Georgia Podcast Network

I remember a few months ago Griftdrift and I were discussing what makes a blog (or a podcast or a news outlet or whatever) popular. My theory was simply that the best content went a long way toward distinguishing an outlet. Alan Cooper called this Best of Market Trumps First to Market.

This article from Podcasting News makes me wonder if that theory is malarkey, and if there are other factors which are more important:

Internet research firm HitWise reports that, while Hulu is getting big shows, it’s not getting big audiences.

Hulu.com., the joint venture between Fox and NBC that provides streaming video content online, came out of beta on March 15 and has seen a steady share of US Internet traffic since:

The site ranked 33 among Multimedia websites last week and 84 among television websites.

While it is often compared with YouTube, YouTube is attracting nearly 300 times more traffic than Hulu.com.

I say this because Hulu has some really excellent content. You can watch entire episodes of professionally-produced television shows from the major networks, including The Daily Show, Family Guy, The Office and The Simpsons. All legal and free and with high quality encoding, unlike on YouTube.

And yet, 1/300 of YouTube's traffic.

Podcasting News posits that the lack of alternative interfaces (podcasts, Apple TV, etc.) is holding Hulu back. I don't think that's true though. YouTube got huge without offering downloadable content or podcasts or access on Apple TV/Tivo/whatever, though some of that stuff has since been implemented.

Maybe you'll say Hulu isn't the best case study because of their early (and arguably ongoing) marketing problems. Fair enough. But that doesn't explain why YouTube is so big and everyone else is so small, despite YouTube's obvious shortcomings (crappy video quality, dependence on illegal content, etc.).

So, if best of market doesn't trump first to market, is it the other way around? Is being first the most important thing? I think one word is enough to discredit that idea: Friendster.

So what is it then? Is it just that YouTube has built a more active community than the other sites? If so, why did it succeed where others have failed?

You can listen to our interview with Wilson R. Smith on What Is Goin' On by clicking here. Topics discussed include Wilson's new web site (which we designed), the CNN/YouTube debates (which hadn't happened yet at the time), health care, and the effect (or lack of effect) of new media in the 10th District race.

To keep up with What Is Goin' On, you can subscribe to the RSS feed or search the iTunes store for the key words "what is goin on."

A few months ago, I had the idea (that I thought was original at the time) to create a product where users could add audio comments to posts, then listen to the audio sequentially — sort of a podcast created in bits and pieces at varying times and locations.

Then Skype added a feature to its software that let up to 100 users speak on a conference call at once (which in turn isn't hard to record and post somewhere). That happened before I even had time to look up a venture capitalist's phone number.

Well, now it appears video sharing site Grouper has upped the ante, adding a feature to its site where users can add video comments through a web cam. The videos and video commenting software all work through Flash, and can be embedded on a web site the same way YouTube videos are.

All I can say is... wow! View an example of the technology in action here. It's similar to what I wanted to make, except mine was going to be audio-only.

If this catches on, it could dethrone YouTube. What I know for certain is this is the first application I've ever seen that actually made me want to buy a web cam.

h/t Techcrunch

Two or three years ago, you'd be hard-pressed to find a place to host your videos. Ourmedia was just about the only game in town. Now, according to this CNN article, there are 173 web sites vying for that privilege. CNN predicts a shakeout soon, as logically it seems impossible for that many competing services to make money.

So, basically, it's crazy to try to start a media hosting company with the idea of being profitable right now. But someone has to produce all that content to put on those sites...

I think what's neatest about these mass video storage sites and how easy they are to use combined with prices dropping on decent quality equipment is the accessibility to normal people. The possibilities are endless:

• Sports coaches could put highlights from local games online
• Community theater outfits could broadcast their plays
• Clubs could post their meetings online
• Restaurants could post guided tours of their menus, featuring head chefs
• And two gals with thrift store wigs and a bottle of gin are fully capable of competing with television for your attention. Witness True Gritz, produced on a budget of next-to-nothing, and getting the big boys' attention.

It will be interesting to see in the coming years how many people are willing to pay for localized, small scale media production services in the same way small businesses are already willing to pay for small scale web site development.

The list of things you can do with your cell phone just keeps getting longer. Time to add one more: "shoot video and send it directly to YouTube." People already blog from their phones, upload photos to Flickr, and waste time on MySpace; really this is just the next logical step. Imagine the possibilities for instantly sharing homemade pr0n!