Posts about prezvid

Join the panel

March 15, 2007 by Jeff Jarvis
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Tomorrow at the Politics Online conference in Washington, I’m moderating a panel with Jay Rosen, Jim Brady of WashingtonPost.com, and David Plotz of Slate, on the changes in media in campaigns today. Here are some of my talking points. Please add yours:

* Is it possible to break out of the old media campaign narrative of races, fights, spin, stereotypes? How?
* Political reporting is often not really reporting. It’s about repetition, rumors, spin, opinion, handicapping, predicting, leaking. So the relationship of MSM and blogger/amateur/citizen (whatever we are today) is different. We, the people, can do much of what they, the reporters do. So who should be doing what?
* There’s a new relationship between candidates and citizens. What can it be?
* Can campaigns be conversations?
* Can we question candidates in new ways?
* Can we take over more in the operation of campaigns?
* Candidates have no ways to route around reporters and editors to citizens. What’s good and what’s bad about that?
* Will we end up with more or less spin? Do these new media offer more ways to issue spin or to cut through it?
* What is our new relationship as voters with candidates?
* Is it better that we will see more of the candidates — through their lenses and ours?
* Let’s discuss the danger of the gotcha moment, henceforth known as the macaca moment. Do we need to be more forgiving of gaffes when we hear more? If we want the candidates to be more human do we need to accept their human falliblity?
* What new reporting can we accomplish now with pro/am effort? What new information do we need?
* Can we drive new ways to cover campaigns? What should they be?
* Can we escape the duotone red/blue stereotype and narrative through listening to the subtler views of more people?
* What might the impact on campaign advertising be when we can all see the worst of the ads on YouTube? Better through shame? Or worse through free distribution?
* What will the impact of citizen-made commercials be?
* Discuss US vs European and left vs right experience so far with YouTube.
* What advice do we have for the candidates? How should they be using these new media and how should that affect their campaigns and relationships with us?
* What advice do we have for bloggers, vloggers, et al. What should they be concentrating on?
* What advice do we have for MSM press? How can they do their jobs better?
* Will this this new, open media have a profound impact on campaigning? Write the analysis story a decade from now.
* Can and should candidates carry on this new communication while in office? Will the next President vlog?

(Crossposted at PrezVid)

Meanwhile, on the trail

March 14, 2007 by Jeff Jarvis

I have three new posts up over at PrezVid. Yes, that’s a plug.

Exploding Video: The biz

March 14, 2007 by Jeff Jarvis
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Frank Barnako has nice things to say about my newborn video effort, Exploding Video, and its first two shows, PrezVid and IdolCritic:

I’m an always looking for a simple idea with big possibilities. The Drudge Report is one of them. One or two guys, constantly scanning the Web as uber-editors looking for sexy, funny, provocative, inside, and shocking stories about money, politics, sex, and entertainment.

Now, Jeff Jarvis and Peter Hauck have launched two online video shows: PrezVid.com, which follows the 2008 campaigns by aggregating video clips from YouTube.com, and a fan show, IdolCritic.com.

Liza Persky, a TV talk show producer, is the talent on the weekly videoblog about America’s favorite TV show. She’s no Amanda Congdon, but at least seems to know what she’s talking about, even if it just a TV show. If you’re an “Idol” fan, while Perksy’s remarks may amuse or anger, you probably can’t hear enough about the show.

Which leads me to one of IdolCritic’s really good ideas. The site has links to Idol-related news, information, EBay-items, Amazon-available products, and blogs. This is such a natural think to include, and useful. Further, since EBay and Amazon have affiliate programs, it’s possible that if IdolCritic visitors make some purchases, Persky/Jarvis may make a few bucks.

Jarvis is convinced that old and new media must involve their readers, by nurturing and supporting communities of interest, even if the focus is a TV show. The Idol site invites people to submit their own “Idol videos” (whatever THEY are), and of course comments are welcome – if few and far between: only 20 after a month, some not so positive. There’s also no evidence of uploaded video.

Jarvis and Hauck are on to something. As Jarvis told PaidContent.org, the cost of doing something like this – anything – is zip. “My son is my Webmaster. I’m editing the video myself, as you can tell. It’s so damn cheap to get started,” said Jarvis. He and Hauck are taking their cues from the front pages of newspapers and conversation at water coolers. They’re showing it only takes eyes, ears, and a little money to set hooks for peoples’ attention. The cost is so low you can afford to try a bunch of ideas, and if one hits, you’re successful.

