Spark Minute » Tech debate

Viacom and Google: Looking back at more than three years of bickering

David Spark — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:20:23 +0000

What have we learned from the Google-Viacom incessant bickering which ended up in a ruling we all knew before it even started?

After more than three years of arguing, Google/YouTube were found not guilty of copyright infringement given the “safe harbor” provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). DMCA’s “safe harbor” refers to a site not having to police every piece of content that’s posted to its site by its users. It’s the job of the copyright holder to notify the site when their copyright is being violated. Once the site is notified, they’re out of the “safe harbor” and must remove the infringing material.

When Viacom first issued its infamous $1 BILLION lawsuit against Google/YouTube, I appeared on KQED’s “This Week in Northern California” to talk about it.

There’s lots more to the Viacom vs. Google/YouTube story. For a complete detailed rundown, check out Betanews’ great timeline looking back at all the pertinent events. Here are my learnings and questions over the past four years.

Is there an art to picking large random round numbers?

What are we to think of these obviously chosen, not calculated numbers?

Viacom: We’re going to sue you for $1 billion.
Google: It cost us $100 million to defend ourselves against Viacom.

How do large companies come up with these seemingly large arbitrary numbers? Since so much of this lawsuit has been a media relations game, one can only assume Viacom and Google focus-grouped the numbers on their shareholders.

Where there’s a science and art to pricing products, there must be a similar technique to choosing these large round numbers for lawsuits and expenses to either scare or codify your audience.

Pull it down. Pull it all down.

Four years ago when Viacom requested infringing videos be pulled down, it seemed that Viacom was requesting more videos to be pulled down than Viacom had the rights to pull down. And YouTube didn’t argue. Instead of verifying that it truly was violating Viacom’s copyright, they just pulled down every request Viacom threw their way.

Viacom CEO, Phillipe Dauman

It appeared that one of Viacom’s criteria for pulling down content was the appearance of the properties’ program names in the title of the YouTube video. I personally had a video that I produced entitled “Daily Show Segment on ZDTV.” It was a segment that I produced for the now defunct cable network ZDTV that included interviews with writers and correspondents of “The Daily Show.”

YouTube pulled down the video because Viacom claimed copyright infringement. But it didn’t infringe Viacom’s copyright. They had no rights to it whatsoever. I can only assume that the reason they pulled it down was because they saw the name “Daily Show” in the title. Had they watched just a few seconds of it, they would have quickly known it wasn’t theirs (for more, read the entire story).

There was so much content they wanted pulled down in such a short period of time that I can’t believe Viacom actually had the time or manpower to look at all the content to insure that it was actually violating their copyright.

Similarly, at the time, YouTube had a lean staff and was being inundated by takedown requests that it just wasn’t worth it for them to see if the copyright violation claim was valid. They just took down every takedown request as required by the DMCA. It wasn’t a big deal. They had enough video on their site as it was.

People who had legitimate claims to their videos, like me, were getting their videos pulled down. I guess if you cast a wider net you’ll catch more tuna, but you’ll probably get a few dolphins too.

Today, I’ve been told by a communications VP at Viacom that the number of false positive takedown requests are quite low. Viacom employees actually do look at the content of the videos and my individual case was unique and he didn’t know why they chose to pull mine down. He claims they do make some mistakes today and they correct them as quickly as they can. But he wasn’t there four years ago and couldn’t speak to the process then.

Also at issue four years ago was that video commentary on video content was not as prevalent as it is today. Now it’s not unheard of to see somebody’s video with “The Daily Show” in the title that is purely a commentary about “The Daily Show.”

Why aren’t Google stockholders more furious?

Last year, it was estimated that Google was spending $1.25 million a day operating YouTube. Costs that were not being recouped by the meager revenues. Add on top of those daily operational costs was the purchase price of YouTube, which has been reported to be somewhere between $1.65 and $1.76 billion, and now YouTube admits to the supposed $100 million to defend themselves against Viacom. Add all that up and Google is spending billions on a service that has no foreseeable means to generate a profit.

