Even though their site has issues with it’s error messages (see below), it’s undoubtedly worth quite a lot of money. This article on TechCrunch has a good top line discussion on how much it might be worth and outlines the big challenges ahead: YouTube’s Magic Number – $1.5 Billion
It’s also worth a read of this post from Mark Cuban about The Coming Decline of Youtube where he talks about just how tricky YouTube’s copyright issues are. Oh well, the lawyers get rich again.
Where’s the legal Web2.0 play that displaces the lawyers, come on, someone’s got to have one…
After an earlier gripe about YouTube’s shoddy error message, here’s a beautiful piece of application design that’s cheered me up no end. From the brilliant and ever useful backpackit.com and their writeboard (collaborative document editing dodah) service.
I deleted a document that I’d been working on. On purpose. It did the usual thing of checking I was sure. Then on the cofirmation page. Bang.
Gives me ultimate confidence that they understand the frailty of human nature and have built an application that gets it too. Aaah. Geek Lovely.
It’s been a wee while since I posted an interface gripe. So here’s one I got today at YouTube:
So, what’s wrong with this?
500 Internal Server Error. That sounds like a lot of waiters with gut problems. Serious. What did I do wrong? I must have done something.
Trained monkeys, that’s sort of almost funny (but not really). I think they mean that someone’s going to fix it.
If someone’s fixing it, does that mean what I’ve just tried to do will get done or do I need to do it again. Now? Later? When?
Even though it’s being fixed I have to email customer service. Why? In case the monkeys’ pagers aren’t working?
What on earth is that big blog of Matrix style gunk that I have to copy and paste into my ‘error report’, what’s an ‘error report’? How do I make one?
It just hasn’t been thought about properly. Someone’s seen that it can be nice to personalise these messages and give them a bit of character (hence the monkeys gag). But for me it’s indicative of the fact that YouTube doesn’t really have a visible character, or tone of voice.
Here’s a little clip I made of the Human Snail Race at the Big Chill festival this year. Someone showed me the ‘Silent Movie Mode’ on my digital camera and it became quite a hit (it puts stuff in black and white and speeds it up a bit).
It’s amazing how many otherwise normal people wanted to strap themselves into sleeping bags with shells on and wriggle along the ground on their tummies. Perhaps it’s a repressed desire in all of us…
I’ve always had a strange passion for clipart. It’s pretty much the most lifeless form of illustration that exists. But ironically people use it to add life to presentations and documents. I have my own idea for a clipart project that I’ll probably never get around to doing. But this has inspired me…
In being uploaded to YouTube it’s got a bit fuzzy around the edges. To get the real experience go and see the original.
2 posts about game related things in one day. Perhaps I’m turning into a wannabe gamer without even knowing it. I just had to post this trailer for the new Rockstar game ‘Bully’, it looks amazing. Given their history with games like Grand Theft Auto you’d expect things like tuck shop extortion, lunch money muggings and more. But it looks slightly less controversial, maybe.
OK, so it’s only a trailer movie, but you can see how great the characterisation is going to be, the graphics, the storyline.
Reminds me of one of my favourite childhood computer games, Skool Daze on the ZX Spectrum – which you can now play online. I’m sure it’ll keep the average modern gamer engaged for about 3 seconds, but I played it for weeks solid.
Coke have been getting quite a lot of slating for various things that they’ve been doing online. Poor user generated content, ill conceived non-virals, etc.
Not sure where this came from, but for me this is a ‘viral’ movie. I bet it was developed with the intention of being viral, and has actually, through it being good (and right for the target audience) has become a genuine viral success.
A response from the Agency.com camp regarding the Subway video. It’s basically saying: “we did it, we got people talking, that’s the whole point”.
I’m sure the debate will rage on around whether this is just a good piece of post-rationalisation and speedy ass-covering. Or a cunning master-plan that was in place from the start. (As an aside, if it’s the latter I think there’s a much better way of presenting this, a making of the behind the scenes video perhaps? Showing the point at which the decision was made to target the advertising community maybe?).
