For our 2nd “State of the Vlogosphere” (see 1st State from March 2007 here), in addition to some of the “where are the video blogs?” questions, we wanted to look into the following trends:

• Why are video producers setting up their own sites? How are they using sites like YouTube?
• What is mainstream media doing in the vlogosphere?

Where are the video blogs?

According to the data collected by Mefeedia, video blogs are at:

Key Trends since March 2007:

• YouTube down: the percentage dipped from 11.1% to 9%. Fewer vloggers on YouTube? No, just an increased amount of vloggers on YouTube appear to also be setting up their own video blogs via blogging platforms, thus causing an overall decrease in the YouTube percentages.
• Independent Websites up: increased market share from 56.9% to 61%. More and more producers are going independent and trying to attract audiences from a variety of different video sharing sites.
• Blip.tv up: the popular videoblogging hosting platform, increased from 11.6% to 14%.

The shift to creating your own video blog and using more content-creator-friendly services such as Blip.tv and Wordpress’ “Show in a Box” should not be a surprise, particularly for content creators looking to produce online video as a business. Your own video blog site allows you to set the terms of what, when and how people view your work and gives the content creator the ability to monetize through advertising and sponsorship. Of course, to attract an audience, YouTube and other video hosting sites are great places to post content that promotes the creator’s own website. This enables video producers to capture an audience and try to draw that audience to their own website.

The other benefit to video producers is branding and ownership. As Jay Dedham, a videoblogging pioneer and vlogger at RyanIsHungry.com explains “Having my own blog allows me to control the context of my videos. Ownership is clearly mine. I can learn to interact with my viewing community since i have full control over my site. You can’t do these things on sites like Youtube.”

Mainstream Media and the Vlogosphere

NBC, ABC, CBS, Sony, Fox – mainstream media has been entering the vlogosphere in many ways over the past several months. What are all of the mainistream media players doing with the new low-cost distribution methods and “hip, cool” online video audience? Since our last “State of the Vlogosphere”, there have been a lot of announcements made - here are a few highlights:

• NBC and Fox announced a Joint Venture to compete against YouTube. The new site will feature licenses content from NBC and Fox libraries.
• CBS Interactive has launched toe “Interactive Audience Network” which will push out CBS content across many websites rather than forcing people to come to CBS.com.
• CBS Interactive also acquired the business video blog Wallstrip, meaning that mainstream media is also looking into the “cool, hip” content and the web producers who understand the importance of web syndication.
• NBC continues to output “webisodes” (web episodes - why not just call it a video blog!) through The Office and other web episodes of their shows.
• Grouper, a video sharing site acquired by Sony Pictures a year ago, recently renamed itself to Crackle and launched an original content discovery site. The site will feature quartlerly contests to pitch Sony executives with the promise of cash prizes and the possibility to land a TV pilot through Sony Pictures Television.
• MySpace announced that it is teaming with the FOX network and the Producers Guild of America to seek out television pilots through the “Storyteller Challenge“. The partnership could provide a shortcut straight to TV.
• Sony Pictures Television and MySpace launched their minisode network, which includes everything from the original Fantasy Island to The Partridge Family into shortened six minute clips.

These trends point to an important trend: the difference between a Web Show and a TV Show is becoming less distinct. As Mike Hudack of Blip.tv explains “an inflection point is coming up where these two converge.” Soon in the future, we won’t be talking about a “TV Show” and a “Web Show”, we will just be talking about a “Show”.

Clearly, sites like Mefeedia are important as online video explodes onto more and more indie video sites, video hosting sites such as YouTube and MySpace, and mainstream media video series such the minisode network and NBC webisodes. Consumers will need easy tools to discovery and collect great video from any site and any platform, and be able to watch that video on any device, TV, and player they want to.

Vlogosphere Statistics

Methodology

Since 2004, Mefeedia has been collecting data on video blogs. We collect this data in an objective, fair manner from video feeds throughout the internet. Any video blog can be included in Mefeedia’s Directory by providing a adding a MediaRSS feed to our directory.

About Mefeedia

Mefeedia is a social discovery site for online episodic video. Mefeedia brings together video feeds from any video site and any platform, allowing you to create a personal channel of video from these feeds, which can then be watched on Mefeedia, in iTunes or other media player, on your mobile device, or anywhere you would like. More about us.

