Givit Aims to Make Mobile Video Editing & Sharing Commonplace

The creator of video sharing technology and software for Cisco’s defunct Flip Camera – once a really popular recording device – Givit, has channeled its expertise into a new service poised to make mobile video editing and sharing commonplace.

Unrestricted by length, number of clips or automated editing, Givit has cracked the code in the this race with a powerful, simple new iOS app that transforms raw footage into something polished and shareable on Facebook or YouTube in about 30 seconds.

Unlike any other social video app on the market, Givit’s unique features include:

•  Live Highlighting – While recording a live event, simply tap to highlight critical moments. Tap to recap back seven seconds, or start/stop record at any point.

• Multiple Clips – There are no limits to the number of video highlights that can be combined to create the final product.

• No Length Restrictions – Share highlighted video reels of any length or size.

• Effects - Add motion effects (slow-motion, speed-up), music and transitions to polish and finish the highlight reel. 

• Sharing Options – One-click social sharing to Facebook or YouTube; or, share video privately and securely by email. 

• Cloud Storage – Upload highlighted videos to the Givit cloud for permanent storage, or highlight videos from any other source imported from Givit.

• Facebook App – Watch and share highlighted videos directly from the Givit Facebook app.

• Free – Givit is free for anyone to use, offering 5GB of storage at signup and premium packages for avid users.

They also just announced a $2.5M funding round from JK&B Capital and ATA ventures. Go here for a free download. 

YouTube Talk: It's Always About Storytelling Baby

YouTube's Andrew Bangs talks about the history of YouTube, and the areas they focus on and emphasize when it comes to creating a compelling video. It all revolves around storytelling which he breaks out in categories in his talk during Social Media Week at SPUR on Mission Street this week in San Francisco.

Making Video Count in the Midst of Crowded Online Channels

This week, Text100 hosted a panel on online video during Social Media Week San Francisco.  Most companies understand the power of video and want to create genuinely viral content. The panel discussed ways you can not only create compelling videos for your website, Facebook Page and a blog but also how to stand out in crowded channels such as YouTube, DailyMotion and Vimeo.

They covered:

• The pros and cons of using a single branded video owned media destination versus placing content across a variety of channels

• How to optimize video for SEO as well as tips and tricks for adapting video for both your brand’s properties and for external use – content, length, production, etc.

• Examples of brands that are successfully leveraging video and other ways online video can benefit your brand

Liz Gannes moderated the panel that included:

• Scott Brown, Director, Marketing, Cisco Media Solutions Group

• Jim Louderback, CEO, Revision3

• Melissa Chanslor, Sr. Account Manager & Social Media Lead, Text 100

• Jordan Hoffner, President of Digital Media, Electus

Video from the event is below. (note: it covers about 75% of the talk):

 

 

Tunepresto's Video Music Maker

I met with Tunepresto's marketing guru Owen Cooney in Dublin and our briefing was a bit scattered, but in a good way: partly over food and partly under an umbrella on a walk through Dublin. The guy knows more about the history and myths of Ireland than the last country tour guide I encountered. And, more  importantly, is passionate about it. (graffiti, art, legends, and murals too). 

Currently, Tunepresto, a video 'music maker,' is a Mac download only, although it is slated to be a web-based solution later this month. Essentially, Tunepresto uses the colors in your video to create royalty free music, perfectly timed to your video or slideshow. I can think of tons of places where you could use a solution like this, so the value-add for me was immediate.

While I haven't tried it yet (waiting for the web version), it's so damn easy to understand the benefits. Additionally, their website walks you through every possible scenario where adding music via Tunepresto would give you a 'win' to a creation you're working on. Refreshing.

How many times do you go to a website and know immediately what the company is about and how to use their product? Tunepresto's site makes it incredibly easy to figure out: left is a download, right is a learn more video. Also, they have this fabulous screenshot which walks you through different ways to use their product.

More when the web version is ready. I'm eager to try it out.