Google makes money from advertising, because eyeballs are looking at screens with their content and ads on it. Hulu has figured out how to make money from eyeballs looking at video content, why can’t Google?

After last Thursday’s earnings call, there was this exchange between a reporter and Google’s CFO, Patrick Pichette:

QUESTION: Does the Viacom ruling change your ability to monetize (on YouTube)?

RESPONSE: We are still in appeal, so I don’t want to comment on the specifics. What I can say is … with more clarity from this judgment, it gives us more room for experimentation that we didn’t have before. Because, until these rules are clear, you don’t know exactly where the bar is. With that clear bar, we now have much more room for experimentation.

Uggh, if I was a Google stockholder I’d be furious. They’ve been holding onto something for practically four years that’s costing them billions and they’re waiting for a “bar” to be set so they can start “experimenting?” Google and other tech players have been setting industry bars on their own. Why isn’t Google doing it now? To think that a clearly defined criteria by someone else, especially the government, will come around anytime soon is absurd. They’re pushing off their stockholders, and their stockholders should be furious.

YouTubers really hate Viacom

I’m amazed at the vitriol YouTube users have against Viacom. In the video you see above, there are more than 120 comments for which most of them refer to Viacom with profanity. In fact, the two most popular comments as voted by viewers of this video are:

“Fuck Viacom all they think about is money”?

“Money? all they fucking care about Viacom go suck a dick you twats.”

Either people truly hate Viacom, or my viewing audience are complete morons that can only speak in expletives.

What I don’t understand is if they truly hate Viacom, why don’t they show their anger with their wallet? If you hate Viacom so much, stop spending money and viewing their content properties.

Viacom hates its users (or at least they use to)

If it’s evident that viewers of Viacom’s content hate Viacom as a corporation, then it can also be said that Viacom hates its viewers. Or at least they were angry with them three and four years ago when they filed the lawsuit against Google/YouTube.

Historically, Viacom has been successful getting people to pay for its content through traditional means (e.g., watching TV shows, paying tickets for movies, buying DVDs), but they weren’t successful selling through new media. Viacom is doing much better at it now, but back then they were furious that people would go watch a clip of “The Daily Show” or “Colbert Report” on YouTube instead of coming to ComedyCentral.com to see that same clip. The problem back then was that the clips appeared on YouTube faster, were easier to watch, share, and embed.

Today, that situation has changed dramatically as Viacom’s online properties post videos faster in a format that are easy to link to, embed, and share. There’s no need for a fan to capture, encode, and post a video of the “Colbert Report” to YouTube if Viacom is doing it already in a format consumers want.

Technology doesn’t wait for lawyers to figure things out

One of the great things about being a nimble private startup is you don’t have any lawyers around telling you what you can and can’t do. Your only limitation is technology. And what we’ve all discovered is you can figure out and accomplish things a lot faster with technology than you can with lawyers.

The reason for Viacom’s lawsuit is that the media company simply couldn’t figure out how to distribute its content while also making sure everyone got paid. At the time, YouTube wasn’t a public property nor did it have any content assets to protect. Given reduced content issues and complexity, YouTube’s ability to go to market with a video distribution platform was considerably easier.

Viacom’s lawsuit claims that YouTube was creating a safe haven for copyright infringement. Had Viacom offered a usable online video content and distribution for its properties like they are today, this wouldn’t have been an issue. Problem is Viacom simply couldn’t figure it out fast enough. They needed lawyers to figure out all the content, copyright, and payment issues for their properties. There’s no conceivable way they could have ironed out all those issues as quickly as someone who can encode and post a “Daily Show” clip to YouTube.

It wasn’t technology holding Viacom back, it was a bunch of businessmen and lawyers waiting until they could all agree on what money was going to go into whose pocket. While they were sitting around trying to make those decisions, YouTube was slowly building their market share, and getting the audience eyeballs that Viacom would later have to fight for and win back.

