This is social media marketing at it’s best! The Old Spice guy records a get well video for Kevin Rose creator of Digg.com, Revision3 and host of Diggnation.

This is brilliance in action.  A funny video directed at an unlikely person with a large social network.  Old Spice gets their brand to geeks everywhere.  (And it’s funny too.  This won’t work unless people want to talk about it.)  Old Spice has made scores of personalized message videos to invade other demographics too.  Check them all out in their YouTube channel.

There’s one directed at Alyssa Milano.

After her reaction, Old Spice Guy recorded and posted a response video.

Then Kevin Rose sees the video directed at him and replies on Twitter.  Then Old Spice Guy records and uploads another video to continue the conversation.

Then another video for Alyssa Milano.

This is how it’s done, people!  Old Spice is schooling us all on social media marketing!  Pay attention!

Here’s the letter CAT wrote to Leo:

Hi Leo!

Two years ago, (almost exactly) I had the idea to make you a Jayne Hat so that you would have something to wear during your new venture on TWITlive.  When you received the hat, I was so excited to see that you really appreciated it.

Over the years, fans of both TWIT and LetsKnit2gether would send me pictures of you, your daughter and others wearing your hat as part of a “Jayne Hat sightings” picture collection.

Recently, someone sent me a picture and pointed me to a video of Colleen happily wearing the Jayne Hat as she was leaving the TWIT cottage for her new adventure at Google. Now, although I am thrilled that amongst all the hats that you have in your collection, she chose the Jayne Hat to grace the halls of Google, I couldn’t leave you without one.

So, here is Jayne Hat #2.  Wear it well and remember, “A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he’s not afraid of anything”.

Thanks for all your support,

CAT
LetsKnit2gether.com

New Mediacracy is an audio podcast about web video featuring industry producers, directors, writers, and other content creators.   It’s not for everyone to be sure – it’s in the form of a casual conversation which usually means that it goes on for hours.  Being a web video producer myself however, I find it an incredible resource.  Creating web video can be very isolating and it’s nice to hear about other web video creators’ successes and failures in this depth of detail.

Episode 13 of New Mediacracy was a discussion that happened after the first meeting of the IAWTV in Los Angeles.  You can hear the episode here.  What follows are my comments about the episode:

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Great discussion.  There’s so much to comment about in this episode.

First impression: The most surprising thing I realized after listening to this episode is that the actual members of the IAWTV don’t really know much more about what’s going on than we do on the outside.

My thoughts on Steve’s “gatekeeper” frustration:

I’m frustrated by it too but I think that it may partially be an illusion.  I know I’m still over here doing my thing and I’m guessing there are lots of others that we never hear about in other places doing their thing too.  I think an echo –chamber has started up in new media and we’re all beginning to believe our own press.  Nothing has changed.  Everyone can still do their own thing.  Keep doing it.

That being said, I think an overall attempt to re-structure new-media (open media) to resemble old-media (gatekeepers) is inevitable.  I personally see new media not as a new medium, but what old media is becoming.  They are not separate, just in various states of becoming if you will.  The transition is going to be very painful because old media won’t want to give up their control.  It’s going to get worse over the next few years as the old media ways become more and more threatened farther and farther up the big business food chain.

OK, so we all know that.  Big media would rather sue Napster than buy it.  We’ve seen it before.  What I think Steve is reacting to is that it seems that some in new media are actually trying to mold OURSELVES back into old media, presumably to gain some sort of “acceptance” from old media.  I see it too and it’s really sad.  I came from old media.  I jumped off that ship on purpose and I can tell you there’s no reason to go back.  Old media is dying.  All my old-media friends think I’m crazy for doing what I’m doing now but they are also in a lot of pain with their own old-media careers.  Right now, temporarily, old media still has some advantages, like traditional revenue streams, but those are drying up.  Don’t make the mistake of jumping backwards onto a sinking ship.  You’ll just go down with it.  The only way is forward.  (What “forward” means is unknown but I guess that’s the curse of being a pioneer.)

end of rant –

My thoughts about the IAWTV

Unfortunately I don’t think the IAWTV has any substance to it.  There’s a lot of potential there and I see a lot of people (including myself) projecting their HOPES on this organization, but what is the IAWTV really doing right now that is worth saving?  What does it have right now to build on for all those future possibilities?  I don’t see anything.  I just see a big mess.  I think we’re getting distracted trying to solve all the problems with the IAWTV and we’re not noticing that there’s nothing there to begin with.

