About a month ago I edited together a video for the Ngecha Artist Association talking about their work in Kenya.  The video was taken by Erin Murphy on her digital still camera while she was working on her graduate studies in Kenya.  I think it’s a great example of how you can tell a great story without expensive equipment (though a microphone would have been nice.  I had to subtitle over the speaking parts because they were too hard to hear).

Pause Visions – Ngecha Artist Association from Jon Hickey on Vimeo.

The iPad won’t revolutionize the market simply because it doesn’t solve a problem or fulfill a need that wasn’t being fulfilled before.  Apple has certainly released revolutionary products in the past.  The iPod brought the ability to listen to digital files on the go.  iTunes allowed people to download music legally and safely.  The iPhone created a market for mobile applications that wasn’t there before.  These products all created a market because they were actually useful.  The iPad, however cool it may be, simply doesn’t do anything new.  Anything I can do on an iPad I can do with one of my other computers.

If you are interested in video or music, Archos, a little known brand in the United States, has been making similar media devices for years.  If you want the iPad for the e-reader aspect, the Kindle is much cheaper (costs half the price, you don’t have to pay extra for 3G, and books are cheaper as well).  If you want mobile apps, the iPhone and iPod touch provide what you need.  All this device does is combine a few features from scattered devices.  It doesn’t actually do anything new.

Price is another huge factor here.  $500 for the base model is a lot of money for what you are getting.  People have become so used to Apple products being expensive that they think this price point is cheap.  It’s not.  iPods and iTunes sell at accessible price points, which is another reason they were able to create a new market.  This product isn’t accessible at all, especially because it doesn’t actually provide you with a function that your other devices can’t do.

The reality is we don’t need a new way to consume media right now.  I’m happy with my iPhone, laptop, and 46″ HDTV.  Carrying around yet another device isn’t appealing to me – especially since it doesn’t replace my iPhone.  If the iPad had a camera, GPS, supported Flash, and cost $100 less, I might say it is worth purchasing (but still wouldn’t call it revolutionary).  As it is, it’s a neat gadget for rich people.  Nothing more.

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It looks like at least one U.S. Senator understands Gov 2.0.

Senator Claire McCaskill just launched her new official  senate website, and I love it.  It’s modern, incorporates news and social media, and feels much more approachable than most government websites.  The first thing you see on the homepage is a featured story rotator and a box to send Sen. McCaskill a message.  Underneath are some useful links to resources and social media websites Sen. McCaskill is active in.  All of these portray access and transparency that gov 2.0 websites should strive for.

The one odd thing about the site is the map on the left side of the homepage.  It looks like an event calendar, but there are no events entered in at the moment.  I imagine it will be nifty once it is actually filled it.  It’s a new website though, so I’ll give her some slack there.

I’ve always like Claire McCaskill for her quality use of Twitter, and now I like her even more for her quality use of websites.  It’s nice to have at least one person in the senate that understands the importance of a quality internet presence.

You can see her website here.

Mashable reports that the New York Times might start charging for their web content.  I’m skeptical this model will actually work, since there are so many other options for news.  However, I also wonder what the impact of big news sources like the New York Times closing off their service will be for quality discussion online.

Let’s say all major newspapers and other news outlets create a pay wall.  If there isn’t a way for me to pay one price to access all of these sites, it will be hard for me to really look at links and citations that commentary blogs (like my favorite website Slate.com) use to make their arguments.  Without access to sources, it will make it harder to provide quality opinion pieces and have useful discussion.

So while it might (and I say might, because I’m not sure it will) be good for the news sources bottom line, I worry that pay walls will be a disservice to society as a whole.

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While we don’t quite have the scheduling app live yet (we plan to start our closed beta-testing in February), we have decided to replace the YongoPal blog with a landing page so we can begin to do some marketing in Korea.  Darien is heading over to Korea next week, so we need something a little more official to show at our home page.  Things are getting close to launch, and we are all working as hard as possible to get everything lined up.  Exciting indeed!

You can see the landing page at www.yongopal.com.

At this time each year, college football fans excitedly watch the AT&T Cotton Bowl, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, the Citi BCS National Championship game, as well as many other corporate sponsored Bowl events.  During games viewers are bombarded with corporate sponsored half times, game breaks, and players of the game.  With all the money being paid by big-name brands during college football games, it’s easy to forget that these players are amateurs.   The NCAA is able to treat these athletes as amateurs while collecting massive profits because of the tight control the organization has over its athletes.

Large organizations are trying to adapt to the disruptive force of social media, and the NCAA is no exception.  During autumn quarter, I took part in an independent study with the MCDM and the University of Washington football team.  The following is a brief summary of my final paper for the class.  The full paper can be viewed here.

The NCAA has enjoyed monopsony power over athletes for decades.  With this power, the NCAA successfully caps salaries for athletes (in this case salaries are called scholarships) and limits what athletes can do with their image (special permission is needed to use the likeness of an athlete’s image).  These rules are in place to protect the “amateurism” of college athletes.

Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter disrupt the NCAA’s model of control over athletes’ images.  Before the advent of social media, college athletes were limited in their ability to promote themselves, since it is against the NCAA rules to hire an agent or have your name or image used commercially.  With Facebook and Twitter, however, athletes are empowered to promote themselves on new channels that are yet to be regulated by the NCAA.

There are many examples of NCAA football teams attempting to regulate their athletes’ use of social networks.  After a couple of incidences of students posting inappropriate pictures on Facebook, Kent State banned the website, citing reasons of safety and protection of the University’s image.  More recently, Texas Tech’s head football coach Mike Leach banned the use of Twitter on Texas Tech team.  Kent State’s Facebook ban was eventually reversed due to public pressure.  However, both of these examples demonstrate the strong reactionist measures universities are taking in response to social media.