Creative Commons photo credit to sdk, Mariano Kamp, sonicbloom, dannysullivan

How to increase the value of content without ever changing the content

David Spark — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:01:42 +0000

The market for content is an ongoing debate. And for so long the argument has been based on the question, “What will people pay for and what won’t they pay for?”

The problem is when people ask that question they’re looking for absolutes.

Will people pay for newspapers online?
Will they pay for videos online?
Will they pay for music online?

If you removed the word “online” from all of these questions and asked them twenty years ago, the answer would always be “yes.”

While we’ve always known that the value of content is constantly changing (e.g. people will pay for a newspaper printed today, but its worthless tomorrow), in the online world those valuations are faster, more fluid, and often hard to pin down.

Our constantly changing perceptions are responsible for changing the value of content

One day a best seller book can only be had at full price. A month later it can be found in the remainder bin for $2. Did the book all of a sudden lose value in that month? No, our perception of its value dropped in that month. The question is how did our perception allow it to get so high and then fall so low?

Below is a list of different techniques used to change the value of content that are outside of the creation of the content itself. Are you using these techniques?

Value generator – The influence storm

We let ourselves be influenced by all the marketing, pressure, advice, recommendations, critics, and crowd reaction there can possibly be. All that influence raises the value and price of content. When that storm of influence falls away, then so does our interest, and in return so does the item’s perceived value.

Value generator – Alternative methods of payment

When we ask the question “Will they pay for online content?” it’s assumed that there’s a direct financial transaction in order to consume the content whether renting or buying.

But consumers can still see value in content and pay for it without actually giving cash. For example:

Social media gamers pay marketing and acquisition costs by promoting and distributing the game to their friends.
Video viewers pay with their attention which in return allows the video distributor to generate revenue from advertising.
Users pay by divulging private information, such as email and mailing address, allowing for the creation of an email or snail mail marketing list.

Once you can create value, a need to consume and have, then you can build a pricing mechanism. All businesses have costs and different business goals such as customer acquisition. Let your pricing mechanism allow people to pay through other means other than monetarily.

Value creator – Give options for payment

Not only do you need to provide alternative methods of payment, but you always need to provide these alternative methods as options. That’s because at any given moment, with any given person, there are a combination of issues that will change their perception of the value of content. A video may not be worth my money, but it may be worth my time to watch with advertising. Or irrespective of the value of the content, the user may appreciate the value of the portability of a video program (e.g., downloaded to an iPod or watch streaming on a mobile phone) and therefore pay to have the added value of portability.

What is so strange is these changing behaviors can often be within the same person.

ABC.com handled the “give options for payment” issue very well early on when they simultaneously gave people the choice to either watch “Lost” for free on their site with commercials, or avoid the commercials and pay $1.99 for the episode on iTunes which could also be watched on a portable device.

Don’t try to second guess your audience’s behavior. It changes too rapidly and erratically. Instead, provide all the payment options for consumption and let your audience make their decision when they want. And in many cases, it’s a good idea to let them change their payment option as often as they want.

Value creator – Define the market

In the world of rising digital content, this is probably the greatest value creator. Just think about all the digital marketplaces that exist today: iTunes for music, the iTunes mobile app store, triple-play services (phone, TV, Internet) offered by cable and phone carriers, Kindle book store, and virtual digital assets on social and MMORPGs (massive multi-player online roll-playing games). All of these platforms have become successful because they did an excellent job clearly defining the value exchange for content. These successful marketplaces had predecessors that failed because the pricing mechanisms were all over the map, in multiple locations, and were highly confusing to consumers.

The iTunes music store succeeded because they demanded that every song sell for $.99 (now some can be had for $1.29). The music industry had failed up until then because they felt they needed to create a multi-tiered pricing structure and sell the content across all their artists’ sites. It was too confusing and the marketplace was too disparate. People didn’t want to purchase music from a record label or directly from an artist, they wanted to purchase from an online record store, just like they do in the real world.

