[videoblogging] Re: the inevitable conversation about what we're doing
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Robert Scoble [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's interesting that I've gotten several emails in the past few minutes agreeing with me, though (funny too that they asked not to be dragged into this here). I've seen the death of communities before and this one sure seems to be in decline. Message traffic is down. Helpfulness is down. And evidence of beating up on leadership is up. I've seen this movie a couple of times. It typically forks when one group of folks becomes professional and another group stays indie. It happens in waves in the film and music business, and it happens on the interwebs. When blogging was fresh and new a contingent of folks got really upset that we--gasp!!!--paid bloggers for working on Engadget, Joystiq, Autoblog, TUAW.com, etc. Of course, those bloggers maintained their voice and ethics--they just got paid to do the same thing. The indie folks believed that commerce had no place in blogging, while other thought gee, this is fun to do for an hour a day... I wonder what it would be like if I could quit my job and do this full time? A portion, not all, of the folks who didn't grow either commercially or non-commercially started to look at the increasing profile of the other bloggers and get more and more upset. Haters hate... as Kanye would say. I'm no expert to the history of this group (i've been on and off of it lurking for a while), but it seems to be a similar issue going on in vlogging. One group is getting commercial success while others are holding on to the non-commercial roots. At the end of the day vlogging, blogging, twittering, justin.tv-ing, etc. can be done for any number of reasons. Some folks play music for a living, some folks live to play music... different strokes/all good. Everyone should be happy for each other and the choices they make. I never come down hard on the artist trying to make a living... it ain't easy. best jason
[videoblogging] Counting views in Facebook?
Why on earth doesn't facebook let you count the views on your videos?!!? (i.e. we put our videos here: http://www.facebook.com/video/?oid=18176448560 and have no idea if these are seen by 10 folks or 10,000). Lame! Folks are complaining about it here: http://www.facebook.com/video/?oid=18176448560 Hello Facebook?! j
Re: [videoblogging] Microphone/headset recommendation
Plantronics dsp 400 has worked really well for me over the years. Leo uses same one on TWiT I believe. J --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Mobile: 310-456-4900 http://www.calacanis.com | http://www.mahalo.com Executive Assistant: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: quietleader [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:39:27 To:videoblogging@yahoogroups.com Subject: [videoblogging] Microphone/headset recommendation Hello! I need a microphone or headset (with mic) for vlog voiceover projects. My hope is I can find something with decent quality for approximately $150. Anyone have any recommendations or advice? Many thanks, Warren Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[videoblogging] Re: Advice on how to get to 100-250k views a day (quickly)?
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Baron [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Speaking of Jason, he's most known for: Oh boy... I probably shouldn't even respond to something so libelous. However, this is so false I've got to correct it. 1. Stealing the idea and the people from Gizmodo to make the identical knock off- Engagdget False. I didn't steal the idea because the idea was Peter Rojas'. Nick Denton back Peter's idea first in the form of Gizmodo, we (the weblogs, Inc team) backed it second in the form of Engadget. For background, I offered Peter Rojas equity in Weblogs, Inc. and he gladly left his ~$1,200 a month job with Nick Denton at Gizmodo. Nick Denton promised Peter equity and never gave it him, we did. We invested our own money into Engadget which quickly--thanks to Peter and his team--grew to 3x the size of the incumbent Gizmodo. We sold Weblogs, Inc. (and without getting into exact details) Peter became a millionaire over night. 2. Not paying employees fair wages. False. What are you basing this on? We paid hundreds of folks at Weblogs, Inc. per month well over six figures for years. We paid the best rates in the blogging business (better than or as good as Denton depending on the time). When AOL bought Weblogs, Inc. we hired around 20-30 folks full-time. 3. Trying to steal Amanda from Rocketboom (only one day after news broke) False. How could we steal her if she left? She was a free agent and looking for work. AOL really wanted to hire her so we made her an offer (a very nice large offer). She took another large offer from ABC's. Are people not allowed to make offers? Would you rather talented folks not get offers when they've achieved success? After working for you should Amanda never work again? I'm confused. 4. Trying to steal top posters from Digg for Netscape False. We offered the top posters from digg pay for work they had previously not been paid for. We paid ~40 of them to work on Netscape/Propeller doing things like putting in high-quality stories, taking our false stories and spam, and cleaning up the mess that is social news sometimes. It was a really good idea and Propeller is the second largest social news site in the world. 2. Killing Netscape by making it into a Diggclone and then getting fired from AOL False. Jon Miller the CEO of AOL was fired and I left in solidarity within 24 hours. That's how I do I'm loyal. I started working with a fairly well known venture capital firm with ten days of that. Netscape was being shutdown when folks at AOL asked me what I'd do with it. I said I would build an editorialized version of digg where the news was fact-checked. We did, it worked. The only reason they moved it to it's own domain--from what I've been told--is that it is more valuable with a new name (i.e. in terms of a sale) and that redirecting Netscape's audience to AOL.com is highly profitable because AOL.COM is the most profitable part of the empire (and social news sites have a harder time making money). 3. Building a site called Mahalo which is suffering badly and no one likes. The 1.5 million uniques who've come in the last 30 days (our fifth month) might disagree with you. :-) In terms of Veronica you can be sure she has a much better deal than the one she had at CNET. You can also be sure she has much more resources behind her than ever. Good luck with that second show. all the best j
[videoblogging] Re: Advice on how to get to 100-250k views a day (quickly)?
