On the confusion in conversation about videoblogging and money


Here's the deal (I wrote some of this in response to Kfir Pravda's Blog Post

that he mailed here last week @ http://urltea.com/1l10 ):

The problem with terminology and funding in the web space is the plain and

simple fact that the entire culture of video on the web is non-linear and

cannot be easily defined – and many content creators don't want to be. The

best we can hope for is one definition per setting, be it one video, one

site, one player, or one network. But we should should consider ourselves

"lucky" if we even get that.

The problem we are encountering right now is that the culture of business

that sponsors and finances video on the web is completely linear and their

concepts of what videos are are completely past-based. "They" need

terminology that has content fit in boxes of a defined shape and size in

order to survive and to justify the funding of projects, and this poses a

problem for producers that don't want to be confined by those boxes. And

we're seeing many well-intended agreements unravel and many

wonderfully-conceived video projects lose their organic feel and charismatic

nature because of this collision of the linear and non-linear.

For me, finding an "answer" in revenue models, and not necessarily

advertising models, that allow creators the freedom to just plain create is

where the fun is. What I fear, though, is there may just be too many people

willing to sacrifice that freedom and will climb inside the boxes before we

can get the momentum going for anything else.