The iTunes app store also succeeded because it had simple and low pricing. Most applications are less than $5. Not only was the pricing low and simple, all applications operated on one platform, it was easy to develop for that platform, and the platform had lots of capabilities and lots of users so developers were eager to create for that platform. Conversely, the site Handango for years was trying to sell applications for smartphones for ludicrous amounts of money. I remember seeing Microsoft applications, like an expense application, selling for more than $150. It was insane. I believe the publishers felt that anyone who had a smartphone at that time had it issued by their company, and they could charge whatever they wanted for an app because they assumed the employee would just expense the cost of the application to their company.

The other reason iTunes continues to sell well and other mobile platforms don’t is the cost consistency of application and the value they deliver. For example, when Sprint released SprintTV about five years ago, it was the the first full blown IP-based mobile TV distribution in the U.S. The price of SprintTV was somewhere around $10/month. Another company sold a single comic strip to your mobile phone for about the same price. If you wanted two comic strips, it would be twice as expensive. To the individual, that’s lopsided value. A month of TV has far more value than a month of just one comic strip.

This cost-value confusion caused purchasing paralysis. It wasn’t the fault of Sprint or the guys distributing the comic strip. It was the fault of the lack of a marketplace. The community hadn’t agreed yet what was the value exchange for content on a mobile device. It took someone like Steve Jobs and Apple to create a an online marketplace for all products and say this is what the products are going to cost. And on top of that we’re going to take 30 percent of the sale of any digital good in our marketplace.

Value creator – The archive

Today’s newspaper has value. Yesterday’s newspaper has little to no value. But an archive of last year’s newspapers does have value. People see value in what information is coming out right now, plus the ability to go back in time and find relevant stories. The New York Times has gone back and forth on whether it does or doesn’t charge for its archive. They’re constantly debating as to what their audience wants. Do they want to pay piecemeal, say a dollar, to have access to a single archived article? Do they want an “all you can eat” monthly subscription? Or should we just have advertising and reap revenue from the increased number of people who will see the content?

As mentioned before, you don’t have to second guess the audience. You can offer options and let your audience decide. You can create a nuisance advertisement for unpaid people, and let people pay to not have the advertisement before the article. Salon.com used to do this, but it doesn’t appear they’re doing that anymore. Or you can do the “eat too much and now you pay” solution which is one that I’ve seen the New York Times utilize.

Value creator – Content itself generates value

Very few websites can get away with charging a subscription fee, but some can like those media outlets that publish financial information and advice, such as The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ does have a tiered model as some of their information is free, but only a limited amount. This is possible because people who pay for the content can see direct financial benefit from the information the site generates.

If I get this content, I can make more money, therefore the cost to purchase it is worth it.

Value creator – Fabricated scarcity

The film distribution system operates under the fabricated scarcity model. A film may not be available through one specific platform not because it’s not physically possible to distribute it that way, but rather people have been trained to know that it takes time for a film to be released on a specific platform (e.g., theaters, DVDs, on-demand, cable, network TV, international).

This technique is known as fabricating scarcity. The movie industry is controlling how much access people can have to the content thereby making it more valuable at different stages of distribution. People are now conditioned to pay to see films at prime times and locations. First run movies in a theater are most expensive. Then second run movies in smaller theaters are less expensive. Then renting a DVD or watching on-demand is less expensive than that. Appearing on a pay cable channel is the next tier, and finally free on network TV is the cheapest, but the slowest means to arrive.

Dodo Bird

There’s nothing technically holding back a film from being in your living room right now. The industry knows that they can generate the most money if they create a life cycle for a film and fabricate scarcity at each point along the distribution chain.

The trick to fabricated scarcity is not to be random about it, but to clearly define the stages of a piece of content. Hulu is now doing this with Hulu Plus, only giving paid members access to the freshest video content.

