Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Great Example of Video Ad - With Photos Only!



I talked to the Extraordinaries here at the Netsquared conference (we had breadfast) and they showed me their way cool video promo on their iPhone.

Easy to create - just use Comic Life, some photos, and edit together in iMovie or some other simple tool.

We'll learn more about these simple tools and how to make simple but effective videos in the July 18th class. Visit the UCBerkeley Extension web site to sign up.

Friday, May 22, 2009

East Bay Express Offers Video Ads


A new development in the rising tide of video ads that are professionally produced - the local free weekly in the East Bay today featured an ad for a new East Bay Express Videography service.

Ads are shot and edited by Jonathan Mann. A video slideshow costs $250; a real video $900 (the same as TurnHere).

Samples here.

Call the East Bay Express at 510 879 3700 for details.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Web Video Marketing Class - Announcement and Enrollment Now Online!



You can now sign up for my Web Video Marketing class at UC Berkeley Extension's web site. The class will be held Saturday July 18 in San Francisco.

Class details

Rave Reviews from Past Participants

• "Easy to listen to...expert knowledge."
• "Thank you! Excellent informative presentation."
• "Lots of stuff. Very inspiring."
• "Great Content/Info!"
• "Valuable Seminar - well worth the time spent here."
• "Very informative, great resources, on target."
• "Lots of info - very friendly!"
• "I learned a lot of online video and a lot of good websites to help me make video without thousands of dollars. Really great!!!"
• "Very deep knowledge of video/media. Good speaker. Good at soliciting questions and comments."
• "Good, lots of questions allowed. Nice Pace. Great documentation. Lots of student/teacher interaction."
• "Learned a lot. Great informative handout - love the websites. Wonderful presentation."
• :Good help for my business."
• "Very well informed and easy to understand instructions."
• "The best workshop I have ever attended at SBA!"

Vcasmo: My New Favorite Web Video Application for Businesses

Sample here...it displays your video side by side with slides. This sort of player used to be quite expensive: Vcasmo is free!

The embed below is just one of a number of examples on the Vcasmo site.

2.0 Cornucopia

I have to admit that I am totally amazed by how many sites I never heard of that look totally fantastic and cool that are contained in this presentation. Have a look! But be forewarned - it may take you off the path you're on because you will find so many new sites that extend your ability to collaborate and create.

VoiceThread

Oh dear - yet another new great tool! Check out the many wonders of VoiceThread.

The tour is good; the examples not so good - but imagine better ones - perhaps you'll make them!

Sketchcast: Way Cool

It's yet another new amazing web site where people can create - and share - content - Sketchcast. Here's a sample:



Could be a very useful tool for businesses.

You can also record your voice to narrate your Sketchcast.

Opinion TV - Want to Bring It to America?

Opinion TV - the folks behind the TV Taxi - have a great deal for you...they'd like to bring TV Taxi to every state in the U.S. and are looking for a partner. The deal is this: you trick out a vehicle with the cameras, mikes, and lights and staff it. Edit the videos and upload to a central site where you can mix and match footage with their audiences. Or not.

In Europe, Mazda is providing TV Taxi with a free vehicle for each country they're in.

TV Taxi is a great format - someone should jump on this right away!

For more info, or to contact them, go to www.opiniontv.eu.

This is exactly the kind of thing the world needs now.

YouTube to Uploaders: More, More!

When I first gave the original YouTube101 talk at BizTechDay in the fall, I opened the talk Jeopardy style - showing an answer. The answer was 13 hours per minute.

The question was How much video is being uploaded to YouTube?

I now have to revise my talk as YouTube today reports that 20 hours are being uploaded every minute - and they're egging the crowd on to post EVEN MORE - and providing a new tool so you can post video responses more quickly. This from the YouTube site:

May 20, 2009 | Posted by: Ryan Junee

Zoinks! 20 Hours of Video Uploaded Every Minute!

In mid-2007, six hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Then it grew to eight hours per minute, then 10, then 13. In January of this year, it became 15 hours of video uploaded every minute, the equivalent of Hollywood releasing over 86,000 new full-length movies into theaters each week.