On their site ‘Jeff’ is quoted as saying:
“They made this for ad people to watch, think about, talk about, and spread. And that’s what we’re doing”.
But did they? I thought the whole point was that it was a video for a Subway client. Or is that all part of the subterfuge as well? Maybe they made a 5 minute boring ‘meet the team video’ and sent that to the client too? Along with a pitch based around:
“See how much noise we can generate with one video clip within the (online) advertising community, imagine how much noise we could make with 5 clips and a decent budget within the food eating community…”
If that’s the case then maybe they come out of this looking like genii…
But, based on the original premise (as we, the audience, were shown it): “we need to create a video for a client” (a private piece of communication), “let’s put it on youtube” (a very public communication channel). I think the naysayers were right to pound this tactic for it’s apparent naivety. (An interesting conversation starting tactic maybe?).
Whether they’re very right, or incredibly wrong I don’t regret being part of the spreading this meme. I called it as I saw it. I made the t-shirt, and I’ve either helped them look smart (or not). If I’ve been ‘duped’ into being part of this whole thing I’m glad, I’ve been a part of an ‘evolving, collaborative, dialogue driven online experiment’ – and that’s the kind of thing that we should all be doing. Whether I have or not, I guess is still the question.
The great thing about the web is that at some point the full story will come out. There will be winners, there will be losers, but as my P.E. teacher used to say “it’s the taking part that counts”.
In case it matters (and it probably doesn’t), the fact that the domain name ‘whenwerollwerollbig.com’ was bought yesterday doesn’t indicate all that much forward planning in terms of the meme ‘going viral’. But that might just all be part of the plot…
Oh, and I’m pretty sure that the line in the video (as pointed out to me by others) is ‘if we roll, we roll big’. So I corrected my t-shirt yesterday. On the site they feature the old shirt, with the erroneous line on the front. But their domain is “when we roll, we roll big”, so maybe my old t-shirt was right after all. Or maybe we’re all as confused as each other?!?
Ultimately whether this works or not depends on how you measure the value of conversations and noise. I’ve seen a few comments where people have said things like “it’s better that people are talking about you than not”, but I don’t buy that. And I can think of a few examples where brands would probably agree. Coke with their Desai water launch ‘conversations’ in the UK. The noise around Hoover and their Free Flights offer. The awareness driven by Mercedes and their rolling cars. These are much more serious examples than a pitch video on YouTube. But you get my point.
I’m going to stop now. This is way too meta for me.
OK, I’m going to give credit where it’s due: hats off to Agency.com for nailing their colours to the mast (in a very public way) and for using web stuff to talk about web stuff. Credit over.
Maybe it’s just a cultural thing. But this video really hurts me. I’m not quite sure why, I think it’s just because it feels really staged and makes people who work at online agencies look like a bunch of chumps. As I was watching it, the voiceover felt like it could, at any minute, morph into moments from ‘The Truth About Advertising‘ (version 2.0). Videos of the inside of agencies always end up being self-referential to the point of embarassment (at least the ones I’ve seen do). This is no exception.
And, furthermore…
What are Subway supposed to do? Give their feedback via YouTube? If that happened I’d forgive the whole thing and give everyone a massive pat on the back (almost).
Whether Agency.com win or lose the pitch, the result will be public, and scrutinised. Which is the bit I gave them credit for earlier.
But this whole thing leaves me with loads of questions:
Now they’ve put their clip out there are they getting behind the monster they’ve created?
In a way that demonstrates that they get the world of web 2.0?
Or is it just a cheap gimmick?
And most importantly: if something gets passed around because people dislike it, does that mean that it’s still viral? I’m guessing it does…?
By the way, I think Agency.com do some really good work. For me this just isn’t, at all. But I’ll be interested to see if there’s a different set of reactions to it from other parts of the world. Or other industries.
