Irina Slutsky and Tracy Swedlow: vlogging pioneers

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YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Sclipo and Viddler

I had the pleasure of hanging out with two of my favorite "vloggers" Irina Slutsky and Tracy Swedlow, of Geek Entertainment Television and Interactive TV Today. The idea was really just to meet at a cool cafe called "Mission Pie" on 25th and Mission in San Francisco and share ideas as friends - we all know each other already; this wasn't our first time talking but it was my first time getting together with both of them at once. We talked about events, vloggers, t-shrts, boobs, and the Karate Kid.

I've long admired what both Irina and Tracy have done. I met Irina in 2006 at an event in San Francisco she helped produce called "Vloggercon" which was my first introduction to the community of video-bloggers.



But what is "video-blogging"?

Video blogging is the act and art of talking into a camcorder or video recording device to tell a story or share information, then taking that video and editing first and / or directly uploading it into a service like YouTube. Some take the resulting video on the service and embed it into a blog, but that doesn't mean one has to do that for the video-blog to be just that. It's just using video recording systems to talk out and show your ideas and observations rather than writing them down. It's that simple.

Video blogging really grew with the emergence of YouTube and Blip.tv before it. For a time, Blip.tv was the service of choice because its quality was far better than YouTube's and that perception remained active until 2008, when a newly-owned-by-Google YouTube started to upgrade its systems. Now, YouTube is the dominant video distribution system. With that, Irina has almost religiously stuck to Blip.tv (though that's about to change).

Irina's one of the pioneer vloggers - remember, YouTube was established in 2005 and Blip.tv in 2006 so vlogging is still new - along with Amanda Congdon and Andrew Baron who teamed up to created Rocketboom and reached stardom in 2006 only to have a breakup so nasty it became an Internet event, causing Rocketboom to zoom from 125,000 views per day to over a million a day. That fight for control between Amanda and Andrew forced companies like ABC to pay attention to vloggers. Meanwhile, in the same year, Irina was "acquired" by a new firm called PodTech, which made video content and drew corporate sponsors to pay to have their image associated with it. PodTech was the first company established to a degree around the content of vloggers.

Unfortunately, PodTech and Irina came to a parting of the ways I will not go into here, but Irina carried on with her work at Geek Entertainment Television. Meanwhile, Swedlow was doing more than just vlogging, she was paying attention to "Interactive Television", which is where the viewer "interacts" with what they're seeing. The best example being voting on television. Anytime you text a message to a number after watching, say, American Idol, you're "interacting" with the television.

Tracy started Interactive TV Today with her husband Richard Washborne in 1998, and rapidly gained a reputation for producing a cool, cutting edge event called "The TV of Tommorrow Show" held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and where she brings together products and personalities for a lively discussion on how televisions future is being shaped today. (You can also hear her show on Blog Talk Radio)

More gatherings soon

Irina, Tracy, and I got together to talk and plan, but I can't say what we're going to do as of this writing. It's not that we don't know; we do - I just can't share it yet. We're still trying to figure out how to include "constantly hugged goats!" (See the video.)

Stay tuned!

YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money - NYTimes.com

YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money - NYTimes.com: “Making videos for YouTube — for three years a pastime for millions of Web surfers — is now a way to make a living.

One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site. For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job.

Mr. Buckley quit his day job in September after his online profits had greatly surpassed his salary as an administrative assistant for a music promotion company. His thrice-a-week online show “is silly,” he said, but it has helped him escape his credit-card debt.”

Amanda Congdon Supports Barack Obama

I just got a Facebook News Flash from my Facebook friend Amanda Congdon, who reports that she's behind Barack Obama for President!

Awesome!

I wonder if that has something to do with 1) his authetic politics, 2) the need for real change, and 3) the fact that Barack's, Amanda's, and my birthday are all the same day -- August 4th?

Hmmm..

www.marblejars.com Causing Controversy With Vloggers

Marblejars.com at www.marblejars.com is an online video distribution site that's designed to give attention to video makers by providing "marbles" for them. Now that's the problem, no one knows what the hell a marble is. The site itself reports that...

"Each jar can hold a maximum of 1 million marbles. Each marble represents one U.S. dollar. You can cash out your marbles and collect your money at anytime. And when your jar is filled, make sure to upload a video testimonial to thank the people who helped you out. That will make the people who gave to you feel good, and it will keep the community helping each other!"

This caused a bit of a row over at the Videobloggers Group on Yahoo! Take a look at these exchanges:



1) Hello my name is Robert O'Dell and I am the founder of
www.marblejars.com. I recently joined this group,I would like to
find out if you know of any vloggers or people that have an idea or
cause that would be interested in trying out our site.

We have several categories
http://www.marblejars.com/browse_category.asp that we are looking
for users to submit video's to.

We are specifically trying to find film makers to announce that they
have a project and say how much they need to complete their project,
and when the project is done, then make sure everyone who gave
marbles to their jar get to see it first as well as get access to
all the dailies and different creative commons edits.

Also we are seeking users that have an idea for a business or
invention that they want to receive funding for.


If you know of anyone that may be interested they can contact me.


Thank you

2) hey robert
i looked at your site and its def interesting
just the usual questions -- how is it funded? how many users do you have?
has anyone filled up a jar yet?


3) I went to marblejars.com, and I didn't see any instructions on how to
use the site. Nothing really indicated to me what a marble was (I
assume it has something to do with money) or how much a marble cost,
or how it works to help this people out.

Perhaps you could explain it here, or better yet, explain it on the
website. It was somewhat interesting, but difficult to understand.
Thanks,
Milt

4) Hello Milt, sorry you had trouble with the site or finding out what
it is about, if you click on the marbles
http://www.marblejars.com/how_it_works.asp tab at the top you should
see a page with the text below.