Similarly, my company, Spark Media Solutions, is working on building a model of fabricated scarcity with itiBiti, a company that produces a desktop communications and content application that’s utilized and distributed by brands. Think of it like a mashup between Skype and Hulu, but it’s completely branded. For example, NBC has a version called the NBC Communicator. Being a desktop application, it can deliver content before the browser, just like iTunes does. But being a communications application as well, like Skype or an instant messaging app, users are trained to leave it running in the background. Having an “always on” channel on people’s desktops, brands now have the opportunity to deliver specialized content to their confirmed fans on a first see basis. It’s a form of fabricated scarcity that the brands can control.

Want to see a trailer before anyone else? Want first dibs on the hottest tickets? Then you need to install our version of the itiBiti application and we’ll send it straight to your desktop once it’s available.

But success is up to the brands, just like success in the film industry is up to all the players agreeing that this is the way we’re going to distribute films.

Since the distribution of content is so easy now thanks to digital distribution, you don’t necessarily need a film distribution company to release a film. This breakdown of the barriers to entry of film distribution is threatening the fabricated scarcity business model. Films released on opening weekend can immediately be found on a torrent site and distributed everywhere, completely nullifying a film industry’s ability to completely control the value of content across the distribution channel.

Conclusion: Consumers’ perceptions are the strongest value creators of content

While we keep hearing the phrase “content is king,” the real truth of the matter is content isn’t king, it’s our perception of content that’s king. One day a piece of content is worth $50, the next day it’s worthless. We allow ourselves to be influenced by so many outside pressures to increase the value of content. With that understanding, what can you do with your existing content and the content you’re about to create?

As a plug for my business, Spark Media Solutions, we’re in the business of making your content look as valuable as possible. Not only are we custom publishers creating the stories necessary to build out your media network, but we’re also connecting it and publishing it to the sites and audiences that would see the greatest value in it. In addition, we also time your content perfectly, such as at live events to give your content and business maximum exposure. Please feel free to contact us if you’d like to learn more.

Creative Commons photo credits to: JoannaPoe, MarkWallace, zizzybaloobah, benchilada, cafemama, kevinzim, Darren Hester

Cranky Geeks: Road warriors checking email on the toilet

David Spark — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:20:31 +0000

In this week’s episode of Cranky Geeks, we got to arguing about the nearly half of all road warriors that check email on the toilet. We complain about what exactly is the problem with the new iPhone and we debated about how who you should and shouldn’t befriend when you start a new job. Watch this really funny episode with host John C. Dvorak, New Media Minute host, Daisy Whitney, Roger Chang, senior producer at Revision3, and of course, me.

Can downloadable applications survive?

David Spark — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:58:15 +0000

It seemed that after the advent of Web 2.0 programming technologies, such as AJAX, that there was no more need for downloadable applications since any web page could now be a live application. With webware applications, each action would behave like a desktop application could. No need to reload a page every time you click a button, and more importantly, no need to download and install an application onto your computer.

On first look it appears that webware programs have usurped the need for downloadable applications.

But web-based programs have one very critical limitation. They require you to be on the web to use them. Webware programs can’t run all the time on your computer. They won’t shrink down into your Windows System tray.

As a result of webware’s limitations, there is still a strong market for downloadable applications. Looking at the history of popular downloadable programs, here are the three most successful categories:

Communications applications – VoIP and video chat programs like Skype and all the instant messenger applications have always been popular. Many Adobe Air applications, e.g., TweetDeck, fall into this category.
Anti-virus and spyware – Everyone MUST have these programs on their computer. Many people aren’t willing to shell out the bucks for McAfee or Norton, so they opt for one of the free solutions.
Multimedia applications – Even though you can watch videos and listen to music online, downloadable desktop programs like iTunes and Windows Media Player remain popular.

All three of these categories have stayed consistently successful even with the amazing proliferation of webware applications.

