thoughts from NewTeeVee conference

I attended the NewTeeVee 1 day conference in San Francisco last week. The conference was put on by Om Malik and his team. It was a very intense day that started at 7:30am and ended a little after 8pm with very few breaks. Although tired, it was great to squeeze this into one day.

First of all, hats off to Om for all the great guest speakers and panelists ... a pretty impressive list of people. These events are perfect for networking and I got in as much as I could in one day. It had a real grass roots feel to it that I hope is maintained through the years

The key things that becomes clear day in and day out working in this space is that online video is not TV. Anyone that tries to make it like TV is doomed to fail. The web continues to be a short form video snacking environment and will continue to be so for a while. What really hit me at the conference is the real emergence of high quality, edgy made for the internet type of content created by what may seem to be amateurs. Well ... these amateurs are really funny and they are getting support from many great new online media companies like www.blip.tv, www.revision3.com, www.crackle.com and many others. These companies are helping produce and distribute this new content while also helping these aspiring actors, writers and directors make money.

I already read way more blogs than newspaper articles and I stopped being interested in TV long ago. I don't really know if we are at a tipping point but we may not be far. I predict that this new "pro-am" movement will get significant momentum and will become a major force to be reckoned with. The writer's strike is going to add fuel to the fire by forcing many of the extremely funny pros that write for shows like The Daily Show to create their own online shows and many will eventually make this a full time gig. I also wouldn't be surprised if we begin to see some serious market consolidation in this space and a new media goliath starting to form challenging the major big guns like NBC.

Here is a picture of some of the stars of tomorrow at the end of the conference that was capped by the Web Video Celebrity Game Show. From left to right Lindsay Campbell (www.wallstrip.com), Veronica Belmont (daily.mahalo.com), Zadi Diaz (epicfu.com), Hayden Black (http://www.goodnightburbank.com//Abigail's x-rated teen diary), Casey McKinnon (http://www.galacticast.com/), Heather Gold (heathergold.com), Rober Scoble (http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/), Kevin Rose (http://revision3.com/diggnation/), Yuri Baranovski (http://www.breakaleg.tv/), Eddie (not sure what show), Justin Kan (sittting down, justin.tv).

There are many more great online shows and can't list them all out here. For FaveQuest, this is great news because it provides us access to lots of great fresh content. All these guys syndicate their content in multiple places and we hope to be one of them. How exciting!

Tune in to the next blog for more predictions