When I was younger, there was nothing I loved more than being in the kitchen with my grandmother while she cooked gumbo. Patiently waiting as she went through all the careful steps of preparing and combing all the ingredients and later sitting at the table with my family enjoying the taste of her love and energy. My research into video blogging has reminded me of that process of cooking gumbo. In order to understand what I mean let me first give you a quick rundown of what goes into a gumbo. Gumbo consists of a stock, chicken and or seafood, various vegetables and a roux. The most important part of any gumbo is the roux, the roux a combination of flour and butter, it thickens the mixture and brings all the flavors of the stock, meat and vegetables together, without the roux - you have soup. Unfortunately, most of the users consuming Internet video today are eating soup.
So, what is the roux of Internet video? What’s going to make our soup into gumbo? Video blogging and user based propagation of media popularity. The near future of internet video will bring about a gumbo of mainstream and user created media where you will watch video blogs like Ze Frank, right next to high production shows like The Daily Show. This gumbo will consist five ingredients: mainstream syndicated media, mainstream viral video, user syndicated media, user viral video and a media aggregation/recommendation network (note: I’m going to save the details of this for later). So let’s go over the ingredients.
Mainstream syndicated media
Since the introduction of the television we have had mainstream syndicated media, by that I mean television shows that you expect on a weekly or daily basis. This content was selected by a small group of people in boardrooms at major networks and in many cases the content is created by separate production companies, for example MTV’s Real World is produced by Bunim-Murray and ABC’s Lost is produced by Touchstone Television, Bad Robot Productions and Grass Skirt Productions. A majority of the mainstream syndicated media is available online, I can watch Lost from ABC’s website or download it via iTunes and of course there is bittorent. Where as before the only way to watch mainstream syndicated media was through the networks channel on my television, now I can watch the same programming on my computer from iTunes. This makes the television networks more like playlist creators, selecting content from production companies and adding their label/brand.
User syndicated media
User syndicated media, video blogs, are very similar to mainstream syndicated media except they have lower production costs, they tend to be shorter in length and are not available from broadcast television. When on the internet, there is almost no difference at all except production costs, for example, when I want to watch the Ze Frank show I go to his website, when I want to watch Lost I go to ABC’s website (when I should be able to go to Bad Robot’s website). This is where we begin to put our ingredients together to make our gumbo. As a user who watches all their video online I can say okay I want to create my own network based on the shows that I like and I don’t have to watch the stuff the networks try to force feed while waiting for my favorite show to come on. In my network I can watch what ever I want, when ever I want, let’s say at 10:30 am on Saturday I can watch a episode of the Colbert Report followed by Rocketboom.
User viral media
We all know user viral video, if you don’t then cruise over to Youtube or watch a episode of America’s Funniest Home Video or as mmeiser8 would say “it’s the hey look at me and hey did you see this. “ In our gumbo, it is an important ingredient, which separates Internet video syndication (internet television) from broadcast television and it is going to be the glue that will recreate the lean back experience of television programming. Okay let’s go back to my Saturday morning, I’ve watched my selected shows and I have a huge queue of programming to watch from earlier in the week and I don’t have anything to do today so I put my aggregator on surf or shuffle mode where I don’t know what’s coming on next but the system knows what I like. In this lean back mode, in addition to the shows in my queue, there will also be viral videos sent by friends or pre-selected by the system, thus creating a rich experience like television with entertaining transitions between episodes.
Mainstream viral media
How does a show like Battlestar Galactica survive in a world surrounded by shows that cost almost nothing to produce? Advertising. Don’t consumers hate advertising? Sort of, the future of advertising lies in viral video, remember, - the aggregator knows what you like and included in the shuffle of user viral video are mainstream viral videos created by advertisers. You may be saying “oh man, there goes my utopia†but these will not be the same boring commercials advertising pick-up trucks to residents of Manhattan, but ads created based on your past viewing history and that of users who have similar taste as your own. We all must admit we have all seen an entertaining commercial or two. UTOPIA!
Challenges
The biggest challenge is finding a way for these ingredients to mix together without Campbell canning gumbo and calling it creole soup or video bloggers hosting all their videos at Youtube for the Google ads.