(It's pretty simple actually. Just join Marblejars and you can get a
jar or buy some marbles to give to others.

When you buy your jar, you can choose a specified amount of marbles
you want your jar to collect. Then upload your video describing what
you want in the right category. And don't just sit back and relax;
promote it! Go out, tell your friends, put the embed link in your
MySpace page, send it around and watch your jar fill up with Marbles.

Each jar can hold a maximum of 1 million marbles. Each marble
represents one U.S. dollar. You can cash out your marbles and
collect your money at anytime. And when your jar is filled, make
sure to upload a video testimonial to thank the people who helped
you out. That will make the people who gave to you feel good, and it
will keep the community helping each other!)

So feel that we have tried to make it easy to use and user friendly,
the problem that we have found is that most people are visual and do
not like to read anything. But we can't make everyone happy, so
again sorry for the confusion.

And as far as your question on who it could help, it could help
anyone that might fit one of these categories.
http://www.marblejars.com/browse_category.asp

Or if you need to you can find more information on giving marbles
here. http://www.marblejars.com/give_marbles.asp

It is a video community with a twist, you can earn money from every
video you upload, someone can just give to you if they like your
vlog or your look , or to help your cause, the possibilities are
endless.

Also the user that decides to give marbles actually gets to drop
them into the jar and hear the sounds of marbles falling into the
jar, so the receive some entertainment along with the giving.

Robert

5) I am fascinated by micropayment systems, and so this stuff interests me.

I guess the main issues you face are getting a critical mass of users,
getting sponsors, and gaining the apparently vital 'trust' component.
Ive heard it said that ebays sucess and value is in being a platform
that encourages trust between people, or at least negates risk of
trust being broken.

So I dunno, for a site & business concept like yours, the trust factor
could be make or break. The focus of the site so far, on people asking
for donations for various needs, is certainly a tricky one on which to
build trust, but hopefull iy will be ok, and less of a problem if
theres a greater focus on people wanting marbles to fund works that
people then get to benefit from by seeing on the web. Then theres also
the issues of trust in the service provider, where you may benefit
from putting more detail on your site about your company structure,
have more than a PO box address, and other techniques such as blogging
or making more videos about yourselves. And crucially being upfront
and clear about where in the system you make money, as Im not
understanding that bit yet, if I buy marbles for $1 and the person who
receives them gets $1 for them, hows that actually sustainable for
you? If tehres fee's or a cut somewhere, where can info on this be
found currently?

Cheers

Steve Elbows

6) Steve thanks for the great response!

Yes the site is focused on people asking for users to give money to
them, and this will remain the focus of the site, because that is
what we designed the site to do.

The issue of trust of the service provider (Marblejars), is
definitely the biggest obstacle we feel that we face. This is why we
have designed features into the site to help facilitate this.

The user testimonials, these are designed so when a user decides to
cash out their jar and collect their money, that everyone that is on
the mailing list with marblejars that donated to the jar will
receive an auto email from us informing the givers that the user has
cashed out and uploaded a testimonial, thus allowing the user's to
return and see that their donation was used in the way that they
thought it should be.

But this trust issue is something that will take time to build,
trust is an issue with anything from the environment you leave your
kids in at school, to the bank you use, to some place like paypal
freezing accounts on not giving users their money, or eBay and all
of the fraud that they are plagued with.

I do agree it would be nice to have a physical address but, if I
were to put this then it would be my actual home address and my wife
and I decided against that. I have two beautiful children and a wife
of 17 years and their safety comes first. I also am not going to put
some fake address or go rent a office space to have nothing in. This
may come at a later date but for now the PO Box will have to work.
This is a small business and we created this not get rich but to try
and help out the people that are less fortunate in the world.

I have invested very much money into this site to help with the
trust issue, but this will have to be tested and proven by users in
time, money can not buy trust in my opinion, so we will have to let
the community grow and hopefully the trust will build.

Our philosophy about the site is if it helps one person on this
planet and that is all then it is worth our time and money to create
it. To often in today's society people can't won't and do not even
want to help anyone other than themselves, so we hope that are site
will be able to connect people with the average person that may need
help in some way or another.

As far as the money issue with the site, at this time a visitor can
find information about the costs associated with the site in the
http://www.marblejars.com/help.asp and the
http://www.marblejars.com/player_issues.asp sections of the site and
of course the http://www.marblejars.com/terms.asp section of the
site.

If they are a registered user they can just login and click on a
collect my money link on the site and it will go to a secure page
describing the same.

Here are the options for users wanting to cash out.

Get paid by company check (Free)
Get paid by wire transfer (a $25.00 fee will be deducted from jar
contents and they may have to pay a small fee at their receiving
bank)

When a user decides to cash out a jar and collect the money, they
will be charged a 5% processing fee (based on the total amount of
money in your jar). This fee covers credit card transaction fees
incurred by marblejars during the cash out process.

We will make our money on the jar sales, also merchandise and
apparel that will be added to our store soon.

Also we have defiantly thought about and we have attempted to create
a living marketing video from myself about the site, but we are
finding that this has been more difficult than we thought, one it
seems that when I attempt to make the video I either look to angry
or to happy in a fake way, so we are trying to put one together, but
it has proven to be a task in itself.

Also it is of some concern and has been discussed by us over and
over again, if we do put this video up will it have an effect in a
positive or a negative way.

On one hand it lets users visually connect with the company, and can
possibly help with the trust issue.

On the other hand, it is someone listening to a song on the radio
and saying "man I really like that song" then when they get home
they see this artist on the tube and say " damn I can't stand that
freak"

So it is a catch 22 in some respects. Please let me know your
opinions about this and if you feel that the positives out weigh the
negatives.

Thanks

Robert


I'll stay tuned on this firm.