In a recent post, Video Nuze looks at the growing number of video-based “how-to” websites. The Video Nuze post highlights the logical popularity of how-to videos, asking:

How many of us would rather watch a video of someone explaining how to do something vs. reading a lengthy and often poorly-written guide?

Such sites have multiplied recently as a rush of well-funded competitors clamber for entry into the space. These companies have varied strategies, business models and content approaches. For the ad-supported sites, some strictly show professional videos while others focus mainly on UGC.

Both types of sites are seeing a good deal of buzz around advertising. One of the main reasons there is a lot of activity on the ad-supported side is that how-to videos sites deliver the highly-targeted and engaged audiences that sponsors crave. Great revenue opportunities exist for those sites able to aggregate enough traffic in a given category to attract advertising sponsors.

But with so many competitor sites crowding the space, how can each site effectively draw-in and engage users? With all of this video being produced, how will the companies ensure that when users search—either through Google or directly on their site—the most relevant content is delivered? Video content is at a fundamental disadvantage to text content in that it is largely invisible to Google and Yahoo. To build its traffic, 5Min plans to pursue widgetization, 3rd party distribution and SEO; this will be a good start, but SEO for video is non-trivial. That said, this category of video content lends itself well to speech to text to enable it to “plug-in” to the Search Economy. To succeed, these how-to sites must enable superior search and discovery of their videos. Solid video SEO and positive user experience through straightforward, accurate site search will be defining factors of the sites that manage to pull ahead of the pack.

The Chinese user-generated video site Youku.com (their name even sounds like YouTube!) closed Series C investment of US $25 million on November 19, according to Youku president Victor Koo. The company will use the $25 million to improve video service standards, expand the company’s sales and marketing efforts and increase research and development. While this announcement from Youku demonstrates that online video may be yet another market in China where Google finds some tough competition, the same questions remain for Youku as for YouTube—how can content producers make sure their videos are seen and how can all that seeing translate into profit?

In China, video-sharing sites like Youku face major barriers. Along with higher infrastructure costs associated with video storage, the Chinese government scrutinizes online video as harshly as it does TV programs. However with some strategic partnerships—such as a deal with Baidu, China’s most popular search engine—Youku has gained an early lead on other video sites since its launch last December. This already popular service claims “videos are broadcast more than 70 million times a day.”

With 77 percent of Internet users acknowledging that they have consumed online video and forty-five percent of user’s time online spent consuming content, it is no wonder Youku found firm financial backing. And China now has the fastest-growing online population worldwide. Second only to the U.S., China’s 160 million Web users represent the second-largest global market. A leading monetization model has yet to surface on either side of the Pacific however, with various ad formats vying for primacy but no single form taking the clear lead.

As we move into 2008, media companies will likely continue their ambivalent relationship with 3rd party distribution sites such as YouTube and Youku. Content producers will face similar frustrations, as they too look to spur consumption to levels meaningful enough to build sizeable revenue online. Connecting users to content—and finding the value in that connection—will be more important than ever as this market continues to grow and more and more multimedia floods the Web.

Just a few days after Current board chairman Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Price, the youth-oriented news and information cable network launched its new Web site Current.com. Unlike the old site, Current.com goes beyond a TV station feeder system in its offerings. With an increased degree of user involvement and social networking, Current now looks to be a full fledged multinetwork media solution.

The concept of Current.com, explains Chief Executive Joel Hyatt, came out of surveys showing that 70% of Current TV viewers had a laptop open as they watched. Hyatt describes Current as:

“…a new form of social media where viewers can create, engage, and influence news and information”

Current’s goal is to give viewers a greater voice in media while also giving them context for videos on the site. The network, which already allowed professional videographers to submit video news segments, moves several steps further with the new site by soliciting user feedback over the Web and converting submissions into online news and pieces for broadcast. What is striking about Current’s latest developments is how they address issues of brand control, dual-screen viewing, and interactive media consumption patterns.

Brand control and messaging

Advertisers are intrigued by the potential impact of online video when it comes to messaging and brand awareness, but they are also nervous about control. Video spreads rapidly across the Web, particularly when it is creative and quirky. How do companies get in on the online video trend without breaking the bank, spreading the wrong message through repurposed TV content that falls flat, or having their brand name show up next to objectionable or irrelevant content?

Current offers one possible solution. Gore asserts that Current’s platform gives advertisers the best of both worlds: brand control and zero production costs. Video ads created by consumers must adhere to certain guidelines and advertisers screen the clips to decide whether they should be distributed beyond the Current network. Additionally, Current.com acts as a hub where people can watch ads for the sake of watching ads—viewers are drawn to the clips in part because other users generate one third of the advertising content. When your brand has an ad on a site like Current.com, users may find it more entertaining—Current viewers prefer Vcams (viewer created videos) to traditionally produced spots by a 9-1 margin. Because of the eclectic, interactive nature of the Current network, advertisers may fret less over whether or not an ad will show up next to poorly targeted or objectionable content—at least while the ad is within the Current network. The question of control rears its head once more when the advertiser opts to move an ad into the wider Web.

