Thoughts about an Online Content Revolution

An online content revolution is drastically changing the traditional media and distribution landscape. The market for online content, especially video and audio, is growing at an extraordinary pace. Fueled by open standards for digital media, the deployment and continually falling costs of broadband access, the explosion of user-generated content populating the Internet, the growth of broadband, mobile, set-top boxes and digital recording devices in addition to the advancements made in Digital Rights Management software, digital video and still-image content is becoming more widely available and easier to access.

The one obstacle these technological advancements have failed to properly address is how to efficiently monetize online content. In the past, aggregators and content providers worked only with traditional means of media distribution including through television, theater releases, DVD/VHS purchases and rentals. Moving content to the Internet has presented itself as a new, highly efficient medium to view and distribute digital media and ultimately is helping to build new ways to promote, build revenue streams and other non-traditional monetization mechanisms.

Indeed, we are witnessing the long-term trend away from the inefficiency of legacy delivery and the associated sub-par customer experience of the legacy model. New digital media start-ups and their emerging technology will gradually complement and possibly replace traditional television business models in the future. Now anyone with a camera and a desire to produce content can record, upload and distribute their work over the Internet. This type of access used to be just a fantasy for most content creators, but now it is fast becoming a reality.

Clearly, the emerging standard for video and information is on-demand, à la carte interactivity: consumers being able to find, download, store, recall and transfer content of their choice on virtually any platform or device. Digital interactivity will be the driving force to unlocking the bottomless content in this Pandora's box. However, search and filtering is the means by which to find and manage the data, television program, movie, music or other content of choice. One cannot exist without the other in this brave, new media world.

Microstock Group

If you don't know about this forum it is truly a great find on the Internet for people interested in Microstock and selling their photography online. Microstock is an emerging market, just ask Getty, for selling photos, vectors illustrations and video footage under a Royalty free agreement and at low prices. For a great overview of this market, check out Lee Torrens description from Microstock Diaries here.

The Microstock Group forum is a great place for people selling content online to express their views, get help from one another and spread details about other agencies out there that they are using.

Pluggd...

Just saw this article on VentureBeat that gave a quick update on this company we've been tracking for a few months now. It's called Pluggd and aside from having some solid backers and venture financing, they're amazingly enough trying to sell a decent product. They provide heatmaps of audio files (and soon video) that show you where certain words or themes pop up. How they're going to do this with video is beyond me, but it will make online video searches that much more relevant and timesaving. When it's ready, we'd obviously love to use technology like this on our site, so we're interested in seeing what they negotiate with partners in terms of pricing and who they partner up with over the summer.