And the winning bid is ...
$40,000.
That's how much Rocketboom's first week of advertising brought on eBay. The highly publicized auction (see item below) drew 105 bids and closed Feb. 9.
Rocketboom's novel ad approach
Rocketboom, which now boasts 130,000 downloads a day and which is also available to TiVo subscribers, is about to cash in with advertisers. But like Rocketboom itself, the approach will be different.
Rocketboom will auction its first week's worth of ad time on eBay, according to journalist and blogger Paul Berger and advertising maven Steve Halls's blog, AdRants.
But that's not all: Rocketboom will create the ads and the advertiser will have no control -- none whatsoever -- over the message. Rocketboom producer Andrew Barron made that clear to AdRants.
It's going to be interesting to see who agrees to those novel terms. And how much they're willing to pay for the privilege.
Video tackles wiretaps
A video post by the Democratic National Committee takes on President Bush for wiretapping communications without court orders, as prescribed by law. The news release is here.
Before the Internet and broadband, a position ad like this might only be seen in select markets. Now the information field is level.
Vlogging from Sundance
The Flavorpill Network is vlogging from the Sundance Film Festival. Great stuff for film fans.
Flavorpill chose Divx for its video format, which requires a browser plug-in that most viewers won't have. Download (for Mac) was painless and easy. Playback was another matter. In our viewing, the image quality was quite good but sound and video were way out of sync.
Flavorpill has been posting blog-style for several days, and the first video went up January 24. Sundance runs through January 29, so maybe the quality glitches will be solved soon.
AP notices a trend
"Amateur video sharing" is the subject of a feature story by AP Internet Writer Anick Jesdanun. Curiously, the words "vlog" and "blog" do not appear. Perhaps they are not yet in the AP Stylebook.
The amateur video enthusiasts selected to personify the trend are New Yorker Janelle Gunther and Steve Silvestri, a television news cameraman in Bates City, Mo.
Gunther got started toying with video made by her Canon PowerShot digital camera when she found a place to post it. To its credit, AP included links to Gunther's video at Vimeo and railroad enthusiast Silvestri's clips at YouTube.
VideoEgg makes strategic moves
VideoEgg has transplanted its operations to San Francisco, secured additional venture capital funding and aligned itself more closely with its initial video publishing partner, Six Apart's Typepad. Read more in our interview with Kevin Sladek, one of VideoEgg's founding partners.
Time out
Time magazine (January 23, U.S. edition) devotes a page to "5,000 Channels: TV on the Internet." Subscribers can access the online version.
Apple's iTunes, Google, AOL and Yahoo get top billing as portals for recycled TV programs. Also mentioned are ifilm.com, youtube.com and atomfilms. But there's no mention of vlogs. Seems short-sighted to overlook what is certainly the most innovative and diverse incarnation of TV on the Internet.
The Big Sell
Expect to see lots more marketing vlogs this in the future.
"Clerks II" won't be released until late summer, but writer-director Kevin Smith got the buzz started early with regular video posts from the set. Makes sense, too. After all, it's been more than a decade since he made "Clerks," and much of the audience for it supposedly has matured.
The vlogging started in early December, with updates every couple of days. After a break for the holidays, fresh posts resumed. Based on the number of comments from readers/viewers, a lot of folks are paying attention. The occasional raw language probably doesn't faze most visitors, but parents be warned.
The majority of posts are music video-style, quick-cut teasers that only fans will care about. But one is a fresh, behind-the-scenes, fly-on-the-wall record of Smith, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino talking after screening an early cut of the movie.
Most of us only catch glimpses of the likes of Tarantino when he's pitching his movies on talk shows. This vlog post, called "The Good, The Bad and The Man," is the real deal. Tarantino is still wildly enthusiastic, but dialed back a few pegs without a live studio audience. The Man sounds pretty much like a regular guy.
Tiny but creative
One edition features a long-form poem. Another is a moody, black-and-white video portrait of a day in the life of the blonde co-host. A third relies on good old man-on-the-street predictions for what 2006 will bring. Could this really be the Year of the Cowgirl/Cowboy?
Each post takes a different tack, and each is Tiny Tube. Unlike so many vlogs, this one places value on theme, style and production techniques, like using original music from hatfarm. The latest technical addition is a green screen, which pumps up the presentation by allowing co-hosts Ben Dragu and Joan St. Simone to replace an unattractive black background drape. Big improvement!
Tiny Tube, as the name implies, is TV-like. Or what TV might be like if the tube had space for experimental, artistic expression blended with whimsy, satire and political comment.
Tiny Tube just might earn a respectable following.
VideoEgg hatches for Macs
VideoEgg Publisher, a Web-site plugin to capture, edit and publish video online, is coming for Macintosh computers.
A Windows version already exists.
