Monday, March 17, 2008

social video and public broadcasting

In the midst of the videoplayer storm (almost every day there is a new service launched) I have been working on.. indeed making another videoplayer. There is however a very decisive difference in this player with other services. Most of them are aimed at us, users becoming videochannels. That's great, a well of new unknown talent comes on board, You Tube already showed this much. But..This player is aimed at getting "regular" broadcasting material into the the social web layer. The question then is how to get a videoplayer that can stand up against all these new initiatives AND add value to the experience of using and working with it?

We focussed on adding 'watching together" functionality to it. On getting video online "social" itself. What functionality do you need so you can share your viewing experience with others, most likely your friends?
You need to be able to comment and talk about the contents of the video. You need to be able to point out what others should watch, which particular scene..and why
You need to be able to "personalize" the video you want to place in "your environment", notably your webpage, profiling page etc. All of that and more we designed into a player no larger then the You Tube player. Where You Tube is adding - a lot - of social functionality AROUND the players, in their own website, we tried to get the most significant functionality also INTO the player. Off course we want to direct people to the website of the public broadcaster as well. This will happen because of the added value you can find in the landingspages (the reward to go to the website of the pubcaster is this good, you will). With "uitzending gemist" the pubcaster was one of the first in the world to have a large scale video on demand library available to the public. The service is inmensely popular, but.. it is a closed loop. Coming from a closed environment the movement here is to "open up" to the wishes of the public. To take the content and place it in your own context and enable you to "talk about it" with others. In some upcoming posts I will go deeper into the motives behind this, the things we learned so far and a little bit more about how to get video on the web more social. The answer is in the icing on the cake..

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great stuff Monique. I do enjoy your ideas. Personalization in video (and more specifically flash) is the next wave, that is here. Just as VDP (variable data publishing changed direct mail, so too will personalization change the video medium. Strokes on the keyboard change the voice-over.

Love your blog.

Mitch

www.twitter.com/CosmicHog

joy said...

Public media content delivery is happening without us.The barriers to entry are low, and many organizations apparently have much less process through which to wade.People in public broadcasting seem to view the role of new media primarily as a servant to their legacy services, not so much as a new way of accomplishing our mission.
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joycelorenza

Link Building

monique de haas said...

Hi Joy,

In my view (this is the dutch market of public broadcasting) entering social personal domains is very much a strategic act. As well as it is an act of securing position in new domains.It is also attempting to deepen the relationship with the material by letting the public choose fragments and place personal comments on their material. The Dutch Public Broadcasting is taking bold steps in the personal social domain. Following that, we need a new advertising model whereby we give the public a say in choosing what ad they are willing to let accompany their widget in personal domains. This is how we tried to set it up in releasing a widget for public programmes enabling people to place (fragments of) public programmes on their pages. We offered them a choice of 4 commercials to embed with their programmes. The choice for a commercial in itself is telling something relevant, a preference over other commercials offered, by the one your are placing in a widget on your personal page. It shows to others relevant to you (your friends connected to your personal page) what is your taste, your liking in this, that you are willing to share with others publicly

Anonymous said...

everyday new technology arise...it offers new features that we can surely use and enjoy..

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