Full Transcript:

Benjamin Higginbotham: Benjamin Higginbotham with technologyevangelist.com. I am here in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the TE podcasting headquarters and Ed Kohler is with me, he is in San Jose, California, beautiful and sunny at the Video on the Net conference. Ed, how are you doing out there?

Ed Kohler: I am doing good, but I just want you to know that it did rain a little bit earlier today, but sun is back out.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh, bummer . I was all excited, It is cold and windy here. So, what happened today? Today was the first day that the conference opened on Video on the Net and as you know this is something I am very passionate about, so I am excited here what you have to say?

Ed Kohler: Well, there is a lot going on, event started this morning with a Jeff Pulver’s key note beign his conference he gets the chance to get a few words here and there, so he tried to give a feel for where the industry is going and , one of the interesting things that he said was “Voice over IP, the whole concept of VOIP , he said “May be its time that we drop IP from that, because all voices are going to be Voice over IP, we are almost there now, so the term is kind of wearing out in the sense.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, I am all excited about this and you are lethargic in telling me this stuff, like reading from notes, don’t do that. I can see what people don’t realize is we are actually in a video conference net right now, so its ViVOIP and I can watch him reading his notes like, “yeah, so no, it was a great conference, we had really good time”, now seriously, what was the highlight of the show? What was the fun and what was the best thing that you saw there on the show floor today?

Ed Kohler: Well, I think, one of the things I think, I got most exsited about was just trying to understand the difference between, BrightCove and Revver and their different approaches to content and helping content creators with their content, so Revver is kind of approach of, it’s a file based systems, so you create your content, you create a video and then, basically they Revveries the video so, once there is an ad been embedded in the video, you don’t care who steals that thing, because its already, it has the ad in it, so you can throw that out and distribute through BitTorrent or just let people steal it put it on their site doesn’t matter, because wherever it ends up, they are using the bandwidth and if anyone ends clicking on the ads, you get paid, so it’s a interesting system that way.

Benjamin Higginbotham: What about BrightCove's model, how is BrightCove...?

Ed Kohler: BrightCove, its a little bit more locked down, where it's based on more of a network type system where you can, there are couple of different levels to how it work. You could have your own website which is primarily where anyone who becomes a large content creator whether it’s a video blogger or blogs like the established company its been creating content for decades like a major network, they will have their own primary site for their direct relationship with the consumers, but there are also opportunities to be part of BrightCove’s network or syndication with content to other sites or another thing is just licensing your content which is basically a syndication model as well, so they play it all those fields, but it all ends up coming off of BrightCove servers in all those cases.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, where does Blip.tv fall in to play in all of these, because we are using lot of blip.tv right now on the Technology Evangelist website?

Ed Kohler: Blip will be closer to the BrightCove model, because you are basically serving stuff off of Blip, the are not messing with your file formats, the way that Revver does, where which is the one drawback where, its going to be Quicktime file coming of Revver because they have a proprietary format there that allows them to embed the ad into their system, but Blip is also very good about looking out for the content creators and that they really seem to be going after people who are creating serialize content where basically like a show, where people who are consistently creating a certain type of content whether that’s a comedy show or a cooking show or a fitness show or a tech show, so creating different channels like that and turning themselves into an online network in the sense that allows them to them sell based on channels or based on groups of channels to create a tech, I guess this hard to describe the difference between a web channel and a TV channel.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well they could be essentially the same web channel and the TV channel, where they could be totally and completely different?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, I think they has to, what they have to be figure out is, how they can get people watch video after video after video, it doesn’t really matter if they are coming from different people or if it is from the same person, as long as they can keep you using stuff and putting good stuff in front of you, so if 9 out of 10 videos that you watch or something was a good experience for you, you probably going to continue to use Blip, but if after watching a video you can’t think of what to see next, may be there is nothing left to watch from that particular user and there is no good recommendation of what else is available out there, well then they just going to leave the site, so that’s the challenge for them, but that’s what they are working on.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Now, its gigantic conference and you told me earlier that you shot over two hours of footage today in contrast from at the Consumer Electronic Show, (CES) which is a much larger conference, everyday we would only shoot may be an hour with the footage, so what else did you shoot? What else is going on there?

Ed Kohler: Well I spent most of my time hanging out in, there is one section of the exhibit floor that has the very-very-very small booths, it holds one plasma screen here.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Yeah.

Ed Kohler: That’s where the fun stuff is, because you actually talk with people that build the stuff, so if their logo is hanging from the ceiling, if there its probably not going to be an interesting booth like from our perspective, because they are large enough where its they are more defensive when they talk to you, instead of actually sharing what they want to talk about, so…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Right.

Ed Kohler: But, I am on the stuff that exhibit in the small area there, its things like SightSpeed, I had a chance to talk to them today and Neokast is here who we recently had on Technology Evangelist or Move Digital, there are lot of people who are working on the new stuff that’s really going to change industry very-very fast.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Now, that brings another interesting question that I am curious about, so you have got going back a step, we have got blip.tv, we have got BrightCove, Revver about it, I think I read a report not along, but there are only over 350 different video for sharing sites out there, but Move Digital is slightly different beast.

Ed Kohler: as of yesterday there is 367 online video publishing sites according to Om Malik... stuff.

Benjamin Higginbotham: So, but Move Digital is different, they take a different approach?

Ed Kohler: Yeah, Move Digital is a different business. .