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Jeffrey Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You've successfully launched and sold several media properties, Mr. Calacanis. You've also got a company, Mahalo, that has a marketing budget. In my opinion, folks in your league should pay for advice instead of getting it for free. It's not like you're a Rocketboom or a Epic--FU/Jetset, starting from the ground up on a shoestring, in the community with the rest of us, and including us in the conversation by asking one or some of us join you at Mahalo on a contractural or full-time basis to help you gain subscribers. You are a not a regular participant on this list, and I've seen nothing of value come from you since I've been subscribed. While it doesn't break any rules for you to come ask this question, I find it rather insulting for you to do so without offering a gig or valuable advice to one or some of the people in this community. Well, all the advice coming in is 100% transparent and open so we all benefit from it. It's not like I'm asking folks to tell me in a private email and hoarding the information. Also, I think folks have the option of NOT answering. In the other businesses I've run (i.e. Weblogs, Inc., Netscape/Propeller) I used the same process of being 100% transparent and giving out MORE information then I got in. Check my sharing of AdSense learnings on calacanis.com over the years. I gave out all our secrets and got rewarded with advice and good will over the long term. If something works I feel like sharing it is the best way to maximize value... At best, you're getting free consulting that devalues the hard-earned expertise of people here. Really? How so?!? I actually think it gives folks the chance to showcase their talent (if they want to). On LinkedIn Answers I got over a dozen responses and many of those were very good (ones here were better on average). Those folks all get to look smart and I think they would get more work from it. When does community-based advice to peers end and when does free consulting to professionals begin? Or, in other words, when do we start devaluing our own experience and expertise by giving it away gratis to people who could afford to pay for it? This is my biggest question as social media rises and communities help more and more with building of companies. Well, I think everyone can answer this for themselves by either giving or hoarding information. It's an individual decision... some folks do blogs giving tons of advice understanding that they will get increased consulting gigs from it, other folks have enough consulting gigs and decide to hold their advice close to their vest. Different strokes.. best j
[videoblogging] Re:Advice on how to get to 100-250k views a day (quickly)?
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, eric gunnar rochow [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Jason, welcome to the vblog group, we met briefly at VON Boston I guess I'm one of the minority here who are creating content that has commercial potential, though Gardenfork.tv does promote organic practices. Very cool... not sure you're the minority, you might be the silent majority. :-) Just from reading your post and the subsequent replies I learned a few things about getting the word out about gardenfork.tv and RealWolrdGreen.com. am working on a ning site as we speak. Thanks for posting your note, please post more. The four things that have come up most in advice on how to grow audience are (in order): 1. Make great product on a consistent basis (duh). 2. Use a super distribution method (i.e. put your video on every single service you can think of). 3. Use social services like Facebook (groups), Ning, Twitter, Pownce, MySpace, Delicious, Digg, Propeller, etc. to build community and showcase your work. 4. Use SEO-friendly titles to get search traffic (i.e. if you're doing a show about the new Tesla don't name it something clever like driving into the future but rather something people will type into a search engine like Tesla test drive). best j
[videoblogging] Re: Advice on how to get to 100-250k views a day (quickly)?