See more in:online video, state of the vlogosphere, trends, videoblogs

Social discovery - it is the latest in Web 2.0 talk. StumbleUpon was bought by eBay for $75 million and Last.fm was bought by CBS for $280 million. Related to this new form of finding “the information that i want”, this article on TechCrunch talked about the new breed of “portal”: Facebook / the social network site where you find the information you “need” through your friends.

The one piece missing: video. Sure, some of these services have a “video feature”, but this is like Google having Google Video - Google had to buy YouTube to really understand and compete in the online video space. Video is different - creation, viewing, discovery. Mefeedia enables this “social discovery of video” through our community/social network and tools.

We hope you enjoy the sharing and collaboration available today through our community of video creators.

Please email us at friends@mefeedia.com if you would like to share your thoughts/comments.

Enjoy!

See more in:discovery, mefeedia, social, videoblogs

Techcrunch is reporting, via Jossip, that Wallstrip - one of my favorite video blogs and part of Mefeedia here - is being acquired by CBS for around $5 million. Jossip reported that the vlog has zero ad revenues, but does have a great show and some great talent (Lindsey Campbell does a great job). Congrats to Wallstrip!

As part of the videoblogging community, this brings some great validation that a great show is a great show - whether that means it is produced independently or by a larger entity. This is a sign of things to come in the vlogging space. We will be sure to do our part in helping people discover great video blogs through Mefeedia’s community discovery engine!See more in:cbs, jossip, techcrunch, videoblogging, videoblogs, vlogs, wallstrip

Video was hot this year dominating the Webby Awards, with lots of great videoblogs and videoblogging services representing.

Youtube, Ask A Ninja and Lonely Girl 15 took the top honors Special Achievment. The only non-video related top honor was David Bowie for his famed bowie.net an innovator back in 1998!

Also receiving awards were the videoblogs Terra Online, Cool Hunting and the Jet Set Show. Blip.tv also won for their yummy hosting services! And the vlog DriveTime received a nomination.

All in all RSS syndicated video and videoblogs in general were a big winner. Though some big names like ZeFrank and a few others were noticeably absent.

We’ve put together a a guide to the 2007 Webby Awards representing all the videoblogs. Enjoy!See more in:achievments, ask a ninja, blip tv, cool hunting, david bowie, drivetime, hot this year, innovators, jet set, lonely girl, videoblogs, webby awards, webby awards, youtube

I recently read an interesting article in ReadWriteWeb about “Video Podcasting Comes of Age” - the core of the article was a discussion about the quality of vlogs (the Production quality, not the quality of the content). This seems like a logical step for vlogging, especially as the path to the TV becomes seamless. However, it is amazing that ON Networks claims to be “revolutionizing how video is created, distributed, and consumed” when they don’t even support MediaRSS! Let’s hope this is just due to them just being in beta. The vidoes themselves are very nice quality and I would like to add one or two of them to my personal channel on Mefeedia.See more in:mediarss, videoblogs, vlogs

“Crossing borders, making new friends” was a suggested theme for this year’s Videoblogging Week. Mark Day kicked things off with this video reaching out to YouTube video producers to become part of the “broader community” by participating in Videoblogging Week.

As a result, Mefeedia tracked over 120 videos from YouTube that were part of Videoblogging Week. Thanks, Mark!

“Videobloggingweek2007″

Watch movie

Original post on March 31, 2007 from YouTube :: Tag // videobloggingweek2007: (RSS feed)

Want to get your videos seen by other videobloggers? Tag them videobloggingweek2007 Author: markdayresponse Keywords: videobloggingweek2007 Added: March 31, 2007

(Via Mefeedia)See more in:videobloggingweek2007, videoblogs

Since 2004, Mefeedia has been the leader in tracking video blogs through our proprietary database and collection techniques. That is why we have started this Quarterly State of the VLogosphere report. This is the first one!