A Recap of the 2010 Tudou Video Festival

This year, a thousand people attended the 2010 Tudou Video Festival, which was held in an arts complex in Beijing China. It mixed the Oscars with a little bit of Sundance and Cannes combined. In a CNN recap, you'll learn how fabulous the event was below. Except instead of red, the carpet was green. Instead of fancy designer dresses, the attire was a combo of grunge, flannel and faded blue jeans. And instead of airing on television or in movie theaters, the nominated films came straight from the Internet. Welcome to the 3rd annual 2010 Tudou Video Festival, held over the weekend in the Chinese capital.

Tudou.com (which means “couch potato” in Chinese) is China’s first, and now one of the country’s largest (aside from rival Youku.com), video sharing portals. Launched in 2005, Tudou follows a similar model to Google Inc.’s video Web site, YouTube.

 

Tudou.com co-founder Gary Wang.

Tudou also hosts videos that push the boundaries of sensitivity on the country’s censored Internet. It was the first portal, for example, to show the “War of Internet Addiction,” a 64-minute computer animation film on government Web controls, Tudou co-founder Gary Wang said. The film, produced by a network engineer who goes by the name “Sexy Corn,” won the top award at this year's festival.

Aspiring filmmakers, actresses and actors, animators and amateur videographers from around China (all mostly in their mid- to late-20s) showcased their work at the festival held at an art complex in Beijing, with aorund one thousand people in attendance.

Of the more than 5,000 entries, 94 made it to the final round of nominations.

“Two to three years ago, the works were really amateur,” Wang said. “Now people are taking it much more seriously.”

Now, traditional media along with advertisers are starting to take the content on Tudou much more seriously, too. Hung Huang, a blogge experiences working as a journalist in China won the “Golden Camera Award," and Hitch-hike Diary won the documentary category. The film, by a video blogger who goes by the name Tomato-Han Da Ka, is the story of a hiking trip on the border regions of Sichuan province and Tibet.

Sexy Corn

 

Sexy Corn, creator of “War of Internet Addiction,” which won the festival's top award. The film was shot entirely within the game World of Warcraft.

He is the producer of the “War of Internet Addiction,” an animated film shot entirely within the video game, World of Warcraft (it is a filming technique known as machinima, which involves making animated movies using real-time images recorded from video games). The movie won the top award at the Tudou festival.

The film centers on World of Warcraft gamers who are frustrated that a new version of the game was banned in China. However it also contains deeper themes about Internet freedom in the country. It has been viewed millions of times.

Video Link: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/8w0z0Q_TAQI/

Engaging In The Digital Wilderness

Earlier this month, the Arcade Fire released the video for their new single ‘We Used To Walk’. But they completley blew the roof off the concept of a ‘traditional’ music video. In a collaboration with Google, they’ve created a video experiment using HTML-5 to take users on a digital ‘walk’ through their childhood neighborhood.

It’s brilliant – intended to both challenge the ‘quo and, most importantly, engage users. And not just users as in ‘fans of the band’ but users of the web. It’s become a viral hit, making it’s rounds in inboxes and social feeds across the web, meaning the band is reaching an entirely new and globally further-reaching audience than they ever could had they released a ‘standard’ video single. Certainly, there is room to grow from the video and their are a few bugs in the delivery (ie: you can only run it on a Chrome browser) but it’s a good start.

Really, it’s a great example of getting creative with customer engagement which is what good digital should do. If you haven't already, you can give it a go for yourself at www.thewildnernessdowntown.com.

New Lessons from Old Spice

By now, I’m sure you’ve all at least heard of the Old Spice Guy campaign and the immense waves it made this week. It is one for the textbooks – a case study that will be reviewed, recounted and revisited for at least the next year, I’m sure. And with good reason. On every level, it was exemplary of what a digital campaign should be.