Integrated two-screen experience

Just as the explosion of web video has advertisers excited yet hesitant, the TV industry is looking for how best to handle the competition and opportunity Web video presents. Current, thus far, is a success story of dual screen and dual industry integration. Realizing that the vast majority of their viewers watch Current programming while using the Internet, Current now actively acknowledges this dual screen viewing. By making the two screens complementary to one another Current provides viewers with an experience that mutually reinforces both TV and Internet platforms. Current does not stream online, so to enhance the web experience users tune in to their TV; those watching on their television set find out they can engage online, so they open their laptops and participate. There is no live feed of the Current TV broadcast on the Web—the cable and satellite companies were not fans of the idea—meaning Web users must turn on their TV to watch; the full Current experience is truly multiplatform.

The way we twenty-somethings want our media

Gore maintains that the best way to reach the younger web-savvy audience is to let us help create the content. Right now Current presumes an incredibly active consumer—the draws of the network and the site are interactivity, topic breadth and, I would argue, brevity of individual clips. There is also the chance that your content could make it onto the TV channel, allowing for the type of exposure my generation seems so taken with from our live journals to Facebook profiles to the videos we upload of ourselves doing just about anything onto YouTube. As Rafe Needleman contends:

“Current milks our fascination with being broadcast for all it’s worth.”

Still, in its present iteration Current—as a dual screen, interactive, multinetwork media product—reaches only a narrow population segment. “This is about being more actively involved in the news,” said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, continuing, “It presumes a pretty active consumer as opposed to a passive one.” The challenge for Current will be to expand their audience while maintaining the vivacity of their content and the conversational nature of their programming.

This past Monday Daniel Graf and Erik Abair launched Kyte.tv, one of the newest ideas in the realm of what Graf and Abair call “TV out of the box.” As advertisers and content creators look for ways to integrate TV into the Web 2.0 experience intriguing hybrids are cropping up–and Kyte.tv is one. The technology behind Kyte combines some of the hottest features of Web 2.0–user-generated content, viral video, social networking and blogging–with the metaphor of TV to bring it all together into a cohesive, interactive medium.

Kyte begins with users creating their own “television channel” which they can do either on the Internet or on their cell phone. Each channel consists of the photos, video, music, opinion polls and text that users upload. In order to entice viewers, you can embed channels in a blog, Web page or MySpace page. Viewers then log on to watch and interact with your channel by answering polls you have created and using Kyte’s live chat feature to talk to other users.
If successful, Kyte.tv will mobilize and destabilize our definition of TV. On the site’s glossary the question, “What is TV?” is answered:

A TV is an embeddable Flash player that is tuned to a particular channel which enables you and your friends to watch shows. You may also place a TV on your blog, website or social networking profile page and interact with your audience, no matter where they watch.

Kyte’s creators don’t just want us to think “outside the box”–they want us to become our own producers, critics and distributors. Oh, and if you still think of TV as that box in your living room, they would certainly challenge you on that notion as well.

Once enigmatically entitled “The Venice Project,” Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis’ Joost has begun stirring things up in the television industry, on the internet, and in the exciting, less chartered territory where the two inevitably–and sometimes uncomfortably–collide. Joost is the newest service from the innovators who brought the world KaZaA and Skype. As the recent deal with Viacom illustrates, Joost attempts to solve the conundrum of uniting television and the internet while benefiting consumers and content owners alike.

Two of the enticing aspects of Joost–particularly when compared with YouTube–relate to copyright and advertising revenue. These are the areas which make Joost most appealing to Big Media companies like Viacom, Inc. Unlike YouTube, Joost only allows copyright owners to add their content. Also distinct is the revenue sharing that Joost offers to partners like Viacom for ads played with their content.

It will be interesting to see what impact Joost has on the developing relationship between television and internet. Perhaps the television industry, more comfortable with Joost’s copyright protection and revenue sharing for their content, will be more willing to think outside the literal and proverbial box as they search for new ways to bring programming and advertisements to consumers.

A lot of exciting news has come out of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week in Vegas, including news on the iphone, ehome, and the 102 inch plasma TV. However, equally interesting are the advancements we’re seeing as big media companies partner with technology partners in an attempt to deliver their content to an audience that is becoming as or more comfortable in front of their computer as they are in front of their tv.

One company making good headway in this regard is CBS. In his keynote address at CES, CBS President Les Moonves highlighted such technology partners as YouTube and Sling Media. YouTube currently hosts some CBS content and is using the relationship to attract more of the highly coveted 18-34yo market. Sling Media is developing technology that will allow CBS online visitors to share snippets of video with other users instead of sending an entire file. And not to toot our horn, but PodZinger was also mentioned alongside these companies.