And this is where itiBiti has found its comfortable and successful niche. DISCLAIMER: itiBiti is one of Spark Media Solutions’ clients.

Instead of trying to compete with any one of these categories, itiBiti is actually a mashup of a communication and a multimedia application, two proven and consistently successful categories of downloadable apps.

These downloadable applications succeed in one of the following three ways:

They maintain a consistent connection with a brand that generates revenue through advertising (e.g., AOL with AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo! with Yahoo! Messenger).
They operate under a freemium model. Basic service is free but additional services cost money (e.g., Skype with Skype Out and Anti-Virus software with further scanning abilities).
They operate a marketplace that sells content (e.g., iTunes with sales of songs, movies, and applications).

Given all these above described options, here’s the combination itiBiti offers:

Always-on communications (text, voice, and soon video)
Multimedia content (video, real-time news, web content)
Branded application (white labeled so anyone can brand the application)

Since so many downloadable applications have failed since the advent of webware, it’s often a common belief that all downloadable applications are doomed. But if you look and realize that there are still many vibrant and highly demanded categories of downloadable apps, it’s easy to realize that there’s still a very strong marketplace. itiBiti aims to build success on a hybrid of already proven downloadable applications.

Want to know more? Interested in getting your brand on the itiBiti platform? Contact Brad Parry (bparry@intertainmentmedia.com).

Cranky on Apple fanatics dating each other

David Spark — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:14:09 +0000

On this week’s episode of Cranky Geeks I’m on with Dan Goodin of the Register, Joseph Engo of Mevio, and the host John C. Dvorak. We talk a lot about 3D gaming at E3, genitalia recognition algorithms for Chatroulette, and Cupidtino, the dating site only for Apple fanatics. Watch to hear me say “masturbating” about a dozen times.

It only took four years for Viacom to retract their copyright claim to my YouTube video

David Spark — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 03:39:56 +0000

After four years, some help by a VP in Viacom’s corporate communications, and some recent pestering, but Viacom finally retracted a copyright claim to a video I posted on YouTube four years ago.

Ten years ago I produced a piece for ZDTV (later to become TechTV) that featured “The Daily Show.” It was a news piece for ZDTV’s show “Internet Tonight” and the piece was about how we were starting to see comedy being distributed online similar to the way news is. At the time, Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” was just starting to incorporate web humor with its TV program. I went to the studios in NYC and spoke with correspondent Mo Rocca, a writer for the show (and good friend) Jim Earl, and the web producer Debra Bard. Here’s the piece.

What happened and why did it take four years for Viacom to retract its copyright claim?

Four years ago I posted a video on YouTube of the news segment I produced ten years ago for ZDTV that featured “The Daily Show.”
I received a message from YouTube that Viacom claimed I was posting their copy written material and they were removing it. YouTube warned me that if I tried to repost the content that it would result in the suspension of my YouTube account. At the time, it appeared Viacom just saw “The Daily Show” in the title and immediately assumed that they owned it, and therefore had the right to have it removed from YouTube.
I sent a message right back to YouTube saying that they were misunderstood. My piece wasn’t owned by Viacom and they had no rights to it. It was a piece that I had produced for a network not owned by Viacom.
I never received a response. YouTube I’m sure was flooded with people complaining that their videos were unjustly being removed. I assumed they just ignored my plea for reinstatement along with others. I let it slide as I didn’t have the effort to push it, nor did I want my account to be suspended.
Fast forward four years, and I see a story about Viacom pulling down another video for which they had no rights to pull down. I wrote about the story (read “Why do the ‘They still don’t get it’ stories still persist”) and relate my experience with Viacom taking down my ZDTV video.
Three days after posting that article I received an email from a communications VP at Viacom who apologized for my video being pulled and said he would put in a request to YouTube to have it reinstated. He also asserted that they don’t just pull content because it has a Viacom property’s name on it (e.g. “The Daily Show”). I argued had they read my description of the video or watched it they would have known that it wasn’t theirs. He said it was one of their few mistakes as they pull down hundreds of thousands of truly infringing content and a few do slip through the cracks. Mine was obviously one of them. But I did mention that I went through the official channels to get reinstated and was ignored. We exchanged many emails and the Viacom rep was very cool with me. Read more about this exchange.
Three weeks passed and my “Daily Show” ZDTV segment video still wasn’t reinstated on YouTube. I pestered the Viacom communications VP one more time.
Two days later I received a note from YouTube that Viacom has retracted its copyright claim to my video.

This incident and many other incidents have made me realize that traditional customer service is broken, and until businesses can get their customer service up to speed with social communications, complaining publicly is the best way to get customer service.

Creative Commons photo attribution to elkit.

Reprising United Breaks Guitars (and me on Al Jazeera English TV)

David Spark — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 01:52:05 +0000

Almost a year ago Canadian musician Dave Carroll became a household name with a song and video about his trials and tribulations trying to get compensated by United Airlines for breaking one of his guitars. The video, “United Breaks Guitars,” was seen by millions of people online and it became a public relations nightmare for United who scrambled slowly and badly to compensate for a mistake in not servicing Dave Carroll’s complaint (he complained for a year) and also responding weakly and slowly to the storm of sympathy people felt for Dave Carroll and likewise anger towards United Airlines.

I received a call from the Al Jazeera English a couple of weeks ago to speak about the topic for their international show, The Listening Post. It’s a pretty standard story discussing how consumers have control via social media. If you’re not familiar with the Dave Carroll “United Breaks Guitars” story, then you should definitely watch. You should also watch to see my first ever international TV appearance (video automatically jumps to the segment).

While cable destroyed the 80s comedy boom, the Internet is bringing it back

David Spark — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 01:11:43 +0000

Pew Internet Research, seemingly the only organization conducting Internet research, just did a report on the state of online video, specifically what people are watching.

The most interesting aspect of the research was the shocking rise in comedy video viewership, from 31 percent of adult Internet users to 50 percent over the past three years. More people watch comedy videos than they watch movies, TV, news, or educational videos online. What does this mean?

Lots more funny videos are being produced and therefore more people want to watch them.
Since 2007 more people are in general depressed and therefore need to watch comedy videos online.
More people are screwing off at work and watching comedy videos.

Ultimately, I think the issue is more people have time for a good laugh but they don’t have time to actually learn anything.

Cable destroyed stand up comedy in the 90s

Back in 2001, while working at ZDTV, I produced a video at San Francisco Comedy Day, a five hour long free outdoor comedy show every year in San Francisco. Lots of great comedians come and at the time “Internet Tonight” show host Scott Herriott interviewed many well known comedians as to whether the Internet would be a boom for the comedy business or actually a bust. At the time we all thought the Internet was going to abuse stand up comedians just like cable did (as you’ll see in the video). But as we can all see today, the comedians were happily wrong.

Watch the video below and see comedians such as Jake Johannsen, Don Novello (a.k.a. Father Guido Sarducci), Kevin Meaney, Greg Behrendt, Larry “Bubbles” Brown, Carlos Alazraqui, Don McMillan, and Dave Attell.

Top photo is of Brian Malow, the Science Comedian (before he became known as the Science Comedian), performing at San Francisco Comedy Day in 2001.

Is this the right way to request a Facebook friend?

David Spark — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:37:52 +0000

I recently received a friend request on Facebook with no introduction. There’s nothing odd about that. I receive them all the time, but it’s usually from someone I know or I met and can’t remember. Facebook has that convenient feature that lets you invite your entire address book.

For a while our address book was the easiest way to discover people to invite to Facebook. But since Facebook started behaving like our mother and suggesting people for us to be friends with, I’ve started to receive a lot more friend requests.

