There's one simple thing I must point out. Who stands on the soap box all day?
The simple fact of the matter is that the average vloggers post what, 3 minutes total video footage a week if even? The power law isn't really much different then this mailing list. The majority simply read or lurk. This doesn't mean they don't have the power to speak up, the soap box, when they want to. That's accessibility. I said we could all have our soap box, not all stand on them all day around the clock.... and who would want to. The economics are completely different for communications in cyberspace. For one you don't have to communicate in realtime allowing you to catch up with someone's vlog once a day, a week or once a month. Time is removed from the equation and becomes abundant. If I don't respond to your email imediately but in a week from now, it's still effective communication. This is not true in physical world conversations. This medium works because you listen on your time, where you want, in the manner you want. These are all issues of accessibility. Just like the Blackberry and email the more ubiquitous and accessible the viewing methods and the producing methods the more power the medium will become. All we need do is grow the platform. Beyond the dekstop, the ipod, the PSP, the set top box, cell phones like the nokia n93 and n95, and set tops. In order for these platforms to be viable as mechanisms of communication they must be end-to-end... they must be utilizeable as viewing and producing platforms by everyone, not just a few select videos as gootube and now revver intend to do with Verizon. The value isn't just in the long tail... that might be true of movies, and music and books... but we're talking communications, like the cell phone, the value is ALL tail. What value would youtube be to you if you could only access 5% of the videos google or verizon selected for you? The idea is stillborn, bankrupt. In order for verizon to be a legitimate platform or anything more than a insignificant token we have to have access to any video blog we like. Anything else is like having a cell phone that only allows you to speak to other people using the same cellular carrier. The value is all in the tail, it's all tail, everything is tail in communications. It's simply the "network effect". It's funny that providers of basic communications, cell phone carriers, suddenly think because they're dealing with videos and not realtime voice communications that the netowork effect doesn't apply. Thinking that everyone is going to watch the same videos is like assuming that everyone is going to want to call the same telephone numbers. ESPN mobile made this assumption... that people would buy phones and pay for services just to watch a football game or baseball game from ESPN. This is completely contradictory to the nature of a personal communications device... the parellel, the convergence is between voice communications and email... such as the blackberry... or what about voice, email, and an RSS aggregator? And soon... voice, email, RSS text, and RSS with image, audio and video podcast. It's got to be what the user wants... there can be no gatekeeping of content on networked service... the expectation of accessibility only goes one way and that is people constantly want more access. The internet has permenently changed expectations. Just as noone goes from having 500 channels of cable to wanting 5 broadcast channels... noone goes from having access to millions of blogs, and news sources, and email, and videos, and photoblogs, and such as can only be found on an open web and goes back to wanting only ESPN games on telephone. They value proposition for such gatekept services is forever blown. It's got to by my friends videos, my friends photos, my peers blogs, my email, my family photos. It's so ironic to me that people like verizon and microsoft with the zune are STILL coming out with services and making deals around the assumption that the media on their platforms belongs to some company somewhere. I already pointed this out with the verizon / gootube deal... but it's also extremely obvious with the zune. It automatically assumes the media on your device is not yours... and keeps you from sharing it. These are the assumptions of a bunch of lawyers and beuracrats in board rooms in some of the largest conglomerates in the world. It never even occurs to them that it could be YOUR song, your podcast, that it could be creative commons... that the media could be anyone else's other than theirs... and that even if it is someone elses media not theirs that people might feel differently about sharing it. COpyleft and creative commons and fair use don't even exist in their vocabulary. These are still all issues of accessibility. Today that minimal standard for access in the video space is being able to distribute a url via email or IM, or to embed a video or link to it in your blog, but the next frontier is beyond the desktop. Why must one be sitting in front of a computer? Why must one be online always connected with a broadband connection in order to watch the latest video. As sure as the connection to the telephone became untethered with the cell phone standards for access are not fixed, they change rapidly. I'm betting my money that in a year or two's time that Flash no longer will cut it for accessibility because it can't go beyond the desktop, it can't go offline, it can't go portable, it can't be downloaded, or cached, and it cannot become unhinged. It's got to many technical and hardware requirements and is to proprietary to go where video needs to go in the next couple years. In short it's accessibility challenge has already been more than seeded in the architecture that is video and audio podcasting... a technology which completely contradicts it. Peace, -Mike mmeiser.com/blog mefeedia.com On 11/29/06, deirdreharvey2002 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Wow Mike, that is a really awesome piece of writing. I totally agree with > you about almost > all of it and really commend the passion. > > Not that I am really coming from a strong place given the number of months > (3?) I've been > arsing around with my blog rather than posting anything. You can't really > get much less > accessible than "not made yet". > > --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Mike Meiser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > > 3) And most importantly because YOU are *accessible* to your viewers as a > > real live person, to respond to... to correspond with... to email, to > > comment on your vlog, to IM with... and even because they too like you can > > post a video on their vlog in response as your equal... there is nothing > > like having a conversation eye to eye... In the real world if we all got > > soap boxes none of us would be able to be heard, but in cyberspace we can > > ALL have our soap boxes and we can all have an equal opportunity to bring > > something to the table. Try getting that type of access with any > > personality on TV. > > This I will quibble with, but just a little. I love the bit about being > accessible to your > viewers, but I think that lots of soapboxes in cyberspace is just as bad as > lots in the real > world. > > Watching other people's work, commenting, paying attention, involving > yourself in > conversation is just as important to my mind as making videos and publishing > them for > other people to see. It's the mutual engagement that makes this stuff > special. The active v. > passive discussions often frame active participation as media creation, and > that strikes me > as a pretty impoverished vision of participation. > > Being a producer of media may be harder work than being a consumer, but I > guess a world > where everyone is a producer but nobody is listening to what anyone else has > to say is > almost as limiting as one where only a few large organisations can produce > and distribute > media. > > So to sum up: soapbox = boo, active engagement with other people = yay > > > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > >
