Zach Posner : The world of Digital Media » StartUps

Wow.

Zach — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 01:17:29 +0000

Interesting Social Media Video.

Free by Chris Anderson – for free!

Zach — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:12:01 +0000

Ad Supported Internet Video on your TV – Round 1.5

Zach — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:00:05 +0000

This is a quick follow up to my earlier post on Ad Supported Internet (web) Video on your TV, where I brought up the concept that if users stream web video to their TV, you take the interactivity out of the Ad unit and so goes the value to the advertiser for using the web as a more powerful vehicle to spend their ad dollars.

Now it looks as if the big wigs are responding to the problem and the reason that NBC has been resisting is simple, “because it hasn’t figured out how to make money off Web video yet — and needs you to keep watching TV on your TV.” Check out an interesting piece from Silicon Alley Insider that goes into more detail.

The shift back to get web content on the TV continues….

Shared characteristics of successful ad supported Internet companies

Zach — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 06:17:07 +0000

Below is a draft of a few characteristics that successful advertising supported Internet Companies embody. This is just a simple table – and a start to taking a birds eye view approach for what makes the great companies tick. Thoughts are welcome.

Advertising Supported Internet Industry Overview

Purpose	Connecting with Friends	Consuming Content
Success is Driven By:	- Controlled platforms (you control who you are friends with)	- Current Fads
	- The size of each users network (the bigger the better - to connect, you must be on the platform)	- Respecting Super-Users
	- Users generate their own content (self service platforms)	- Multiple content providers (self service platform)

Sample Companies:	- Facebook / MySpace	- Google / Wikipedia (close to being ad supported))
	- AOL IM / Skype	- Pandora / Digg
	- YouTube / PhotoBucket / Twitter (email / embed functionality)	- YouTube / PhotoBucket / Twitter (destination site)

Thanks to Scott, Adam & Evan for thoughts.

Ad Supported Internet Video on your TV – Round 1

Zach — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:22:43 +0000

A few weeks back I started to temporarily (b/c I cannot seem to find a splitter that will allow for simultaneous viewing on my monitor and TV) hook up my mac mini to my TV to test out a new service called Boxee. From what I have seen Boxee is the easiest way to display Ad Supported Internet Video on your TV (assuming that you do not have an Xbox – as I have heard they do a great job). There is no special set top box, just a simple downloadable app that from a mac can be navigated through the remote control (and if you are a PC user, last week they released a windows version). Boxee essentially acts as an aggregator for Internet video services like Hulu, and is used in a similar fashion to Video on Demand – automatically formating the content for a full screen experience and ignoring quality of picture, I would take it over VOD (think about the amount of free ad-supported programming that you it opens you up to).

An unintended side effect is that it takes the ads that are found in and around content and takes the interactive experience away. Most users would not know the difference between watching a TV show via CBS’s Internet offering through Boxee vs. watching it on CBS (with the exception of much shorter and a fewer quantity of commercials), so the user recognizes it as a TV experience, not the Internet experience, where advertisers flock to for the inter-connectivity.

Its a few years off, but it will be interesting to see how the TV experience evolves, as built in wi-fi on TV’s becomes common place (as LG recently announced) will they come with keyboard / mice, and will Boxee become the aggregator of your Internet Video for your TV? With all of the players in the set top box space fighting to figure out who will win the download / streaming of paid content to the television set, I look forward to seeing more entrants focusing on the ad-supported space which is behind the recent surge in online video and will only continue to grow, especially as advertisers shift their budgets to online video.

Here is a quick overview of Boxee:

I titled this post Round 1, as I am sure that there are several more to come!

Facebook keeps charging forward – good move

Zach — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 01:03:16 +0000

Facebook’s Land Grab in the Face of a Downturn was the title of an article in the most recent edition of Business week. This is refreshing news especially in this environment when it seems that all you hear about are layoff’s & downsizings. Downturns present a phenomenal opportunity to start or push forward young venture and if you take a step back and really assess the situation if the average company that is acquired is four years old, would you prefer to be exiting during a bust or boom? The economy is cyclical and will be back, why not already have a few years of business growth under your belt?

Soocial – Organize your contacts

Zach — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:02:44 +0000

Great concept – you can organize and sync all of your contacts to all of your devices / emails. If you are like me and have contacts from random places and times in different locations (think Gmail, Mac, Outlook, BBerry, etc.) this should be the answer. Unfortunately, after messing with it for a few hours, the only comments are that it needs work – made triplicate copies of my outlook contacts and crashed the computer twice. As always, revenue model to come later, up sell on premium version, don’t know if people will pay for just a contact storage / sync solution.

But they are claiming to only be in Alpha mode, and did caveat the heck out of backing up your data! Look forward to future versions.

Posterous – Life Blogging

Zach — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:49:24 +0000

The team at Posterous has created a tool that makes it simple to upload media files (Doc, PPT, EXE, MP3, JPG, etc.) to a website. All that the user has to do is email the file to a unique email address and they automatically find a viewer to view or play the content and post to your own domain (there FAQ describes it much better than I can). This gets interesting with the evolution of the smart phones – it instantly allows even the technically slow crew to create a page and share their experiences with friends / family. I plan to try it here, once I get up and going with a new BlackBerry (I have been stuck on the 8700 series with no media capabilities).

Ping me with thoughts.