Tag Archives: Web 2.0

The Great Social-Media Consumption Project: Open Mic Time!

As you may know, we have two audiences for WillVideoforFood:

  1. Online-video industry advocates (agencies, bloggers, marketers, media). These people quietly graze for stories, but rarely interact.
  2. The online-video junkies and Nalts watchers. These folks are more active on the web, and usually keep this blog alive with a clever thread of comments– which is more interesting than the blog itself.

Well guess what? It’s “open mic” time for the latter group, and the former group can listen carefully as if they’re watching a focus-group behind a 2-way mirror! Let’s learn how hard-core online junkies daily consume media and interact with friends, colleagues and family.

You see, our media consumption patterns have changed radically in recent months and years. We don’t wake up and watch morning shows, and then check e-mail (unless you’re wifeofnalts). Instead, we consume via a customized, electronic intravanious drip of what and who important to us via RSS, e-mail, YouTube, blogs, and social-networking applications.

I encourage the curious to read the thread below. Anyone can post comments, but I hope all readers will take note of the insights below. I may try to summarize them in a future post:

  • What’s a typical day for you on the computer? What do you most look forward to, and how do you consume the information?
  • What’s changed most in the past year? Do you use e-mail less/more, or have new destinations you love?
  • How do you keep current on videos, news or new sites/tools that interest you? Do you find them, and share them? Or does someone you know help you find them? How on EARTH do you know so quickly when I post a new video? Do you use Google alerts to track certain words (like your name or a company name)?
  • What advice would you have to people who are trying to engage more in Web 2.0, social media, online-video and other communication tools?

I’ll start with my own typical day (see more). You may want to write your own description before reading mine so it doesn’t bias you…

Continue reading The Great Social-Media Consumption Project: Open Mic Time!

Battered User Syndrome: YouTube and Online Monopolies

Want your Gmail to replace your YouTube messaging? Sorry- but
here are some pretty thumb icons you can use to rate comments!

Who would have thought the market would be so beholden to YouTube’s inside-out design… half way through 2008? By now, I would have predicted that Web 2.0 would offer us endless options for customizing a video experience using someone else’s player. They can pay for the bandwidth and make ad revenue, but please allow us to customize, widgitize, and private-labelize.  You know- the open source, altruistic dream that borne Revver, and its open source API (whatever the hell that is).

Nope. Maybe that’s in the Web 3.0 upgrade. Not now. No soup for you.

Alas, market dominance means you innovate on your own terms. YouTube and Google were designed to solve a problem its founders felt, but the market didn’t quite know it needed. That works well when you’re in start-up mode or innovating, but can inadvertently spawn arrogance that hardcore users begin to resent. I’ve been an informal adviser to several smaller video-sharing sites, and found it very rewarding when those sites responded to our needs (or at least convinced us they were). Note: I disclose these relationships and they’re not paid — otherwise I’d lose my objectivity on them. And risk hating one less than another.

Now lately I’ve been confronted with some needs that are on the edge of YouTube’s functionality. So I did what any YouTube Partner would do: I went to both my dedicated YouTube technical liaison, Eric, and community representative, Brenda, to solve these issues. 
No I’m just kidding. They don’t take my calls either.

No, friends, we’ve got battered user syndrome.We don’t expect YouTube to fix itself. It’s tired after a long day of work, and we did spill its beer on the counter. So we’ll search for our own tools we can use on top of YouTube… despite it. The bad news is that we’re limited to offering this to people via channels we can control. The good news is that they solve problems that YouTube doesn’t see, doesn’t care about, or views as off strategy. The more bad news is that we don’t know what tools are safe or effective.

Suppose you had a cheese playlist and wanted to randomize it (like the Oreo contest entries) so each video gets a fair shot at being first. Or maybe you’re using the playlists as a free, copyright-violating jute box. Well you can’t do that. You’d want the Randomize YouTube Playlist script (mind you I’m not vouching for these things- I wouldn’t know what to do with them even if I could get past the porn ads and download them).

Then there’s the YouTube Search Script. I suppose that one allows you to customize search and embed videos based on parameters? Then there’s the “YouTube Script” which represents itself as a poor man’s custom YouTube (with that impossible promise, I’m guessing it’s a virus that turns your monitor into a camera and broadcasts your life 24/7 in Stickam). I am having fun playing with Overlay.tv (which is kinda like YouTube’s overlay tools on steroids). But I may do a promotion video for Overlay.tv… so more on that later. And don’t give me crap about promoting them because it’s like a skateboarder endorsing a skateboard brand. It’s cool. It’s why I pimp TubeMogul for free.

Anyway- share your own YouTube hacks below (not the zillion YouTube rippers, thank you). And don’t expect Eric or Brenda to call you back. Nope. Leave it to Web 2.0 to foster a monopoly where we love a website even when it beats us. We deserve the beating, though. We didn’t behave, and the website is under a lot of stress lately.

P.S. I dare someone to turn this post into a video blog and make it look like they’re not scripted. I’ll add a link here if you do. You gotta do it like Pat Condell… with articulation and enough emotion that you don’t look like you’re reading.

P.P.S. Domestic violence is not funny. Go get help, please, if you experience it. I am just using the analogy to exaggerate the learned helplessness we face with some technologies.