Home digital video clips don’t have viable business model – yet

The personal digital video industry is upon us. It used to be that people would document their lives in photographs and the printed word: This photo album is our wedding, this is our trip to Italy, here’s the kid, the dog, the cat and the budgie. Nowadays, people document everything on video both as a means to show others accomplishments as well as to keep fresh certain memories that might fade with time. But for those of you who are wondering what will happen when the Internet, television and your personal videos collide, the answer is, in the short term, nothing. The video industry hasn’t really changed since the first moving picture was recorded. Yes, technology has increased the capabilities of the cameras while reducing the size to fit into the palm of your hand (or onto your Palm Pilot for that matter), but the only thing that has really changed is the mechanism for distributing the outcome. Movie theatres, television and now the Internet have given voice to the millions of hours spent holding the "record" button but none has had a greater impact on the distribution of the content than the Internet. It has allowed common folk, like you and me, to distribute our own video to whoever will watch (usually friends and family) at a comparatively low cost. Certainly, reality-based TV shows such as Survivor, the Mole, Big Brother and Temptation Island have help push the everyday into the mainstream but it was early shows such as America’s Funniest Home Videos and Real TV that influenced us the most. These shows gave us insight into other peoples lives – often through self-deprecating humour - and we watched and laughed and those people who rubbed shoulders with Bob Saget got their 15 minutes in the spotlight and perhaps a large cheque. So is it possible to translate pure content into pure cash? The answer is yes, but not for the faint of heart. Let me explain: In order to understand what drives the Internet you have to understand what drives people to the Internet and where your content fits. For example, the online sex industry drove the early growth and adoption of the Internet (99% male, 1% other, in those days) and continues to be one of a handful of online content business models that generates positive cash flow. They understood who they were catering to and understood that sex sells, sex is easy to videotape and that videotaped sex sells. A business model was born. A California company called Eveo tried to harness the power of consumer content into a business model but needed to refocus when it became very clear that there were very few gems in all the video clutter. The idea was very simple: Create a large enough library of consumer produced video (say, a clip from your trip to the Grand Canyon) and then syndicate the clips to web sites in need of content (such as Expedia.com). Eveo gets paid, you get paid. Trouble is that the sites syndicating the content couldn’t control the consistency of the content from one clip to the next – one would be too light, the next too far away, etc. – and Eveo quickly realized it would need a different revenue model to keep their doors open. It refocused on shooting new content or re-purposing existing content to syndicate and scaled their customer base down to large travel sites. Similar stories have been seen across the Internet for companies such as iSyndicate and Loudeye (the later dropping digital video altogether and focusing on digital music). On the flip side, what started out as a video diary for three twenty-somethings turned into a somewhat lucrative relationship with Warner Brothers. dLife, a series of personal, poignant and controversial snippets of life originally aired at Heavy.com (a content portal), quickly amassed a large and global following and was finally licensed exclusively to Warner Brothers online. Chris, TJ and Natacha filmed themselves on road trips, parties and vacations and then did a spectacular job editing the content into watchable entertainment. What does this all mean? Well for the majority of us it means that we will not likely turn our content into cash anytime soon (if ever). What the Internet has opened up to us is the ability to tell our stories to anyone who will listen or watch. We’ll see weddings online either streamed live or archived for those people who couldn’t make it to the ceremony; we’ll see repositories of vacation video, as is, for those of us interested in seeing a particular monument or hotel before jumping on a plane; we’ll see scenic tours of cities from the perspective of a tourist. What we’ll really get is an honest look at the places we’ve seen or would like to see. Rob Woodbridge is the president of Ottawa-based GetHow! Inc.

Home digital video clips don’t have viable business model – yet

Broadcast | September 6, 2001

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