Return on Intention

Apparently, I am not alone in using YouTube as a jukebox. Its pretty convenient to load up a few songs in YouTube and listen while working, as long as you have the bandwidth to do it. Over the past month with all the running around and frantic schedules, I let iTunes do the work of playing tunes until today when my dear friend Daniel Lyons sent me an instant message that read:

“Take on Me” by Reel Big Fish just came on my Pandora. This is your fault somehow.

I don’t have that song in my iTunes library, and now being reminded of its existence I went to YouTube for my ska fix. Boy was I pleasantly surprised.

On December 6, 2009 a new service owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, EMI and Abu Dhabi Media Company, and developed and hosted by YouTube, Sony, and Google Videos went live. The service is called VEVO that hosts music videos for record labels. The quality of the videos (while not HD … yet) is pretty high quality compared to the default settings of YouTube videos. These videos are the kind you would find on MTV back when MTV played music videos. Somewhere along the way from its fantastic birth to today, MTV seems to have forgotten what it was. I can only assume that MTV found they could make more money by creating reality tv programming than by playing music videos, and some marketing guru convinced them that their brand had outgrown “music videos” and had become a “lifestyle brand” that directed pop culture, so expanding into foreign territory was a good idea. I don’t mean to suggest that the aforementioned marketing guru was wrong, necessarily. This strategy could very well have been the right thing to do for MTV, but either way they are not the place to go for music vidoes anymore. The place to go was YouTube, and now its VEVO.

The reason VEVO was created seems to be more about satisfying a business need than a market driven, or so most of the stories I have read seem to point to. If that is true, then this is a good example of unrequested innovation that meets the business needs and consumer expectations.

Why did they launch VEVO?

The business reason to create this is because many advertisers (the revenue stream for YouTube and Google) are weary about their ads showing up next to user generated content. The fear is that if something offensive, or “off brand” occurs on the video, some people might carry that association over to the brand whose ad is showing next to the video. Its also a nightmare for the music industry trying to figure out how they are going to make money with the internet when new channels pop up all the time that give their product away for free. VEVO helps in both these areas.

By keeping control over the content that is posted on the site, VEVO can assure advertisers that the quality and content of the videos are more controlled. This will help  nervous brand conscious advertisers to feel more assured that this is a good property to spend ad money on. VEVO also shares its ad revenue, so some money will come back to the labels for the use of their content. This model should be appealing to them, after all, thats how radio worked. We got to listen to the radio for free while the advertisers paid for it. This model should seem comfortable.

So what do the users get out of this?

There amount of frustration I would feel when searching YouTube for a specific music video was becoming too much to bear. It would take a bit of time to go through all the user generated content that used the song I wanted as a sound track, or sifting through the really bad live recording taken from someones cell phone at a concert. It was getting hard to find “the good stuff”. VEVO has solved that problem for me. Now my only problem is what to do when VEVO doesn’t have the song I want, but I’m sure that it will get better over time, if this model proves successful. As a user I now have YouTube for funny videos, clips and the user generated content I want to see, and VEVO for the music. I also don’t have to pay for it. The ad sponsorship allows me to check out the music I want to see without having to shell out some cash for it.

The interface is more designed for music as well. There is a lyrics button, so you can see the words while the video plays, as well as the ability create playlists. Of course there is also links to iTunes and Amazon so you can buy the tracks right from the site. This is much better than the few seconds I get on iTunes to preview a track. Now I can hear the whole thing, and see a professionally produced video all before I spend the buck to buy the song.

It seems like a win all the way around. I hope it sticks. I wonder what MTV is doing now?

Part of Google’s philosophy is “You can make money without doing evil.” So far I think they have done a pretty good job. This philosophy is part of the Google culture, and we can only hope that it makes its way into all the decisions that Google makes. When a company can live its own philosophy and not just talk about it, that philosphy becomes a part of the brand, not because they say so, but because they live it.

So what does a company that is bent on “Not Being Evil” do for the holidays? They give a ton of money to charity. About 5 minutes ago I got an email from Google that looks like this:

Here is what it says if you can’t read it:

Happy Holidays from Google

Hello,

As we near the end of the year, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for the time, energy, commitment, and trust you’ve shared with us in 2009.

With sharing in mind, this year we’ve decided to do something a little different. We hope you’ll find it fits the spirit of the holiday season.

We’re looking forward to working with you to build lasting success in 2010.

Happy Holidays,
Your Google Team

When I followed the link, here is what I saw.

See Google’s Holiday Gift.

Thanks Google, for giving back.

I was fortunate enough to participate in the first Ignite NM held in Albuquerque on July 15th, 2009. Ignite NM is a short form presentation format that works by allowing each each speaker only 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds. Sound hard? It is, but man was it fun.

At this event, which was organized by Mick Thompson and sponsored by Northern New Mexico Connect, there was 13 presenters. I was the 5th and did an abridged version of my Better Online Sales presentation. This was truly a unique experience, mainly because this format was hard for me, but also because there really wasn’t a bad presenter in the line up. It was great. You can check out more of the videos on the Ignite NM website.

Ignite NM – Reid Givens: Better online sales, tips and tricks to improve sales from David Thompson on Vimeo.