To wrap up his address, Moonves had this to say about the merging of big media and technology companies,

“Anything is possible,” Moonves said. “Audiences know that, content people know that, and innovators in the digital space know that. In the weeks and months to come, we’ll have a lot more news on how we’ll be working with the interactive community in ways both big and small,”

Pretty exciting stuff!

It’s digg’s second birthday and with that, it launched several new features, including a section dedicated solely to pocasts. The new feature allows you to digg either a particular podcast series or individual episodes of the podcast and also lists the most popular episodes according to the number of diggs.

Digg, a community driven site, started out two years ago with mostly breaking news content. With that success, digg is starting to branch out to more content-rich media like video and podcast. Community voting has been proven to be a highly successful model in creating buzz around breaking news and for digg to start branching out to video and podcasts is a sure sign that the online video industry will have a strong stand in the next stage of online media.

Om Malik of NewTeeVee writes,

“Digg is the latest social web filter to embrace video aggressively. A few days ago, StumbleUpon added video stumbling to its offering. As more and more video moves online, finding the good stuff is going to become harder and harder.”

Malik is right. There are ton of rich media online now that is waiting to be discovered. Digg has categorized the podcasts in different categories and the top “diggs” are already populated by already highly popular podcasts. Like some of the other smaller news item, you still need to do a lot of digging to find a less popular podcast with similarly “good stuff” as mentioned by Malik. We’ll just have to wait and see if the community will be able to turn that around and use digg as a platform to “dig out” other great content in the podcasting world.

Evan Williams (founder of Odeo) posted an interesting overview of podcasting companies. He compared the site’s popularity using Alexa rankings and added some of his own thoughts.

Interesting thing is that Evan combines all the companies together, even though they represent different categories. For example, a podcast hosting site would have a different target user compared to a podcast search site. (Podcast creator vs. podcast listener)

I’ve split his listings into different the categories below. It’s good to note that even though podcasting only started about a year ago, there are already around 20 podcast directories available. This reminds me of the time, back in the days when internet text content (or sites) could only be found in site directories and people were barely using search to find information. I am sure podcast search is going to change as more podcasts become available and people start to shift their habits to searching for more specific content within podcasts.

Content Creation
Podtech

Podcast Hosting
Libsyn
Hipcast
Blubrry (Also has a directory)
Gcast (Has a community)
Podomatic (Also has a directory)

Podcast Directories
Odeo (Podcast publishing available)
Podcast Pickle
Podshow
Podcast Alley
Podcasting News
Podcast.net
Podcast Directory.com
Plugged
Digital Podcast
Click Cast (Also has publishing tools)
Indie Podder
Podfeed
PodNova
Podcast Bunker
Podcast.com
Loomia
ZapZap
TalkShoe
Podcast Player
Yahoo! Podcasts

Podcast Search Engine
PodZinger
Podscope

Social Networking for podcast
Melodeo

Podcasting Trends and Tidbits

• Technology and travel seems to be the most popular topics for podcasting. Search for the term “technology” on PodZinger and there are more than 32,000 results and a search on “travel” has more than 19,000 results.
• Podcasting is current. Just like blogging, current issues dominate conversations. Discussions range from political issues between Israel and Lebanon’s conflict, to sporty topics like the upcoming football season.
• There is a long tail to podcasting topics. According to Forrester analyst Ted Schadler, there are flurries of podcasted material of all kinds, but then moves on to a slow tail off, “leaving only the most valuable podcasted material left.” Like bloggers, podcasters are passionate about the issues they talk about and their range of interests is reflected by the long tail of topics in podcasting.
• Businesses are moving toward podcasting. Many companies such as General Motors and Pepsi are experimenting with podcasting in their marketing efforts. They are starting to realize that the new medium could be a targeted way of reaching the iPod generation.
• Video Podcasting is the way of the future. Sites such as Rocketboom, 88Slide and others are creating new video content daily. Neilsen/NetRating recently reported that 4 percent of actively online U.S. adults are already downloading video podcasts, comparing that to 6.6 percent downloading audio podcasts.

Faithful readers of our largest daily here in Boston—The Boston Globe—may have chanced upon an article written by technology journalist and blogger, Rob Weisman, in yesterday’s paper that highlighted PodZinger as one of five Boston-area companies claiming its stake in the Web 2.0 world. Weisman addresses the small, but growing number of Web 2.0 companies popping up here in Beantown and venture capitalists looking at the new breed of tech companies gaining attention.

Speaking of PodZinger in the news, the company was featured in Mike Cohn’s article in Monday’s Red Herring. As you may have read, we’ve spun off from BBN and we’ve even moved out of the house (well, across the street).