Social Media

Swiss seesmic meetup

I’m sitting on the balcony with a view of the Lac Leman (lake geneva) after a good evening spent with many of the Francofous, French seesmicers. More videos will appear over the length of the day.

2600% jump in views, 650 views in just one day.

That’s fun :-) Thanks to the Geneva Lake Parade I saw a nice jump in traffic to the twelve videos or so I streamed and uploaded yesterday. I suppose when you cover the right event there is an audience. This is just one small example of why I should continue streaming video content. That’s also why I should get the content on a number of platforms.

Social Discovery, the Social Media and how it can be used.

I think social discovery is one of the most fascinating parts of the new media lifecycle because we are so early in determining the most efficient way of social discovery. Search has now been dominated by Google and while new companies attempt to attack what is increasingly becoming a monopoly, most companies have realized that the space of social discovery has yet to declare a winner.

Source The question we as content creators must ask is where we get our information from. Where do we go to find the media content that we ingest. Do we rely on a social network like twitter, scanning through the timeline for interesting events. Are we out with friends in town noticing the signs and billboards. Are we in an English pub where we see all the promotions? The point is that the way I consume media has left the printed page behind. It’s also left live broadcasting of pre-recorded shows behind. I’m in an on demand world. Everything I consume is through word of mouth and general browsing. The web is a giant book shop and I want to enjoy as much of the material as I can. I’m also generating content, and so are my friends. At the lake parade I was streaming whilst another friend was taking slow motion videos. More friends were on twitter, friendfeed and facebook. Every time a friend has a gig or a party we see it appear on facebook. I didn’t bother going to a flashmob (water fight) because of the weather but within a few hours the photographs were on facebook. That’s because as much as people consume the media they also create it. That’s where the social dimension comes in. Many of you know that I was filming interviews of people like Katie Melua, Dionysos, Patrice, Mademoiselle K, Travis, Yael Naim, Camille and The Kills to name but a few. All of that content was only available in France at first but there’s a website now. Musicorama.tv. That’s where you can find man of the interviews I’ve filmed recently. When the Paleo is on there should be quite a few more interviews appearing that I’ll make you aware of.

Two very different types of Qik videos

We climbed the ladder for two different reasons.

Today both a friend and I are among the top qikkers of the day. Whilst Documentally of Ourmaninside.com was in Milton Keynes getting an iphone 3g and streaming a number of videos on the experience I was filming dancers at the Geneva lake Parade. Both these events have appeal for different reasons. We’re used to watching videos of Americans getting the iphone and doing a variety of geek events and for once we had the English experience. It’s not a very visual occurrence but at least it’s been streamed and shared. He also took the opportunity to speak about lifecast, a new way of sharing the media you generate over a day. The Lake Parade is a very different type of event. It’s the type of event photographers and camera oeprators go to in order to get video and photographs of girls dancing to music. It’s only once a year and previous years have been better. I like the fact that I can go to the event with a phone, stream video straight to the web and all without the hassle of a camera and laptop. I’m commenting on the latter because it’s the second time I see someone walking with a laptop in order to do some live streaming of an event whilst I’m very light. I could have shot in high definition but everyone’s doing that. What interests me is going to an event, finding some action, sharing it live as it happens and not have any real post production concerns. In general live streaming from mobile phones is an interesting way of covering events that does not get much publicity. As a result the audiences are not as large as they could be but that will change. It’s just a matter of getting people used to the idea of webcams and live streams being more interesting than a static twenty meters from where the action is happening.

Lake Parade streaming fun

Whilst a friend was filming with a high speed camera i was streaming the event live from my phone via Qik. I noticed they improved a couple of important things. The first is that video files are now saved and readable without conversion. The second fact is that you now have an RSS feed, makes aggregation easier. I’ve added two or three of those feeds to itunes so the content can be accessed more easily. And there are a few more on Qik which I’ll let you get to yourself.

Twitter purge no. 2

As a frequent user of twitter following over 1000 people it’s impossile for me to keep up with everything that’s going on. That’s especially true now that I’m going out more often, working and summer is here. As a result of these factors I removed anyone that doesn’t @ me very often, doesn’t remind me of a conversation or doesn’t post much. As a result the signal to noise ratio has gone down and twitter should be more manageable. In total I removed about six hundred people this morning. Now to see how things change.