The Video Long Tail

"What if creativity could pay the rent?" Revver.com

The Chicago Tribune reported in its Tuesday edition (1/30/07) that YouTube.com has plans to pay people for content. The article suggested that because of the extreme competition emerging from video sites that can host content, YouTube wants to attract the best content.

From the article: "almost every big site that focuses on viral video will have a revenue-sharing component to it," said Keith Richman, chief executive of Break.com.

Two new sites that I've never heard of Revver.com and Spymac.com have revenue-sharing models already in place. Spymac will pay viewers on the basis of user viewership, regardless of where it is viewed, as long as it was first uploaded to the Spymac site. Spymac is claiming on its site an estimated payout this month of $3437.10, U.S.

Revver will embedd ads in the user-generated content. They even have something called "Hey Kid Take a Hint", that explains a strategy for getting the video to go viral. It involves using any combination of MySpace, Friendster, creating a widget, podcasting, email, iTunes, and del.icio.us and Digg. Wow.

Interestingly, a site called Viewpoints.com, will feature reviews on restaurants, hotels and other service-based industries, produced by volunteers, as well as by paid writers.

It's my belief that all of this is in it's infancy. I also believe that video is perhaps the hottest technology out there right now.

I had a discussion the other day with one of our English teachers who does digital storytelling projects with his kids-he's worried that this whole video thing has blown away digital storytelling, at least how we do it (we only use still-frame imagery in our DST program, for technical reasons). He's worried about interest-both student and viewer. I disagreed, believing that a quality story is a quality story, and we still need to teach kids how to tell their story properly. They can always graduate to video.

So, all the more reason for having a digital storytelling program in your school. All the more reason to teach kids how to be content creators.

Note: The Tribune article requires registration, so that's why I didn't link to it. The information presented in this post is from the old-school print version, article by Eric Benderoff.

Benderoff, Eric. Web sites want to pay you for videos. (2007 January 30). Chicago Tribune

technorati tags: digitalstorytelling video jakes davidjakes dst