That was kind of my reaction when Howard Lindzon launched Wallstrip.com. You can do more-than-acceptable video programming with equipment available at Best Buy and, in Wallstrip’s case, talent behind and in front of that gear. Anybody can do Web video now, and every day it seems there’s another portal, video sharing site, or wanna-be Internet TV network that wants your content, and some are willing to pay for it.

What a country.

Yes, I think it’s possible to start something new with TV and so I’m doing it to learn it.

A visit with Webcameron in London

March 11, 2007 by Jeff Jarvis
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While in London, I went to the Conservative Party headquarters — new and sparkling white, with a view of the river just down from Parliament — to meet Sam Roake, who’s making his leader, David Cameron, a star of small TV. I wanted to hear his advice for the American candidates now dabbling in the TV of the people.

Roake is a personable, low-key, and smart chap in a suit with no tie, the uniform of our next leaders. He’s a veteran of Google AdWords. Yes, Google will take over the world. And then no one will wear ties.

2007, Roake says, is the year of video and social networking. He sees the two closely linked.

The web team — which so far is Roake and one colleague — have Cameron answer five questions a week from voters, three of them voted up by the public, Diggishly, and two he selects.

Then they have videos of him “out and about” anywhere in the world, talking to the camera with his thoughts and experiences. That happens about three times a week, but Roake said they’d do more with more resources — that is, one more staffer.

He says Cameron’s videos need little editing. Once they’re done, they go up on his site and on YouTube.

Roake argues that the videos enable their man to speak directly with voters and it helps them present their man in a candid, human way. “To be genuinely candid,” he says, “you have to talk about yourself as a person.” He says that to make this medium work, politicians have to switch “out of politician mode.”

The videos have been remixed and spoofed. But that hasn’t worked to the party’s disadvantage, Roake says. A labor MP made a parody of Cameron’s video and — I heard this tale from 18 Doughty Street‘s Iain Dale as well — it was so far off the mark (like a cringeworthy late-night skit), he had to apologize. The people from the show This is a Knife also made a parody called Blind Dave. And see the video by pioneer Parliamentary blogger Tom Watson tweaking Webcameron but wishing Labor had its equivalents:

Not having snit fits about all this apparently makes it look as if Conservatives have a sense of humor. They also want the videos to show that Conservatives are open and innovative. Roake says Labor isn’t doing this because they are “more focused on control.”

Roake acknowledges when I ask that it’s a bit different for the party in power. But then I ask whether they would continue their video strategy if they took power and he says they’d pretty much have to. “If it suddenly stopped, that would be seen as a very cynical move,” he says. The form would “evolve as the job evolves…. You can’t stop communicating.” This, Roake says, is a “new stage of politics” that is about a “sustained dialog with the public.” This was the kind of talk we heard from Gordon Brown about blogs at Davos. Once Brown ascends to power, I suspect they’ll be tripping over themselves to seem web-cool. As a head-of-state vlogger, Germany’s Angela Merkel already beat them all to the punch (though with a characteristic and militant lack of flair); she, too, is answering citizens’ questions online (here, auf Deutsch). Coming soon: Fireside vlogging. The White House Show with ___________.

But Roake emphasizes that vlogging isn’t the same as old TV though the American candidates are still treating it as if it were. They are broadcasting. The audience is different, he says, and the medium is different. His advice for our vlogging pols:

Don’t make the videos scripted and spun. Involve the voters: respond to them and address them by name. “See them as people who want to engage with you.” He says they need to be “personal, open, spontaneous.” Have someone with a camera along as much as possible to capture “off-the-cuff moments.” If you just have someone come 15 minutes a week to get one video, it won’t work. If you show events with lots of people, he says, balance that with more personal videos. Don’t sweat the production value.

Now, of course, it’s hard to believe that everything in politics isn’t always spun. Saying you’re not spinning is spin. But I take the point: don’t shrink-wrap the message and the candidate.

I ask why he thinks that the leaders in small TV in Europe tend to be conservative — Cameron, Sarkozy — while in the States, it’s the liberals who’ve taken the lead. Roake acknowledges that “a lot of it has to with being in opposition” and not immersed in the business of government (the podcasting, vlogging Merkel excepted). Then he spins just a bit: “The conservatives are less of a top-down government.”