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Lan Bui [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Whit is the true value of getting 100,000 views in a day? Is it so you can get sponsors to be interested in your show? If you do what Rupert and Bill say about getting featured then sure you will get those views but what true value does it add to Mahalo Daily? Was and is your goal just to make money with Mahalo Daily? The goal of Mahalo Daily is to entertain, inform, and sometimes even help folks. We look at it as a stand-alone property that will also, on a secondary basis, sometimes inspire folks to use Mahalo for what it's good for (searching, research, how to articles, etc). So, at the bottom of each Mahalo Daily blog post we post a bunch of related links. Today we have a couple of articles including How to use Dopplr and how to book a cheap flight linked under the blog post. So, after watching today's show (which is very funny fyi... good job team!) a certain percentage (5-10%) of the audience might want to go deeper into the topic area a certain percentage of those might become regular Mahalo users (say 10% of 10%, or 1%). In terms of sponsorship we would consider a sponsor if they were in sync with the audience and Mahalo brand, but we don't need to have a sponsor because if we can get to 100k views a day the traffic from the searches would pay for the show (a... cue the sinister Calacanis/Darth Vader music). Yes, page views/search traffic at 50,000 a day range would pay for enough of the show to break even. Beyond what Jan said, which also would get you viewers, I know that building a community of genuinely interested people would be the best way go get valuable viewers. The better the community, the more interactive, the more viewers you will see come. Sage advice... we've got the core audience already thanks to Veronica's past work and a core audience of 70-125k folks coming to Mahalo.com every day. So, I guess the advice of slow growth is the best we've seen here. best j
[videoblogging] Re: Advice on how to get to 100-250k views a day (quickly)?
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, John Coffey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm with you Richard. I suggest Jason have lunch with Andrew Baron and relive the worst TWIT ever. I think you're referring to Rupert Murdoch?!? ;-) TWiT 57 is legendary now... Leo talks about not pulling a 57 or let's not 57 this one.. in the pre-interview. Very funny. j
[videoblogging] Re: Advice on how to get to 100-250k views a day (quickly)?
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Steve Watkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Whats really so bad about twit 57 anyway? I tried to listen to twit once and couldnt take it, but I just watched the video version of twit 57 all the way through. Sure, there were some moments where too many people talking at once wasnt good, but I found the show interesting. Unless the video version is edited, I didnt spot any legendary row, just a mildly spirited discussion, which was fairly revealing and thus interesting. The audio version was a disaster... the amount of noise was crazy. Some folks like the spirited debate between me the Baron, some folks didn't... i thought is fun! :-) And the Murdoch comments were nothing compared to the brief moment at the end of 2006 and start of 2007 where a few 'would be media moguls' stated their aspirations in even more ott fashion, only for those plans to wither away without much fanfare or explanation. No comment. I got rather passionate about such things at the time, disgusted by the idea that a new breed of gatekeepers were trying to bring themselves into existence, because that seemed like it would destroy some of the things that make blogging and vlogging have such potential. So whilst I admired the fact that rocketboom didnt seem to be selling out in the usual sense, for money, I became disturbed by some possible signs that Mr Baron was seeking to achieve a different sort of power. I actually think he's a hard working, smart guy... he created something unique at a unique time. I admire him for having big aspirations and who knows, some day he might become Murdoch. I mean, it could happen. That being said, I think the folks who got in blogging and podcasting first got to grab a lot of land and look really smart when the value went up myself included. When there were only two gadget blogs it was easy to be #1 or #2... today? Well, today there are 500+ gadget related blogs. In a strange way Im sort of sad that nothing much has happened, I was looking forward to seeing what would occur. I imagine to witness the emergence of a potential mogul of the new media world, we need a far more ruthless character with an iron will, and a plan that is more detail than dream, to give it a go. None of the a- list/controvertial/opinionated/whatever characters, or your confrontations, live up to the hype. I think you'll see some of the video network folks make a go of it... Rev3 and NextNewNetworks seem to have solid models of controlling show costs while keeping value high--and publishing on a regular basis. Regarding Mahalo and promotion, I would like to know stuff about promotion options that are well beyond the reach of the individual or those with more modest funding etc. Do you ever consider advertising in traditional mass media? I don't believe in buying advertising for startup companies... I've always believed that if you make the best product in your space the world will find it. I'm probably making a mistake in that belief, but it's worked for me for a while now so I'm going to stick with it. When I have someone call me and say buy a $200,000 advertising buy and we'll send you 10,000 folks a day for the next six months I think to myself... hmmm... maybe we could find someone uber talented and put a couple of talented people around them and make a show that will bring in 10x. Plus, if you own the show it grows forever... so, it's much better deal for us to build a great show then give the money to some radio station or website to send us some transient traffic. If we do 250 shows over the next year and they each get 500 views in the archive on average that's like 100k+ people a day visiting the site. That's really cool... the asset value of archives is going to be great I think. Own your master tapes if you're going to do a deal with PodShow or PodTech or Rev3 if you can :-) best j
[videoblogging] Advice on how to get to 100-250k views a day (quickly)?