I think it might be time to put the IAWTV aside and redirect all our energies elsewhere to build the organization we all really want and need, from the ground up.  We can bypass ALL the IAWTV issues by starting up a new organization with a mission and an organizational structure that is aligned with the core values we all care about.  I know there are some who have put a lot of time and energy into the IAWTV and they won’t want to abandon that hard work but that’s not really a good reason to put more work into it.  If there was some core asset that the IAWTV had that was worth saving I would say go for it, but from here, at this point, I don’t see anything.  Just a thought…

Best quote from episode 13: “The Television Academy isn’t called Visual Radio.” – Barrett Garese

As someone who has been working very hard for four years to try and bring credibility to web video, I’m extremely disappointed in what I saw on the Streamy Awards Sunday night.

The Streamy Awards which is run by the newly formed International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV) touts itself as the “…most prestigious awards ceremony devoted to honoring excellence in original web television programming and those who create it.”  That’s what it says on their website and that’s what everyone was expecting during the months of publicity that led up to the award show streamed live on the internet on April 11.  What we actually saw during the award presentation itself however was a different matter.

The tone of the entire ceremony was crude, vulgar, superficial, and unprofessional.  There were multiple masturbation jokes in the host’s monologue, a scripted bit with an actor playing a vulgar porn producer that goes on and on and on, presenters in nothing but underwear, not to mention unplanned events like two male streakers and people rushing the stage to molest the presenters.

@streamyawards This is insulting & not funny. Gay jokes & dick jokes are not funny when Vanity Fair called you the Oscars of the internet.

– @Destini41 Destini

Sorry to any of our fans who watched and were offended by the raunchiness at the Streamys.The tone of humor was not honoring the evening IMO

– @feliciaday Felicia Day

There was a point in the show that I was like “Is this really happening?” I can’t even imagine how the brands and sponsors felt being a big part of the event. This is one of the biggest hurdles in online video is getting brands to trust the content they are advertising against. Now, they can’t even trust a show ABOUT online video!

– iJustine

Worse, the bulk of the prepared jokes played off the stereotype of Elitist Hollywood v. Web Show Wanabe.  From the host’s introductory monologue:

Tonight we have 35 awards to give out but let’s not forget the real winners, the 4 people who actually made money on the internet.

One or two of these types of jokes would be OK but it really seemed like this was the theme of the evening.  You can’t make money on the internet (not true, we do, and so do others) and nobody watches shows on the web (also not true.  We’ve had a thriving and growing community watching our show for years.)

About a third of the way through there was a pre-recorded “man on the street” video that I found particularly insulting. The host repeatedly asked random people on the street what their favorite web show was.  Of course no one they asked even knew such a thing existed, leaving the impression that the industry is a complete joke.  This meme went on and on through the evening…

My biggest personal issue with the show was that it disrespected the professional industry that I (and many others) have been working so hard to build over the past 5 years. The constant jokes about lack of funding in web series, lack of viewers, etc. cheapened our hard work, especially when a lot of the attendees ARE making money and have more viewers (and less publicists) than cable television shows.

– Casey McKinnon

All of the technical problems were one thing but it seemed like the jokes were picking on the internet – not CELEBRATING what we do.

– @buckhollywood Michael Buckley

The @streamyawards were a complete joke. I felt so bad for the people who make their living from the internet, to be ridiculed all evening.

– @ConwayJamie Jamie Conway

To be fair, there were a few very positive moments, mostly by the award recipients themselves, like the Auto-Tune the News gang who sang their acceptance speech in four part harmony.  Amazing.  Or Felicia Day who, in spite of having to take the stage only moments after what happened in the picture above, managed to deliver an extremely uplifting, generous, and authentic acceptance speech.  Very classy.

The Streamy’s could have been about the pioneering spirit of the creators, the excitement of doing something different, the possibilities of the future, but no.  Instead it was about snarky, crude, superficial, mean spirited jokes.  They spent the evening making fun of what I’ve been successfully doing for the last four years of my life.  In short the newly minted IAWTV has brought the absolute worst of stereotypical Hollywood snobbery to my industry and frankly I resent it.

Telling a thousand people that their jobs, content, livelihoods, and dreams are a joke, and that the only way they’ll amount to anything is to beg their “betters” (read: “celebrities,” but the unstated implication was made very clear) to slum it in their crappy webseries…well, that’s not gonna go over well. Repeatedly joking that it’s subpar quality, or that there’s no money, future, or reason to get involved only hurts us all.

