Does viral need a middle man?
Posted: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 1:21 PM by Will Femia
Mark Glaser writes an open letter to Stephen Colbert asking him to resist efforts by Comedy Central lawyers to wall off video content from sites like YouTube. He points out why YouTube is better than the current offerings at ComedyCentral.com and updates his post with a lot of relevant links.
I can certainly envision a future where content creators offer their own video on their own sites in a way that actually works for consumers and video sites that share copyrighted material shrivel up and die. I think we see it beginning to happen with TV networks practically begging their audience to log on and view shows online. To be clear, I agree with Glaser that content providers aren't actually at that point yet. The Comedy Central video player is terrible. I tried to watch Grey's Anatomy on the ABC site and it was all choppy. I did have a good experience watching Heroes on the NBC site, but I didn't notice any fan generated material while I was there (the way I see it on YouTube). And I point this out from a site that sees more of its content distributed virally through sites like Crooks and Liars than from its own video player. But to return to my point (and what I was trying to say with my question about the Dove video), if content providers like Comedy Central do get their acts together, forward thinking shows like Colbert's don't really need YouTube as a viral middle man, do they?
Related: Google shares ad wealth with videographers - The part you care about: "It will pay $5 to video creators for every 1,000 times their video is watched." Five thousand bucks for a million views is pretty good if you're the Numa Numa kid, but it's not much of a budget for any ambitious productions.
Speaking of Comedy Central clips, the first South Park ever. Interesting to see there are no identifying markers on it that would show up in a search for stuff to delete. NOTE: Curses are NOT bleeped on this.
Scott Adams points out that elections rigged by nerdy hackers can't have any worse outcomes than elections rigged by corporations and special interests.
Speaking of problems that haven't been solved, Airport Screeners Still Aren't Any Good. But to be fair, as Schneier points out, "We can't keep weapons out of prisons. We can't possibly keep them out of airports."
Remember that headline about St. Louis being the most dangerous city? Here's the fuller list of the results of that survey.
Here's a new twist on the intellectual property issue: Writer Neil Gaiman tells us about a writer who died without a proper will and the rights to his "literary estate" ended up taking a turn he probably didn't want. The solution Gaiman offers is a simple will that creative types can download from his site and follow the instructions.
This is too late to be worth anything for this year, but if you're the kind of person to plan ahead for holidays, here are some great/gross ideas for Halloween. I like the guacamole in the baby doll.
Internet simulator game NOTE: plays music as soon as the page loads. I scored a 128.
Rock Hotel in Cappadocia, Turkey carved in the face of a cliff.
It's the content, not the icons - I'll be interested to see if this is a sign of a coming backlash against all of those "Digg this" type buttons you see everywhere online lately. I'm not a fan of those buttons except when I see an icon I don't recognize that leads to a cool aggregating site I'm not familiar with. But the argument in this blog entry is that they don't help traffic and only look ugly. In the comments you'll find a few objections making the case that "build great content and they will come" is an elitist argument that ignores the real difficulty of growing an audience. If it's not elitist, it's at least over-idealistic. Even if having a Digg button doesn't get a blogger the tens of thousands of clicks that come from front page Digg placement, a few extra clicks can be an exciting achievement for an XYZ-list blogger.
Eleksen's fabric keyboard / UMPC case in the wild - It's a case for your PocketPC that then becomes the keyboard. It's a neat idea, but I'm not sure how comfortable I'd feel typing on something so flimsy.
Speaking of buttons, A petition to bring back buttons on phones? It explores the merits of physical buttons versus touch screen buttons in gadget design. New vocab word: haptic.
How to save a wet cell phone. I don't know anything cell phones, but these look like some really great instructions. (Great = I wouldn't have thought of them.)
Who the heck is Wee Shu Min and why is she the most searched name on Technorati? The Wikipedia entry explains the story of a political scandal in Singapore that is hard to imagine happening here in the U.S. (On second thought, this probably could happen in the U.S. If one of the Bush twins had a blog and made disparaging remarks about poor people or the working class or something, that would probably cause a scandal.)
Speaking of names in the news, I don't care about Marcia Cross but... (my standard gossip item opening phrase) did you see this item about her having 200 naked photos of herself in the garbage and now the garbage remover has them and is looking to make some money? Of all the forehead-smacking things to do...
I got a laugh out of the new Moby/Debbie Harry video. The song's a little repetitive though.
Book Review: The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton - Includes tips on how to avoid being one and how to deal with one.
