I have been meaning to write about this topic for a long time. The linchpin has been discovering this presentation via Mark Cuban’s blog, who knows a thing or two about online video himself given he is the chairman of HDNet and sold Broadcast.com for a bajillion dollars.

This slide deck is from Netflix. Its very honest and insightful into where this company is going, the opportunities, the threats and the future of entertainment. Check it.

My own personal thoughts

What’s really pissing me off at the moment is my data limit on my ISP and the random wi-fi disconnections. It happens when someone in my family yells out:

“hey we’re reaching our limit! We’re X% over, stop watching online video!”

Clearly, we do not have the infrastructure or the networks yet that can cope with high usage, fast internet speed. Nor am I on the correct data plan. YET. I do hear there’s this thing called the NBN being built and WiMax.

I love watching movies and tv shows. I love watching stuff on Youtube, tvshack, from blogs, friend’s videos on facebook, Hulu, etc… I smashed “How To Make It In America” in like 3 days (8 episodes makes it easy). I’ve just watched Book of Eli, A-Team, Hot Tub Time Machine, Zombieland, Invention of Lying, one episodes of Gruen Transfer in the past 2-3 weeks.

On average I watch several videos a week. I’ll also throw in some UFC action, NBA (in season), worldcup, Masterchef, Underbelly, etc… The majority of these I watch from my computer or from my tv.

I’m telling you – the future is going to be streaming. If I miss an episode of Masterchef or Underbelly on tv, I watch it streamed online. It gets posted up by the Network the following day. It’s just so much easier watching it online when I want to.

The alternatives in Australia suck

I can’t say that I’ve watched many movies online. Because the better services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon are not available in Australia. There are ways around it, but I can’t be bothered. Its too much effort. The ones that I can access for streaming do not have great quality. Plus my wifi connection will drop out at some point and I do not want to stream it again from the start or lose my point in the video.

Theoretically speaking, downloading means that I can’t watch it immediately. I would have to wait til when the download finishes (which could be the next day). But sometimes, you have a hankering for a certain movie or tv show. You don’t want to wait. So you have to settle for an alternative. We, well me specifically, are dreaming of a world where this stuff is on demand and affordable.

Currently, Netflix has a leading position in the consumer market in the US. It charges $8.95/month for unlimited streaming of its catalogue. It is focusing on the long tail – not the new releases. This is partly because the studios do not want Netflix to be showing new releases before it is in DVD rental / sales, as it could cannibalise those sales and they probably have existing arrangements that Blockbusters, etc… would have first release.

In Australia, we also have Telstra which has a online streaming consumption model and also iTunes. But these are either too expensive, alacarte and not subscription based.

Parrallels with music

With my music, I do not have a collection on my laptop anymore. I have some music on my phone. Now, I just stream music online. One of my favourite sites is 22tracks, where the music is available to be streamed and has been curated into the newest tracks and by genre.

I occasionally do download music such as free mixtapes or free albums which the artists or music blogs give out. I haven’t purchased music in a long time. The last time was in the States when I bought some mixtapes from Amoeba in Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles 3 years ago. Before that, it would be several years again when I was working down the road from Dirt Cheap CD’s. I’d wander into there and pick up a few hip hop CD’s during lunch.

For me, music has become a commodity. I still love my music. But I no longer want to purchase it or have the need to. I don’t even really download it anymore. I can stream it on demand. I can usually hop onto Youtube and find the songs that I like. There are lots of paid music services out there like Spotify, LaLa, etc… but I think its EXTREMELY difficult to get people to pay for music now, even if its unlimited streaming and storage in the cloud. As consumers are simply used to free. And many of them are not prepared to pay. The horse has bolted.

Back To The Future

I feel that movies and tv shows are also going down this path. We have so many movies available via P2p networks. People have more movies than they can watch. Because they have so many movies, it also devalues them, turning them into commodities.

The future is streaming movies. A mix of tv, cable and online streaming. The question is whether people are prepared to pay for this on demand access. Or will we simply shove better ads into them to entice purchase of goods/services.

I’m out like Australia in the world cup,

Matt Ho.

This is the local version, Sydney State of Mind which my friend Cheryl sent to me recently. I actually heard them mixing / playing it in the Nova station. Check it!

Yeah, Im out a Blacktown, now Im in Maroubra,
Right next to the Seals, Im Sydney forever,
Used to live in Newtown, couldnt dig the people there,
With the crazy coloured hair and you can always see their underwear,

So I hit up Carringbah, did my time at bizzos,
Saw some good bands and did some talking with my fists though
Started work at Panthers, uniforms an insult,
Still remembered as the Tiger Woods of Aqua Golf

I’m out like Empire State of Mind remixes,

Matt Ho.

Youtube concert

At approximately 2.30pm on Monday AEST, U2 staged the first live streaming Youtube concert online. And I witnessed it!!

U2 is easily one of the world’s best known bands. It’s probably not the first band to stream a concernt online, but the first of the major bands to do so and to such a large audience. I’m by no means a huge fan of U2, but I wanted to be part of this historic and momentous event. Plus I got to watch a concert for free!

I tuned in for about 2 hours and watched it in between doing work. I had it streaming in the background and witnessed an awesome concert unfold. They played a lot of songs that I was familiar with but didn’t know the names of and got me reacquainted with a lot of their music.

There was a bit of lag at times (about 3 or 4), but overall the streaming was smooth and there were heaps of different camera angles. Considering that there were in excess of 1.3 Million channel views, that was a pretty impressive job by Youtube. Their cloud servers must have been running at max capacity!

Monetisation Streams

As I was watching it, I was talking to my friend @dacheah about the monetisation possibilities. I feel that this was a public demonstration of Youtube’s streaming capabilities. This was a free concert, but imagine how much advertising, publicity, and album sales were made in the lead up, during the concert and post concert.

On the right side of the streaming video, you could purchase a download of the album off iTunes. Or donate to Bono’s Red charity or find out new information about their new album. These are just the direct actions you can take. By using iTunes it allows people to make an immediate purchase and receive the album on demand, an even cheaper distribution method.

But what happened indirectly?

They were able to bring in people like myself who aren’t big U2 fans into their music. Created new fans and advocates of the brand.

Given all that is happening in the music industry with the profileration of free downloads and pirating, there needs to be alternative money stream. Stream the concerts for free and entice people to purchase singles, albums and merchandise.

However, I think the biggest play would be to charge people access to live streaming concerts. This could be Youtube’s monetization model, have people pay $5  -10 to watch a world class concert. You could potentially have a subscription service as well, whereby people pay a yearly fee and get access to number of online streaming concerts. I’d also pay for this.

The ability to use streaming online video is now quite easy. We used it for our basketball game via Livestream (formerly Mogulus).

Back of the Envelope numbers

Using some general online stats that only 10% of people would pay for an online service, lets assume that 130,000 of the 1.3m viewers would have tuned in @ $5 a pop (lower end of the scale).

$5 per viewer x 130,000 number of viewers = $650,000  Revenue

Video Costs

1. Streaming costs

Youtube offers branded channel but their not cheap. If you advertise more than $80k with adwords, you can get it for free. They also have free accounts as well at the public level. But I feel that its going to be bundled together with streaming, storage space  similar to how Livestream and Ustream do it. Let’s do a yearly calc based on Livestream current costs:

1 Channel with 25GB streaming, HD up to 1.7 MPS: $350 a month

20 premium channels with 200GBs streaming, HD up to 1.7 MPS : $1,250 a month

I assume that there will be an option in the future for premium users for 1 Channel with 200 GBs available for larger concerts. It could possible use Google App Engine or Amazon EC2 which will bring the cost down. However, lets go with $1,250 since this is a publicly available cost. Give that 130,000 viewers watching video could potentially smash the server, lets multiply the cost of streaming by 5 fold to be ensure there is enough capacity to handle the extra traffic.

I’ve chosen a yearly fee because the band will want to maintain it and possibly do a number of concerts.

$1,250 per month x 5  x 12 months = $75,000

Note that this is a variable cost because it can be cancelled or use more/less bandwidth. But you will probably want to retain it and the more concerts you do, the more the cost will be spread.

2.  Camera crew for 2 hour concert

Camera crew will be needed for full day to prepare, stream and record,  dismantle stuff. This staff is in addition to existing sound crew. I don’t want the regular sound crew worrying about online streaming in addition to the concert as well.

This could be you streamed online....

Lets say 5 are needed – one in the booth to check video, three camera people to give different shots (upclose, in the crowd, pan wide), maybe an extra sound guy. That’s 5. I use 8hrs for a full day required for a 2hr concert.

$80 p/h  x 8hrs x 5 staff =  $3,200

3. A couple of IT and social media guys

On standby to monitor streaming, computer/servers crashing, social media feedback, commenting, drive traffic – 3 staff. I’ve chosen the figure $120 an hour to get more quality staff with experience.

$120 an hour x 8 hrs x 3 staff = $2,400

Total costs

$75,000 streaming + $3,200 camera crew + $2,400 IT staff = $80,600

$650,000 Total Revenue – $80,600 Total Cost = $569,400

That’s approximately $570,000 profit.

I haven’t included advertising costs, but this could be done in conjunction with their concert promos i.e. a URL at the bottom of the concert poster, twitter updates / facebook updates, email, radio. The cost of this should not significantly increase current advertising spend.

Of course not all bands are going to have this kind of fan base like U2. Smaller bands can cut costs by hiring less staff, opt for a smaller online account, but I dont see how they couldn’t take advantage of this.

Plus you also need to add in the profit from ticket gate receipts, album sales, tshirt sales, iTunes downloads, etc….

Final Thoughts

Online streaming simply provides an additional revenue stream for music bands via concert. I’m sure some bands and event planners are concerned that people might not turn up to a concert if shown online for $5 instead of a concert ticket price of $130. But nothing beats seeing something live.

However, there is going to be a significant number of fans that can’t afford the ticket price, cannot make it due to work / commitments or are simply living overseas. Surely this can be monetized! Your providing them with the chance to also participate in the concert, be a part of the crowd, and sing along.

Side note: Youtube has also introduced paid search for video,  and the videos shows up as a sponsored link. There is also Google Music Search, which produces results for all the different music services.

I’m out like Mogulus,

Matthew Ho.

Now, I’ve just seen the demo video and I really dig it!

A service that lets you find “Any moment from any film ever made”. That’s a very powerful tagline. Kinda like the Bill Gates vision “A computer on every desk”.

Watch the entire video for the demo and the questioning.

FYI the guys on the judging panel are:

- Scobelizer (Robert Scoble) is a huge tech blogger, former Microsoft guy

- Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook and co-founded Napster, Plaxo and Causes. And now joined Yammer!

- Reid Hoffman, once an aspiring Academic and Rhodes scholar (i think), founder of Linkedin and mentor to many of the top web 2.0 CEO’s

- Dick Costas, founder of Feedburner, Head of Google Social Products, and now COO of Twitter

- Mike ?, he used to be chief engineer at Mozilla Firefox, now Chief Engineer @ Facebook.

As you can see, its the who’s who of Silicon Valley.

Essentially they:
1) Aggregate short form video (less than 4 mins)
2) Allow people to metatag and categorise
3) have monetization models so you can buy the video or download or rent it

There are valid questions around legals, getting buy-in from the studios re content and also discovery.

Discovery is a good point, because that’s how I find a lot of interesting content on youtube from browsing other videos. I also think its going to be an incredible challenge getting the studios on board. But they did it with Hulu via a JV.

Ultimately, the guys behind it are right suggesting that it reinvigorates our love of movies. By me watching that scene from the Big Lebowski, I wanted to go to the video shop and rent it immediately. It might encourage others to go find the torrent, but they were never going to buy it anyway.

My other question is that can’t Youtube do all of the above? Youtube’s biggest problem at the moment, is that the most watched videos and biggest traffic driver is amateur videos. Not professional. If the anyclip guys have figured out a way to automatically tag, categorise and scale it, that could be a winner.

I’m out like long form video,

Matt aka Inspiredworlds

With Seesmic, the facebook integration is something that I’ve always wanted. A way for facebook to dynamically update using Adobe AIR. In the past, i’ve often found myself refreshing the page to find out there’s new updates. Now, I can just use facebook via Seesmic desktop. I’ve been using it for the past couple of hours since it was announced. Although they say that there is “full integration with the feed”, you can’t respond to status updates (i.e. comment). All u can  do at the moment is check the  ”like” box. if you want to comment, it opens up a new window in your browser and may need to login again. Which is annoying.

I’m out like the old facebook,

Matthew Ho

At 6.30pm when I arrived, the place was pumping. They had two levels booked out, and the bottom level where the main arena was, was absolutely packed. Standing room only! (Well bars are made for standing room).

Man with the $349 jacket

Adam Ferrier went first and spoke about their infamous “girl in the jacket campaign”. This campaign was created for Witchery to launch their mens range and they had a budget of zero (emphasis) and wanted to generate a lot of buzz. So they created a fictious story where girl sees boy in cafe she fancies, boy leaves jacket, girl wants to find boy. Girl then goes to the enormous length of posting a video on youtube. The story then got amplified as the main stream press picked it up and they showed that Sunrise breakfast program, newspapers, etc… Their intention was to get the brand noticed and get people talking about Witchery Man. Check it:

As of now, 212,100 views in youtube. Pretty impressive for a budget of zero. I’ve watched the video for the first time, and although I have the benefit of hindsight, I would have been highly skeptical of it at the time. The way that she goes to great lengths to describe the jacket and how the “perfect guy” would be wearing it. In fact its not a bad jacket. Subliminal advertising must work on the weak.

Then the press started asking who is this girl, is this a marketing campaign, who is behind this? They eventually got outed. Naked & Witchery came clean and posted a video response saying yes it was us. I’ve only seen the videos now (after the talk) so here it in all its glory:

Man, I cringed when I saw this. It could have been executed a lot better and definently with more class – the way that Heidi turns it into a ad for the jacket. In fact, the only time I cringed even more in the last 24 hrs was when I heard Adam Ferrier’s response as to whether Naked was arrogant.

Its all about generating conversations

It seemed that for most of the night Adam was defending Naked’s actions. He even had stats to back himself up. But at the end of the day, I think he was convincing and I agree with Tim Burrowes comments on Mumbrella that he did help to sway the crowd onto his side.

Honestly, I don’t have a problem with this tactic of creating a false story or building a mysterious story to get customers engaged and talking about a brand. Brands do it all the time. It’s what we do as marketers. Can Jordan really fly? (Wait, there is doubt?), are pure blondes really made from pristine rivers? Brands make up stories and fantasies all the time to get customers talking and excited. All they want to do is generate buzz. If that’s the objective, then Naked slam dunked it.

Was the public misled about Girl in the Jacket. I have no doubt they were. Was their a line that was crossed? Yes – only when they made that cringeworthy followup video. If Naked did not do the followup video like that, I think it would have been a great campaign. Consumers are smarter than what we give them credit for.

Was it groundbreaking? Of course not. In fact some guy in the audience asked “Did the Witchery Man campaign helped increase the popularty of social media?” – dude are you kidding me? They posted a youtube video about a fake story and it got picked up by the press. It’s not as if they created Twitter. When the story was being told, I immediately thought of the real life campaign of NY girl of my dreams, the cybersearch by one NYC man for an aussie girl he met on the subway. I came across this when I was travelling in the States, and I had actually thought about it when I started reading about this campaign and the connection became even more clearer last night. 

I agree with Adam’s insight that social media is a communication channel. It could be more than that, but at the end of the day that’s primarily what it is. Yes it is democratizing media (see Ashton Kutcher). However, it does make it a lot harder for brands and marketers to do something similar now because people think they got screwed over.

It nots really Stephen Conroy?

I love Leslie’s work as the fake stephen conroy. Dude is funny but a walking PR disaster. He didn’t have a lot to say on the night and Tim was trying to involve him as much as possible by asking him questions as well. But he definently had a couple of good insights – that not everything created by companies on social media is great. Everyone does go nuts when they see a brand do something on social media. 

If you want to see more of the Witchery Man campaign check the video from the night.

I’m out like the man in the jacket, 

Matt

blellow looks interesting – like twitter meets yammer. users are organised into groups like for joomla, ruby on rails, accounting & finance, entrepreneurs, etc…

So people with common interests or need help with a certain topic can speak to each other. I’ve joined a couple of groups, so will let you know how that progresses. In the meantime, check out the video below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTV6fCo92xI]

btw i couldn’t find anyone from Australia on it. if you are us, holla!

I’m out like blellow,

Matt Ho

It’s called “First Asian Boy”, and I’m digging his style:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3ZQty7I1aw]

This guy has got 1.2 million views on youtube so its doing very well!

Second video I found whilst surfing the web called “Daft Bodies”. It’s Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”. It’s genuis!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl6RJyZdBSU]

It listed in the Daft Punk Youtube Channel, but I don’t think its an official Daft Punk vid as I’ve seen the cartoon one (also very good). It’s more of a fan vid. Very simple, yet highly effective and creative!

If you are into Daft Punk, I would highly recommend this idaft. It has a console with different words. You tap the buttons on the console with your keyboard and recreate the song’s chorus. Very cool! 

I’m out like being an Asian Boy,

Matthew Ho.

AFL Season Launch Ad 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oxpyRreruU]

NRL Season Launch Ad 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgxGWvaPz6w]

I’m out like the offseason, 

Matthew Ho

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIRbQB4O45M]

Another good video from SXSW is about designing community pages for the wisdom of crowds (yes, its that book!). It’s not the actual author but someone who is applying those ideas to online.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX-7xwPPY8I]

I’m out like everything you knew about web design,

Matthew Ho