It answered all the social media ‘rules’:

1. Be engaging
2. Be integrated
3. Be human
4. Be transparent
5. Influence the influencers

The campaign, which began with a string of hilarious print and TV ads, moved into digital using YouTube to broadcast personalised video responses to people talking about or to Old Spice across social networks (primarily Twitter, Facebook and YouTube but also across forums like Reddit and Yahoo! Answers). With YouTube as it’s very well-branded ‘homebase’, the campaign took the brand into other spaces with similar, but space-specific, creative treatments, behaviours and tone of voice.

The responses were instantly popular. Hilarious and off-beat, they very rarely spoke about the actual brand or product (unless, somehow, smacking a pinata with a dead fish is somewhere in the Old Spice brand guidelines). The brand became human. It wasn’t Old Spice the brand, it was the Old Spice Guy with (funny) stories. And it was responding personally to us, the users, the ‘dearest and closest internet friends’.

While the Old Spice Man created videos for the ‘average joe’ (and did he ever - he actually even proposed for someone), he also responded to users with high levels of activity, followers and authority (such as Digg founder Kevin Rose and celebritweeters like Alyssa Milano, Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres) which helped the campaign grow exponentially. It brought the level to an accessible user level and found celebrity involvement without the celebrity fee.

Old Spice started by sponsoring a tweet to solidify their space in Twitter’s Top Trends and the campaign was trending across Twitter and the web within hours of the initial tweet (something that would have happened organically, without the sponsored tweet – but still a safe move on Old Spice’s part).

Throughout the campaign, the agency behind it all – Wieden + Kennedy – brilliantly kept an open-door policy about the whole thing, offering up behind-the-scene shots and tell-all explanations of how the process was working.

The campaign is a simple idea, executed well. It hasn’t reinvented the wheel, but it has defined the way we use it.

What’s the big takeaway that B2B marketers can take from this? That thisn't just a B2C case study - it is a case study for B2B, too.

Before this, Old Spice was not an exciting brand. For as long as I have known it, it has been ‘the stuff my dad wears’ (and my Dad really does wear it which he will now claim makes him a trendsetter).

Campaigns like this are what give brands new traction. B2B has long had the reputation of being less fun and creative than the consumer side of our industry. We know that’s not true, so let’s get out the dead fish and started beating the piñata with it!

Smash Summit Attracts the Best Marketers & Brands in Silicon Valley

Smash Summit, which was held in San Francisco yesterday, explored social media marketing strategies, tactics, tools, & campaigns used by successful online companies to acquire and retain customers on search, social, and mobile.

Some of the speakers included Altimeter Group's Jeremiah Owyang, Google's Hunter Walk, Twitter's Anamitra Banerji, Facebook's Bubba Murarka, Mattel's Cynthia Neiman, Dogster's Ted Rheingold, RockYou's Lisa Marino and Paul Kim from Automattic.

Also on stage was Marcus Nelson from Salesforce, Comcast's Frank Eliason, David Lifson from Postling, Rowen Payson from Virgin America, Rashmi Sinha from Slideshare and Victoria Ransom from Wildfire.

Payvment's Christian Taylor talked about the use of shopping carts to enhance your campaigns; one simple line of code embedded on your web page transforms into a shopping cart system without a lot of effort. You can use it to sell your products anywhere or with affiliate/referral links to increase your affiliate revenue.

It's important to create social sharing components in your copy: the more social your copy is, the more effective your click through rates will be. He used an example of how KISS in the 1970s made their fans become part of their army. The same thing applies today but online -- create your army and keep them satisfied.

A few Facebook fan page tips for big brands: give users an incentive to become a fan of your brand by offering exclusive deals or merchandise. This can triple engagement as well as up the number of fans. For example, Pampers offered 1,000 diaper packs for $10 each on its Facebook store and in one hour, they not only sold all 1,000 diapers, but got 1,000 more fans.

20,000 brands & retailers have launched stores on Facebook, 120,000 searchable products have been added to Facebook, and there are 400,000 Facebook users shopping across these 20,000 stores.

