Debating the future of online video
July 28, 2008 · · Comment
Beet.TV hosted a discussion at Stanford University recently about the state of online video among leaders from the technology industry, the venture capital community and media.
CNet’s Charles Cooper and the San Francisco Chronicle’s Phil Bronstein both summarize the gathering.
“The thing I find hardest to struggle with is how the different business models will work,” said Kleiner Perkins’ William Hearst III. “I still think there’s value to people who make a career out of news gathering and don’t make a lot of mistakes.”
Bronstein says: “Here’s what was striking, though maybe only to me: the issues being discussed by these genuine brainacs were the same ones I’ve heard come up at nearly every panel, forum and blogosphere discussion about on line content/the web/journalism I’ve horned in on.”
A) Technology. These guys, and they were almost all guys, had plenty of opinions and experience with technology, and they’re already into some very cool toys, though those toys should not be, someone warned, “bolted-on innovations”. But they were unsure where that technology would take video and its audiences (except to the universally agreed upon “multiplatform.”)
B) Biz models. Where are they? Anyone seen those things hiding somewhere? YouTube is cleaning up, but, like web advertising in general, you can count on one hand the companies that are getting all the ad dollars. Get bought by one of them or starve. Viewers still, for the most part, don’t pay, those rotten ingrates.
C) Content. The theme I also hear at all of these things is that the future of journalism and, to some extent, larger content generation, will be a pro-am combination - amateurs providing digital information and professionals interacting with them…somehow. The spectrum runs from YouTube, where as Mr. Grove noted, people put up pretty much what they want and then the YouTube folks “curate it” (which means they don’t do much with it at the moment other than organize and tag it), to the more traditional control model where professionals accept receipt of information but control every aspect of how, where and when it appears.
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