $200 Slingbox to get more from that package is a no-brainer.)

So what about the business model? How does a company, which has received $53-million in venture capital, drive sales beyond hardware? The answer is syndication, licensing and advertising deals with content makers - a strategic initiative led by the company’s Clip and Sling service (it’s in beta) that lets people easily capture video clips using their Slingbox, and then share them with friends/family, or the Web community. While the financial details have yet to be worked out, Sling figures it can make money by providing content makers with ways to market and sell their programs, while Sling gets to generate some advertising revenue. Sling Catcher is also a sales and marketing tool because, in theory, people who are sent Sling Catcher video clips could be inspired to buy a Slingbox. Wilkes said Sling is also looking to generate revenue from software sales by putting the Sling player in a variety of devices such as laptops.

I also got a chance to meet Dave Zatz, who writes the Zatz Not Funny blog, which focuses on connected home and digital lifestyle. Zatz started a new gig as Sling’s manager of online communications - proving you never know where blogging will take you. Zatz said Sling plans to launch a corporate blog fairly soon that will feature Sling products, as well as tips, tools and news about digital media. It will be interesting to see how Zatz balances Sling’s blog with his own blog.

Technorati Tags: Sling Media, TV

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It’s Just Like…a Mini-Mall

Hat tip to Rob Hyndman for highlighting - and I use that term lightly - a hilarious video for a furniture retailer in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s one of those so bad, it’s good kind of things that will probably see the “star” enjoy his 15 minutes of fame. If you find yourself singing “It’s just like, it’s just like, it’s just like a mini-mall” later this afternoon, don’t blame me!

Technorati Tags: YouTube

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The Monetization of User-Generated Content

So, YouTube’s going to start sharing the wealth, eh? I guess it’s easy to feel generous after you’ve pocked $1.65-billion from Google, and never have to work again. There’s lot of chatter about why YouTube is doing it (check out Scott Karp and Nick Carr for a small taste) but the bigger and far more interesting development is how the user-generated content industry is starting to become a business as opposed to a hobby/brand building/ranting/ego massaging exercise.

As Scott Karp makes clear, more people want to get paid for the content they produce (and we’re not talking about link love, trackbacks, RSS subscriptions and traffic). We’re talking dollars and cents (but mostly dollars given people are tired of getting cents from AdSense). Does this mark the beginning of the end of the user-generated content revolution that has seen millions of people offer their insight, knowledge and skills for free or next to nothing. Probably not but it does indicate the USG market is already starting to evolve as content producers are saying “show me the money”, while distributors (YouTube, Revver, etc.) look to embrace different ways to monetize their traffic to turn a cool, popular service into a business.

In theory, the concept of getting paid could be a could thing for USG because it could encourage people to create better content - if you believe in the concept this work will be more popular and, as a result, more lucrative. It’s content capitalism at work. Perhaps an ancillary benefit will be a consolidation of the USG industry as people who want to be paid but get nothing or little for their efforts decide to move on to other things.
Update: As much as money is coming into the user-generated content world, ego still plays a huge role in why people blog. Exhibit one is Robert Scoble, who detonated a flurry of discussion within the blogosphere after having a digital temper tantrum because after Engadget declined to link to a video story he did on new technology from Intel. Scoble’s not into blogging to make money (although it has jump-started his career in a major way) but his disappointment over the lack of links shows he’s got a healthy ego and his blog is part of that equation.

Technorati Tags: User Generated Content, Video, YouTube

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Hey, We’re Talking Tech

Another Friday, another Talking Tech podcast featuring yours truly and my trusty sidekick, Kevin Restivo. In the wake of CES, it was a fairly quiet week but there was lots of buzz in the online video market with the official launch of Joost, Netflix getting into the movie and TV download business, and Brightcove raising $59.5-million. Both Kevin and I are impressed with Joost, which we think will be a success as long it can get content owners onboard. I also think Joost will be another entrepreneurial success for Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friss, who appear to have the Midas Touch in the wake of Skype’s sale to eBay.

In Canada, the big tech news of the week was Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce’s admission that its Talvest mutual trust subsidiary had lost a backup file that contained the personal data of 470,000 investors. Of course, this pales in comparison to TJX Inc. having its network hacked and as many as 40 million credit card numbers exposed.

We wrap up the podcast with a look at a week in the life of telecom entrepreneur Terry Matthews, who saw one of its investments, Ubiquity Software, acquired by Avaya for $144-million, while another, March Networks, had its stock drop 40% after revealing that one of its large customers (Wal-Mart) is buying less of its digital surveillance technology.

Technorati Tags: Wal-Mart, Terry Matthews, Video

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All Video, All the Time

Another day, another major online video announcement with BrightCove raising $59.5-milion of venture capital from a group of investors including the New York Times Co. It was only yesterday that the tech world was abuzz with the official launch of Joost (otherwise known as the Venice Project) and Netflix getting into the business of downloading movies and TV shows. Then, there’s the launch of Video.ca (well, in Canada, this is newsworthy).
Amid all this activity, it will be interesting to see how cable companies deal with the growth of video delivered and consumed on the Internet, particularly if the content owners get into the business of going direct to consumers. Does this mean the cablecos will have to aggressively enhance their video-on-demand and pay-per-view operations? Does it mean cablecos will try to squeeze more money out of their high-speed Internet access operations as consumers demand more bandwidth to download movies and TV shows?
It could be that cablecos will be squeezed by online video - much like newspapers, radio and the music industry are being squeezed by the Web. We’re in the midst of a huge shakeup in the media landscape that no one is able to avoid.

Technorati Tags: Venture Capital, Video

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