Google is talking about interactive video ads at this weekend’s Allen & Co. conference. Today, Twitvid is launching its video advertising platform over Twitter (press release). What’s important to know about video is that there is already an institutional history of the video format in the form of the :30 television spot.

Like television, the social media will act as broadcast media that will distribute the “video spot” over the channels – Facebook, Twitter – that are replacing television eyeballs. Even more promising are the upcoming geolocational marketing opportunities for local merchants who will be able to upload video, coupon deals and other content like menus on mobile applications like Yelp and Foursquare. Those first mover merchants who develop compelling media content will be rewarded with Facebook “likes”, the new currency for customer attraction and search results.

We’re now reaching the stage where the instant video upload for business starts to make sense. Remember the old Seesmic video conversation platform that Loic LeMeur took down last summer 2009 because he concluded video conversation adoption by the public was limited? I agree carrying on a video conversations may still attract a limited audience, but the ease of uploading video from iPhones etc. now makes it much more easier to develop video messages on the fly. For example, it would be easy for a chef to iPhone video the day’s dinner offerings and broadcast/post it via a social media distribution system like Posterous across the restaurant’s Twitter and Facebook feeds each afternoon:

It takes time for consumers to understand and adopt new media. The concept of Twitter was alien to most, until Oprah made Twitter accessible in April, 2009. The use of adhoc video for business messaging is still alien to those who believe video production quality standards are high hurdles, but pioneering businesses will soon figure out that audiences are more interested in the real time message being delivered in “living color”.

Comcast’s purchase of TV network NBC and movie studio Universal seems backwards to older media veterans who remember the ascent of upstart cable versus the powerful Big 3 TV networks in the 70′s/80′s. It proves that media itself has become a commodity to be digested across a panoply of distribution channels. It just so happens that cable, with its reliable subscription revenue streams and multiple channel assets, now has more financial clout than advertising based network TV and with it, the ability to finance programming through a movie studio as well.

Moreover, TV/cable and Internet are merging towards display across a common TV/monitor display platform. Cable channels pay significant syndication fees to broadcast relevant programming. They are curating content for their audience. However…

Social media facilitates the same content curation done by cable channels. Justin.TV allows anybody to broadcast hit movies (illegally) like a Showtime channel and now, personal broadcasters can get paid for it as a pay-per-view affiliate:

Obviously, copyright issues on Justin.TV seem to fall by the wayside just as they have done on Youtube (Google no longer seems diligent in deleting uploaded copyright content). This tolerance becomes a moral hazard that makes copyright protection unenforceable.

Like other content, video has essentially become free and curatable. For every Hulu, there will be copycat channels. Even Hulu’s exclusive licensed content are easily replicated by screen scraping video software like Camtasia.

Justin.TV’s pay-per-view channels will be the first of a new video revenue model that YouTube (which already announced this intention) and other video channels will follow. Why? Because everybody wants to be a broadcaster.

The Denver Post is conducting a poll to its readers – would you pay to access news online?

The Denver Post already plans to start charging for content. Would the overwhelming results of this informal reader poll change their mind? It boils down to, how stupid are they?

This is a followup from yesterday’s article about news feed aggregation – the advent of  “real time” news in the past year with Twitter and micro-blogging citizen journalism has commoditized news content. The public realizes they can find their news anywhere and everywhere online… this perception didn’t exist a year ago.

Why are print newspapers shutting down presses, and book publishers decrying where their readers went? Today’s NY Times essentially says this:

(Charts, of course, not based on actual statistics; for descriptive purposes only)

Consumers are increasingly avoiding newspapers — and books, too — because the text mode is now used so infrequently that it can feel like a burden. People are showing a clear preference for a fully formed video experience that comes ready to play on a screen, requiring nothing but our passive attention.

The video mode has been reinforced by the rise of YouTube. In December, almost 100 million viewers in the United States watched 5.9 billion YouTube videos, according to comScore. Tellingly, YouTube has not cannibalized TV viewership — it has instead carved out another chunk of our leisure time for video on a screen.

I always had this notion that if Twitter could embed videos, it would do three things:

1. Become a full fledged broadcast media. Now Twitter “channels” can be created.
2. As a true broadcast media, TV news organizations would jump all over this by embedding their video stories for distribution and publicity.
3. This would position Twitter as a content network competitive with user-generated video blogging services like Seesmic.

I saw it on Jason Calacanis’ Twitter account this morning, investigated and found Tweetree.

This is the only application I’ve found so far this morning that can embed videos on Twitter.

UPDATE: I believe the capability to see embedded videos in Twitter requires Firefox’s PowerTwitter add-on, or to see the Twitter stream via Tweetree.

Tweetree has potential to become Twitpic for video, which just proved its value with Janis Krums’ famous Twitpic picture of the downed Flight #1549. Moreover, I predict a programmer rush to build a Twitter application that facilitates a simple “shoot, send and embed into Twitter” functionality for phones and cameras. (And yes, I know Seesmic has similar video functionality but Janis Krums would have required a broadband connection, and an open Macbook to “upload” a video from his ferry).