Roake plans to help small TV spread in his party, getting more MPs to join the fun, joining a few leaders, including blogging Boris Johnson and vlogging Grant Shapps. He says that “any party serious about engaging in social media could do it.” And will.

(Crossposted from PrezVid)

OPA: Jeff Rayport and video

March 8, 2007 by Jeff Jarvis
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I’m at the Online Publishers Association confab in London and Jeff Rayport is leading off. He is a former Harvard Business School genius (former HBS, still a genius) now leading a consultancy called Marketspace. I’m taking extensive notes because he’s sure to be provocative and this will be on the final. From his Powerpoint and spiel:

He says the challenge for online publishers is to “build volume through aggregation and margin through engagement.” Trends:

* “Community is the new engine of content creation,” his PowerPoint says. I’d day that content is the gas of the community engine.

* “Social networks are the new distribution channels.”

* “Social intelligence is the new source of editorial filters.”

* Tools and applications are the new editorial bundles.”

* “Multiplatform is the new basis of online ‘publishing.’ ”

* “Video is the new lingua franca of online content”

Now to the strategies he recommends. Note how big-company-centric they are (I argue that you have to see yourself not at the center but at the edges, serving the community at the center, but more on that later). Powerpoint quotes:

* “Own the audience: Overwhlem the microcosm. Deliver shock and awe in content abundance by geography, interest, or identity.” Where do I start? We’re not an audience and you can’t own us. And you likely can’t awe us either. His example is Toyota’s launch of Scion because they are selling cars “designed to be completed by the owner.” Or I’d say, owned by the owner. He says this was the first major auto brand launched with no television but with web and interactive media. Online, his examples include the knot for “condition” (“it touched 85 percent of weddings” last year), femail for identity from the Daily Mail in the UK, xionet.com (a Chinese Facebook, the second-largest social network in the world after MySpace) for location, bebo for interest (a MySpace up-and-comer in the UK). He says that online, “audience growth is often strongest where community is most palpable” — e.g., The Economist, The New Yorker. He’s not wrong but I still say he’s looking at this the wrong way. These things an help enable people to do what they want to do or to do what they already do better. Flip the model: You’re not at the center, we are.

* “Claim the community: Ensure membership has its rewards. Forge communities of conviction and reward loyalty.” His example is online travel and “gives us cause for great hope for claiming the relationship.” In content, he argues that free content “drives volume or traffic” while bundles of proprietary offerings “defy aggregation;” he uses Times Select as an example because it “drives pricing power.” Insert standard argument here.

* “Work the web: Let the outside in… and let the inside out. Adopt ‘open source’ thinking as an aggregator while exploiting network effects. This, he says, is the network effect. Letting the outside out is Progressive Insurance providing quotes from other insurers. Letting the outside in is Starbucks pushing into consumer environments (aka grocery stores) instead of just pulling them into destinations (the Starbucks store). Sure. This is about a newspaper providing links to the world and about going to where the people are. This is Google. Citizen journalism is letting the outside in. He says the more interesting story this year is citizen editing. Yup. Factoid: “up to 60 percent of YouTube’s streams are viewed on third-party websites.”

* “Design for occasion: Make each interaction a divine revelation. Customize online content interfaces for consumption contexts and occasions.” He says that Daily Candy is an example of form-factor optimization. Oh, my, that’s a fancy way to say it. But yes. Factoid: Daily Candy commands CPMs as high as $280 and is on track to generate $18 million in revenue in 2006 with margins over 60 percent.

* “Integrate the experience: mandate a unified field theory. Orchestrate multichannel delivery to establish best ecosystem.” Example: American Idol spreads internationally and into mobile and the internet and merchandise and concerts. Being a former business school academic, he draws a two-by-two martric: Amateurs acting like amateurs (e.g., Numa Numa guy), professionals acting like amateurs (e.g., LonelyGirl15), amateurs acting like professionals (ZeFrank, AskaNinja), professionals acting like professionals (e.g., OK Go, Beppe Grillo, and, surprise, me at PrezVid).

He has five strategies, “x factors” for online video (from Andrew Heyward).

* Extend content you have and bring it to online media.

* Expand video activities to make new and experimental forms of content.

* Expose (let the outside in; e.g., NY Times wedding videos, Le Monde user videos).

* Explode (let the inside out; syndication, in other words).

* Exhale (you don’t know what will work so relax).