We launched Mahalo Daily with Veronica Belmont last week as some of you might know. You can find the show at http://daily.mahalo.com and on iTunes. We're hosting it at Blip.Tv (for now) but considering some other options since folks have been pinging us. I'm looking for some advice on what we can do--other than make the best show we can--to grow the view to 100k+ a day quickly. We did over 120k views in the first week (about 12-37k views for each of the first four shows) which is much more than I thought we would. We've got our iTunes page running and we're syndicating the videos to YouTube and Facebook. We've also started a Facebook, Ning, Flickr, and Twitter groups/accounts to compliment the program. They are getting nice pickup. On a business level, I'm wondering if there is anyone out there who can bring in 100-250k views a day for show, perhaps in exchange for exclusive hosting rights/advertising rights or something (i.e. Yahoo, AOL, YouTube, etc). Anyone have an distribution tips? Has anyone done deals like this? Mahalo for any help... best J i blogged about this here: http://www.calacanis.com/2007/11/11/congrats-to-tyler-and-veronica-on-an-amazing-first-week-for-mahalo/
[videoblogging] Re: Advice on how to get to 100-250k views a day (quickly)?
--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Rupert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This might not be the right place to ask those questions. Most (not all) of the producers here are working organically and personally with much smaller audiences and are creating uncommercial content. Got it. Thought that discussions about distribution channels might be in the mandate since I've seen them here before, but if not please do delete! But here's my two cents: You want regular six figure viewing figures, I'd say the only guaranteed way to do it from a standing start is to get featured on Youtube every time. I would imagine, given your YouTube has come up a lot so I guess we should talk to them about distribution. I agree about the value of those viewers and the horrible behavior. In some ways I guess it's like getting on the front page of digg: you get some traffic but you also get abusive comments from the kiddie/anonymous coward contingent. My feeling is that to get any value or meaningful response from your viewers, you need to build audience and loyalty organically. All the social network/social media groups you've set up are a good start. Agreed. We're getting a great response from Ning (http://mahalodaily.ning.com), Facebook (600 or so memebers), and Twitter. But they're not a quick fix. Or a road to instant viewer riches. Agreed again. I think they are good at creating a space for your existing users to get together. I advise you to look at EpicFu (formerly Jetset) - Zadi and Steve have done it about as right as possible, I think. They've been developing their show and their fans for a long time, and are now getting 1m views per week. They cover a lot of ground, screen on multiple networks as well as their own site and work very hard at it. They have their own social network, which is integral to their show. Seems to work well for them. Will do... those guys certainly know what they're doing and have been at it for a long time. I also advise you not pay any attention to my advice. I'm a videoblogger. I'm happy with a two or three figure audience, not six. I want to keep personal contact with my viewers. I have nothing to sell and no intention of making it my business. None of my opinions are based on any experience of building a promotional show with a big audience. Good luck with it. Actually, I think your advice is sage... focus on the organic and stick to your knitting. The goals of our podcast and a personal podcat are certainly different, but the passion is the same. LinkedIn has like a dozen answers including a VERY funny one from Leo from TWiT. http://www.linkedin.com/answers?viewQuestion=questionID=128692askerID=24171 best j
