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NEW DEALS IN USER-GENERATED CONTENT

Four news stories this week highlight the importance of user-generated content:

YAHOO ROUTES USER CONTENT TO REUTERS
Yahoo's new "You Witness News" lets users upload their photos and video for possible display on its news site as well as Reuters.com, and, next year, throughout the Reuters news service for traditional media.

Editors at both Reuters and Yahoo will review the submissions for placement on pages with relevant news articles.

Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites, although those distributed to Reuters' clients will be paid for.

SCOOPT SELLS FLICKR PHOTOS
Scoopt says it wants to "release the untapped value" of the pictures stored on the Flickr photo sharing website.

Scoopt licenses amateur content to mainstream media. Now the site is encouraging Flickr members to tag images with the "scoopt" keyword to indicate that they content is available for sale; Scoopt will then "push" the images to buyers "in direct response to demand."

On its website, the company posted "an open letter to Flickr members" which stated: "Here at Scoopt, we love Flickr. We love Flickr because Flickr members are some of the best snappers on the planet.
"Some of your photos are worth hard cash to newspapers and magazines... but media buyers don't have time to contact you individually, agree prices, make one-off payments etc.
"Scoopt wants to change all this! We want to license your great photos commercially and split the profits with you."

Sales revenue is split 50/50 between Scoopt and the photographer.
The photographer keeps full copyright.
Free Scoopt membership is required.

ONE TRUE MEDIA WORKS WITH NBC UNIVERSAL
One True Media says it has been chosen by NBC Universal to handle viewer video creation and submission for the new "iVillage Live" daytime talk show.

The dual broadcast/online show "will encourage viewers to submit their own videos and commentary around topics on the show, such as parenting, fitness and entertaining."

The producers say "iVillage Live" is the first interactive daytime talk show that lets viewers direct the action through live chat, daily polls and comments as well as video submissions.

One True Media says it also enables consumers to share their video creations by emailing them to friends, posting on popular video sites, and sending them to friends and family through TiVo for TV viewing.

YOUTUBE EASES AUTOMATIC UPLOADS
Top user-generated video site YouTube now lets users record video directly to the site using a PC-connected camera. The Quick Capture features uses an Adobe Flash Player API to save live video directly to the site.

While this makes it easier for users to "publish" their video, it also carries with it the difficulty of a live TV broadcast: there is no editing a video once it's recorded.

[Also: Like the many test pages from its parent company, YouTube also debuted "TestTube" page, which it called its "ideas incubator" -- "where YouTube engineers and developers test out recipes and concoctions that aren't quite fully baked and invite you to tell us how they're coming along."]

----- Paul Worthington

NY Times on visual communication in online video

In this NY Times blog on video convergence, the writer makes an interesting observation on the power of visual communication, and just why a goofy old dance video is the most-watched clip worldwide.

http://screens.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/the-breakthrough-of-that-dance-video-the-future-of-youtube-and-the-wisdom-of-google/

Panel Discussion: The Visual Conversation

Industry leaders discussed how remote communication is becoming visual, and how it turns out that seeing the people at both ends is just a small part of the picture.

Panelists included:
Paul Worthington, Moderator, The Future Image Report, Future Image
Alan Greenberg, Senior Analyst & Partner, Wainhouse Research
Bob Goldstein, Founder and President, AVA Mobile
Bob Morgan, Vice President of Business Development, ShoZu
Dr. BJ Fogg, Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

Bill Crow gets ready to present

Bill Crow, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft introduces their new file format - Microsoft Photon.

For more information, please reference Bill's blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/billcrow/

Download A Brief Overview of Windows Media Photo.ppt (1411.5K)

Kristina Hooper-Woolsey: Democratizing Visual Eloquence

Kristina Hooper-Woolsey, Board Member of the New Media Consortium, demonstrates her successes in empowering others to fluently 'speak with images.'

Here's a clip from Kristina's presentation including an introduction by Alexis Gerard:

Rick Smolan speaks on “Creating Change Through A Billion Cameras

Rick Smolan, CEO of Against All Odds Productions

A former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer, Rick Smolan created best-selling 'DAY IN THE LIFE' and 'AMERICA 24/7' photography series and is CEO of Against All Odds Productions, which specializes in the design and execution of large-scale global photographic projects that combine compelling story-telling with state-of-the-art technology.

