via Kotaku

Here’s a tip: If recipients of your alternate reality game materials think they’ve been sent anthrax, you’ve done something wrong.

The new ARG for EA’s Crysis is definitely getting some attention, but there are ways of doing ARGs right, and there are ways of doing them wrong:

“The contents were weird and scary-looking: a photocopied military report of some sort with a small brown envelope stapled to it. She looked at me: “ugh! What’s in the envelope!? Anthrax?””

I love this comment by David of Functional Autonomy at the Wonderland post:

“Yeah, it’s a Crysis viral, and it seems to be generating a universal meh along with a dab of scorn for the appalling writing.”

That kind of reaction is what we call a bad sign.

Another choice quote, this time by Clushje on Kotaku:

“It appears viral marketing stops being effective when people actually think the package does contain a virus.”

I’ll endeavor to follow up on the story, as the ARG appears to be making something of a splash online.

Or perhaps that’s a flop.

If you google a few terms like Sony Viral Video Backlash you’ll find out what happens when marketers try to use the participants of a social network, instead of just trying to harness the network.

I once organized a charity Walk-a-Thon on Facebook, and I got to see what happens when you use a network, instead of its participants.

What’s the difference? Transparency. Participation implies consent, and when marketers try to trick people into doing their advertising for them, bad things ensue.

Read the rest of this entry »

Vimeo, a video sharing site I have reviewed in the past (and personally endorse for all my video content) has released an update to their player that supports native resolution HD in Flash.

Needless to say, the update is being widely embraced by the video community and beyond, getting coverage in Motionographer, Kottke, and many others. Although I’m no Flash expert, I’m guessing this is using Adobe’s new “Moviestar” technology because

1. Flash Player 9, the latest version, is required. Found this out the hard way when I was using a crappy old Windows PC with outdated software earlier today.
2. Jakob Lodwick, Vimeo’s founder, wrote about the Moviestar technology at his personal blog.
3. Really, how else could they do it? Current Flash tech doesn’t support high def video (at the codec level, like H264 does), and certainly streaming video with the VP3 codec at a high def size would kill your average server.

Why do I care if Vimeo is using Moviestar? Mostly I’m just curious, but I also am interested because this would be the first major real world application of the technology. If so, props to Vimeo; this is a very strong addition to their recent series of changes that have turned Vimeo into a world-class video sharing community.

John Battelle (founder of Federated Media) recently posted a very accurate and somewhat scathing rant about YouTube’s deals with content creators at his website, Searchblog. The author of the rant (it isn’t Batelle, he posted it anonymously) addresses a sort of hierarchy in content on YouTube:

Right now YouTube has a three tiered system, the top, or big media, the middle, indie content creators with audiences, and the bottom, random user submissions that get small numbers of views.

A system like this is inevitable: people group by nature, so something like this should be expected. However our ranter doesn’t like the groups that YouTube chooses to support:

And the big question for everyone was how are you going to make money? Well, we certainly were not making any green from YouTube. And until the last three months, they weren’t publicly promising any cash to anyone. So what were we supposed to do? Just pray really hard that YouTube would someday pay us? That’s sorta irresponsible. So we did what anyone would do, we started evaluating the opportunities that presented themselves and then took advantage of some of them.

Many video creators like Ze Frank and Amanda Congdon use alternate hosts for this very reason – no guarantee of financial success. Ze pioneered a micro-sponsorship system called Gimme Some Candy (which he should have spun off, more on that later) to help fund his blog, along with using the post-roll ad based Revver to host his videos. The video creators in the rant (I won’t divulge names, but I have a darn good idea of who they are) have taken a similar route. In fact, they now say

…when YouTube finally got its act together and offered us an advertising split, it was too low an offer. We were doing better without them. And with less strings.

There are plenty of alternatives to YouTube. I noted Revver above, but there are dozens of other video sites available. (I’ll start compiling them tonight, further details as I get them.) You can also host yourself, and we briefly covered this in this YouMakeMedia article. You can’t just drop out of YouTube, unfortunately. It has a massive reach. But you can alter your content. Post thirty second teasers, or short clips of your videos. Maybe even dual post – have video on YouTube for that crowd and video on your website from another source, or vice versa.

YouTube has helped new media in unparalleled ways – that is undisputable. Unfortunately, they have taken way too long to help content creators monetise, further impacting their chance of staying in the game for the long term. As I see it, YouTube is a bridge to more sustainable video sharing tools unless they make some rapid changes in their policy and technology.

PureVideo, a video search service that I covered in October has just released a wide variety of new features. Some are more intriguing than others: Let’s take a look.

• MyPureVideo (beta) is a new start page designed for folks interested in the online video charts. The page highlights the top video across nine different channels, however you can also add content that is not video related, either from their library or an RSS feed. It’s an interesting endeavor, but it is just another addition to the plethora of start pages that are already available.
• The research channel is going to offer top videos from academic feeds such as the History Channel, NASA, NOVA, and A&E.
• The PureVideo Toolbar will (in Web 1.0 style) offer users a toolbar with a few things they do need and lots that they don’t.

My experience with new media websites has been very spoiled. I generally get exposed (and stay with) the best of the best, and quite frankly I don’t see PureVideo fitting in with this class. The potential is there, certainly the technology is in place, however I fear that PureVideo is ceasing before they reach their full potential for innovation. They’re just copying every popular web service online: adding a toolbar, a customizable home page, and other services that are unrelated to their core mission. It’s unfortunate too, because there is no single provider of internet-wide video search.

Personally, I’d suggest that PureVideo drop their homepage and toolbars. As a user, those sites hold no value to me. Instead, why not offer widgets for other popular start pages like Google Personalized Homepage or Netvibes? That way users don’t have to be locked in to PureVideo’s service.

All in all, it’s nice to see that PureVideo is interested in expanding their service, however I don’t think they are doing it the best possible way.

In another sign that User-Generated Content is imperative to the success of media in the next few years, Time Magazine, a top-down, bureaucratic organization, awarded the concept of user-generated content, the bottom-up, collaborative creation system, its coveted “Person of the Year” award.

Past recipients of the award include Bill Gates, Queen Elizabeth, George Bush, and Albert Einstein. We are in good company. I expect that Time will send the invitations to the celebration party any day now… They did have to print six billion copies though, so if mine arrives a bit late I’ll forgive them.

I’ll have more thoughts on this tomorrow, however at the moment it is rather late (thirty minutes until tomorrow in fact) so hang tight. Heck, if you’re just passing through, why not subscribe? Or you can go back through our archives (they’re in the sidebar) and see what we have around. And if you really want to get involved, email me or comment (be sure to pester about Part 3 of the podcasting tutorial!).