There’s a lot of meat in this. I might grill some of what he fries, looking at things from a different perspective (ours v. theirs), but I think he brings together important observations, conclusions, and recommendations.

Discuss.

* * *

Next is a panel with Betsy Morgan of CBSNews.com, George Kliavkoff of NBCU, Alberg Cheng of Disney-ABC, and Tony Ageh of BBC internet with Larry Kramer moderating.

Betsy says that they are sold out in video advertising and that’s why they are syndicating their content to get more inventory. Kliavkoff, who extolled the virtues of marketing by putting clips on YouTube (yea), says that CPMs are high for online video but there is a shortage of quality inventory. He argues against the dreaded “user-generated content” usage saying that Spielberg is a user, too. He says the lesson of YouTube is that it doesn’t matter whether it’s amateur or professional; quality wins (I agree in spirit but in specific, it’s hard to judge the quality of a flaming fart and so quality is what you have to seek and find).

Betsy tells the story of her sister-in-law, who got Direct TV and made an either-or decision: TV or internet. She chose internet and she’s now watching her TV via the internet, including paying for shows via iTunes etc. See yesterday’s post about the end of the remote control clickers.

George says that an SEO company trying out for a gig with NBCU made measurements on the sly, looking at blog talk about shows from five weeks before they launched and then compared the ratings five weeks later. No surprise (to us): We the people formelry known as the audience (now known as the programmers) predicted that Heroes was a hit and that other shows would not be hits.

I asked the group to give advice to the makers of new TV at the Video on the Net conference I’ll be attending in a week and a half. Betsy said they are seeing “microjournalists” who are expert and credible and they’d like a relationship (promotional and commercial) with them but also need a trust system to help determine who is good (a system used by the public, not the network). George advised focus (serve a topic and stay on topic) and scale (get distributed). Larry advised aggregation, putting together shows/sites in networks large enough to be worth advertisers’ effort.

PrezVid show: Advice for Obama

March 7, 2007 by Jeff Jarvis
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Click To Play

Some simple PrezVid advice for Barack Obama: Say something. (Crossposted PrezVid.)

At 18 Doughty Street

March 6, 2007 by Jeff Jarvis
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I was headed to visit Iain Dale, creator of 18 Doughty Street, the new internet channel of conservative (they try to sell it as “anti-establishment”) political chat shows in London. So I emailed asking him for an address: “18 Doughty Street,” came the answer. Doh. Silly American. It’s an old, Georgian townhouse taken over by this new-age network with a staff of 20 crammed into the front parlors and a studio in the back with seven cameras, two couches, one table, a bowl of flowers, and book cases with cutouts for a couple of the cameras.


Click To Play

On the video (which is long with bad quality, for which I apologize), I ask Dale about the YouTube election and what David Cameron is doing on small TV in the UK. He tells about Cameron making a video about “discovering your inner tosser” and his fears that this would insult the voters. But the target audience got it. He says Clinton’s Hillcasts are just pieces to camera; “she’s not interacting with people, she’s talking at them.” He says that Obama’s site is fresh; I say he’s not saying but Dale argues “you don’t have to say much; David Cameron didn’t say much” at the start of a campaign. “With Obama, it’s almost like a movement whereas with Hillary Clinton it doesn’t seem to be like that.” Dale would love Hillary to be the the Democrats’ candidate; he’s hardly alone among conservatives with that wish. He says that on the Republican side “none of them has got it.” But he argues that Mitt Romney “is getting what George Bush used to call the big mo.” I’d say it’s a very little mo.

Dale believes that Rudy Giuliani can use the internet to get over the objections of some in his party and he also cautions: “But the Republican Party has to be very careful not to repeat the mistakes of the Conservative Party in Britain, where we became so obsessed by one particular issue – Europe – and has meant we’ve been out of power for 10 years. Now if the Republican party goes down this road of obsessing about abortion, gun control, gay rights, those kinds of social issues, I fear for their future because if they’re taken over by these sort of more fundamental groupings you’re not going to have a coalition – and all politial parties are coalitions.”

He advises that candidates should not (like McCain) make their videos too slick. And if candidates have blogs, they should join in personally sometimes. “You’ve got to personalize it.” He says that each of the campaigns should have people following candidates around with cameras like mine and post what happens. He advises that candidates should use humor, acknowledging that “it’s dangerous sometimes… With declining voter turnout, sure everybody would agree that making politics fun is all part of it.” He says candidates should show that they are human, that they have houses and dogs and humor.