Against All Odds' next project will be SIXTEEN IN AMERICA, a one-month project taking place in the Spring of 2007, involving ten thousand 16-year-olds using handicams, digital cameras, cell phones, and web sites to capture what its like to be "coming of age" in America at the dawn of the Millennium.

Webshots - Martin Green, CNET SVP

Martin Green of Webshots presents the results of a joint Webshots.com/Future Image research project, investigating the profiles of the content creators who are driving the explosive audience growth of online picture and video sharing.

Click the video icon below to see a portion of the presentation.

Attendees enjoying breakfast

6Sight offers glimpse of imaging world to come

The world of digital photography is going through a fundamental technology change, but attendees at the 6Sight Conference, also got a glimpse into the cultural changes coming when a billion people worldwide have access to digital imaging. The two-day conference, attended by more than 200 thought-leaders, concludes today.

David Szetela, President, Clix Marketing, Presents the Citizen Climate Network Initiative

Click here to get a glimpse of this session.

Download 6SightSlidesCCN.pdf (100.4K)

Financial Roundtable

Mark Kalow, Managing Director, Soquel Group
Tricia Saliniero, Managing Director, Newforth Partners LLC
Patrick Chung, Principal, New Enterprise Associates
Raj Kapoor, Managing Director, Mayfield Fund
Sam Jadallah, General Partner, Mohr, Davidow Ventures

Download PDF presentation 6sight_Newforth_Oct2006.pdf (266.4K)

J. Gerry Purdy's talk

Gerry discussed how network bandwidth affects use of mobile imaging services. Clearly it's too expensive to send high resolution images over the wireless network on a mass market data tariff (eg this post would cost about $2.50 on a tariff of ¹cent per KB). Flat rate data plans are one answer. WiFi enabled phones are another.

One thing that is already solved is the bandwidth issue. It's possible to send big files over a slow 2.5G data network, as long as the data transfer happens in the background (so it doesn't interrupt normal use of the phone) and recovers from the point of failure automatically following interruptions (loss of network coverage, phone calls, dead battery...). The technology for this is already deployed (eg in ShoZu).

Attendees - A full house of industry experts

Paul Saffo: Farewell Infomation - It's a Media Age

Paul speaking

Paul Saffo, Forecaster, strategist and author, gives us: Farewell Information - It's a Media Age. He discussed how the shift to an economy of creators is erasing the distinction between product and service, and the implications for companies in the imaging market.

Click here to view a clip of Paul's talk.

Anyone who wants more info can download an essay on the topic here.

Alexis Gerard

Alexis Gerard, Founder and President of Future Image, kicks off the 2006 6Sight conference in Monterey, CA.

Opening Remarks

Day 1 - Opening remarks

Opening Remarks

Delicious eats

Conversations during the opening reception

Kristina Hooper-Woolsey of the New Media Consortium with Charles Mauzy, CEO of Digital Railroad, and Eric Zarakov, VP of Marketing for Fotonation.

A little mingling...

Opening reception

Hear from Diane from Realeyes3D, the company that brings us Qipit - www.qipit.com.

Click here to view the video.

Video Pre-Revolution

From Paul Worthington, Future Image:

Today we are nearing the democratization of video.
In the past, the most powerful communication technology has not been accessible to most people.

Even with camcorders, digital video, and email-scale compression, most people could not easily or affordably capture or express something on video and then share it with a wide audience.

Now, thanks to web-based sharing sites, they can.
As exemplified by YouTube, anyone can post a short clip, and thousands if not millions of people may watch it.

In 1999, I was over-enthusiastic about the possibilities of digital video for both production and distribution: With my friends and family, I started to create my own 12-hour TV serial.

But dreams of being a mini-mogul faded after many months of trying to coordinate everyone’s schedules into a video production -- akin to herding cats.

Also, many of my projections were wildly optimistic: developments I thought were a few years away have yet to arrive.

Nonetheless, it was the most fun I’ve ever had -- and I think most of what I foresaw in 1999 will still come to pass eventually.

After the jump: my still-very-lenghty business summary from the previous millennium, with some names changed to protect the guilty.
[Such as the show’s name is changed to just “the show.”]