After video: what's Next

At the beginning of the year I picked up a prediction, saying that video was going to be the next thing. And indeed it is. The video service YouTube is being acquired by Google at a new economy price of more than a billion US dollar. This, while Google did have a video service of its own. The money must burn in their pockets.

And of course, now everyone is following the trend and has to have a video service. Was blogging trend a year ago, now video is the trend? So blogging gets less attention, while the user logs peak on vlogging. No longer a text embellished with photographs suffices; you will need moving pictures, regardless of the quality.

So following the trend, Dutch services are running a race in order to get their video service set up. Three Dutch information providers, all traditional publishers, are moving in order to have their service. Geenstijl, (No style) with a minority share of the newspaper company De Telegraaf, has started its own service. Ilse, part of Sanoma Magazines, is busy with NU.tv and follows the route of citizens’ journalism to get eventually to a video service.

But more impressive looks the news site that PCM publishers are setting up. Together with the commercial broadcast company Talpa, PCM is testing a beta service for photographs and movies. The service, which is going to be called Skoeps.nl, will build up a network of professional video makers and citizens who will deliver movies about news items. The 500 video makers should deliver two scoops a week. The rights to the movies will stay with Talpa and revenues will be shared 50/50 between PCM and the movie maker. Vodafone will participate as mobile partner for the mobile photographs, but also for the mobile distribution. Also the Dutch newswire ANP is partnering with Skoeps for the distribution of the movies.

In the coming months we will be flooded with movies. If the logistics of Skoeps work out with two scoops a week by 500 reporters, the service will deliver 1.000 scoops a week. This is more than their fully paid reporters bring in text and photographed items in the national newspapers of the company. But it will most probably also quantity over quality of the scoops.

I am going to search for the next content trend. Citizens’ journalism has already been overtaken by entertainment. I guess that the novelty of the video services has worn off by the beginning of next year. I do not want to be the old, cynic man, but what will be the next content trend?

Tags: content, citizens' journalism, video

Blog Posting Number 541