I was recently asked to speak about Video Trends to a large group of 100+ Bloggers at the SOBCON event in Chicago. The Event was really amazing and had some other great speakers including: Robyn Tippins from MyBlogLog & Andy Sernovitz Author of Word of Mouth Marketing. I only had about 25 minutes, but what I hoped to educate people on was the upcoming video trends for 2007 and how they could embrace these video trends with their blogs and video widgets.

First they had to be made aware that there is great video content online that is buried in the mountain of garbage. There are amazing video gems just buried beneath the surface of the short attention span videos. Don’t get me wrong, there is value in the short attention span videos.

Top 5 Online Video Trends:

1. Better video Search Tools
2. User Aggregated Video Channels or Playlists
3. Video Channel Widgets
4. Community forming around video Channel Themes
5. Connections with other people that watched the same videos as you.

See the Video Trends presentation here:

http://www.slideshare.net/Rumford/video-trends-sobcon-2007

Comments?

Technorati Tags: YouTube, video trends, video channel, video aggregation, video sharing, video playlist, google video, video community, Blog, video search, google video, video widgets, business, videosticky, videosticky.com, Rodney Rumford

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We have been getting good feedback from our Alpha testers of VideoSticky. Thanks Everyone! The video community design team has been hard at work trying to simplify the design and usability. For the upcoming Beta launch we have redone the logo, page layout, Navigation, website design, etc…

Making the site EASY and intuitive is critical. We are going to bury some of the functionality further down into the Video Community site so that users are not overwhelmed initially with the feature set and power of the service. We would like to hear what you think of the new home page design. The large area that says “Create” is actually a flash animation that walks you through the 3 main concepts on a high level. Create | Share | Connect. in about 10 seconds.

We think it allows users to rapidly see & quickly grasp the concept of how they can use video sticky to create a video aggregated channel, and share it several ways and use it to build community and connect with other like minded individuals.

It ties into our design mantra of “Don’t Make Me Think”. Simple is better, Less is more.

Tell us what you think of the new website design, it is still a work in progress and we will have more changes coming. Thanks for your feedback.

p.s. We also did a total redesign on the blog as well. We hope you likey.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, Youtube community, design, alpha, beta, online video community, video community, video sharing, VideoSticky

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Online Video Community is a loosely defined term. If you look at the “Online Video Community” of YouTube :it is really not a video community in the true sense of the word. YouTube has a “swarm” of people that consume what are effectively short attention span types of videos. It is what i like to refer to as “Drive By Video”, boom… you are in… you see the funny viral video… and you are gone… there is no true way to connect with other users in a meaningful way. Therefore, I think that they tend to fall very short on the “Online Video Community” definition.

An online video community should allow users to connect, interact, learn more about the other members, create, aggregate and share content and thoughts. Get your head around this: How nice would it be to find someone else that shares the sames interest as you by seeing what videos they consume and like? That connection will allow true online video communites of shared interest to form. Members can join channels of content and connect with other people in the online video community that share their interest. In this way, consuming video content online becomes much more engaging and entertaining and fosters a real online video community.

Imagine if you could have a room full of people to discuss a channel of content that is themed (on any subject imaginable) and they could connect and share their thoughts as well as their viewing habits? Much in the same way that you would discuss the latest TV episode of “The Office”, channels center people and act as a point of gravity and connection. This is one critical component of what makes a strong online video community. This is what we are trying to foster at videosicky.com

Your thoughts about what makes a good online video community?… We would be interested to hear.

Rodney Rumford

Technorati Tags: YouTube, Youtube community, video, online video community, video community, video sharing, viral video, Rodney Rumford

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UAV (User Aggregated Video) is a concept who’s time has come. There is a ton of pain in finding the gems of user generated video online… lots of gems hidden in the mountain of garbage. User aggregation across multiple online video services such as youtube, google video, yahoo video, myspace video, etc… is key.

Content syndication via rss for user created channels/playlists/connections/etc. is also key. Easy discovery of the user aggregated content is also critical. Having an easy way to allow the 10% of community users that don’t actually create video content, to create a channel of content that they are passionate about is really critical.

The video marketplace is very fragmented and there is room for multiple solutions. New startups might partner with the tradional media giants. But there is also an opportunity for solutions that are not connected with the media giants.

Users are watching less and less TV and are consuming video more often online. This trend in user behavior allows for virtually unlimited channels of content to be created beyond just “My Personal Favorites” sort of lists. Worthy of note is that online users are consuming new media not created by the media giants.

Consumers ideas of entertainment is shifting rapidly towards online with UGC playing an important role. There are nearly 80,000-1000,000 new videos uploaded online every day, they can’t all be crap, there are some real gems in there. Users will aggregate videos for many of the same reasons people blog, to voice their opinions and tastes, to make connections, to share content, to take ownership of their ideas and principles, to be their own channel programmer, to create a communication channels that is syndicatable, to build a community around an idea/concept/theme/product/person/personal taste, etc…

There are literally tens of thousands of virtual channel opportunities that will support very narrow niches online. We will be launching this week in alpha at www.videosticky.com There some other ideas I have around this subject, technologies under development and how the model for online video is shifting, but I will save them for later.

