Digital Video Dominating the Olympics Coverage – New Paradigm in Broadcasting Live Events

The amount of coverage at the Olypmics is significant and all of the video will be in digital. I found this podcast from Cisco that talks about the challenges from a network perspective.

The podcast is here.

I’m trying to get Cisco on the phone to go into detail about the provisioning and systems level design. This could be a benchmark for all live events.

The question that I have is will this be a new model in doing massive live events or just live events. There are many companies out there now doing Live video from Lifecasting to major broadcasters.

The only issue that I have with the Olympics is that the only player is Silverlight which isn’t exactly the standard in desktops. Google is also doing some work on the mobile side and videos on YouTube.

The new broadcasting paradigm needs to connect with a new set of users. This morning I asked my 11 year old if she want to watch the Olympics (either online or on TV) – she said that she’d rather go to the movies. Very telling.

Long Form Video is Good – Good Move YouTube

SAI is reporting that YouTube has finally moved to allow long form video – for now you have to be a partner to sign up.

It’s no secret that I have been a fan of long form video for a long time. I think that the future of online video advertising is ‘long form’ ads. In the Web 2.0 value proposition is around content. Content is king and now it will be in both long and short form on Youtube for the masses to enjoy. Ads will follow almost immediately.

The one problem that I have with YouTube is that the quality is horrible on the videos that I upload. Fix that and provide long form and you have the new TV platform.

As I have posted before YouTube is TV for everyone under 18. YouTube has a tremendous opportunity to not only be the resource for discovery of ‘new tv’ video but the presentation provider.

I am very bullish on YouTube. Their business development teams better get busy because a tsunami of deals will be flying in.

Google Freedom Machine Being Blocked Around the World – War for Freedom – It’s a War of Ideas

Freedom on the Internet is not accepted around the world according to Nicole Wong of Google, and in America, that freedom is being tested. I applaud Google Inc. (GOOG) for not taking down the terrorist videos under the attack of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.). Lieberman is old and out of touch with the country and the new world order. Hey Joe: It’s not a series of tubes.

Nicole Wong, Deputy General Counsel for Google, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law at a May 20, 2008 hearing on Global Internet Freedom. Topics of discussion include Google’s commitment to freedom of expression, our efforts to meet challenges posed by legal and cultural barriers to the free flow of information, and the role of governments in reducing Internet censorship and promoting free expression.

The issue here is about censorship and human rights – war for Internet Freedom. Broadband access provides value – plain and simple. Freedom to access the internet will create huge opportunities. Before I wrote this post I just got off a collaborative chat with engineers in Europe who are building products for me. That benefit wasn’t there years ago. Areas that deprive Internet access are denying freedom and economic benefits to both individuals and their countries.

The war in Iraq is stupid. The real war is a new kind of cold war – ‘wired war’.. It’s a war online – It’s a WAR OF IDEAS. The country that is most connected will win this new ‘cold war’.

Pull the troops out of Iraq; connect the world – then fight this new war online. Send in the bloggers, twitters, diggers, stumblers… 🙂

YouTube Metrics – Where is the Sharing Embed Metric

Over the past 7 months I have been developing a engagement algorithm and metric for social media (mainly video). The key component is the embed data on the shared widget. Today, Youtube announced analytics but where’s the beef on the embed data from their player.

Social media online advertising needs new standards and metrics, but YouTube’s Insight offering doesn’t deliver the value for advertisers – YouTube delivers ‘vanilla server side’ metrics.  Come on YouTube get the embed data from the viral sharing.

Developing and engagement algorithm is critical for understanding the effectiveness of content and advertising (or content advertising) in social networks.  Is YouTube missing the boat?  Most likely this is their gen 1 product and look to see viral sharing data from YouTube.  It’s a must have.

What is the engagement algorithm? More on that later.,

Social Media Everywhere – YouTube APIs – This is Big

I was just posting the other day my ideas around the notion of Social Everything or Social Everywhere. Today, YouTube announces new APIs and YouTube Everywhere . YouTube has turned the corner with their user generated content site – it’s now a platform.  More info on YouTube APIs and tools.

If you’re in the video platform, advertising, or widget platform business you’re either scared to death or happy. YouTube just became a great partner or the devil of a competitor.

YouTube’s Jim Patterson – blogger and product management dude – writes, ” Technically, we have introduced some new APIs. (This is just a geeky acronym for Awesomely Powerful Interactions, which is what users are now capable of performing from just about anywhere.) Building upon our existing APIs for querying the YouTube library and playing embedded YouTube videos, we have added the following new API services for external developers and partners:

• Upload videos and video responses to YouTube
• Add/Edit user and video metadata (titles, descriptions, ratings, comments, favorites, contacts, etc)
• Fetch localized standard feeds (most viewed, top rated, etc.) for 18 international locales
• Perform custom queries optimized for 18 international locales
• Customize player UI and control video playback (pause, play, stop, etc.) through software

The number of possible new applications is endless…”This will certainly change the social media landscape.