Tag Archives: kipkay

Metacafe Gives Viewers Wikipedia-Like Editing Control of Videos

It’s maddening when a creator tricks viewers with misleading thumbnails, titles, tags and descriptions. Until now, we’ve counted on the website’s search engine to solve that problem. But even YouTube’s Google-like sophistication still opens the door to tricks by Viral Video Villians.

Google learns from its users, and I imagine the YouTube search engine quietly gives primacy to videos that meet criteria we never see… such as open rate, duration of average view, related videos, and other metrics that YouTube can track to determine if the video is perceived as relevant or “good.”

Metacafe — without the funding or mother Google to help — has created a clever alternative. It’s giving edit rights to the viewer in true Wiki style. Just as anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, Metacafe viewers can now edit the title, tags, description and even flag misleading thumbnails or duplicates (I flagged a “Farting in Public” ripoff just now). This is hard to explain, and a video is worth a million views. Watch Sherry in the video here to see how it works. I love this demo and not just because I make a surprise cameo.

I hope Metacafe doesn’t allow its creators to switch the hosts of it’s Metacafe Unfiltered series? Imagine how much better you could make this interview with KipKay, who has made more than $100,000 in advertising revenue on the website.

This begs a lot of questions. I can report a misleading thumbnail (the image you see representing a video before you play it), for instance, but I suspect human intervention is required, and perhaps that requires a few people reporting it. I can edit someone else’s video description, which introduces some risks of abuse initially (for instance, I could add my name to popular video tags but I’m sure it would erode a trust score and have little benefit to me). Ultimately the community will police the community, and that’s theoretically better and less expensive than editors or complex algorithms.


Wikicafe Beta: Hate Typos?The best bloopers are a click away

 

Pratfall Spices Up Viral-Video Panel

Guy falls on stage during panel about viral videoSo I took a deliberate spill while hosting a panel at Streaming Media East called “Creating and Promoting Amateur Videos.” Paul Kontonis, CEO of For Your Imagination, screamed like a teenage girl, but was one of few people that realized it was a joke.

The fall is 1 minutes and 9 seconds in. Warning: Per my YouTube video today explaining this, when you do a pratfall that people think is real, you’ve backed yourself into a corner. If you say “I was just kidding,” you simple make it look like you’re saving face. So I didn’t bother to explain.

You actually may want to watch more of this video because it explores what makes a video viral, and how marketers and amateurs can promote their video using online video sites and blogs. It was an all-star cast (except me): Paul Kontonis, CEO, Co-Founder, For Your Imagination; J. Crowley, Founder, Black20; Ben Relles, Founder and CEO, BarelyPolitical.com (the guy who created Obama Girl); and Kip “Kipkay” Kedersha, Viral Video Producer, Metacafe Top Producer.Here are the rest of the Streaming Media Videos, including a session called “Young People’s Attitudes Toward Online Video,” which includes Dylan of Dylan’s Couch (CinemaFreaks on YouTube). And be sure to comment on the “For Your Imagination” blog. Something like “Nalts is a genius. I can’t believe you signed Xgobobeanx and not him.” And thanks to Jennifer and TubeMogul.com for help embedding this (I finally installed a “Raw HTML” WordPress plug-in so I can insert widget thingies and other Web 4.0 things).