TODAY’S ONLINE CONTENT FATIGUE

Web 2.0 could be described as a phase in the evolution of the Internet that facilitated individuals in creating content within the constructs of social websites (blogs) and social networks (as participants). User-generated content was the New New Thing when it first appeared refreshingly on blogs (in 2002 blogs were being recognized as media), MySpace (2003), YouTube (2005) and Facebook (in 2006, it opened up beyond colleges).

Now, the discovery phase of Web 2.0 is over. Thinking bird’s eye level, all the content that needs to be online is now online. For example, there are literally thousands of articles (and videos) about how to raise your credit score, and using Google isn’t really going to help you find the best or most appropriate advice. Conclusion: content creation is now not as highly valued when it’s already ubiquitous and en masse.

However, one kind of content is still prized; it’s in the taglines of CNN and Huffington Post: “Breaking News“. Breaking news, in all its forms from reporting to analysis, holds the most social and economic value – world society reacts, trades and competes with New News.

MEDIA 2.5 – POSITIONING AS THE HUB OF BREAKING NEWS

The mainstream media finally figured out that journalist content creation also didn’t need to be salaried. Breaking news can now be reported by anybody in Mumbai or Gaza. Media measures its worth by traffic, and solidifying the market position of being the hub of Breaking News is where Media 2.5 is headed. That means having producers like CNN’s Tori Blase on Twitter‘s front lines receiving and monitoring news stories and alerts from her Twitter network. This reinforces CNN’s status as the breaking news hub when it has dispatches at the borders of citizen journalism. News sourcing is social, every news producer must do this to stay connected with the new citizen news sources and be relevant in the future.

WEB 2.5 – EMPOWERING WEB 2.0 INDIVIDUALS TO CREATE BREAKING NEWS MEDIA HUBS

The New New Media Properties have none of the mainstream media overhead and infrastructure for collecting breaking news – Huffington Post, Politico and video-based Funny or Die are the collaborative media that Web 2.0 facilitates. All they need are writers/video producers who want syndication, and what aspiring journalists/producers will turn that opportunity down? These sites have become talent agencies that trade talent exposure for content quality, and in turn elevates their online presence and traffic.

The window is open, but nobody sees it’s open yet. Any organization, company or even a team of like-minded individuals can now create Politico-type blog network/breaking news distribution properties cheaply by leveraging Web 2.0′s blog and website design applications. A key distinction needs to be made in developing a media property – the content being created and distributed must be quality controlled to attract traffic. Social networks built on platforms like Ning won’t work due to noise and content credibility arising from any yahoo who wants to be a participant. The mainstream media understands this distinction and have been augmenting their journalistic offering with a J-School trained blogger corps (examples: NYT, SFGate), basically trading in the name “column” for “blog”.

Web 2.0 facilitates individuals. Web 2.5 facilitates the development of collaborative websites. The real estate industry in particular can leverage Web 2.0 tools to create collaborative websites that position real estate agents as local “reporters”. Properties like Homescopes leverage Web 2.0-savvy real estate professionals to break local news like the details of recent home sales only they would know about. Seth Godin mentions today that real estate brokerages should create local e-newsletters… this idea aligns with the idea of real estate agent as reporter.

You wouldn’t buy GM stock today without checking Marketwatch.com, and consumers will soon understand they won’t put an offer on a house (in this weird market!) based on month-old data. Breaking news is the killer app.

WEB 2.5 – LEVERAGING THE MEDIA HUB TO ATTRACT TRAFFIC (AND ONLINE FAME)

If you want evidence that content creation is taking a back seat to content distribution, see Justin.TV, an online streaming media application initially launched to allow the masses to chronicle their lives in video. Unfortunately, most people’s 24-by-7 lives are excruciatingly boring, and Justin.TV has evolved into the leading do-it-yourself online Cable Access channel network that facilitates anybody who wants to “program” online TV. Naturally, the most in-demand content are the free broadcasts of subscription streams of sporting events and movies… value-based content is king.

And just so content creators won’t complain that I’m positing the “death of content”, on the contrary, good content creators will now flourish, and gain access to exposure and fame much more easily with the proliferation of the new Web 2.5 content distribution channels (and let’s just call them media).

Media hubs/channels are the antidote to content fatigue by facilitating relevant filtering for discovery of great stuff. Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop and Jason Calacanis’ Mahalo are based on nothing more than the collaborative insights of what is online good “breaking news” content. Somewhat autocratic, but a simple formula. It’s no coincidence that both Guy and Jason have attuned themselves to real time trends as well-networked Twitter celebs.

What I’m trying to say is – the opportunity is build these media hubs is wide open and easy to do… the challenge is to convince your network to participate in your hub. This is the spirit of post-Web 2.0.

