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May 24, 2006
Local Video: "Just Around the Corner"
2006 is certainly turning out to be the “Year of Video”, facilitated by the rise of online video sharing sites and broadcast networks’ moves towards shifting distribution (among many other recent events, like Google’s introduction of video to AdSense).
But one area where (at least) I haven’t seen much attention devoted to yet is local video.
The video format is able to convey and evoke very strong emotional messages, beyond the capabilities of pure text or audio. It has the capability to uniquely and immediately reach viewers in a very personal, visceral way. To me, this capacity appears to match extremely well with many types of local content. Information about people’s local neighborhood and community is one category that strikes at these very same chords of passion, accessibility, and intimacy.
While local television stations have traditionally struggled to attract audiences to their sites, the emergence of video of on the web enabled by broadband adoption has given them a second chance at finding a voice. This Cincinnati Enquirer article profiles how local Ohio stations – far from “media revolution” epicenters of Silicon Valley, New York, and L.A. – have embraced the web as a distribution outlet for their content. It’s a progressive to hear one of WCPO’s news directors, Matt Miller, saying,
"We're not just a TV newsroom anymore… We're a news content distributor on whatever platforms are out there right now - TV, the Web, podcasting, cell phones."
But the opportunity for local video goes far beyond the recasting/repurposing of traditional local television content consisting of news, weather, and sports. The ability to produce and reach a relevant audience with video content has and is continuing to become remarkably easier. This situation should facilitate the creation of local cultural, political, and entertainment content that wasn’t economically feasible under previous structures. I think that the potential for existing local-related online businesses (like cityguides, travel advisory, business directories) is clear. Supplementing existing offerings with video appears to be a natural extension of the information set which they provide.
The fuzzier opportunity which will work itself over time is what other types of local video content will be produced, that users will want to consume, and that advertisers are willing to support. Thoughts? It seems to me that both incumbent players and upstarts alike have a chance run with ideas in this open playing field. (The difficulty, of course, like with any company trying to amass local info, is the ability to generate/produce/obtain a critical mass of content for enough coverage to satisfy consumers of it.)
May 23, 2006
You Never Know Who You’re Going to Get
I couldn’t help but laugh when I read Paul Kedrosky’s post Tribble Trouble last week, where he laments that the number of people who show up at an entrepreneur’s first meeting at a VC’s offices can multiply,
“And then ... you show up for this first meeting, thinking that you'll have a nice, informal chat -- and wham! There are five people in the meeting. There's the person you emailed with, but there's also an an entrepreneur-in-residence, two associates, and a partner who comes late, then keeps going in and out, checking email, and generally acts like he/she is double-parked… A one-VC meeting turns into a two-VC gab-fest, which turns into a four-VC presentation, and so on.”
It’s indeed true that this situation can and does occur… often. But I think the situation can be proactively managed (see #4 here) by asking beforehand both who is invited and who will likely join the meeting. The answer may (read: will) change on the day of the meeting, but raising the issue will serve as a good guidepost and could lead to a discussion about how many people are appropriate, if need be. And if a more informal one-on-one conversation is ideal, directly asking for it makes intentions and preferences known. Also, while some VCs don’t drink coffee, I think meeting somewhere for coffee or breakfast, when it is purpose-driven and/or genuine advice-seeking, is a good way of ensuring an audience of one. For some reason, VCs don’t travel in packs outside the office.
Posted by at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)May 19, 2006
Three Things I’ve Been Thinking About
Perhaps not enough for a full-blown post, the following are three questions I’ve been mulling on recently:
Connectivity over content – or being content? I haven’t been able to shake the theme from the (long and somewhat dated academic) article written by Andrew Odlyzko, “Content is Not King,” which has stuck with me since I read it last September. Maintaining “that connectivity is more important than content,” the author cites historical industry revenue figures making the point that “spending on connectivity [point-to-point communications] is much more important for communication services than spending on content can ever be.” Reflecting what has happened in the past five years since this article was written, with the rise of social networking applications, perhaps we are seeing the rise of the true merging of the two previously distinct forms of communication. Afterall, what is MySpace et. al other than the communication between individuals becoming content?
Do the best entrepreneurs wear jeans? In the limited subset of entrepreneurs pitching an early-stage venture firm in the Boston area, it seems that there is an inverse relationship between how formally an entrepreneur is dressed during the pitch and how potentially exciting their endeavor. Of course, the correlation isn’t perfect, and correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it is notable, especially given the “stuffy” reputation the area has vs. the rest of the start-up regions. Perhaps it is a symptom of the expression of confidence wearing something comfortable.
Where have all the bloggers gone? It seems that many of my *favorite* bloggers have slowed down their posting in the past few months. Charlene Li just apologized to her readers about her recent absence. Jeff Clavier said “Long authoritative analysis is just not something I have time to produce these days.” Greg Yardley is “on hiatus… for the moment (obviously) because I’m busy.” Nivi hasn’t posted much since January other than some quotes. Seth Levine took a month or so off between posts, but is now back. And Russell Beattie has stopped altogether. I miss (reading) you guys. But I myself can’t start pointing fingers. Looking back at my own writing, it’s slowed down quite a bit as well. The difficulty (for me at least) is in generating unique meaningful content, especially among the multitude of voices in the blogosphere (as opposed to even when I started over a year or so ago), plus the time associated with doing that. As I continue, I think my blogging will continue to trend towards less frequent, but more thoughtful analysis, when I have something definite to say. I hope some of the others above will do the same – I, for one, am looking forward to hearing more from you.
