Monday, August 28, 2006
Distribution of Arts Product
Experimenting with Digg, Revver, Blogger, Adsense, and Flickr has me thinking about how the sphere of social networking might help artists and arts organizations leverage grass roots opportunities to a) distribute content and b) iinteract with potential customers/consumers.
Back between 1995-1998 I produced, as part of my MFA work, three video/stage/Internet hybrid productions that experimented with allowing live audience participants to engage other audience members and performers in real time. The video was choppy and crude, but it occurred to me at the time that we were headed down a path of intense interactivity. The birth of MOO (or Multi Obect Oriented) environments was an early clear indicator that people want to interact not simply view content. I met my wife on one of the earliest and most successful MOOs—LambdaMOO and ended up immigrating to the United States from Canada.
The beauty of Web 2.0 (a term I think has become tired) is that it allows for a tremendous amount of interaction between consumers not just between consumers and providers. You can post a photograph, video, painting, almost anything and start to get almost immediate feedback on the quality of the work. There are, of course, risks. If a consumer thinks your work stinks, that opinion can very quickly colour the opinion of others. This may or may not mean that your work is good or bad but opinions matter.
Recently I heard the statement, “The Web is an economy of reputation.” If you get a bad reputation you are toast. I have a new aquaintance that I made in Vancouver recently, Kris Krug. He had his photos stolen off Flickr and reposted by another Flickr user. It turned out this person had also done it to others. There was a vast demonization of this person (you can decide if it was warrented or not) that thrust him into infamy and may well have made Kris more famous than he might have imagined—at least by way of the social networking crowd.
One of the effects of using tools like Revver and Adsense is allowing you to monetize your content. You can make money by syndicating almost any content. I posted a video of one of my dogs howling and made a buck in an hour. I’ve been playing with different kinds of video to see what would have traction. So far, a 5 second video of Jelly Fish I took in Australia has not had the largest number of views but has had the most click throughs so it has generated the most income. (We’re not talking any significant income—enough for coffee.) But this has me thinking, what has generated the clicks? Is it the quality of the advertisement at the end of the video? Is it a viewer showing appreciation for the video? Interestingly, a link to this video has been posted on a vietnemese food site.
Videographers could post a snippet,1-3 minutes say, of a video they wanted to sell. Not only would the video perhaps sell, but you could also earn revenue for people watching your sample. I saw one instance on Revver where an advertiser created multiple videos and then, presumably, bid on ONLY having their own ad at the end. They pay for the clicks, but earn a small amount back each time a potential client clicks through.
Artists can put samples of work on Flickr having the images flow through to an art blog and monetize the content using tools like adsense on the blog. Or they could put together a slide show of images that are saved as video and place them on Revver.
It was suggested to me that Digg ccould be used by individuals who create a “Digg Circle”. You create content—a post on a blog for example—and let your circle of 50 friends know that you have posted. They then all Digg that article over a short period of time driving that post to the top of Digg’s list. Digg can be remarkably successful at driving traffic to your content. Recently I posted an article and linked Digg to it. It generated a total of 4 Diggs but that quadrupled traffic to this blog over a two day period.
On Digg, Revver, and Flickr content can be rated by users. The higher the rating, the more views, the more views, the higher your reputation, the higher your reputation the more likely that pages you have monetized in some fashion will generate income.
Back between 1995-1998 I produced, as part of my MFA work, three video/stage/Internet hybrid productions that experimented with allowing live audience participants to engage other audience members and performers in real time. The video was choppy and crude, but it occurred to me at the time that we were headed down a path of intense interactivity. The birth of MOO (or Multi Obect Oriented) environments was an early clear indicator that people want to interact not simply view content. I met my wife on one of the earliest and most successful MOOs—LambdaMOO and ended up immigrating to the United States from Canada.
The beauty of Web 2.0 (a term I think has become tired) is that it allows for a tremendous amount of interaction between consumers not just between consumers and providers. You can post a photograph, video, painting, almost anything and start to get almost immediate feedback on the quality of the work. There are, of course, risks. If a consumer thinks your work stinks, that opinion can very quickly colour the opinion of others. This may or may not mean that your work is good or bad but opinions matter.
Recently I heard the statement, “The Web is an economy of reputation.” If you get a bad reputation you are toast. I have a new aquaintance that I made in Vancouver recently, Kris Krug. He had his photos stolen off Flickr and reposted by another Flickr user. It turned out this person had also done it to others. There was a vast demonization of this person (you can decide if it was warrented or not) that thrust him into infamy and may well have made Kris more famous than he might have imagined—at least by way of the social networking crowd.
One of the effects of using tools like Revver and Adsense is allowing you to monetize your content. You can make money by syndicating almost any content. I posted a video of one of my dogs howling and made a buck in an hour. I’ve been playing with different kinds of video to see what would have traction. So far, a 5 second video of Jelly Fish I took in Australia has not had the largest number of views but has had the most click throughs so it has generated the most income. (We’re not talking any significant income—enough for coffee.) But this has me thinking, what has generated the clicks? Is it the quality of the advertisement at the end of the video? Is it a viewer showing appreciation for the video? Interestingly, a link to this video has been posted on a vietnemese food site.
Videographers could post a snippet,1-3 minutes say, of a video they wanted to sell. Not only would the video perhaps sell, but you could also earn revenue for people watching your sample. I saw one instance on Revver where an advertiser created multiple videos and then, presumably, bid on ONLY having their own ad at the end. They pay for the clicks, but earn a small amount back each time a potential client clicks through.
Artists can put samples of work on Flickr having the images flow through to an art blog and monetize the content using tools like adsense on the blog. Or they could put together a slide show of images that are saved as video and place them on Revver.
It was suggested to me that Digg ccould be used by individuals who create a “Digg Circle”. You create content—a post on a blog for example—and let your circle of 50 friends know that you have posted. They then all Digg that article over a short period of time driving that post to the top of Digg’s list. Digg can be remarkably successful at driving traffic to your content. Recently I posted an article and linked Digg to it. It generated a total of 4 Diggs but that quadrupled traffic to this blog over a two day period.
On Digg, Revver, and Flickr content can be rated by users. The higher the rating, the more views, the more views, the higher your reputation, the higher your reputation the more likely that pages you have monetized in some fashion will generate income.
