Tag Archives: merck

Quit Day Job: Full-Time Online Video & Marketing

Today I quit my day job as Consumer Product Director at Merck, where I marketed Propecia. Thanks to all of my Merck friends for tolerating me and teaching me so much.

Now it’s full-time to follow my passion: making videos, working with Hitviews, and starting my own consulting practice that will help brands engage in social media, especially the most visceral kind: online video. Stay tuned next week for more details.

Do what you love, peeps. I have an MBA in entrepreneurship and a passion for marketing, social media and video. Time to put it to work.

do what you love

Choosing the Best Video Chat Tool or Software: FaceBook, Stickam, Skype, Google Chat, AIM, BlogTv

It’s a race for live video chat. Which one is right for you? First the history, then some recommendations based on what you plan to do (one-to-one or one-to-many).

  • First it was Stickam, where community people would run group video sessions.
  • Then came Blogtv.com, which provided advertising dollars to popular online-video talent to run live shows (the most-subscribed blogtv creators are, not coincidentally, all most-subscribed on YouTube).
  • Stickam and Blogtv, according to Alexa, are currently fairly close in terms of visitors and time spent on site (as much as 13 minutes).
  • Skype also extended its audio chat to video. And of course there’s always AIM video for people either far behind or far ahead of the time.
  • Then Google/Gmail Video Chat made it easy, and integrated with Google mail.

Now Facebook is getting into the game. Given the proliferation of Facebook, I’d guess we’ll see significant use of its video chat — perhaps more than Gmail or AIM since it’s a common platform regardless of e-mail or hosting provider.

It’s unfair to compare these, because they have different purposes. Here are three, with my recommendations:

  1. Want a video-conference call that includes several people, and potentially observers with view/comment access only? Try Stickam.
  2. Want to do a “show” for a large audience? Blogtv is probably best, unless you want to interact with interviewees or callers… then it gets limited.
  3. Going one-to-one? AIM, Google Video Chat, Skype, and FaceBook seem like reasonable bets. Given that FaceBook likely has your network established, I’m betting on it surpassing the others.

nalty merck