ConvergeTHE FUTURE OF ONLINE VIDEO
Openness Matters. RSS Can Help. by Nicholas Reville, September 14, 2006
I want to convince you that if you care about open standards, open source, deep linking, and all the other things that make the internet wonderful, you should care about where video online is headed.
We are living at a moment when media is converging rapidly onto the internet. Will television move online in an open and accessible way? Or will it remain centralized and controlled by a few large corporations? So far, things aren't looking good. 1: The Two Key Questions
This essay started as an email to Mike Hudack at Blip.tv. Blip is an excellent video blogging / video hosting service. My goal was to convince Mike that they should feature RSS subscribe buttons more prominently on their site and that they should explicitly encourage their viewers to watch videos via RSS feeds. Of course, I would be especially pleased if Blip promoted watching RSS with Miro (which is developed by my organization, the Participatory Culture Foundation), but any support for video RSS is good. Good for my organization and, I believe, good for the future of media.
As I was writing to Mike, I realized that there were a lot more people that I wanted to say this to, so I decided to turn the letter into a public essay. I'll start with the two questions that I think will define the future of video online:
QUESTION 1: Will internet video viewing be primarily web-page based or will it be primarily RSS based?
QUESTION 2: Will internet video be centralized in huge services like YouTube or Google Video, or will it be more broadly distributed (like blogs and web pages are), with huge (youtube), big (blip), medium (rocketboom), and small (average video bloggers on their own site) players?
These are not entirely distinct questions, and that's a central message of this essay. If video online is mostly web-based (question 1), the biggest centralized services have huge advantages (question 2). If centralized services win, many of the wonderful things that can come from TV meeting the internet will evaporate. 2: Are We Moving in the Wrong Direction?
So far, the answers to both of these questions have gone mostly in what I believe is the 'wrong' direction: towards two huge centralized services (YouTube and Google Video) and towards browser-based viewing.
That's not to say that video RSS isn't doing well. It is. We've seen the number of channels in the Miro Channel Guide increase 6 fold in the past year and channels are getting created faster and faster every day. But there's big and then there's BIG. YouTube is gigantic in a way that video RSS doesn't approach right now.
YouTube doesn't need defending, but I want to to be clear about exactly where my concerns are focused. As a service and a universe, YouTube is amazing. It has become a visual search engine of human experiences. So far, YouTube has done more to democratize video online than my organization or any of the companies, organizations, and advocates that are working for open-access and open-standards.
But --and this is crucial-- YouTube is spending money like crazy. At some point, they'll need to make it all back. I'm nervous about how they will do that. Do YouTube executives have any option other than to hold viewers and creators hostage to ads on videos?
Furthermore, I worry that the near-monopoly strength of YouTube's network effect is dragging along people who don't actually want to use the service-- "If my video isn't on YouTube, how will anyone find it??" In the social networking domain, MySpace is the best example of this un-resistable social pressure in action-- how many web 2.0 gurus cringe everyday when they try to login and update their MySpace page? MySpace, by the way, is trying to be the next YouTube (if you're looking for a real dystopia for online video, it's that).
The network effect of online video services doesn't just endanger creators and viewers, it also stifles competition. Smaller web video services that don't have YouTube's network effect will become backwaters. 3: Put Viewers at the Center, Not Companies
How do you avoid a world where YouTube is the arbiter of all video content? You do it by centering the video experience around viewers rather than around video hosting companies. That's not what the venture capitalists want, but blogs aren't what they wanted either (they wanted web portals).
Putting viewers at the center means giving everyone who wants to watch video a homebase where they can access videos from any hosting service or website. For miscellaneous videos, like the ones that have made YouTube so popular, this means a search engine that gives results from any service and let's you watch what you find without jumping around from site to site.
For more serious videos-- stuff that's produced by known creators on a regular basis (like a daily or weekly show)-- the best homebase is an RSS aggregator. The can be a desktop application (like the one we make) or a web-based aggregator. The important thing is that viewers can pull together video from anywhere on the web.
This separation of hosting services and viewing services is crucial: viewers could care less where the video is hosted, as long as they can watch it. A separation leaves publishers free to choose the hosting service that fits their needs best. If they like the elegant user interfaces of Blip or Vimeo, they go there. If they like the opportunity to earn money with Revver, they go there. If they want to offer ultra-high resolution video, they might host torrents on MoveDigital. Or maybe they want to control their videos even more closely and host them on their own website (as Rocketboom appears to do). With RSS, publishers can be in control.
All that said, I understand why services like Blip have been reluctant to push feeds. Websites are the bread and butter of most internet companies and page views are next to godliness. Promoting your RSS feeds is counter-intuitive: why would you encourage users to leave your website? You should, because small services can't and won't beat YouTube and Google and MySpace at the web game. Those companies are too big, too well funded, and have hired too many talented people that will continue to improve their service. You are better off getting your viewers to subscribe to your content while you have them. In this way, video RSS lets hosting services innovate to attract publishers.
This is not strictly an either / or choice. Smaller hosting services and individual video creators can start pushing video RSS while still offering a great user experience on the web. In the long run, however, video RSS will be the key to success for small and mid-sized hosting companies.
Here's one more way to look at it: most viewers will go to YouTube if they are just looking for something to watch. It makes sense-- YouTube has the most stuff. So when you, a video hosting service, do happen to get a viewer on your site (because they followed a blog link or someone emailed them a video) you want to try to keep them connected, even if you don't expect them to spontaneously come back to your website. Getting them to subscribe to a feed is the best way to do that. 4: How You Can Make the Future of Television Open and Awesome
If you cringe at the thought of online video becoming a 'walled garden' like MySpace is or dial-up AOL was and YouTube wants to be, start pushing things in the right direction it.
Viewers: try a video RSS application like Miro or FireANT. Both have BitTorrent support, can show high-resolution video, and have built-in video search. This isn't just good medicine, it's honestly the best online video experience you can find.
Creators: no matter where you host your content, encourage your users to subscribe to your video RSS feed. That way, they don't have to remember to check your website, they'll get your stuff delivered right to their desktop-- you've got them for good. Serious video creators need rss because it lets them connect directly with their audience.
Hosting Companies: create RSS feeds for everything (users, tags, popular videos, etc). Put RSS subscribe buttons prominently on every page and explain to your viewers what it means and why they would enjoy watching with a video application.
Advocates: video online has had a 2nd rate reputation with the tech elite. It seems a little trashy and has tended to appeal to the lowest common denominator. But that's changing. Truly excellent video channels are popping-up. Don't forget that television is the most important mass medium in our culture-- when you talk about open-source, open-standards, Firefox, net-neutrality, xhtml/css, blogosphere and netroots, you should also be talking about video over RSS.
Nicholas Reville is Executive Director of the Participatory Culture Foundation, which makes the Miro Platform. Contact: nicholas-at-pculture.org. For more, read the Miro Blog.
Update: please see Mike Hudack's response to this essay.
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