YouTube Killed the Video Star

Dietrich Kappe, Thursday, July 5, 2007 @ 6:00 am

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?

Everytime I make a pronouncement about the way "the industry" is going, I feel like Mr. McGuire from the graduate -- old, pompous, irrelevant. Still, sometimes you have to call them the way you see them. So it is with the continued growth of video on the web.

To me, it looks like online video is about to do to cable and the networks what the web did (and continues to do) to newspapers around the turn of the century -- steal their customers and advertisers. There reasons for this trend are multi-factorial: cheaper and bigger bandwidth; faster laptops and internet enabled video devices; greater viewer comfort with watching content "offline," through DVR's like TiVo. These factors and the trend they drive will only continue to accelerate. Imagine a TiVo that will allow you to search, pick and record online content just as well as the "legacy" cable content.

Fake Steve has similar sentiments (if you're not familiar with the deeply tongue in cheek "diary" of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, do yourself a favor and add it to your RSS reader):

Trust me, I own one of these networks. I talk to the executives.
They're clueless pussies who will never dare to take any risks because
at the end of the day what they care most about is keeping their jobs
and perks and fancy offices. Meanwhile the
nothing-to-lose-and-no-FCC-rules Internet stuff is coming at them at
warp speed. Worse yet, the networks have destroyed their own news
operations, which was really the only part of their business where they
were adding value. And this, by the way, is now the huge gaping
opportunity on the Internet. Forget "Ask a Ninja" or "Naked News" or
girls in bikinis on trampolines. Someone with money and brains is going
to do an Internet version of what Ted Turner did with CNN in the early
days of cable. Real content. High quality, good reporters, cheap
cameras out in the field. Streaming news and on-demand, so you could go
back and watch pieces over and over again, or email them to friends.

Just
imagine what you could do in Iraq with twenty ballsy reporters armed
with cheap digital cameras and no network brass to censor them. Imagine
how you could cover the 2008 elections. Imagine the size of the
worldwide audience. Imagine how stunned people would be if, for once,
the people doing the news could actually tell you the truth. Imagine if
the reporters were smart, funny and wise-ass, instead of Ken Doll
robots with strings in the back of their heads. Imagine if you didn't
have to abide by the stupid rules about equal time and fair play.
Imagine if you got a handful of sales guys with TV experience (nobody
over 40) to bring in the advertising. It'll happen. Wait and see.

Ouch!

So, what does this have to do with Ajax? We aren't just writing code that uses XMLHttpRequest objects. We are writing applications with a purpose -- to entertain, inform, sell, assist, create. And as web technologies and usages evolve, we have to make sure our apps evolve right along. People still read books, despite the popularity of TV. People will still use "traditional" webapps, without video, but video will start to play a greater role in more and more online applications. It is time for us to start thinking about how to make our Ajax-enabled apps take advantage of this trend.

Technorati Tags: ajax, video, youtube

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