Says Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, “The utter stupidity of this is staggering.”
Gosh, AOL only made public some 20 million web queries from 250,000 people.
That’s not NEARLY as invasive as this probe cam (click to see recent footage) they keep sending to my house.
AOL Video debuts with what “Video on the Web” calls a “Hail Mary Play.”
AOL is in DEEP trouble. It’s hemmoraging customers at the rate of 2,000,000 a year. If they keep that up, pretty soon there won’t be an AOL. So what are they gonna do? They’re tapping their video content… Remember it’s AOL-Time Warner and the Time Warner part has a ton of video – movies, television programs, special interested productions.
What I like about the approach is that you have your mainstream videos or you can visit the “Uncut Community,” which includes user-generated content. Currently the most popular video has had less than 50,000 views… but I’d suspect it gets more popular pretty quickly. No where to go but up. Uncut is not differentiated in any meaningful way, and doesn’t share ad revenue with creators. But if AOL puts some media dollars behind it it could become one of the more popular viral attractions. Couldn’t it?
As an update on a recent report about popular online video sites, here are the latest site rankings of online video sites according to Alexa. Not all of the online video sites allow for uploading and sharing, so they’re not all packed with viral videos.
* Refers to those that give you the ability to upload
$ Refers to those that share revenue with video creators
P.S. ClipShack: 37,750, CubeBreak: 294,151, The DailyReel: (too new)
Interesting Nightline report on the AOL and Comcast situations… we have cameras and we’re ready to showcase the best and worst of customer support. If you can make it to the end of this report, you’ll see my broadcast debut (I’m the wink at the end… it’s an excerpt from this Comcast video).
Well after the Comcast Sleeping video and the AOL cancellation video, I thought I’d give this a go. I needed to cancel Comcast anyway… so I tried to see if I could provoke this rep. No such luck, but I had fun anyway.
I find it very interesting that Comcast (and probably other companies with call centers) are making representatives aware of the latest online videos. As you’ll see in this 2-minute piece, this guy knew about both of the videos I mention above.
I’ve noticed that my most popular posts are not my deepest thoughts about the future of online video, or about how amateurs can make money. Nope, if I want blogger popularity I simply write about what video is hot that week.
Indulge me, dear readers, in an experiment. In this post I will write about the hotest videos. I’ll report back how many views this post gets. Did you know that Emmalina is the most popular YouTube uploader? BritBot& Simula Special gets more comments than most. The Diet Coke and Mentos fad, unfortunately, is not over. Today I’ll get at least 4 e-mails asking me if I’ve seen the Comcast guy sleeping. Don’t ask me why, but computer animation with musical scores are all the rage. Check out Naruto AMV- Hinata’s Perfect World. It’s one of the top rated videos on YouTube.
Today thanks to Google sponsors you can watch Felix the Cat for free (which is nice, because I’ve been wanting to watch him for a while, but didn’t want the guilt of searching for an illegal posting of him… that was sarcasm on both fronts). Paris Hilton is the number one video on Google Video. That name still gets searches, doesn’t it? Or is she yesterday?
Learning how to fold a perfect shirt seems to be hot on MetaCafe. And here’s one of the shortest most viral clips: Hiding the beer gut. And Dancing Around the World is one video that deserves the viral status it’s getting. Most people will stop watching this video of an Asian woman performing what appears to be an illicit act but is actually an ad.
Okay- I’m fried. It ‘aint easy finding the good stuff.
Here's my video version of the AOL Cancellation (click to see it on YouTube).
A guy tries to call and cancel his AOL account and runs into an aggressive call-center employee who wants to talk him out of it. And it's all caught on audio for everyone to enjoy! Here's the blog entry about this event. Here's the recording of Vincent Ferrari trying to cancel his AOL subscription. We can all appreciate this because it's happened to all of us.
"Cancel the account. I don't know how to make it more clear… you're annoying the shit out of me."
"And that goes both ways," responds the call center employee. "If you want me to cancel this account… you're going to listen to me."
Apparently the call center employee has been fired from AOL. This just goes to show- see what happens when you outsource your call center (see video)?