Technofile Europe

Taking flash mobs to a new level

In this case, for a viral video advertising stunt (for a local TV reality show):

I think the first-mover for this kind of gimmick was T-Mobile whose dancing mob took over Liverpool Street Station in London in January:

I love this kind of stuff.

Targeting video junkies with GoViral

You might be wondering why we're making investments at such a blistering pace at the moment, when many funds are slowing down and waiting for the markets to stabilise.  Part of the answer lies in our deal sourcing strategy.  Because we like profitable, founder-owned businesses in particular, we often build relationships with entrepreneurs over years before making an investment.

So as it happens, a number of those relationships came to fruition in the past 4 months, independently of the economic turmoil.  And so we closed investments in Schoolwires, Go Internet Media, Spreadshirt and GoViral (with another one to be announced next week) -- many of them companies we had known and courted for some time.

As promised in last week's post on Web cinema, here's an aside on commercial viral video.  My partner Michael Elias closed an investment this week in GoViral, an ad network for branded viral video.  GoViral is a Kennet 'sweet spot' deal -- bootstrapped, with an experienced management team (ex-Trade Doubler, Leo Burnett, Rawflow), strong commercial traction and growth, and a global market opportunity.

So what the heck is branded viral video?  You've all seen the funny, quirky videos that have made the rounds like wildfire, like Cadbury's gorilla advert and Levi's Moonwalker.   Well, there is some structure and strategy behind getting those videos to 'go viral'.  Brands have cottoned on to the fact that if their video is good enough, funny or edgy enough, it can get a lot of 'free' distribution by getting on to blogs, into emails, and onto social networks.  But to get that level of distribution, the videos need a solid kickstart.  That's where services like GoViral's come in.

GoViral built a global network of web publishers in 80 countries, where it can 'seed' its clients' videos to get the viral ball rolling.  GoViral's videos play in a YouTube-like player, directly within the content of the site.  Once consumers see the video, they can easily share it, blog it, rate it, etc.  The best videos get the most distribution and the most views.  GoViral tracks the video's voyage across the Web and delivers detailed performance reports back to the brand that originated it. 

The key is to work closely with brands to make sure only the best videos with viral potential make it onto the network.  That effort has produced gems like this one, a jam session of extreme street football in Mexico:

But this approach can also be applied to traditional high-quality commercials like this one for Nissan Qashqai:

Or they can be low-budget guerrilla projects like the dynamite surfers from Quicksilver:

When it works, the results can be astounding.  As reported by GigaOm, the Quicksilver video above got 20 million views and generated £68 in sales revenue for every £1 spent on the campaign.

Viral video seeding is in its infancy, but big brands are jumping on board (and not only with video, but also games and widgets).  Check out one of my favourite campaigns, Virgin Media's Right Music Wrongs. 

Web cinema: the next generation

After several false starts in recent years, films made specifically for the Web are finally making it to the must-see list.  This is thanks to both technical advances (eg, streaming HD via Silverlight), as well as format improvements that are better adapted to interactive Web behaviour.  The only missing element is finding a reliable way to get the stuff in front of many eyeballs. 

Unfortunately YouTube seems to be stuck in a crappy UGC time-warp that makes it a poor distribution platform for quality HD content.

A great recent showcase for this kind of production is the interactive Web thriller Kirill, launched last year by MSN and Endemol UK. (See coverage in The Guardian here.)  Kirill is a slick, dark sci-fi drama chronicles the travails of a CERN scientist and blogger (played by David Schofield) who tries to save the world from his exile in a dystopian future.

The series ran in ten 3-minute episodes over a five-week period, and was supplemented with clues and activity on MSN's instant messaging and social networking sites (I know this seems a bit of a waste, but MSN has the bucks...).

Kirill looks hot in Silverlight HD.  It's a great combination of high production values with one of the better technologies developed by Microsoft in recent years. That said, it hasn't yet had the broad viewing it deserves because it was distributed on MSN Video, and in the UK only. 

The only valid online distribution mechanism is viral, and Kirill hasn't been allowed (or encouraged) to surf the viral wave as yet.  According to MSN (quoted here), Kirill got 1.5m streams and 500k unique users during its UK run.  That statement is hard to reconcile with Kirill's traction on the open Web.  If you look at its 130 subscribers on YouTube (where episodes aired unofficially) and fewer than 500 fans on Facebook, you'd have to call it a viral flop.

It's obvious that MSN UK is using Kirill to drive downloads of Silverlight, in its ongoing battle with competing Web multimedia platform Adobe AIR, as the 'RIA wars' continue. 

The commercial value of Web flicks remains unproven while quality productions like Kirill and Beyond the Rave don't come cheap.  Endemol's budget for The Gap Year, a reality Web show for social network Bebo reportedly had a budget of £1m.  In all, it is estimated that some 50 digital shows have been commissioned in the past two years for the Web.  The BBC is also in on the act, and expects to launch several long-form shows this year. 

The leading big-name producer for this medium is probably Endemol UK, but the majority of new Web shows are being developed by independent producers like Conker Media and Pure Grass Films, who co-produced Kirill.

