Caleb hangs up his backpack every day when he gets home from high school. He takes off his shoes, uses the bathroom, maybe fixes himself something to eat. He grabs the remote, but conventional TV isn’t what’s on the screen. Using the Sony Google Net Box, Caleb checks off a list of YouTube videos. He is engrossed as he watches one video after another and then another and another. When his parents tell him to turn it off and go do his homework, he hasn’t seen a single program on the network. The sixth grader can’t tell you what’s on Nickelodeon. Cartoon Network has no influence. The huge collection of YouTube videos about gaming and random fun stuff is his poison.
Caleb’s parents begin to wonder about the benefits of keeping the cable. In addition to the waning interest in his son’s cable TV, the cable company recently decided to drop a few more channels and make them exclusive to the premium package. This came too soon after another increase in his monthly fee. The combination of cable, Netflix and the occasional Red Box now has parents paying more than ever for home entertainment. If the family can become more dependent on their Sony Box, then all they’ll have to pay for is internet service (and possibly Netflix). Otherwise, the impact of YouTube and other video hosting platforms will likely serve as a tipping point. in his decision.
Recent advances in technology have added fuel to this video viewing revolution. New video hosting platform websites have popped up everywhere. HTML 5 and its built-in video player make it easy for anyone with server space to display videos. Digital media distributors can provide and package the media for anyone to create their own video hosting platform website. Sites that used to let you post photos are now chock full of videos.
Because of all this, marketing through digital channels now takes on a whole new look. Hundreds of thousands of businesses and other organizations now use video to drive results; and they do this by providing their content to video hosting platform sites like YouTube, Daily Motion, Metacafe, and Vimeo. In turn, they share the content across the platform with other sites, apps, and blogs, giving good content legendary status. Internet celebrities are discovered overnight. Going viral is now a worthy pursuit.
The challenge for marketers is how to excel when sharing content. Successful ways have included ever-present list building and interactive sorting. Through the handy embeddable bookmarking application offered on these hosting platforms, website owners across the WWW list and rank their best video picks. Even the biggest media outlets have gotten in on the game (see Fox News, Billboard and USA Today). Some of the sites that consistently do a good job of listing the best videos online are: mashable.com, Wikipedia, and Huffington Post (which now operates its own platform – aol.com.) For those who don’t entertain themselves with a mere list, there are rating/ranking sites that involve the viewers. In addition to video platform hosts offering their own ways for visitors to interact, some of the biggest social networking sites like Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg use the power of collective judgment to filter the best quality viral video. Other funny video sites like Funny or Die and Blip tv let their audiences pick winners and losers from popular online videos.
The entertainment landscape is changing. Soon, the myopic conduits of television content will be replaced by the fluid and dynamic channels of content emerging from the World Wide Web. With the influx of new devices and brilliantly easy HTML coding, the ability to provide variety and better-than-ever quality will become the standard norm.