Justin Kan, founder of Justin.TV, achieved notoriety in March 2007 by hooking up a webcam on a helmet and broadcasting his life 24-by-7. Justin.TV was born to facilitate similar life streaming broadcasts by individuals.

The evolution of the business model twisted from personal, user-generated broadcast content, Justin style, to a media site that hosts individual broadcast channels.

It’s a play on the “be your own DJ” online model, and many participants are using the pulpit to broadcast sporting events and movies that they are (likely illegally) re-broadcasting from existing online subscriptions. The more interesting feature that YouTube or Hulu don’t have is real time chat functionality to pundit the broadcast.

The moral of the story is the power of combining cutting edge technology (in this case, online streaming video) and outrageous action to develop first, celebrity, and then an online media model. Through discovery, a true online business model – personal broadcast channel – emerged based on the simple cable access channel paradigm.

At Twitter, the act of spamming is universally panned. The first act of the Twitter Spammer is to “follow” up to 2,000 Twitterers (Twitter apparently sets the limit at 2,000 follows for new accounts). The spammer usually creates multiple Twitter accounts and spends an hour of continuous clicking following 2,000 in a big Twitter database like Robert Scoble. The spam accounts always look the same with no picture and similar name derivations:

The spammer’s objective ostensibly seems to be to get Twitterers to click on their profile link (in the cases above, the link is a completely spammy website.)

Within a few hours, Twitter management suspends the site:

Twitter’s Philosophical Dilemma – Explicit Spamming to Build a Following is a No No but Now it Seems Everybody wants to Build their Following Quickly

#1:Twitter started out, and continues to be viewed as a public IM tool that is shared across walled social networks. At first, philosophically, building a large Twitter network of random followers seemed to run afoul of Twitter’s implicit intention that Twitter conversations should maintain relevancy across a network, or “follower” base.

#2: Twitter users like @JasonCalacanis and others started building massive stranger networks because Twitter’s unilateral “follow” clickthrough was so simple. Twitter changed the chat paradigm from private walled communication to a public broadcasting medium.

#3: Yes, spammers spend a few hours on a keyboard with the express purpose of promoting their site, and it runs counter to the social philosophy of Web 2.0. However, most Twitterers will agree that following 2,000 in one fell swoop is the quickest way to build a follower base, provided you are not suspended.

#4: As more Twitterers understand the power of Twitter as a broadcast medium, the more they start actively building their network / follower base. They look for tricks without spamming to get new followers quickly.

I notice the most efficient way to build a random follower base without spamming is to “Follow the Followers of Spammers”. Since the Followers of Spammers will apparently follow anybody who follows them (including spammers), they will also follow you. It’s a hidden game that many Twitterers quietly play.

Silly conclusion: Twitter spammers are part of Twitter’s ecology and are here to stay.

—————————

Interesting update: almost all the followers of @skalua are Twitter spammers. Does this suggest that the Twitter spams are originating from one source? Here is the first page of @skalua’s spamalot followers:

	ilovenewyork88 follow You are now following ilovenewyork88 remove
	magneticguru29 follow You are now following magneticguru29 remove
	5figuresmonthly follow You are now following 5figuresmonthly remove
	iretiredat22 follow You are now following iretiredat22 remove
	onlinesecrets41 follow You are now following onlinesecrets41 remove
	onlineweb20gu follow You are now following onlineweb20gu remove
	trafficformulaM follow You are now following trafficformulaM remove
	therichjerk222 follow You are now following therichjerk222 remove
	trafficmentor22 follow You are now following trafficmentor22 remove
	ilovesalsa22 follow You are now following ilovesalsa22 remove
	leslieonline22 follow You are now following leslieonline22 remove
	maniacwicked99 follow You are now following maniacwicked99 remove
	kevintheman99 follow You are now following kevintheman99 remove
	joeythementor22 follow You are now following joeythementor22 remove
	mlmsecrets09 follow You are now following mlmsecrets09 remove
	dooby04 follow You are now following dooby04 remove
	marketingguru88 follow You are now following marketingguru88 remove
	guruman9289hfdb follow You are now following guruman9289hfdb remove
	carolinafootbal follow You are now following carolinafootbal remove
	marketingman298 follow You are now following marketingman298 remove

The Portable Social Graph is a killer concept behind the future social media business model. Very few can envision it because few live examples exist melding social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter into more traditional popular websites – ecommerce sites like Amazon, media sites like NYTimes or Hulu, and corporate/organizational sites like Toyota or NFL.com.

Razorfish, the new media ad agency, and its CEO Shiv Singh explain the potential power of Facebook Connect to bring social groups (“the social graph”) into transactional websites. Brilliant presentation…

Sound bite video lives so well at Will Ferrell founded Funny or Die. 2 minutes is the perfect amount of time for a laugh… it’s the end of attention span.