But in order to succeed Web cinema will have to do more than pay lip service to the interactive potential of the Web.  Productions need to integrate virality and interactivity and find ways to exploit the distribution potential of social networks, blogs and bookmarking.  For this reason, expect edgy independent firms run by Generation X'ers to lead the genre for some time.

Let's hope that real film investors will follow the marketing bucks spent by MSN to finance quality productions for their own sake.  They'll have to be patient while this model finds its feet and becomes commercially interesting.  Certainly we will see a significant step-up in the quality of productions at this year's Digital Emmys and Bafta Interactive awards.

Stay tuned for more on viral video, and its direct marketing applications, next week.

Endemol scores Grass

Congratulations to my friends over at Pure Grass Films (PGF), who have taken a strategic investment from TV producer Endemol, as reported in the Guardian here.  This is a great cross-over deal between old and new media, and the large production houses should watch this space closely.  Endemol is perhaps the 'newest' of the Old Media companies, having made its initial fortune on global TV brands like Big Brother and (my preferred) Ready-Steady-Cook. 

Endemol is being smart about its digital media investments.  Rather than use its financial and political clout (Berlusconi, John de Mol, Goldman Sachs) to engineer a merger with a large online property, Endemol is making small, strategic acquisitions at the bleeding edge of its industry.  The focus remains on production and not on owning the means of distribution -- no AOL/TW debacle here. 

With Pure Grass and MoMedia as new investments, Endemol is pre-emptively tying up the top emerging talent for New Media: mobile, IPTV, and Web.  What Endemol 'gets' is that repurposing existing TV shows isn't good enough, and it's what most of its legacy competitors are doing. But these New Media are still in flux, viewing habits are not yet predictable, and experimentation (among viewers and producers) is rife. 

In order to succeed, new media production needs to be more like consumer Internet releases -- more frequent new material, produced at low cost, with lots of consumer input.  This requires a different skillset than traditional TV production and a cultural belief that traditional rules can be broken.  Endemol already showed it can do that with its invention and spectacular exploitation of the reality TV genre (think what you might about its cultural value...).  Now, with mobile fillm pioneers Ben and Tom Grass, they have invested in a team that can get them there.

PGF's newest film, Beyond the Rave (starring Sadie Frost and music oversight by Pete Tong) will be an interesting test of both format and channel innovation: it is being released exclusively on MySpaceTV (April 17) as 20 'webisodes' before being repackaged and sold as a full-length DVD.  Check out the trailer below and coverage from the Telegraph here.

What to do in case of recession

Another great edition of Wallstrip here.

Killing the entertainment goose

Great post here from Marc Andreesen on the Hollywood writers' strike -- worth a full read.  If the movie and TV bosses really think this is the right time for a showdown with their talent over a few pennies on the dollar in royalties, they may be in for a nasty surprise.  The longer the strike lasts, the more writers will discover the new distribution channels that are making the large studios obsolete.  It won't take long for new media companies to take their place...

For SNL's unveiling of studio head hypocrisy, check out these videos which NBC then tried to remove from the Web.

During the last writers strike in 1988, most people saw their favourite shows fizzle out over 22 weeks, but they did not hear much from the writers themselves.  This time the impact the backlash will be far greater -- so much TV and Web programming is just-in-time, written-yesterday, current-events-led.  And the writers' have more avenues to influence public opinion (blogs, YouTube, social networks, whole pages on Flickr devoted to the picket lines, etc) than their bosses could ever imagine. 

The incredible irony here is that the studios are alienating the very talent AND the very consumers who just might have been able to save them from obsolescence....

Seinfeld regurgitates a blog

Jerry Seinfeld on The Daily Show yesterday, on blogs:

"Blaahg" -- is this the worst new word of our culture or what?  It's so unattractive; it sounds like something that you spit up...  and it congeals... and you kick dirt on it...

He has a point.

Still trying to free TV!

Earlier this year I wrote about my frustration in finding TV shows and documentaries on the Internet, and my eager anticipation of an online service I wish I'd thought of: TIOTI - Tape It Off The Internet.  Since then the service has gone live and now the project has more Web two-dot-oh features than you can shake a stick at.  Yesterday Techcrunch UK announced that TIOTI had raised a first round of funding from top-quality early-stage investor Pond Venture Partners.

As a business model I like TIOTI much better than Joost or most of the Internet TV projects that depend on developing or buying content for re-distribution.  I also like the focus on whole TV episodes or series, rather than a muddle of UGC and TV clips. 

TIOTI started life kind of like a specialised search engine, indexing tens of thousands of TV shows that are available on the Web, and guiding users to them for download or streaming.  I thought that is conceptually pretty valuable, although the coverage as of a few months ago was fairly limited.

Now TIOTI is adding reams of factual information to its catalogue of shows, emulating the world's favourite movie database, the IMDB.  But by easily taking you to where the shows can be downloaded it goes a step further than IMDB has to date.  Beyond that, TIOTI pulls in the must-have features of the new Web 2.0 paradigm -- tagging, user commentary, ease-of-sharing and various tools for building communities around common TV interests.   