Yesterday (Wednesday January 21st) I attended the first official meeting of Webuquerque, the web focused section of the New Mexico Adobe Users Group. I have been scheduled to speak to this group in November on Marketing, but this time around there was no presentation, just a chance to get together, see the group and meet the other presenters. It was a great night for several reasons:

1. I won a door prize (a book on Adobe Air for Javascript Developers)
2. I got to see some people haven’t seen in a while and meet a few news ones
3. I had some really good conversations with other web folks about web stuff

I usually attend other get togethers, like the Albuquerque Web Geeks Meet-ups, but often people go there to get away from their work, not talk more about it. There seemed to be many people at the Webuquerque group that we’re waiting for a group that not only accepted, but encouraged shop-talk. I am one of them, and I think this group will work out very nicely. 

If you are interested and around town when the events occur (every 1st Wednesday) stop by and say hi. I promise I will get more sleep before the next meeting.

Upgrade NM has now come to close and we successfully completed the two projects we worked toward. We set out to rework 1st-mile.com and our own Upgrade NM site and we made it. Of course as with all web projects the work is never really done, but at the end of the weekend we accomplished what we set out to do. 

The 1st-mile project has been posted on the Upgrade NM server so people can poke at it and see what it looks like. You can also see the origional version of the 1st-mile site at 1st-mile.com. You can also look at the new Upgrade NM site and make a suggestion for the next go around, or sign up to participate next time. 

Overall this was a lot more relaxed that the sprint we did last year, probably because of the extra day we had this time. Somethings remained the same; however, like the bottle-necks that happen waiting for one person to get something done before another person can start their part. I guess that is just the nature of the beast with this type of activity. It was also fun like last time. Something magical happens when a bunch of like minded people get together to get something done. I think we all learned something along the way as well, which is always a good thing. 

I guess this kind of thing is starting to gain some momentum. Here locally we have done two of these events, but this morning as I noticed that WOW was having an Extreme Markover. I guess we all like to help out and give back.

For more information check out my previous post for what happened yesterday and see some of the work in progress. You can also check out “My Weekend with Upgrade NM” on A Blog Not Limited (from Emily Lewis) or “UpgradeNM Sprint #1” on Story to Tell (from Daniel Lyons) to read their account of the weekend. You can also see photos on flickr by searching for ”Upgrade NM”.

THE PARTICIPANTS

Here is a list of people who helped out, and basically what they did:

• Michael Bernstein – Plone & Python developer – back end integration and upgrading of the 1st-mile site
• Markie Casias – Javascript – Wrangled some jquery for the 1st-mile site
• Reid Givens – Design, Mark-up and a dabble of jquery – Designed both sites, did the mark-up for Upgrade NM and did a tiny bit of jquery for the 1st-mile widget
• Emily Lewis – Mark-up and content development – Content creation for 1st-mile, did the mark-up for 1st-mile and tweaked the mark-up for the Upgrade NM site to make it more accessible and to allow for graceful degradation.
• Daniel Lyons – Programmer – Wrote he back end for the Upgrade NM site with Gabe and helped sort out the tough stuff on the 1st-mile homepage widget.
• Jack Moffitt – Quality Assurance and Programming – Tested the sites for bugs and helped sanitize the data input for Upgrade NM.
• Gabe Ortiz – Programmer – Wrote the back end for the Upgrade NM site with Daniel
• Eric Renz-Whitmore – logistics and content – Eric, while not a web developer, was helpful in making sure we had the space, internet access, power, food, Mountain Dew and also helped pull some content for the 1st mile site. 

It’s really early in the morning and here I am writing about Upgrade NM day 1. I guess it’s not that early, but earlier than I want to be awake for today. Oh well, we’re not gonna stop now, we had a good day yesterday and I think we will meet success today for this years Upgrade NM.

Upgrade NM is like the sprint we did last year. It’s an event where many New Mexico web developers get together and try to do a complete web site build in a short period of time. Last year it was a day and this year we are using the weekend. The event last from 8am to 8pm both Saturday and Sunday and all planning and work must be completed in those hours. This year we are redesigning, upgrading, adding functionality and new content to the 1st-mile.com website. We are also going to build the UpgradeNM.org site so in the future we can involve the community in the process of identifying projects and participants for future Upgrade events. 

We do it as a way of giving back to our community and to show the local area that there is talent here that accomplish these types of projects. Often this kind of work gets outsources out of state, and there is not good reason for it. We have a great talent pool right here in town. It’s also fun just to get all of us together and see what we can do, and help out some folks who might not be able to get this level of help normally. 

So here we are about to start day two and we are looking pretty good. We have a new design and and some new content we need to get integrated into an update version of plone that is running the current 1st-mile site. We also have the design and front end markup for the UpgradeNM site and we just need to build out the back end. So far its been a great run and think we have enough done and enough time to finish it. Keep a look out to hear more after today is over to see how far it all got.

Here is the original 1st mile site:

Here is our current version:

Here is the current media-wiki install for UpgradeNM:

Here is the new design for Upgrade NM:

Here is who participated today:

• Reid Givens (of course)
• Jack Moffitt
• Emily Lewis
• Michael Bernstein
• Mark Casias
• Eric Renz-Whitmore

Its official, Obama has won the American Presidency. As I was watching the coverage of the election on MSNBC.com, at least twice it was mentioned that the Obama campaign will go down in history as one of the best run and innovative in many many years. The primary means of his win, according to the MSNBC broadcast, was the internet. Is there any doubt left that the internet is changing the world?