Benjamin Higginbotham: And we use Move Digital almost exclusively on technologyevangelist.com with the exception of our flash files, so what did Move Digital have to say today?

Ed Kohler: They are basically talking about how they are a content distribution network that’s where their game, they are not trying to be yet another work community site type thing, where how do you really differentiate between blip.tv and YouTube and Metcafe and on and on…why should you have to also, so their websites are working on that particular issue, but Move Digital, they are really just about moving large files. It’s just and so they charge you to store stuff other servers and they charge you to move stuff off their servers.

So those are two big things there, so if you just want to get your files somewhere there will be reliably served on your behalf and who can also do a few nice add on’s for you such as create a Torrent version of your files that really help you, keep your bandwidth pass slow and create the phone version and now they said today they are coming out with flash version of their, well if you upload a file once and have it converted into few formats on their side, so that’s really cool, because one thing that I have really seen from the content creators that here.

I had a chance to sit down with a lot of content people, last night and I had a dinner, they are very creative people that are not necessarily the most techie people and that’s fine and that’s the way it should be. So, services like Move Digital are pretty interesting that way, but actually all these sites are really kinda working on that, where it has to be very-very easy for content creators to be able to just do what they do best, but also still get in front of a large audience.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Is it going to be against Move Digital’s business model do not be like a blip or not to be like a one of the video sharings that we can easily find video content where its kind of behind the scenes or is it, are there just so many of those websites right now, that may be Move Digital is on the right track or may be we just don’t know, what’s you see what I am saying?

Ed Kohler: Well, you could use Revver together with blip or you could use Revver with Move Digital, because you could up load your videos first to Revver, have them Revverised and then load the Revverised versions to Move Digital and have them to handle the delivery of the Revverised videos, so that’s one way you could do it.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Why won’t I just have Revver deliver all the video?

Ed Kohler: Revver won’t deliver a QuickTime version of it, so its only download and play type video then you need to find a place to host that, so you got to host yourself or partner with someone like Move Digital to do that, so but if on the Revver side its only going to be a flash version that’s playing on their site or embedded into your website, but if you want to have something people can subscribe to and download say like through Democracy player then you are going need to partner with Move Digital or some other competitors of that.

Benjamin Higginbotham: What about High Definition content?

Ed Kohler: The thing that everyone says is that it takes a lot bandwidth and its really expensive and so we know that, but the networks, the blip.tv and the world.in companies like that. At this point they have hard enough time I think just figuring out how to make money with standard definition content and with high def, they see their cost going way up without necessarily any additional ad opportunities, so its not something that they are just like jumping out like, we want to be the leaders in high def, so that something to happen on overtime, but they are not quite ready to go there.

Benjamin Higginbotham: What’s funny is the exact same transaction happened in traditional broadcast television where all the broadcasters like why am I going to upgrade to high def, I can’t sell anymore ads against that, it cost me millions and millions of dollars to get this equipment, but I think I believe that the consumers are going to demand that, they are going to want that high quality on their new big huge high def televisions, but you know what I know.

Ed Kohler: Here is a new business model, this is the first time I have seen this one, its called Qoof and its Q-O-O-F and what they do is that they are creating an affiliate program based community video site. I don't know if that makes any sense, but here is what they do, you have a product that you are passionate about, such as your new microphone you have there and you go to Qoof and you record a video testimonial about why the microphone is so awesome and Qoof will then link that video directly to Amazon, so people can buy that Mic.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Wow, that’s cool.

Ed Kohler: So you then get a share of the revenue after that and so its basically like infomercials to the web. The term they use for this is usermercials…

Benjamin Higginbotham: Oh cute.

Ed Kohler: But, its kind of leveraging everyone’s personal relationships and I asked them about how people just going to sell themselves out for this and they had a good point in that, if you are actually going on video and seeing that product is awesome, not many people are going to be one to do that, if its actually awesome product and few people are going to go on there and see a product sucks, because there is no sense to do that since no one is going to buy it then, but its so, I think its going to be something where its if you don’t have anything necessarily don’t say anything at all type business model, but that could work.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I am going to be incredibly cool and just purposely not try to make any money and just rip in the products just for fun.

Ed Kohler: I did review at the QOOF just for fun of canon SD 800 camera.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Now, you like that camera.

Ed Kohler: I left right here, well I have the SD 600, but I bought 800 out here, because I left my 600 in Minneapolis.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Of course you did.

Ed Kohler: So, impulse buy, but actually it has the larger number which makes it better and it actually does. So, I will put that up on their site.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Anything else from the show for in the opening day or we are going wrap this one up and take, listen to what you got tomorrow?

Ed Kohler: I think that’s it for the day, one thing I didn’t get you update, I wish I had, I guess Jeff Jarvis had standing room only, and he is a … talk that he gave today about, where video blogging is going and open conversations and things relate to that and I didn’t have a chance to hear that, but I know it was recorded, so feel it will be available on network2.tv or something later, but he is pretty passionate, just reading his blog, he always hand out things, but he seems like to be a interesting guy to see speaking.

Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, this is exiting stuff, I wish I was there at the conference with you, looking all the cool nifty gadgets, but I am stuck back here in Minneapolis and not that its that bad, I do get to play with my brand new microphone, which I will then review and post on there.

Ed Kohler: Yeah, put it on QOOF.

Benjamin Higginbotham: I will absolutely, hey Ed, thank you so much for your time, we will talk with you same time tomorrow.

Ed Kohler: Sounds good, take care, see you.