Archive for October, 2009
Accelerating Toward the Future of Content
Three years ago I was Fresh Off the Car, having just graduated from Syracuse, and completed the pilgrimage to Los Angeles. I was at a bar (Most likely El Guapo, since everyone starts there. It’s like the WME mailroom of LA bars.) and got into an… altercation with a lovely lady about the future of entertainment. All comments about my choice of bar conversations aside, I claimed we were five years from a complete entertainment transformation via what we refer to as the Internet.
Today, that leaves me two years to say, in my best Nikki Finke, TOLDJA!
Google Wave: The emergence of a new Ecosystem, the Platform to Save Us All
I’m one day into the private beta of Google Wave. There are about one million people signed up and using it, while the rest of the world still clamors to get in (A co-worker sold an invite for $20 yesterday, and sign up URLs are going for $75).
Why is everyone stumbling over themselves to get an invite?
Google has positioned Wave as the next evolution in e-mail. That’s a vast understatement. So vast, in fact, that it may do Wave a disservice in the next few months as we get up to speed. From what I’ve seen, Wave is not going to kill ‘normal’ e-mail. It is going to kill off a lot of other services and re-invent the way we interact on the web. But, my gmail account isn’t going anywhere.
JK Wedding – 12 Million Views thanks to ‘The Office’
As I predicted, the JK Wedding video had a huge spike thanks to the Office Season Finale spoof. According to Mashable
According to Visible Measures, prior to the comedic television spoof, the video was averaging around 105,000 views/day. Immediately following Jim and Pam’s TV wedding done JK-style, however, the original once again got passed around with alacrity with over 400,000 views in a single day.
If only Jill and Kevin had a rev share with YouTube, they would have been able to pay for those silly brown suits.
The Facebook Biography or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love my Lack of Privacy
Back in the bad good-old-days; Before Facebook, AOL, Compuserve, BBS’s, DARPANET, and computers the size of that lady I see in Coffee Bean every morning, peoples lives were mostly private. You’d have to put in some time and true effort to let the world know what you thought about last nights episode of 3 Stooges or Lassie. Now we expect it via Facebook, Twitter, etc.
My brother went to Cornell which got Facebook shortly after Harvard. The second he told me about it, I was ready to sign up (Of course, the second he told what Middle School lunches were like I was ready for that too. Meatball subs?!). The day Facebook opened up to Syracuse I was there. Since then, I’ve had a handful of serious girlfriends, crazy nights, cross country adventures, scandalous apartments, and various forms of employment. All these events are marked by status updates, videos, pictures, and wall posts. Facebook (and to a lesser extent MySpace, YouTube and Twitter) contain my complete life history starting from my sophomore year in college. I’ve willingly given up so much more private information than the watcher of 3 Stooges would have ever imagined.
I wonder, what could Facebook tell me about myself?
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Billions and Billions
In 1994, Apple Computer began developing the Power Macintosh 7100. They chose the internal code name “Carl Sagan”, the reference being that the mid-range PowerMac 7100 should make Apple “billions and billions”.
Today YouTube announced that they serve one Billion videos a day. So in honor of that, is this:
NBC Loves Random Dancing and Transcends Mediums in the Process
Last nights Season Finale of ‘The Office’ ends in the epic “Office Wedding Dance’ (above). Leave it to ‘The Office’ to transcend mediums and spoof this popular viral in a way as… touching as the original. In fact, it’s probably more touching. We’ve been rooting for Pam and Jim for five seasons. We know the Dunder Mifflin crew in an intimate way that only television (At least, for the moment) can create.
I wrote about the original JK Wedding Dance previously and it’s now more important than being Sony’s #8 music video on YouTube (And I bet that will rise the ranks for a few days following the Office spoof). It’s a new kind of Traditional and New Media merge – One of content and ideas rather than technical or distribution paradigms. It sets a precedent that it’s ok for TV to copy the Web. Audiences will get it.
The Music Industry’s Gotta Feeling
Sure, there are production snafus, but the 172 communication students (And boy, Com majors really are the same everywhere) who put together this one-take ‘lipdub‘ did a damn good job. Allegedly only took them two takes, but I assume hours of planning. Impressive stuff.
You know what else is impressive? Half a million views in two weeks. You know what is smart? Instead of removing the video from you YouTube due to copyright infringement, it is – you guessed it – Monetized.
Is the music industry finally starting to get it? Perhaps there IS hope in this new world! Now, lets find a way to get all video content monetized and end the damn Piracy Witch Hunt.