Recently, with the success of YouTube, up to 40 videoblog platforms are trying to grasp a part of their marketshare. But what is it all about?
The upcoming articles will be trying to identify how the emergence of videoblogging (aka vlogging) can benefit video amateurs and professionals, as well as SEO marketers, journalists and companies. I’ll also explain how this new "2.0" industry can become a key factor in reversing global media convergence. David Hallerman, from eMarketer, remarked in Business 2.0 magazine “Vlogs are very targetable. They’re small, but they have a niche audience”.
There are at least 3 distinct groups of video content creators:
- The casual video amateur. This is the typical person who’s on your “forward to everyone” list of people who likes those kinds of funny and not so funny videos. It can also be someone’s in its office taking a break from its underpaid job (it has been reported by a large research firm – someone help me on which one – that 4,9hours were spent weekly surfing the web). This means plenty of time to watch many videos!
- The youth. Born with a keyboard and mouse, those kids never heard of floppy drives (don’t even mention 5.25’’), love pop stars and are more than aware that behind Google, Yahoo and MSN lie tons of answers to their multiple questions, children seek social tagging and entertainment, having a place of their own to share their favorites movies, clips or personal performances with their friends. So what happen with the not so cool videos?
- The vloggers. According to MeFeedia, there were 300 reported in March 2005, and 6500 in March 2006, that's 21 times more than a year ago. Those amateurs and professionals vloggers (Rocketboom, which has 250 000 unique visitors daily, having sold five 15 seconds commercials for $40,000 on eBay) are starting to increase in popularity as several of them are now getting associated with the buzzword grassroots media, which is an answer to the media convergence of today. Steve Garfield, who's behind WeAreTheMedia, along with half a dozen other reporters, is a pioneer in the vlogosphere and in grassroots media-making.
The video blogging industry had a slow start but is now looking promising with $225 million in Internet video ads for 2005 and an estimated 1 billion for 2008 (eMarketer). This didn't happen overnight; many attempts were made in the early 2000’s and never took off. Wikipedia offers a great historical walkthrough.
In my next article, I will be exploring the business models of the actual videoblogs, as well as how they can benefit an organization.
old post but still very good for me
Rand: Youtube hubs are fully RSS - check youtube with OPERA. 2) The use of cc or tt on flash and google's abiltiy to listen and index audio in beta are all reasons to aim for SEO results that are strong for keywords and send visitors with a link to one's own site. Example. Type SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION on youtube the 3rd one is me - a black background / image of a webpage source code taking you to my advisory pages on SEO from Switzerland. I am also on the first page for SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING and SEO and REFERENCEMENT (French for SEO) ;)
I can't recall where I heard about it, but I think there was a startup in the Bay area that had developed a method to index the audio within a clip. I don't think it will be long before we see audio treated in a manner similar to text on a screen.
I think this could blossom into an interesting area eventually. It might be a way off, but what better time to learn about what might be possible and lay the foundation for some benefit in the future.
Does vlog content carry good SEO value? The audio and video can't be indexed the same way text is, so you're losing out on keyword targeting. The piece that is valuable might be the organic linkage from having "viral" types videos, but just putting a blog in video format (which requires headphones or speakers and isn't as "work-friendly") doesn't seem entirely wise to me - no RSS, no syndication and very little indexable content...
Of course, if the popularity takes off and folks are watching vlogs on their iPods or mobile devices because scrolling through text is too hard...
Guillaume, thank you for initiating this series. I've been interested in this for some time now and I'm hoping some comments and discussion will lead to some new ideas. I think this market has huge potential and it will be entertaining to see some of the biggies fight it out over the next year.