– Barrett Garese

I can’t fathom what the producers of the show were thinking during the months preparing for this broadcast.  How could they get it so wrong, insult their own membership, and frankly tarnish their own brand on purpose like this.  The producers have posted an apology and have promised to do better next year.  Fine… I don’t think simply trying harder is going to resolve the issue though.   The problem goes to the basic core values of the IAWTV.  What kind of organization do they want to be?  Do they represent all types of web video?  …or only those that try to mimic broadcast television?  Do they truly support all web video creators?  …or are they only interested in getting the attention of a few large studios?  Are they going to be inclusive and truly international as their name suggests?  …or only cater to the worst superficial stereotype of LA based “Hollywood.”  Time will tell…

Today Consumer Reports asked me to do an online survey.  Normally I don’t do this type of thing but I’ve supported Consumer Reports for a long time and I was curious what was in their survey given the dire state of the magazine industry.  The “bait” in the e-mail was the opportunity to choose their next magazine cover.  These were the two choices.

Really?  You couldn’t figure that one out? You don’t know which cover is going to attract more readers at the newsstand?

After filling out the rest of the survey I was actually surprised at how low I scored Consumer Reports.  I used to read the magazine every month and I used much of the information.  I don’t get the magazine anymore obviously, but I do subscribe to their website.  I used their ratings to buy a vacuum cleaner about six months ago but not for much else.  The internet now gives me access to lots of other product users and I can get information from them directly.  The product information available online is also so vast that any one company just can’t test and rate everything.  It’s too bad.  I think an organization like Consumers Union provides certain “watchdog” services that you can’t get anywhere else.  I don’t think they will survive though unless they figure out a way to add more value to their ratings.

Humor for editors…

Don’t judge the B-Roll.

If there were more government videos like this political discourse might even become rational!

Check out the related videos that are presented after watching an acoustic version of Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? on YouTube.

The big budget movie “Avatar” gets the top three spots. Why? The official music video version of Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? has almost the exact same title and also has WAY more views than any of the other three, yet it gets bumped to fourth position. The movie “Avatar” only matches one word in the title of the current video but it gets the top three spots. I sense something fishy. Are small independent producers getting pushed down in the rankings in favor of companies like 20th Century Fox? It looks like it to me.

VoloMedia announced today that it has been awarded what it calls the “patent for podcasting.” OK, whatever. Podcasting is so last Tuesday but the government takes a long, long time to approve these things so, what’s this all about. Turns out it was an application from 2003 that doesn’t even mention the word “podcasting” (because the word hadn’t been invented yet.) I think then it’s a bit disingenuous for the company to say it’s the patent for podcasting in the title of their announcement about it. It looks to me like they might be trying to make claims after the fact.

And who is this VoloMedia? I’ve been podcasting for three years. I speak at technology conferences about it. I’ve never heard of VoloMedia until today.

OK so what does the patent claim actually say? Here are the details from VoloMedia’s website. (See you on the other side of this quote. Don’t get lost on the way

For reference, below are the claims issued under U.S. patent 7,568,213:

1. A method for providing episodic media, the method comprising: providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media; receiving a subscription request to the channel dedicated to the episodic media from the user; automatically downloading updated episodic media associated with the channel dedicated to the episodic media to a computing device associated with the user in accordance with the subscription request upon availability of the updated episodic media, the automatic download occurring without further user interaction; and providing the user with: an indication of a maximum available channel depth, the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising automatically providing the user with an indication of the availability of updated episodic media via the channel dedicated to the episodic media in accordance with the subscription request.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising synchronizing the updated episodic media automatically downloaded to the computing device associated with the user with a portable computing device communicatively coupled to the computing device associated with the user.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein synchronization of the updated episodic media automatically occurs in response to a predetermined user setting.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein synchronization of the updated episodic media occurs in response to a request received from the user.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the updated episodic media is made available to users not associated with the computing device over a local area network.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the automatic download is further based on a priority assigned to the channel.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein the channel dedicated to the episodic media is reduced in size during synchronization in order to fit available cache storage within the portable device.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the channel dedicated to the episodic media is modified in size by removing one or more episodes of episodic media.

What a bunch of vague gobbly-gook. This patent claim could apply to iTunes, my DVR… heck it could even apply to Twitter and Facebook. There’s no mention of an RSS feed at all which is essential for a podcast. I don’t think this patent is enforceable but they could certainly cause trouble for a lot of people.

What’s happening here reminds me of what happened a hundred years ago to the emerging motion picture industry. Several companies got together and formed the “Edison Trust” and tried to control the industry with their patents. The “independents” as they were called (the ones shut out of the trust) moved to the west coast to get as far away from the trust as they could. They concentrated on story and longer feature length films that were easier to market. In the end “content” beat out the control of the technology.

So, what does it all mean? Tom Webster over at Edison research has some good thoughts. Leesa Barnes over at Marketing Fit weighs in as well. But all in all, Alex Lindsay from Pixel Corps may have said it best on twitter:

OK… whoever approved this at the Patent Office… I want my tax dollars back for your salary… youre an idiot.

Yep.