Google's Hunter Walk talked about how to more effectively broadcast your business on YouTube and how it should be part of your overall SEO strategy.

Rule #1: create the right content and make sure it’s the most effective it can be in the YouTube environment. He reminds us that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world with over 1 billion video playbacks each day.

So, what is a content strategy? Creating something people want to watch AND helping others create content for you.

Sure, you have to create something that is not only compelling in a YouTube environment, but also authentic, the overused but still relevant word when 'playing' on social media platforms. Being authentic is not enough however.

The basics: create a YouTube channel, upload demos, make sure you offer lots of content so there are more opportunities to engage with people and offer value through fresh content. Other tips include showing some behind the scenes visuals and audio, such as interviews and amusing moments.

A few takeaways -- ask yourself the following questions:

How does your product relate to what people are talking about & searching about now?

Are you adding the most relevant meta data - description and tags?

Once you upload your video, are you participating in your community?

There is higher value in the comments people leave behind - you want to make sure you are participating in those discussions. You should have an anchor video (for your anchor, you should shoot for 5K+ views, which will help you surface in search and related videos and ultimately lead to more organic traffic.

You should also cross-promote your videos on Facebook, Twitter, your website and blog. You can auto-share your uploads, favorites and other links directly to other social networking sites. According to Hunter, for every auto-shared tweet, they see about 7 click backs on YouTube. You can also promote your video by getting a custom overlay which will improve your conversation funnel. You can then check your cost-per-view in your content and maximize/tweak it to get more click throughs over time.

Salesforce has a YouTube presence and with over 300 videos and more than 6,000 views a day, that's roughly the equivalent of 35 hyper-efficient sales reps on the phone.

Twilio's Jeff Lawson talks about how their solution is the intersection of communications apps and web developers. They have over 10,000 developers and are currently being used by Sony, 37 Signals, Tumblr, SalesForce, Duke and more.

With Twilio, you can call people from Twitter. We see a demo of Lawson calling Dave McClure who has opted into the system, directly from Dave's Twitter account.

Twilio allows you to use social media to connect to people you already know. He then shows the Zappos Twitter page and talks about how Zappos could have analytics around the content is reading when the person calls, i.e., Customer X was reading this particular tweet when he called Zappos. It's an interesting way to connect social media with voice and SMS.

Interacting with Television in Real Time

In the interacting with television in real time session at 140 Character Conference, Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield) chats with CBS Backstage LIVE Producer Rick Borutta (@CBSborutta) and NBC's Gavin Purcell (@gavinpurcell).

Making Online Video Viral at #SXSW

Key tips from today's SXSW panel on making online video viral.

1. Surprise and add elements of the unexpected, i.e., granny beating up a robber, Cookie Monster eating or saying something unusual, different colors, sounds, tempos.

2. Remember that it's all about building an audience, not just uploading content. Building a subscriber base is key - the community aspect is more important than most people think or pay attention to. Encourage people to create new content around your content - it gets viewers excited and allows them to participate.

3. Embed, embed, embed. If people can't easily embed your video across multiple platforms, it's going to be that much harder to spread virally. People want to be able to grab a video and point to it right away, whether that's a URL link OR an easy embed into their blog or other sites. Make it easy for people to capture it and distribution.

4. Metadata - make sure you create good titles and relevant tagging. Don't try to game the system or trick people by false tagging - it only pisses people off. Use unique titles and tailor your titles for your audience. In other words, you could have the same video on Vimeo as you do on YouTube or a blog, but you may choose to create different titles for each of them because your audience may differ in each place.

5. Distribute in multiple formats and be platform agnostic.

One other thing to note was on curation. Sure, you can create great content and have the best tagging and titles in your category, but another effective way to build an audience is to be a great curator of other people's content. There is increasingly so much content in so many categories on the web. Why not provide a great service by making it easier for your audience to find what is most relevant and interesting to them?

Below is the panel playing with the audience at the end of the session. For giggles: