Bambi Francisco

Video publishing over easy

VideoEgg co-founder Kevin Sladek talks about how he spent 18 months building a publishing tool that transcodes video on a user's machine rather than on VideoEgg's servers. In this way, the upload time is faster. He said video uploads take about 2 minutes over a DSL line. Well, the video of his interview took me about 20 minutes on a DSL line. Nonetheless, the service does work. And, VideoEgg is one of the few companies providing private-label video-uploading services. For instance, VideoEgg is powering AOL's Uncut user-generated video service. Both companies will share ad revenue.

Google's video exchange ambitions

Google is trying to get everyone -- and I mean everyone -- to create video advertisements.In fact, if you're a job candidate seeking to get hired by Google, you might consider creating a video ad about yourself and bid against other marketers to place your smiling face on those gazillion blogs and publications that write about Google. This idea was first mentioned to me by Ryan Money, who started HireVue.com. But Google's Gokul Rajaram seems to think the video resume idea will work on Google as well. My money is on HireVue.com since I believe Google will be too distracted to provide the contextual environment job seekers need. Plus, I don't believe job seekers will want to pay for everyone watching their video resume.

But I think there is a place for such pay-per-click video ads, partly because the inventory for news and entertaining video (where these ads typically are placed) is scarce. Advertisers are clamoring to place ads on rich media. I know since I've been creating online videos for MarketWatch since 1999. Google is creating liquidity for advertisers (with video ads) by giving them a cheap alternative ($5 to $12 per CMP) across the blogosphere, where there is inventory. And, when the supply of entertaining video increases, Google will have already amassed the inventory of video ads.

Publishers won't mind these video ads as long as the ads are relevant. And, I believe they have the potential to be relevant and entertaining. The possibilities of what video advertising will look like tomorrow, and who will be advertising are scary, exciting, on the verge of ridiculous, potentially profound, and almost limitless. 

Google's ad video project has had mixed reviews across the Web, with many skeptical about the viability of pay-to-click video commercials. For those who have any doubt about how much video advertising will be created and viewed, think again. Videos will come from people and places unimaginable.  Will Swedish nannies start creating ads about their services and target blogs that only attracts readers who can afford such luxuries? If the potential salary covers the cost of their ad spend for those clicks, which it might, why not? If I had property in Lake Tahoe, I might take my relatively cheap video camera and create a video to showcase the property and upload it onto Google and target lifestyle blogs. 

My Net Sense column - which includes the rest of my observations -- received a lot of responses. I hope those who responded to my column also post their observations here for others to read.

Read my Net Sense on MarketWatch

Knowledge exchanges

Yahoo Answers, Google Co-op and MSN's Live Q&A sound very similar to me. Yahoo's Patrick Crane spoke with me about what he thinks is Yahoo's competitive advantage.

Newspapers vs. News search engines

In 1846, as the new technology of the telegraph system was catching on, newspapers pooled their resources to create a more efficient news distribution system. Jim Kennedy, vice president of strategic planning at the Associated Press, which was born out of those efforts, says newspapers are facing a similar challenge today. "Fast forward 168 years later," Kennedy told attendees at a recent Las Vegas gathering, "that's the situation we face today." Translation: It's time for newspapermen to stop fighting among themselves and cooperate if they want to survive in the era of splintering audiences, and search-engine news gateways, such a P's Kennedy was spoke Friday alongside Tom Mohr, President of Knight Ridder Digital and Colby Atwood, vice president at Borrell Associates, a consulting firm specializing in local media. The panel was part of the Interactive Media Conference, hosted by Editor & Publisher and Mediaweek. 

The panel was titled "5-year forecast: See the Future Today," but from the comments made on stage, it might as well have been "The final days of newspapers." For offline newspapers, the writing is on the Web. Email delivery of national and niche news on our computers or on our BlackBerry devices has made it less of a priority to pick up a printed newspaper, especially when traveling. Why bother with the added weight? In 1949, newspapers accounted for 37% of the advertising market in the U.S., according to Atwood. Today, they account for 17% to 18%.

Given the choices people make on the Web, newspapers -- try as they might -- likely never will come close to having the same market share online that they once had in the offline world.

Atwood said that, surprisingly, newspapers still account for 35.8% of the online local ad marketplace, which he estimates to have been $2.4 billion in 2005. About 90% of advertisements in newspapers are local. Increasingly, those offline dollars are seriously at risk.

"There's a big race to go after local ad dollars," said Atwood. "I'd say newspapers will likely lose their share," he said. "They're not as well organized as the large dot-coms." Read rest of column on MarketWatch

Embracing MySpace

MySpace is speaking with Google and Microsoft about a search deal, according to the FT.  Such a deal shouldn't surprise anyone watching the evolution of social networks and search engines. What's surprising is that Yahoo is "less interested," according to the report. Yahoo already powers MySpace's search results.

Who will MySpace choose? I know Google is very interested.

On May 11, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told me emphatically that social networks don't make money, but that Google would like to help them make money. I asked Schmidt how that would work and whether Google would have to partner with social networks, like MySpace.  Schmidt smiled and said, "You can figure it out." Thus my conclusion in my Net Sense column two weeks ago. Google has moved into community-based searching. Communities are formed in social networks like MySpace. MySpace is seeking to build its own search engine or partner. Is there a partnership between Google and MySpace? Read Net Sense, May 11

And, is MySpace worth it? Yes. Read Net Sense, May 9: MySpace-engine.

Video competition

At Yahoo's analyst day, Jeff Weiner - head of Yahoo's search initiatives - said the search giant would have some new product/service launches in a couple weeks. While he didn't say that a user-generated video upload service would be one of those services, that type of product seems to fit right in with Yahoo's other offerings. My guess is that it's coming soon. The challenge for Yahoo is to making it different from what's already out there.

I recently was alerted to 88Slide.com. It's a site - or should I say channel - that airs one-minute video trivias. Founder Noah Bonnett told me he was inspired by Rocketboom, a daily 3-minute news show.  Bonnett hopes to give advertisers consistent short-form content to sponsor. Bonnett - who shoots the video himself - has already attracted some sponsors. It doesn't surprise me. Advertisers are seeking short-form content that's predictable and reliable.

There is also Purevideo, backed by angel investor Ron Conway. Purevideo owns stupidvideos.com and is in the process of creating other video channels. Vmix is yet another video site hoping to build Internet channels. Booyah Networks (not affiliated with CNBC host James Cramer) is one of the more interesting private-label video services because of its auction-based advertising model. Essentially, Booyah has technology to automate the bidding process for pre-roll or post-roll ads. Think - AdWords for video. Among the other emerging video channels or video aggregators I've come across besides Google Video, YouTube, Grouper, MySpace videos and Akimbo, are Current.tv, Pixsy.com, Dailymotion.com, Metacafe.com, Vidilife.com, Guba.com, and eBaumsworld.com. There's also Ourmedia.org, Veoh.com, Podzinger.com, Break.com, Tagworld.com, Gorillamask.net, Fireant.tv, Dailysixer.com, iFilm.com, Sloopy.com, Atom Film (and AddictingClips), Extremefunnyhumor.com, Dinkytv.com, Stupidvideos.com, GrindTV.com, Comegetyousome.com, Ripetv.com and Livedigital.com.

Who will be the stars of this online video medium? I'm sure they'll arise in no time.  After all, the infrastructure for viewing video online is practically in place. Sadly, I'm sure some of these budding channels won't survive.

Partypoker for stock trading

How many real estate tycoons learned their trade by playing monopoly? Raise your hand.

MarketWatch just launched a virtual stock exchange. Go to MarketWatch to check it out.  If so moved to jump in and test your trading skills against others - like yours truly -- you can sign up and create your own personal portfolio. For those who play poker, it's a lot like Partypoker.net - which claims to be the world's largest online poker school. These virtual games are a good way to  learn about trading/betting without losing your shirt. That said, virtual games don't give you the same real-life anxieties that affect your decisions. For instance, did you learn how to buy real estate by playing monopoly? Anyway, I'd like to set up a couple portfolios. One will consist of picks from the blogosphere. If you have any ideas, send them my way. 

For MarketWatch's weekend show - aired on CBS - I'll be doing a review of the plethora of video channels on the Web. I'm taking a survey of what people like to watch, where they're watching (mobile phone, computer screens in living rooms),  and if there are any drawbacks that make the videos less appealing (ads!).

Google machines vs. humans

As Google's algorithms do what humans can't -- scale -- community-based searches seemed like something Google would not be interested in.

After all, communities are made of people who tend to be fickle, slow and inherently lazy. They can't handle or process what Google's machines can do. Yet, Google is harnessing communities with Google Co-op, a concept that lets users contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve search results for everyone. Google also announced, on Wednesday, Google Desktop 4 and Google Notebook, which allows people to share their notes about their searches.

When I asked Google CEO Eric Schmidt what was the most exciting product launch in the last year, he said "Google Co-op." In his words: "It's a powerful idea" because it gets people to help Google structure the data. Through a co-op, "user-generated data becomes part of the answer," Schmidt said. think this is a brilliant idea for Google to tap into the more arcane searches. Among the digerati, these searches are called the "long tail." Getting to the long tail of searches, the results of the most convoluted or obscure search queries, is something that humans can help with.

"Machine algorithms aren't good at it," Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering at Google, said to me.  Great," I said. "Humans 1, machines 0."

Eustace gave me a little smile, with a look that said, but it won't be for long.

"For the time being, the human judgment is still much better," he said.

For more on Google Co-op, read Net Sense. 

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch

Google's community search

Google's analyst day thoughts. 1) Google is testing out community-based searches along the lines of the companies I've been writing about, such as PreFound (Tuesday's Net Sense), Plum, Jeteye and Kaboodle. Google's Co-op product (in beta of course) is a way for thought-leaders, guides, experts to share their searches. Essentially, anyone can sign up by going to Google.com/coop and create a page of things they've searched for and assign or label it with a topic that can be searched by someone else. Similar to the other aforementioned services I had written about, I can create a topic, say "Hawaii" and put all the information I searched about into that page. Others can collaborate on that topic as well. That page is public for others to search on. As an expert on that topic Hawaii, I become a guide of sorts. It's the About model reborn. The difference is that these guides are found in a search paradigm. With Google's co-op program, the search giant can create verticals rich with information created by people. I think it's a great idea because communities do add a layer of relevance above and beyond what machines can do.
2) Google's Schmidt said that social networks are great, but they don't make any money. He was elaborating on a question I asked about whether MySpace having its own search engine would be a concern to Google. He said that he'd like to get involved with social networks by helping them make money. I asked if he had to partner with these communities, like MySpace. He just smiled, suggesting that I could probably figure out whether Google would want to or not.  3) I asked if Google is building AdWords for video, and whether he thought AdWords for video would work. He said that if someone invents AdWords for Google, he'd check it out. 4) I was testing out my Logitech Webcam to do video interviews. It worked fine when I interviewed Esther Dyson, but unfortunately, by the time I tried to interview Google executives, it didn't work. Oh well. Technology isn't perfect. For instance, all day Google's WiFi network failed to work.

Myspace-engine

If MySpace had a search engine, wouldn't that ruffle the feathers at Google, MSN and Yahoo? It's a question worth contemplating at a time when the online search industry's Big Three are spending billions to supply better search results, and in the process get marketers to spend more ad bucks on those search pages. Additionally, paid search -- estimated to be a $7 billion market this year -- could be the No. 1 revenue source for MySpace. You can bet that MySpace, the leading social networking site on the Web, will be making inroads into search soon. Rupert Murdoch is no dummy. Why else would his News pend nearly $600 million on MySpace and not go after the most lucrative and biggest part of the online ad pie?

As I pointed out in a recent column, MySpace is a whole new distribution platform that is changing the face of the Net. In March, MySpace recorded 19.4 billion page views vs. 13.7 billion at Google, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.   With MySpace's traffic so significant, I had a hunch that major sites like Google and Yahoo might also receive a lot of benefit from that traffic. That hunch was right. Google received 8.2% of its traffic partly from its search tools that appear on pages within MySpace, making the social network the No. 1 source of traffic to Google, according to Bill Tancer of online research firm Hitwise, who retrieved the data for me.

Read Net Sense column on MarketWatch