The application removes the need for vloggers to think about formats, codecs or other technical aspects of getting video on the Web. Files are played back in Flash format.
The company's announcement, made at Macworld San Francisco, says VideoEgg Publisher for Mac will be "widely available by January 16."
Vlogging from the front lines
Vlogging advocate Steve Garfield is walking the floor at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, armed with his PowerBook and video cam. Wi-Fi lets him upload vlog posts on the fly, right from where the action is. Good stuff.
Fast-forward to the next (or continuing) war. Imagine vloggers (mainstream media reporters? freelancers? Geraldo?) in Humvees filing stories from the front lines.
If a satellite phone can pass enough pixels for lousy live video, it can upload a high-quality digital video file to a server. That means better audio, better video. Not necessarily live, but even that might be possible with a cell-phone quality, high-speed uplink and software such as QuickTime Broadcaster (it's free) or Live Channel (it's not).
Yet there are pluses to not being 100 percent live and spontaneous. And there are advantages to not being a lone wolf. When you're the point man (or woman) on an information-gathering team, somebody's supposed to have your back.
Spreading responsibility around theoretically provides opportunities for cooler heads, in less stressful environments, to reflect on the bigger picture. It increases the chances that the story gets reported more right than wrong the first time.
Conventional ways of reporting breaking news are no guarantee that the information conveyed will be correct. That was demonstrated by last week's mining tragedy in West Virginia, when the story outran the confirmable facts. But experience proves that in most cases, especially as the stakes rise, a few more heads are better than just one.
How would lone wolf vloggers have performed as that coal mining disaster played out in the wee hours? We'll never know. It's for certain, though, that some self-assigned vlogging reporters will have another chance soon enough.
Meanwhile, vloggers like Steve Garfield are laying the groundwork for those trials by fire.
Must make Bill want to kill
The voice is that of Bill Gates giving the keynote address at this week's Consumer Electronics Show, where he demonstrated features of the upcoming incarnation of Windows, called Vista.
But the video, conjured up by a so-far anonymous prankster, is the current release of Mac OS X, called Tiger.
Some might conclude that the boys in Redmond are (again) playing copy-cat.
We'll just say meow.
(Thanks to David Pogue for the link).
One more fish in the sea
Once upon a time there were a slew of operating systems duking it out for marketshare and mindshare. R.I.P. Amiga, Be OS, Atari, et al.
Now the same thing is about to happen among the Web sites with unique technologies for uploading, manipulating and sharing vlogs.
Somewhere around 2008 we'll look back and do a similar body count of casualties from the "vlogging made easy yet proprietary" wars now heating up.
The latest entry is Grouper, an application as well as a Web site for cataloging and sharing videos ... not with the world, but with the members of one's group (friends, family, country club, etc). If you're not in the same group, you don't get to see the full show, even if you are a member of the Grouper site at large. But being in a group does have advantages. "Once inside a group, users can stream music, download personal files, and IM/chat in a private setting with other group members," according to a Grouper FAQ.
Grouper also supports photo sharing, and viewing of those is unrestricted. But the new wave is vlogs, and if you want to see more than three minutes of a video, you gotta belong.
The FAQ says there will always be a free version of the product. But at some point "we will offer a premium version of Grouper with new features and services that will likely require payment." More about those plans will be known after Grouper's beta program plays out.
One more tinge of exclusivity: The Grouper application only works with Windows XP. Web video makers using Linux, Mac OS or lesser forms of Windows will be excluded from the fun.
There are many way-smart people focused on turning every Internet user with a cell phone into a vlogger. Many excellent technologies will debut. Which ones will survive?
Our hunch is that the vlogging applications and sites that are most inclusive, easy to use and inexpensive will attract the most content and visitors. That, in turn, will attract advertisers and generate revenue, which will keep the lights on.
Grouper may be way cool, but our OS doesn't allow us to partake. So we'll stay on the sidelines, keep our head low, and watch the battle rage.
May the best, most inclusive and least expensive vlog sites win.
Focus on real people
Real People Network is J.D. Lasica's fourth blog, and this one's a vlog. While he says New Media Musings will remain his chief blog, Real People Network will be home to his video interviews.
Lasica off-loaded a slew of existing material to the new vlog, so there's lots to explore. Among those we sampled are a session with Lisa Stone of Surfette and BlogHer, and Micki Krimmel of Participant Productions, which is the populist-minded bankroll behind the movies "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Syriana."
Lascia's techique is an old-fashioned, straight-up interview with minimal questions. His subjects are authoritative and Lascia gives them the freedom to expound as needed to convey their points. (Which, by the way, is the way network TV news once was before the age of sound bites and quick edits).
Real People Network has good content and excellent QuickTime MP4 images, but the videos reside on a painfully slow server. Patience is required!
