More User Content, More Cooperation, Smart Advertising, Even Giving
Posted on July 20, 2006
Filed Under Channels and Content, Content Co-Creation, Advertising/Marketing |
Here are a few sites that I think point the way forward. That is to a visually rich world where a cooperative enterprise grows out of the web. We saw some of it yesterday in Shopwiki and we know the same spirit exists in TripAdvisor.
There’s also Hotelchatter, Jaunted and more impressively Yellow Arrow.
These are all examples of the cooperative spirit producing great content that’s useful to people in practical situations (in a way that YouTube just ain’t).
Here’s another.
View do is a site that encourages people to upload instructional videos - how to make a Martini, how to throw a screwball, how to change a tyre and coming soon how-to cannibalise how-to print publishing.
“We know that online videos are nothing new, but being able to see tedious instructions in video form and actually take them with you can be extremely valuable,” said Gordy Wray, co-founder of ViewDo. “We also realize that everyone is good at something, whether it be how to throw a knuckleball or how to shuffle poker chips. ViewDo gives people an outlet to share how to do those things in which they excel.”ViewDo is designed to grow from an online library into a master ‘hub’ of downloadable instructional videos.
One way View Do hopes to make money is by encouraging companies to sponsor how-to videos. Makes sense. Attach your name to the first thing people turn to when they want to know how to do something. That’s the kind of supportive, cooperative, down in the detail attitude advertisers will have to adopt.
My own awareness of these cooperative movement began a few years back when I consulted for the Dutch Academy of Science on their digitisation programme. It was just the time when scientific papers were being signed by vast groups of collaborators. The term “collaboratory” began to gain currency. It just preceeded Web 2.0 and it was fiercely resisted by many academics.
Then it started to turn up in the most unexpected places. Precursor of all the cooperative travel review sites is the Geocache movement.
Geocaching it essentially a treasure hunt that anybody can start. The idea is you hide a cache any where on the planet and then set the coordinates for other people to follow using GPS. When other geoachers find the cache, they add to it, raising its value.
It’s like the Sunday walk with a bit of high tech, a bit of global community. A little show me round too. Of course made possible by the web.
More signs of a cooperative strain springing up all over web 2.0 (I don’t mean community building, I do mean purposeful joint venture), Blip TV, which I’ve written about earlier, just got a round of angel funding. Blip allows users to create their own brands and shares revenues with video producers, like revver.com (more of a clip download service). Revver in fact have gone further and now “when you show Revver videos on your website or blog or even in an email to friends, you’ll get 20% of the ad revenue from that video.” Look too at Rojo’s cooperative blog listings’ feature.
Any more examples, please comment them here.
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