Now, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and it is a testament to the fact that you've made YouTube your online video home. We couldn't have built this site without your commitment to sharing your thoughts, experiences, and creativity with each other. We have news clips and full-length shows and movies, music videos and how-to content, sports highlights and animation, short films, homegrown videos, and, yes, all the dogs on skateboards you can watch. There's an audience for every type of content on YouTube, and we hope that with all this video, you can find whatever it is you're interested in on the site.

We're still developing new ways to upload videos to YouTube. Today we're launching a feature that allows users to conveniently record a video response immediately after watching a video, making the YouTube experience even more social. When the video you're watching ends, an icon encouraging you to respond will appear in the player. Clicking on the icon will activate your webcam and immediately bring you into the conversation.

So thanks, and let's see if we can get to 24 hours -- a full day's worth of video uploaded every minute.

Ryan Junee
Product Manager
The YouTube Team

Monday, May 18, 2009

Long Form Video Sites Growing Faster

Is the online video world moving more toward TV on demand?

From today's NYTimes comes the story Social Media Eclipses Email, which shows the dramatic growth in both social media and online video. Time spent on social media sites has now eclipsed the time spent on email sites. This is a sea change in consumer behavior.

In addition, the article goes on to say something equally dramatic:

"Sites with long-form videos (averaging six to eight minutes) are showing much more growth and user time spent online than those with shorter videos."

is this all attributable to Hulu.com? One can't say yet, but....

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Opinion TV - Check out TV Taxi!

I'm going to the Innovation Journalism this week at Stanford and they're featuring this video on their site.

What a great way to collect opinions - check out this format! (Interviewing people in a taxi fitted out for this purpose).

Friday, May 15, 2009

Martha Stewart Tests Paid Online Videos - for Archives

From Memo Pad

CLASSIC MARTHA: Martha Stewart is about to try something most magazine publishers have yet to attempt: charging for online videos. Next month, Stewart will begin testing consumers’ appetite to pay for videos, which will come from archives that are not yet available online. The videos can be purchased at marthastewart.com and then downloaded onto a computer, iPod or mobile phone. Pricing has not been set. Stewart said she’s been trying to figure out how the company can charge readers for online content for several years although, for now, the broader digital strategy will continue with an ad-supported online model.

“We’ll see how it goes,” Stewart said, during a conversation with New York Times media columnist David Carr on Thursday that was mainly about celebrities using Twitter. They spoke at the DeSilva + Phillips “The Future of Celebrity Media” conference. Stewart now has more than 600,000 followers on Twitter, although she hasn’t figured out how to get them to also read her blogs. “I think we’ll define it more,” she said, adding she will test Twitter with more specific information on, say, weddings or gardening.

— Amy Wicks

Many companies do have gold mines of how to videos out of sight and out of circulation.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

"Use Your Words"

There's a lot you can do just with titles, as this little spoofy video from my friend Peter Hirshberg shows. Enjoy (and imagine some possibilities of your own). In this case, some great music provides much of the "secret sauce."

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Beating the Drum for Web-Styled Videos

You gotta love this new ad campaign from Jive, makers of Social Business Software (formerly known as "Communities" or "Knowledge Sharing" or "Enterprise 2.0"...it uses some of the great tricks we first saw in the Michael Wetz videos (text lines that change half the sentence, for instance) in a great animation ad. Check it out:

Friday, May 8, 2009

Nielsen Study: Mo Web Video Happening And It's All Good

Online engagement by Internet users is deepening, according to a new report on the online landscape released by The Nielsen Company. This increased engagement is in part a result of a shift toward video content and social networking as popular online subcategories.



Highlights Of The Report Include:
* The number of American users frequenting online video destinations has climbed 339 percent since 2003.
* Time spent on video sites has shot up almost 2,000 percent over the same period.
* In the last year alone, unique viewers of online video grew 10 percent, the number of streams grew 41 percent, the streams per user grew 27 percent and the total minutes engaged with online video grew 71 percent.
* There are 87 percent more online social media users now than in 2003, with 883 percent more time devoted to those sites.
* In the last year alone, time spent on social networking sites has surged 73 percent.
* In February, social network usage exceeded Web-based e-mail usage for the first time.

Be sure to read the full report - it's got lots of good graphs and visuals as well as great data.

Report