Social media also disrupts the business models of traditional media outlets like ESPN and CBS.  In the past, these major networks would sign exclusive contracts with teams, conferences, and the NCAA itself to secure media rights over specific sports and tournaments.  Modern mobile and social technologies make exclusive rights less valuable, however, since each individual watching a game becomes a potential news outlet.  Instead of only being able to experience a football game by watching it live on television, fans can follow Twitter and Facebook feeds online for scores.  Real-time photos from fans are instantly available, as well as video and other commentary.  If an athlete or coach is Tweeting from the bench during a game, fans might turn their attention to their Twitter feed instead of ESPN.  Traditional media outlets see these new forms of communication as a real threat to their business model.

Many big-name coaches such as Pete Carroll have active Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages, but athletes are generally discouraged from participating on these social media websites.  This athlete-coach divide in acceptability of social media use is similar to the divide in freedom of professionalism.   Athletes’ salaries are capped at a very low wage while coaches see exceedingly high paychecks ( University of Washington Coach Sarkisian will make $1.7 million his first year, which will steadily rise to $2.3 million in 2013.  Athletes, on the other hand, are capped at the cost for their schooling, which ranges from around $30,000-$50,000 a year).

During my time on the University of Washington track team, we were never trained about how to use social media in a way that promotes the University or ourselves.  We were simply told not to use it.  The same appears to hold true for other Universities.  Rather than teach their athletes proper uses of social media, the services are being restricted or banned.  Coaches and the program as a whole, however, are free to use social media to promote the University’s brand as well as the coach’s brand.  Not only does this do a disservice to students by censoring them and not letting them promote themselves, it hurts universities that could benefits from well-trained student-storytellers.  It’s as if Universities have chosen the abstinence approach rather than comprehensive social media education.

The question remaining is whether or not social media will actually break down the walls the NCAA has set up, or if the NCAA will in fact maintain their current moral high ground and be able to control athletes to the same extent they have been able to for decades.  The NCAA is fighting it, but if social media’s disruption in other markets is any indicator, I have a feeling they won’t win.

In Bill Wasik’s talk about modern media, he claims shorter content will always be free.  In the talk, the content he was referring to was written content.  Longer content, such as e-books delivered via Amazon’s Kindle, are becoming more popular, even though you have to pay for them.  Short content, however, has largely become free and easily available through newspapers that have moved online.  Is Wasik right?  Will short content really always be free?

I’m not convinced the length of the content matters when it comes to people’s willingness to pay.  I think what is most important is what people are used to paying for.  The “short content” Wasik refers to in his talk consists primarily of newspapers.  Over the past few years, internet users have become used to newspaper content being free online.  Because of how people share and comment on content, there is actually a lot of value to this model.

When it comes to books, however, a culture of free online has not evolved.  I haven’t done enough research to say for sure why this hasn’t happened, but I can make a few guesses.  Books have always been seen as an activity you do instead of going online.  I often hear my friends talk about how they really value holding the physical book in their hands while reading.  The internet is primarily a low-attention span environment while books require a long attention-span.  Moreoever, there isn’t as much value in hyperlinking a novel as there is in linking a short news story or blog post.  For these reasons, and more I’m sure, have stopped a culture of free to reach the book industry.

Since people are used to paying for books, I think they will be willing to pay for books as they move to digital.  Because newspapers are subsidized by advertisements and can still make money by providing content for free, I believe users won’t be as willing to pay for their “short” content.  In my mind, this has nothing to do with the length of the content, but rather the culture behind the content.  If creaters of short content wish to make money directly off of their work, they are going to need to foster a culture that is used to paying for their content.  This will require some creativity and force short content creaters to change the way they do things.

The current short content creaters may struggle to make the transition, but I’m confident a new generation will figure it out.  When it comes to money and markets, there are always people figuring out how to monetize new paradigms.  Today is no different.

In an article about the most watched show on the internet, Tod Sacerdoti from Video Insider defines a show as “any periodically produced branded content.”  I would expand on this, defining a show as “any periodically produced branded content containing related themes or plot lines.”  To me, the most important aspect of a “show” is a consistent theme or plot line.

Traditionally, TV shows have been either 30 minutes or 60 minutes long when you include commercials.  There isn’t something magical about this length of time – it just made sense for conventional reasons.  We are used to judging time by an hour, so it made sense to create shows that were 30 or 60 minutes in length.  Now that video is moving online, we are seeing this constraints go away, which is allowing video to evolve.  Shows now don’t have to be a set time – they can be as long or short as necessary to tell a story.  Sometime this means a short 90 second “video snack,” while other times it could mean a longer series like the Dr. Horrible Sing-a-Long Blog.  People like to define how long thing should or shouldn’t be, but I think the internet allows enough flexibility to break out of these traditional molds.

There are certainly advantages to this.  We no longer have to shove in filler plots to tell our stories.  Shows get be the right length to be effective and not drag or contain unnecessary content.  This is a positive thing for storytelling.

I’m not exactly sure whether or not it is important to differentiate web video by whether it is a show or not.  What I like about the growth of the internet is the fact that we can break out of traditional definitions and let things grow more organically.  Traditional standards like viewership and ratings are harder to measure and say less about the success of videos now than they used to.  In fact, videos targeting niches will receive less views, but might be more effecting in maintaining a viewership.  Rather than put things into tight, restrictive categories, I think it’s important to just let it go.  Make videos people will enjoy, and don’t focus on the numbers.  It’s more fun that way, anyways.