we’ve been getting quite a bit of coverage in the wake of LIB. a lot of traditional press, a decent bit of blogosphere attention, and a ton of photos (both press and ugc stylie). there are also a couple really great videos that have gotten me to thinking about the future of online media content, and even an idea that could help the desperate newspaper industry in the online space.
eric parsons, a media journalist for the ventura county star made a great audio slideshow of the festival, which you can watch here.
(side note: while everyone’s busy making a big deal about the alleged online video revolution that seems always to be coming, and yet never really arriving, i’m casting a vote for the multimedia slideshow revolution instead. it’s an especially great medium for documentary and journalistic expression, as we’ve been primed on it with pbs and history channel specials. and within the context of online usage, it’s a medium that feels more liberating than online video yet still totally engaging. it allows you to comfortably go off and do other online activities while still being able to take the audio of the piece along with you, and lets you return to the visual part at any time without feeling like you’ve missed anything. it’s kinda like the more versatile “to go” option for the online viewing experience. you can both take your coffee with you on your way or stick around at the coffee shop with your “to go” cup, but online video is the more commitment-requiring ceramic mug you get “for here.”)
crap, that was a really long aside. but maybe i can tie it in after all…
see i liked eric’s slideshow so much because i really feel it managed to capture the breadth of what this event was all about, that i asked to use it for the LIB myspace and website. when i inquired about embedding it, however, the answer from the powers that be at the ventura county star was that all we could get was a url:
http://gallery.venturacountystar.com/videoPlay.cfm?videoID=36
the idea, i’m told, is that the ventura county star wants to keep the content on their site in order to get the traffic over there. the tragic flaw in this logic is that a random link just does not scream “yo! i’m highly dynamic content, i’ve got lots of pretty pictures, and interesting information, you should check me out.”
by keeping the really engaging stuff locked to their site, instead of allowing it to act as a mobile ad “unit” to lead people to the site, they’re kind of shooting themselves in the foot.
i suggested possibly creating a branded frame that could be embedded around the video content, and tonight, this arrived from metrowize.net, like venus from the foam of my suggestion…
brightcove is was totally on the ball with this branded frame bit. [edit: this component of the embed has stopped functioning since i originally made this post. no idea why.] do any of the other video hosting/sharing services out there allow you to do that? they should all be looking into it. cuz the future of online media is gonna require that it has to be able to move! trapping your content on your site is just a waste of effort. if you’da made it emeddable, link-backable, and let your audience itself disseminate that shit far and wide, that WOULD help you generate traffic!