Rodney Rumford, CEO

www.videosticky.com

Technorati Tags: UAV, RSS, User Aggregated Video, YouTube, myspace, video sharing, video playlist, google video, video community, Blog, video search, google video, startup, vc, business, videosticky, videosticky.com, Rodney Rumford

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We wanted to let our readers know that VideoSticky will be moving forward with the Alpha launch next week. We have been working really hard to get to this point. We have had a team of people using the platform for a while. So starting in the middle of next week we will be sending out the invites to the first phase of alphas users that registered on the site.

We really want the service to be easy for users to create a video channel from video content online. So when you get your invite. come on in, create a video channel and play with all the cool features to your hearts content. There is a feedback link at the bottom of every page, please use this to tell us what you like and do not like about the site. We want you to tell us if there are any issues that you come across, bugs, features you might want or things that are just plain confusing. The only way that we can make VideoSticky the best service is with your feedback.
We want to thank everyone who registered for their interest. The first phase of invites will go out this week, and then additional phases in the following week. Tell your friends to register for an invite so they can get in before the public beta launch.

Rodney Rumford

Technorati Tags: YouTube, myspace, alpha launch, video channel, video sharing, video playlist, google video, video community, Blog, video search, google video, startup, vc, business, videosticky, videosticky.com, Rodney Rumford

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We are making tremendous progress on the build phase of VideoSticky. We feel like we are facilitating the evolution of video sharing and it is very exciting. Video sharing is a very popular trend… but it way too limiting in it’s current state online. The team of programmers has been making great progress and we are getting to a point where we think we will be ready for alpha launch within 3 weeks.

Thanks to the people that have registered for the alpha invite… we have not forgotten you… we are just about getting ready to let in a small group of alpha users… so please be patient. Thanks for your interest in making videosticky the coolest video sharing site that evolves and takes video consumption, sharing and community to the next level.

Thanks.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, video sharing, video playlist, google video, video community, Blog, video search, google video, startup, vc, business, videosticky, videosticky.com, Rodney Rumford

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Part of what we are building at videosticky.com will be a video widget so that you can display playlists in your blog, myspace page or any website for that matter. While the team was discussing this and road mapping the product we came up with a list of cool features that we would like to offer to enhance the online video viewing experience.

ability to size the thumbnail preview

ability to decide how many videos to put into a playlist

widget sizing (height and width)

widget header text

widget footer text

widget color wheel selection for backgrounds, borders, headers, footers and text.

AJAX features

Descriptions for each video on mouse over

and quite a few more…..

Any other ideas or suggestions? We really would like to hear your feedback as we are still building and are getting closer to a feature lockdown for the beta version.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, video sharing, video playlist, google video, Youtube search, video community, Blog, video search, google video, startup, vc, business, videosticky, videosticky.com, Rodney Rumford

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Google is making some changes in video search… Today Google has quitely announced: “Google search results already include links to content that’s hosted on YouTube. Starting today, YouTube video results will appear in the Google Video search index: when you click on YouTube thumbnails, you will be taken to YouTube.com to experience the videos. Over time, Google Video will become even more comprehensive as it evolves into a service where you can search for the world’s online video content…” You can read the blog post about the convergence of Google Video & YouTube on Google’s Blog.
I am glad to see this natural progression of video search… however there are still many missing pieces. First, you are only looking at 2 places for video: GoogleVideo & YouTube (that’s somewhat limiting). In fact the search results are still pretty limiting in the fact that you can only search for video and how they are determining relevance is interesting. You still have no way of finding the “best” videos. The algorythm that they are using to produce results is fairly basic.

They also do not allow you to share video channels in the way that you can with VideoSticky.com

More details as we get closer to launch. Regester for a beta invite at our home page.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, video sharing, video playlist, google video, Youtube search, video community, Blog, video search, google video, startup, vc, business, videosticky, videosticky.com, Rodney Rumford

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We are making great progress on our site and will be ready to open the doors and let beta testers into the site in the not too distant future… If you want to see what all the fuss is about and get in the door before everyone else, go to our videosticky home page and register for a beta invite.

One we let users into the site you will see really cool stuff like how to search for videos from many video sites all at once, create really cool playlists that are sharable via a widget that you can drop into your blog or website.

We will be taking community to the next level and you will also be able to instantly see who else is into the same videos as you…. and if you have your own blog… (and who doesn’t these days?)…. you will instantly be able to see who is reading your blog… oh yea…. and so will all of your readers, this is really sweet.

And blog readers and video viewers will be able to see as many video sticky’s as you choose to share.

Plus some other really neat things that get us really stoked… so we think you will like them too.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, video sharing, video playlist, technology, video search, google video, startup, vc, business, videosticky, videosticky.com

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There are several problems with video search, whether you are searching youtube, yahoo video, google video, etc… you are presented with videos that are only from THAT particluar service. There is no easy way to aggregate, compile and easily choose which video fits your desired requirements. You could go to each service individually and go through this time consuming process which is no fun at all and is a pain.

Or you could use videosticky to actually see all the results from the top video sharing services all in 1 place. That is 1 aspect of what we are doing. We are trying to streamline the user experience and the ability to find, share and connect with and around relevant video content and other viewers and blog readers. We will also allow users to easily save any video from the search and create a “Video Sticky” (playlist like) which can then be shared. There are also some issues around tag clouds for video content that allow better folksonomy choices and results for users.

Thats all for now…. we need to get back to the programming and building the most helpful video site possible.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, video sharing, video playlist, video community, Blog readers, video search, google video, startup, vc, business, videosticky, videosticky.com

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