Video Services

Real Estate Mobility

December 17, 2008 by Tom Townsend

We recently wrote an article for the folks over at Home Gain, where I am a guest Blogger on the Technology front for the Real Estate industry. My article entitled, Is an iPhone Under Your Tree This Christmas? discusses the merits that the iPhone has ushered in for consumers and the reason why Real Estate agents and Brokers should give some serious thought into developing a mobile version of their web site.

A few of the screen shots used in the article are from the recent upgrade we did for the Greater Tampa Bay Real Estate Team, where we not only added video capability but made the platform Mobile aware with specific emphasis for those using iPhones and the new Goggle Android platform.

We will be posting as press release here shortly on all the things we did for the Real Estate platform upgrade, it will blow your mind at how much functionality we added to their site. Anyways back to the article on Home Gain.

Unfortunately, one area of the article did not make it past the editorial cut due the fact that the application I referenced is one from Trulia a competitor to Home Gain. So, I am including that portion on our site here because it is very good information on how to do an iPhone application for Real Estate consumers the right way. It is by no means perfect but of the applications now available on the iPhone in the Real Estate category, this ones does the best job by far. As we know competition can spur technology so I only hope that Home Gain picks up the gauntlet and comes out with an even better application. So read the blog post over at the Home Gain Blog and then come back here for more. [Read more...]

DIVX Exit’s Stage 6 and Disney Enters Stage 9

March 4, 2008 by Tom Townsend

Another month and another change in the video landscape. Last week I received an email from the folks over at the video sharing site Stage 6 (that was run by DIVX) informing me that they were shutting down operations the end of February. With the flood of new video sharing sites on the ever expanding landscape for User Generated Content (USG) it was inevitable that DIVX would shut this service down, as it was not a money maker at all. So no surprise here. Effective March 1^st former users of the DIVX site are now redirected via a link to VEOH who who has assumed most of the clients from DIVX, that is the ones that did not move their content some where else.

In a totally coincidental event with interesting timing was ABC’s DISNEY company making the formal announcement of their foray into the online video scene with the advent of STAGE 9. Where DIVX and DISNEY differ is that DISNEY is going after full on BROADBAND content vs. the USG format that DIVX embarked on. Disney is also developing projects for full series created specifically for the broadband video markets. In this respect they can achieve monetization via add revenue just because of who they are and what they will bring to the table. (The team over at NewsOXY has a good article on Disney.)

I think this year we will see a lot more firms move away from the basic garage made, USG ,YouTube type of video entry, and will see the filed morph into more professionally done video projects. The cutesy stuff on the USG sites is just that. It has not made much money for those users or for those that have created the content. If the companies that host the content are to become profitable they will all need to adopt some form of add revenue policy. This means that in order to attract advertising dollars, the quality of the content will have to increase. That is were firms like Virtual Interactive Systems based in Tampa Florida, come into play. We are working with Small to Medium Business to add video advertising content to get their products and services discovered in their local markets and beyond to even international exposure.

Video Sharing Landscape changes as LiveUniverse buys Revver

Filed Under: New Media Marketing, VISIN NEWS Tagged With: Digital Media, internet video, Tampa Video Production, Video Production, Video Services, Web Video

Video Sharing sites and your business

January 18, 2008 by Tom Townsend

So you know about You Tube and Google Video and maybe three or four other sites that will let you post your videos for free?. Now let’s ad to the mix with the Social Networking sites like MySpace and Facebook to name a few and soon the numbers start to swell to over a hundred. These sites are often categorized into different arenas based on usage of the content and the services they provide such as user generated, video sharing web sites, video sharing platform / white label providers and web based video editing.

The landscape on these sites continues to ebb and flow like the tides and as the New Media Generation continues to evolve, new names will pop up and some businesses will be swallowed by the larger video fishes of the media ocean. Some will survive, as You Tube was purchased by Google last year and thrives. Some will die and some will morph into other businesses or be bought and merged into existing service providers.

Last year’s big buzz of course was You Tube…..right now all the talk is centered on another shake-up in the developing video sharing sites. One of the originators of the user generated content form Revver Video may be going through some changes.

It appears the Revver had an executive shake-up in December 2006 that resulted in two of its three co-founders, Ian Clarke and Oliver Luckett, along with some of the support staff, leaving. There is speculation now regarding the site’s well being and it is being fueled by the rumored departure of their CEO Steven Starr. This could very well signal trouble for the video-sharing site. Some have even speculated that Revver would be taken over by Live Universe. “Los Angeles-based LiveUniverse is run by MySpace founder Brad Greenspan. Though its flagship site is the somewhat obscure LiveVideo, the company would add Revver to its network of video sites.”

Revver has had problems with attracting the kind of traffic that You Tube enjoys. It is one of the first sites that took on the revenue-sharing model. Will it be able to continue in its current model if it continues to lack in traffic or if its CEO departs?

With the recent inclusion of ad-sharing revenue models, this year will prove even more difficult for video-sharing sites to compete with the like of You Tube. Guba is another video-sharing site that has seen some execs leave, in this case to start their own video-sharing site and .

Whatever the outcome, you can be sure that Virtual Interactive will be right in the thick of things. When it comes to promoting your business or products, Video Sharing Sites can add real buzz to your business with very little impact on your bottom line. The key here is keeping track of who does what and when in the over all landscape of the Web 2.0 , Social Networks and New Media world. You can rest assured that when it comes to any thing Video related we are on top of it. This is the marketing edge that separates us from our competitors and that our customers have come to expect and where we will consistently deliver on.