March madness: 3,000% jump in users at BlogTV.ca

March was a make-it-or-break-it month for BlogTV.ca, the video blogging site Alliance Atlantis Communications Inc. launched last year. By all accounts, says Alliance's senior VP of digital media Claude Galipeau, the service has made it."We started our marketing campaign on March 5, we had 480 subscribers in our beta," Galipeau says, adding that as of April 4, "we are just shy of 15,000 subscribers who are broadcasting and interacting in live shows."While the number of registered users has swelled more than 30 times since the service went live in December 2006, the curious don't have to register to view the video feeds - both live and archived - on the http://www.blogtv.ca/ site.That means that site traffic has grown even more exponentially: Galipeau says the site received more than 1.5 million page views over the course of March, with 173,000 unique visitors. Not bad for a newborn social networking site that's geoblocked to all but those with Canadian IP addresses.Interestingly, although BlogTV.ca is an English-only site in terms of its design and layout, an increasing number of Francophone bloggers - mostly from the Montreal and Ottawa areas - have been setting up accounts and putting up their content.Galipeau credits the growth in part to Alliance Atlantis adopting a strategy that's served other such sites well: stay out of the way, and let things go where they may. "We're accepting the fact that in this space it's really a republic of users and not a monarchy of programmers," he says.In one of BlogTV.ca's 10 content "channels," things have gone in interesting directions. The After Hours section warns that it contains "mature content" and forces browsers to click on a consent button before entering, and it certainly lives up to that billing.But amateur porn isn't the only thing BlogTV.ca has going for it, Galipeau stresses. He points to guest sessions with big names like punk icon Henry Rollins and professional porn personality Ron Jeremy, as well as appearances by such Food Network stars as Ace of Cakes host Duff Goldman and Ricardo, host of Ricardo and Friends.In the social media space, you know you've really made it when a commercial entity uses your network to disseminate covert marketing, a la the "Bride Has Massive Wig Out" video which circulated on YouTube and ultimately turned out to be a viral campaign. Galipeau says no one has tried to put one past the BlogTV.ca audience with sneak marketing thus far, but he says he's open to discussing virtually any content being posted to the site."We welcome them to come and try to do it with us, or do it on the platform. We're talking to a number of content suppliers about doing particular things," he says. "We can do obviously the user-generated content and the interaction, which is the base of the service, and we can have another layer where we're doing celebrity chats, and then we can also do full events or even just turn on a channel and do IPTV."Indeed, BlogTV.ca itself has turned to using social media to get its message out, and has bought ad space on YouTube in an effort to convince Canadians there to come home. "YouTube is doing eight million unique visitors a month in Canada...that's a lot of lost engagement," says Galipeau.Although trying to win viewers away from heavyweights such as YouTube has caused some to question BlogTV.ca's strategy, Galipeau says an ever-growing number of users are making it a point of pride to be a part of a Canadian service."When we launched it was criticized, but if you go online you'll see a heavy dose of patriotism, with people with webcams blazoned with Canadian and provincial flags," he says. "So, the people who criticized us for doing it only in Canada, I say ‘Fool on you.'"

March madness: 3,000% jump in users at BlogTV.ca

Broadcast | April 19, 2007

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