Former Six Apart Europe head and well known French Web 2.0 entrepreneur Loic Lemeur relocated to San Francisco recently to build a new startup, and thanks to Robert Scoble we now know what it is: “video Twitter.”
Lemeur himself is documenting his startup every day on YouTube here. It’s not riveting content but listening to a non-American view on building a startup is refreshing at times.
Scoble also notes in the same post that Podtech has some big news coming up; one rumor doing the rounds is that Podtech video’s will be syndicated on some form of television station, presumably a cable one. Podtech competitor Podshow recently started distributing shows via TiVo.
Internet Video companies are scratching their heads trying to find a business model. Or basically, how/where to insert ads that turn the business into something profitable without trashing the user experience.
Twitter is doing the same.
Twitter + video sounds certainly cool and obvious, but is it fair to ask about the business model?
Develop a site, develop traffic, join the Google ecosystem by surfacing their ads and make money.
Ahhhh… you are talking about Video Technology companies!!!!
Hi Duncan, thanks for your interest, there is obviously much more than what Robert called “video twitter”. Happy to see you liked the “non American view” daily videos even though I agree it is not riveting content, just my daily diary in video.
Our development team at V:social built a mashup utilizing the Twitter API and our API. We call it Twiddeo and it launched as a live beta two weeks ago. Please play with it and provide any/all input as we are happy to receive the input: http://twiddeo.com/
“Internet Video companies are scratching their heads trying to find a business model. ”
That’s because there is no business model. The only model is to sell out, and buyers are becoming aware that huge bandwidth costs and little advertising revenue is not a good combination.
You need at least an OC-48 telecom duplex line or higher to do a world wide streaming service, and there is simply no way to recupe money on it at all, ever. It’s a losing proposition in any case.
That being said there are much better business models still left for expansion.
Twitter-like apps with video was something I was looking for, and then I found Zannel (www.zannel.com). So far, it seems to be a great service with an expanding community. The player plays in the page, and will also resize within the page. I would love to see them do something better, but Zannel is great now.
I always love it when people say there’s no business model for video on the Internet yet PodTech has millions in revenues this year. If that’s “no business model” I want more of “no business model!”
Oh, and nice guess on the TV thing but it’s not my vision to get my stuff onto old-school TV.
robert and loic’s conversation heralds an exciting new form of real time, rich media communication. particularly agree re: importance of making conversation 2-way vs. 1-way posting.
my company, zannel, recently launched mobile’s first instant media messaging™ service, which allows people to post video, picture, and text updates to multi-media micro-blog their lives and then start real-time conversations with people following their channel on mobile and the web. here is the recent techcrunch article:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....and-video/
-adam, ceo of zannel
Video Twitter? Is this the new MoBlogging? MoVlogging? Well, as much as I’m excited, there are many ways to do this wrong, and only a few ways to do it right. Since youtube is already the king in video, it would be a wise idea to piggyback off of them. Since storage is taken care of by Youtube, simply aggregate the data and have a submit process which is more seamless than regular uploading.
Not impressed!
what is so innovative about it
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
by the way Duncan, not that it matters that much but my name spells Loic Le Meur in two words, thanks.
Robert, are you saying that the “problem” I mentioned in the first paragraph of the first comment is a problem that has already been solved? If that’s the case I need to review my sources (you’re one btw
I do believe that there are millions to be made in the Internet video space but my understanding is that this “problem” hasn’t been solved already. And Twitter’s model is certainly a mystery to most of us, so you may find amusing what I said but I do think it’s a fair statement.
My question was whether it is fair to ask for the business model, and so far I’ve got no answer. Of course Loic doesn’t have to answer the question publicly if he chooses not to, but I do think it’s a fair question, a question that when someone asks me about my own enterprises I don’t have a problem to answer. This is without knowing all the details about Loic’s company, but specifically about any “Video Twitter” service, whatever that may be.
It’s not a new idea. Saw lots of this at VON (voice over net) a year ago, at least.
Video can’t find a business model because it’s too early, there is too much disruption and the convergence that’ll drive what works and what doesn’t from a business standpoint isn’t there yet. The smart place to play isn’t in user created content, in my opinion. It’s in the development of short internet shows and concepts. I wouldn’t be caught dead creating a video platform, but you can bet I’ll be taking advantage of the direction professional content and the web is heading.
Just my .2
@ Robert Scoble, I think Podtech was in early enough to maximize a specific trend within the market and capitalize on it, but that time has passed and today’s market is a lot different.