The key question in my mind remains how TIOTI will deal with illegal TV downloads.  In the Techcrunch article CEO Paul Cleghorn makes the obligatory statement about working with the industry to protect copyright blah blah.  But precisely the greatest value of a TV index and search engine is enabling users to find the shows, in whatever state of legality or illegality they exist.  They should be able to make their own decision about whether or not to download.  TIOTI can help by rating download sites on their degree of copyright respect, but if it self-censors then it's just handing the juicier part of index to other players.

Or so I would have thought.  Another index & search engine, Testcard.tv, which launched a few weeks ago, shut itself down on Friday following the closure on Thursday of its main source -- a volunteer-driven site called TV Links, whose 26-year old organiser was arrested on Thursday for copyright infringement (although the site hosts no download streams itself), as reported in The Guardian here. There is more on the New Freedom blog here. The precedent is very worrying, as it throws into question the whole concept of linking and indexing content, though presumably the Gloucestershire Police are not going after Larry Page and Sergey Brin next....

Others are entering TV indexing game, with slightly different strategies.  TVCatchup is trying to be an online PVR, allowing you to program a recording schedule of your favourite shows.  It's hard to see at the moment how this differs from a cheap Freeview box (though I'd love to be able to programme my Humax over the Web!).

Watch this space.

What HD TV??

Guest report from Evan Frank from the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin:

Last week I attended the IFA (consumer electronics) conference in Berlin. What struck me walking through the exhibition was just how far LCD and plasma technology has come in the past few years. The manufacturers continue to push the boat out beyond what seems possible, as demonstrated by the truly mind-blowing Samsung 102-inch plasma on display, below:

Televisions are becoming wider, thinner, sleeker and cheaper than ever before. And they are all ready for High-Definition (HD) television signals. In fact, as a consumer you’d be hard-pressed to find a non-HD-ready plasma TV (and who would want that, anyway?). Yet despite this favourable trend, are the television networks holding up their end of the bargain?

I come from New York City, home of Time Warner Cable (and really good pizza and Chinese food), so I’m a bit spoiled. Time Warner, the main broadcast network in the city, offers some 25 HD channels, with content ranging from premium stations (like HBO), to sports, nature and so on. The service costs between £30 and £45 per month, with no up front charge. Generally speaking, good HD content is commonplace in your typical NYC household (and has been for the past 18-24 months).

Back here in London, after two years I finally succumbed to buying a cable subscription -– mainly because I bit the bullet and bought myself a plasma. So, what is the HD experience like on this side of the pond?

Sky’s HD offering looks like this: first you have to pay £299 just to get the box. Then you assemble your channel package, say standard sports + movies. This will set you back around £40/month (similar to New York). Want HD programming?  Add another £10/month. What do you get?  Ten dedicated HD channels, which apparently include frequent non-HD programming.

Wow. Even for someone who’s been seen once or twice paying $25 for a cheeseburger and fries at Automat, this seems a little excessive.

But I digress. Back at the IFA, over a bratwurst I chatted with an entrepreneur whose company sells content management platforms to traditional broadcasters and new IPTV operators. He reinforced what seems obvious, that:

in the era of user-generated content and incredibly rich PC and console games, the traditional networks are terrified that their bread and butter –- from Fox Kids to Desperate Housewives -- is losing our interest. To be sure, some broadcasters such as BskyB are announcing subscriber growth (although much of this is attributable to the price and marketing war with Virgin Media), but can they actually recover?

If networks want to do something about subscriber retention and growth in the age of the ubiquitous consumer Internet -– here’s an idea: invest in making quality content affordable and available for the current generation of HD-ready plasmas. These amazing screens are proliferating in households and are woefully underexploited. Perhaps if the end-user experience reflects the capabilities of the technology, the networks might reverse the flow of user interest back to the TV.

Elections 2008, or Politics + Sex + YouTube

I confess I'm torn about whether the recent emergence of the political hotpants video represents the final debasement of the electoral debate, or is in fact a re-taking of the initative by the people, for the people.  Or at least male people...

It all began with Obama Girl gyrating her way through the steamy I've Got A Crush on Obama only 5 weeks ago.  Obama's camp was unsure how to react.  The video's authors (barelypolitical.com) quickly evened the political score by pitting Obama Girl against unlikely Giuliani Girl.  Now even Hillary has a sultry admirer: Hot4Hillary!  Anything is more interesting than Hillary's own choice for campaign song, and the torturous process that got here there.

Where are we going with this?  I'm going to 'think positive' and assume that any initiative from below that breaks through general electoral apathy is a good thing, but let's wait and see (and keep watching...).

Video mashups: Smells Like Booty

Last night, girlwithoutawatch and I were channel-surfing the Freeview box, when we stumbled across our first music-video mashup. I must admit: the thought of crossing Nirvana (Smells Like Teen Spirit) with Destiny's Child (Bootylicious) sounds grotesque at best, offensive at worst.  But, somehow, it really works and is strangely compelling:

This one is courtesy of Soulwax, who pioneered the format.  The modern DJ + iMovie on the Apple Mac = video mashup artist.  I like it! Now, if they can only sort out the royalty and copyright issues...