He says that Cameron, like Sarkozy, is promising to answer questions that are left on his site and voted up by the audience.

* * *

On 18 Doughty Street, the network, Dale is making at least five hours of live TV a night, five nights a week from 7p to midnight and he’s about to expand into America with a deal to use the Arlington, Virginia, studios of the Leadership Institute, and an offer to use the Heritage Foundation’s satellites. So they will feature more American guests and will rebroadcast their shows so East-Coast Americans can watch from 7p-midnight local time. Dale is amazed — as am I — that no one has done this in America and if he weren’t busy in London, he’d make that American network. Someone surely will.

18 Doughty has nightly news updates, talk shows (one with bloggers), and hour-long interviews with politicians (even they are surprised they get to talk for so long). They are about to enable viewers — 100 of whom (including a deputy assistant secretary of state in the U.S.) were given video cameras — to upload pieces; the best will be aired each night. The network is getting 1-2,000 viewers at any one time during the live broadcasts plus more viewing the streams and 5-10-minute clips they put online. A huge audience? No. But as Dale says, blogs get disproportional attention in mainstream media and so do his shows. Their commercial asking what the world would be like without America (below) has had 250,000 views so far.

The channel is bankrolled entirely by Stephan Shakespeare of the polling company YouGov. He put up $2 million to fund it for a year and they’re not even trying to make money now. They have no revenue. He thinks it will likely always be supported by philanthropy and aims to be breakeven. I wonder whether such a show in election season in the U.S. couldn’t be profitable.

I asked Dale to figure out how much he’s spending per hour of TV. He figured a quarter of the money goes to bandwidth and the web site. So the $1.5 million that goes into programming produces it for roughly $140 per hour. That is incredibly low. Any executive of any network anywhere would kill for numbers like that.

They manage this because they do things in new ways. When they started, they had two TV pros who only made things difficult, telling them what they couldn’t do. So they got rid of the pros and now they’re making TV.

America, where money is king

March 6, 2007 by Jeff Jarvis
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I’ve found quite considerable interest in the election here in London and just spoke with an editor who said it is higher than he has ever seen it. Tie this with a recent Pew survey that found that 20 percent of people who followed the election online went to foreign sources. So it’s no surprise that we’re seeing incisive coverage of the election coming from over here. See, for example, Gary Younge’s column in the Guardian arguing that money is still king in our elections and wondering whether the internet can or would unseat that.

We have no idea yet what role the internet will play in next year’s presidential election. First, it is too early in the process. Second, the pace at which the medium is developing means that the campaigning tool of choice probably has not been invented yet. Back in 2003 it took Howard Dean six months to compile an email list of 139,000. But that was before networking sites such as MySpace. In less than two months Barack Obama has gathered more than 310,000 supporters on Facebook.com.

What is certain is that the internet will play a vital, possibly decisive, role; and in all likelihood that role will come into conflict with the established kingmakers. Neither trend is new. But the power of money and the modem are both driven by different and, arguably, contradictory forces. At some stage something will have to give. . . .

While these tensions may play out as a battle between left and right, or doves and hawks, they will in essence represent a far more fundamental shift in the relationship of the professional political class with the politically engaged public – a struggle between the popular and the oligarchic, between the bespoke message of the paid consultant and the chaos of freewheeling public opinion. Sadly, it won’t change the centrality of money in American politics – the internet is a crucial fundraising tool. But by enabling thousands of small donors to contribute, it has already proved its potential to provide an alternative funding base. . . .

We should have no illusions about who has the upper hand in this battle between big money and burgeoning activism. At a meeting in New York to support Hillary Clinton last week, organised through Meetup.com, the host told us that since Hillary had the votes of New Yorkers sewn up, all she really needed the town for was money. . . .

It suits the mythology of meritocracy that remains so central to American identity to have young children walking around in T-shirts saying “Future president of America”. But the truth is if your kid really does stand a chance at the top office, he’ll already be wearing more expensive attire. America’s class system is now more rigid than most in Europe, and that sclerosis is given full expression at the highest levels of politics. Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, Chicago mayor Richard Daley and Southern Christian Leadership Conference head Martin Luther King all carry the names and job titles of their fathers. Each year the richest quarter per cent make 80% of all political donations. The last time there was not a Clinton or a Bush on the presidential ticket was 1976. This is not democracy, it is dynasty.

A brick at a time. A brick at a time.