May 13, 2006
Advertorial Podcasting
I’ve expressed my skepticism about the adoption of podcasting in the past, in addition to questioning what the term really means (and will mean in the future). So while I don’t put a lot of weight in the figures cited in this OMMA article, it does highlight some novel use-cases of advertorial portable audio content. The article opens, “While consumers who tune into podcasts have the ability to skip through ads, it's very possible they won't want to because the content they're downloading may actually be the ad.”
Some of the article’s suggested advertorial uses include choosing a nightlife destination or a car dealership, or a virtual tour of a retail outlet which consumers could listen to as they browse through the store. It quotes Kip Cassino, director of research for Borrell (the analyst firm which produced the report with the figures mentioned),
"Podcasting is a function of the capability of mobile technology, and the mobile phone is already used for a lot more than just communication… I don't think, in the end, that we're going to even call it podcasting, because what it's going to be five years from now is much more than just a transmission of information."
I find myself agreeing with his sentiment above, but just perhaps not his overly-optimistic projections. There is a lot of magic that occurs in advertorial content – where the content is the advertising, and we see many examples such traditional retailer catalogs, online shopping comparison engines, and job vertical search sites, just to name a few. This article opened my own eyes to yet another media type where advertorial can be applied: in portable audio content. When advertising audio is able to become location-specific (or at least location-relative), there is a lot of power there in the long run. That being said, I believe we’re a ways off from seeing what analysts can envision as turning into reality in the near term.
May 12, 2006
All Users Are Not Created Equal
Brad Feld called Josh Kopelman’s recent blog entry, 53,651, “a perfect post.” I completely agree with Josh’s fundamental premise – that there is a strong disconnect between new Web 2.0 companies claiming traction with plugged-in Silicon Valley geeks and real usage by “Mainstreet USA” consumers. Regular readers know that I’ve blogged about this situation myself in past posts The Divide Between Geeks and My Grandmother, Leaping from "Digerati-Facing Services" to "Consumer-Facing Services", and Between the Valley and Everyone Else.
I think that a greater point here isn’t that the first X number of users for a web service are irrelevant (as some have suggested), but that all users are not created equal. What really matters is if the current users of your service are in the eventual target market and how well they are interacting with your service. At our startup Sombasa Media, we found that the “quality” of the users – as defined by how active they are with the service and ultimately how monetizeable they are – varied greatly by how they were acquired. Paid search, natural search, affiliate programs, opt-in lists, CPA campaigns, CPC media buys, PR, recommend-a-friend, other viral traffic, etc. all had resulting different levels of user quality. So we tracked and measured these various traffic sources, paying attention not only to the top-line user & traffic count, but also the levels of quality contained within. The same should be said today as there are addition ways to acquire traffic (blogs, RSS SEO, MySpace viral “seeding”), including a profile on TechCrunch. It’s a matter of understanding the context of the user/traffic numbers in addition to the figures themselves.
In the end, having 53,651 users is a relative number for any consumer-facing web service. (They are irrelevant if they are all TechCrunch readers who will never use the service in the long-term.) What I would want to know is who they are, how they got there, and why they’re using the site.
Posted by at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)May 10, 2006
Discovery vs. Consumption
One thing that I’ve been noticing recently is the distinction between the venue for the discovery of media content and the consumption of it. It’s notable to explore, as media distribution dramatically changes, not only is the consumption of content shifting, but also the discovery is as well. And those shifts are not always parallel.
In my own personal experience, I can anecdotally observe these changes. Prior to having TiVo, I learned about new television shows in the ad promos between during the commercial breaks. Now as I skip through these, I am really not discovering new shows at all. Movies are the same way; I used to learn about them on television commercials and in the previews, now I only do through the latter (when I am forced to sit through them). I used to learn about new music from CMJ New Music Monthly magazine, but as its circulation has dwindled, so has the quality of its suggestions. You would think that I would benefit from music recommendation engines, like Pandora and Last.fm, but I haven’t found myself using them. I think that’s due to the fact that I don’t listen to music on my PC, but rather on my iPod in my car and while I am running.
Perhaps discovery has been traditionally most effective when it is directly integrated into the consumption workflow. See traditional radio as the perfect example – consumption is discovering, as playlists include new music in the linear format. But increasingly users have more choice to consume what they want, not what others put in front of them.
Anecdotally again, I’ve found most of the new content I’ve consumed (regardless of type) in the past year or two has been through some type of word of mouth. It’s obvious that discovery will increasingly include a social component to it, and technology will aid in that process. We’ve seen a lot of progress in the last year with respect to news and blogs, with tools that effectively personalize or prioritize the discovery of new content (sources).
I wonder, though, with the disruption of media towards digital formats, if the discovery becomes detached from consumption method, and if consumers will be increasingly frustrated about finding what they want to consume. As content producers scramble to find the right distribution outlet for their content, are they mindful of how consumers will discover it, wherever it is?
(On a side note, I completely realize that in my thoughts above I’ve committed a fundamental mistake that many VCs make – assuming that my own habits are like those of many other consumers. It’s often funny and frequently misleading when venture guys evaluate or explore a consumer-facing services through only their own eyes, as opposed to through those of the general population or the actual target demographic of the service. A topic for another post...)