We are constantly asked and quoted on “how many videoblogs are there?” and “where exactly is the vlogosphere?”. Here are some key insights into the VLogosphere. For more in-depth statistics or for questions, please contact Frank - frank@mefeedia.com

Top 10 – Where are the Videoblogs?
According to the data collected by Mefeedia, videoblogs are at:

It’s Not Just YouTube
Videobloggers are an independent bunch. Whereas “Viral Video” has seen a tremendous movement of market share to YouTube (43.3% according to a NewTeeVee comparison on Compete.com), videoblogging content – “Episodic Video” – has generally remained independent. In our opinion, this is mainly due to the independent nature of videobloggers and the desire to give users a choice on how and where viewers can watch their videos. Viewer choice is key. Many videoblogs such as Rocketboom and Galacticast now offer episodes in a variety of different formats for many devices.

Videobloggers do use YouTube and other video sharing sites. But a lot of the time, a videoblogger will post a few videos to a video sharing site in the hopes of attracting an audience (and subscribers) to their show’s website. The power remains with the videoblogger – the videoblogger can create and distribute episodic video to whomever they choose. That is why a lot of videobloggers choose to post on open source or independent platforms - Worldpress, Blogspot, or others - and distribute to videoblogger-friendly sites like Mefeedia, where viewers can easily connect and collaborate with the content creators themselves.

Growth of Videoblogging
Videoblogging has seen tremendous growth over the past several years. The trend towards Episodic Video has really started taking off recently:

Of course, statistics are only part of the story in videoblogging. Videoblogging has really been about community and connecting people. That connection between viewers and videobloggers, and between videobloggers themselves, has been invaluable in creating some of the most unique, independent episodic videos online.

The Future
The vlogosphere has started garnering attention from Hollywood. In January, Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine of “Ask a Ninja” signed a deal with Federated Media. It looks like 2007 is going to be an interesting year where “micro media” meets “big media”, or at least they will be talking. From several conversations we have had, it seems that Hollywood is still trying to figure it out. It is a tremendous leap to go from a handful of shows with viewers in the millions to hundreds of shows with viewers in the thousands.

Methodology
Mefeedia collects data on videoblogs in an objective, fair manner from video feeds throughout the internet. Any videoblog can be included in Mefeedia’s Directory by providing a adding a MediaRSS feed to our directory.

Questions? Contact us at:

Frank Sinton
frank@mefeedia.com
310-927-7841

See more in:state of the vlogosphere, videoblogs

Videoblogging week is coming up… starts on April 1st. For those that are unfamiliar with the community-driven online “event”, here is some information on videoblogging week.

Some news for videoblogging week… as promised, we wanted to do”something special” for videoblogging week 2007. Here is what is going on:

Mefeedia asked Irina of The Vloggies Show to be the “MC” for the week, and she agreed! Irina will give her commentary on the daily video events throughout the week. We are all very excited to be able to provide both the tracking of your great videos and the personal voice of someone that many of you know at this site on Mefeedia:

http://videobloggingweek.mefeedia.com

As videos tagged “videobloggingweek2007″ come in, they will “pop into” the center column here and your feed name will show on the left columnunder “Who’s Participating”. If you haven’t already, be sure to add your feed to Mefeedia’s directory:

http://www.mefeedia.com/add.php

We are ready to start watching some great, entertaining videos!

podtechvbweekSee more in:videobloggingweek2007, videoblogs, vloggies

The big news of the day, of course, was the Viacom - YouTube $1 billion lawsuit. This launched an extensive discussion on the videobloggging group. This got me thinking: what makes Mefeedia different is the content - it is about original, independent content submitted by you, the content owner. But, ok, do the numbers really back that up? So I did some analysis, and yes, they do! Here are the numbers:
2,147,356 - number of episodes on Mefeedia (as of 1am on March 14th)

8.5% - Amount of videos on Mefeedia from the Top 10 Video Sharing Sites: YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Yahoo Video, MSN Video, AOL Video, Metacafe, iFilm, eBaum, and Break.

91.5% - great video content NOT just grabbed from the top video sharing sites, but from places like personal videoblogging sites!See more in:mefeedia, videobloggers, videoblogs

While the major studios have format wars of Blu-ray versus HD-DVD, videobloggers will keep moving along with exploring the delivery of video to consumers in HD. Here is a Guide to Videoblogs and Podcasts in High Definition / HD.
This is a just the tip of the iceburg. Videoblogs in HD - a great example of how the Internet has enabled content creators to deliver what consumers want today instead of the confusion that consumers are faced with in this HD format turf war.

See more in:guides, hdtv, high definition, videoblogs