No offense, but if Podtech is making so much money, why is the video content so bad?
RBA: I don’t have the problem with my show that you’re talking about. Does Seagate destroy the user experience on my videos? I don’t think so and they pay me a damn lot of money to sponsor my show (much more than PodTech pays me, so my show is very profitable for PodTech, which shows that there’s at least SOME business model here).
Patricia: how many of my recent videos have you watched? I’d love to hear more of a critique than just “so bad.” Certainly they have better production values (and, even, content) than what Loic posted here and you aren’t complaining about that. You’ll learn a lot more from my videos than watching YouTube stuff too. So it can’t be that.
Out of curiosity, how is Loic creating a startup in the U.S. as a French citizen? (I’m assuming, obviously).
As for Scoble’s comments in the video clip about taking pieces of video, doing something with them and republishing…. sounds like we’re all going to die in front of computer screens, ouch!
5 months ago I made same suggestion. great!
http://titanoasis.com/blog/200.....evolution/
@18 he also said that screens will be with you like we have phones. I like the idea. Vimeo.com allows users to download videos that are uploaded as well as other sites I’m sure. It’s fun to mix mash them. We already have little utilities that allow us to download videos from youtube and it’s clearly abundant that folks love to mix them on youtube. Video twitter is inevitable, but it might be a little ahead of it’s time. Video on phones has to improve, and so does upload speed. Digital Camera video quality is pretty good, but most vloggers seem to opt for webcams and video cameras over their pocket camera/camera phone.
Zannel content is lame and terrible name. Very underwhelming management team too. My bet is on someone else
*yawn* sorry Duncan, but can we at least know of the business model and not some speculative hyperbole from a blog aficionado.
It’s interesting that Scoble says a lot about this venture in the YT video without saying much at all …’now you can..uhh..take a snippet of video and uhh..have a two way interaction..’
..like i said *yawn*
“I don’t think so and they pay me a damn lot of money to sponsor my show”
Sorry, for it to be successful, your income has to outpace your salaries and accounts payable. People were getting fired before the 2nd round of funding when your VC bottomed out. Even if Seagate pours in 200k, it’s still not successful if you spend 300k.
And that’s the bottom line. A world wide streaming video service means a hugely expensive telecom line(That expense never lessens or goes away, it only gets worse), and that’s no laughing matter for investors.
All you nerds are missing the point. If what you’re doing doesn’t create opportunity to benefit the guy creating the video to be a bit more productive or financially stable then you’re destined to not be remembered after you fail or sell out.
Shame on those geeks like Robert Scoble saying “Oh, and nice guess on the TV thing but it’s not my vision to get my stuff onto old-school TV.” That’s such a pompous ego-centric statement that its clear now bloggers like him have reached the same arrogance as “old-school” media.
I’m going to put the smack down on all you nerdy bitches pimpin’ these lame ideas with no long-term benefit to society. Loic Le meur is just another example of something weird going on in the blog community as I can’t believe the lame-ass video that’s on techcrunch showing his daily-diary-video blah blah blah. Pay Attention you monkeys, Curious George was right, let the nerds die in from of the PC first.
You all need to remember what Bill Gates done as a nerd with honor, cus none of you nerds pimpin’ ideas like video twitter are ever going to realize bill gates created something that created opportunity on a massive scale for anyone to who uses his products to be more productive and make money easier. Techcrunch looses points for lacking in stories that inspire the same level of opportunity from this software revolution. It’s like the same song repeating itself lately. I feel less human reading stories like this, so I will say this only once before my launch next month:
Ghetto Gates is on the rise, bitches! Pay Attention, I rewrote the script that will make this market flip. Because soon, everyone is going to get blip’d!
Word.
>That’s such a pompous ego-centric statement that its clear now bloggers like him have reached the same arrogance as “old-school” media.
It’s not arrogance. It’s focus. Watch the video I did with Loic. I explain why I could never compete with old-school TV. So, I’m looking for opportunities that they’ve left open to newcomers. That’s just smart business.
“Shame on those geeks like Robert Scoble saying “Oh, and nice guess on the TV thing but it’s not my vision to get my stuff onto old-school TV.” That’s such a pompous ego-centric statement that its clear now bloggers like him have reached the same arrogance as “old-school” media.”
Dude, he’s just saying that. Scoble couldn’t get his *ss on TV if hell froze over. That’s Scoble’s way of saying “I didn’t want it anyway”, the way a poor kid says that when he got a lump of coal for Christmas instead of a PS3.
Scoble is a twit!
I know!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com