That’s perfectly fine although most of these friend requests don’t come with a message of introduction. That’s OK as well. When I receive a blank Facebook friend request I just send the friend requester a small polite message to build an introduction and see if I actually know the person, yet don’t remember. I actually wrote about this in a previous article and discovered that “One quarter of all people who friend me on Facebook don’t respond to personal messages.”

Just a couple days ago I just received a friend request from a woman I didn’t know. I sent my generic personal response, and what resulted was a very odd email exchange. I honestly don’t know what to make of it and I ask you readers to explain what exactly happened.

Below is the email exchange. No changes have been made. All poor punctuation and misspellings remain. All I’ve done is remove the woman’s name and icon. I’m calling her Vanessa and I’ve replaced her icon with that of Miss Belgian Beauty 2006.

	Hey Vanessa: I saw your friend request. Thanks. Excuse me for my ignorance, but have we met before? :) David
	“The silence ,has more dignity than the words”
	Well, Facebook isn’t based on silence. Have we met before?
	NO!
	Vanessa: I’m sure you’re a nice person but I don’t have time for games. I’m more than happy to friend you if you just tell me why you reached out. Thanks. :) David
	I don’t have time for games to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My apologizes,by. . .

And then she retracted her Facebook invite.

What the hell just happened?

Can someone explain it to me?

Photo credits: Creative Commons e3000, enda_001

What you can only do with paid-for music streaming services

David Spark — Thu, 27 May 2010 03:10:31 +0000

I’m a big fan of The Beastie Boys album “Paul’s Boutique.” It’s probably my favorite album. It received many awards and made Rolling Stone, Time, Spin, and VH1’s lists of top albums of all time. I purchased Paul’s Boutique twice on cassette. Played it so much that I destroyed both tapes and finally purchased it on CD.

Just last week I stumbled upon the site PaulsBoutique.info, which is a complete information site on all the samples used and references made on the album (also available on Wikipedia now). Another fan of the album and user on the paid-for music streaming service MOG saw this list and used MOG’s search feature to compile a MOG playlist of each song the Beastie Boys’ sampled on Paul’s Boutique. It’s entitled, “Pulling Apart Paul’s Boutique.” He made his 80 track playlist available to fellow MOG users. I’m listening to it right now.

Technologies, accessible data, and people collide

Every time such data (e.g., all recorded music) is indexed and made easily accessible, someone finds a way to take advantage of it in a unique, exciting, and completely eye opening way.

For the “Pulling Apart Paul’s Boutique” playlist to exist, three elements had to come together:

An individual or individuals were passionate enough to research and reveal the source information of all these tracks.
A music service existed that had an accurate and easily searchable and playable archive of all popular music.
A person on that music service took the time to create the playlist of all that information. (Tip of the hat to MOG user Cody_B for creating the playlist).

This was such a unique experience that simply couldn’t have happened back in the 80s and 90s when I was listening to Paul’s Boutique on cassette. Very few people have the time, money, or interest to engage in such endeavor. After listening to all those source tracks of Paul’s Boutique samples, I started to think, “What are other music listening experiences that are only possible with paid-for music streaming services?” Here are a couple that I could think of:

Create a playlist of all the musicians that have covered a specific song, such as Johnny B. Goode.
Listen to the albums highly reviewed on services such as Metacritic, or listen to the albums that made the top album lists for Rolling Stone, Spin, Time, or VH1.

The three big paid-for music streaming services are MOG, Rhapsody, and Napster. I’m currently only a subscriber to MOG. I’ve yet to recently try out Rhapsody or Napster. For those of you who use paid-for music streaming services, what types of music listening and learning are you able to experience that you haven’t been able to do before with your own music collection? And have you found that certain streaming music services afford different experiences than others? I do know that Rhapsody allows you to listen on portable devices and MOG will too shortly.

I’m very interested to know what other listening experiences paid-for streaming music can afford. Please share.

Photo credits: Capitol Records/Wikipedia, Fancore