Ru the nxt gr8 drama?

I had the opportunity to speak at the Video on the Net Conference in last week in Boston. Chris Brogan, Peggy Miles and the folks from PulverMedia did a great job putting this together. In attendance were a several senior industry folks as well a number of passionate and active members of the community. One of the most interesting was a fellow by the name of Jim Long. Jim is a cameraman for NBC and he's built an amazing community of followers on Twitter and Facebook.

If you've ever wanted to get the back stage play-by-play of how news is captured, sign up to Jim's Twitter page. From him trying to find a parking space to the size of the cramped room where Musharraf's attorneys are giving a deposition, you get all the "other" details. At the simplest level it's just cool to be on the list. On another level you feel like you're a part of the process. I was watching Meet the Press last week and Jim was giving play by play on Chuck Hagel. It was as if I was in the control room with all the producers. What a great use of technology!

Twitter, at its best, I find marginally useful. There's a certain generational appeal to social networking that I think I'm just on the cusp of missing. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace I use with passive disdain and I feel like I'm about 5 years to old to appreciate the benefits. However, what Jim does appeals to everyone and it takes a (and I gag a little as I say this) Web 2.0 technology and makes it universal. If you were to extend this idea there are some very interesting ways you can enhance the content experiences we have today.

Jim admittedly has a very interesting life. A lot of people would want to hear about his day because it's way more interesting than your own. And Jim, in a way, is also providing a service. I can't get any closer to the source than having the camera man send me a text message as the news is happening. However, very few of us are Jim. My Life, as I suspect most (but may be wrong), is incredibly boring. Why would you care if I am eating cereal or am about to take a shower? Even if I had a close connection like if I was your husband or best friend it would start to get old. But what if you invented a life that was interesting? What is it was pure fiction and everyone knew it. Could you create text message/twitter based content that had enough entertainment value to keep people subscribed?

Millions of people went to YouTube to watch Lonely Girl. She was nobody with a "life" that was entertaining. The entertainment value was for a number of reasons, most emanating from the fact that she was a cute girl telling secrets to the camera. But at the end of the day those that watched were deriving entertainment from being a voyeur (at its most base level) or as an audience member listening to a good story. What's the difference between Jim and Lonely Girl? I'm following the so called life of a person for the benefit of knowledge but also entertainment. Jim, at the end of the day, doesn't necessarily need to be real. Is there a market for this kind of product? I'm not sure. But it's an interesting thought to explore. Celebrity Twitter is obvious. We already hang on the edge of our seat wondering what Brittney or Paris will do next, but that's just hyper sourcing, like how Jim cuts out all the middle men. What I'm talking about is original made for txt products.

When I go through these exercises I often look at the premium cable channels as a good source of inspiration for thinking about what might be possible. They have some of the most unrealized value in the media industry which I'll go into more detail about in other posts. But suffice it to say there is a lot of upside for their products if they can figure out better ways to franchise, syndicate and monetize alternate screen distribution. With that in mind what if as part of the story lines you needed to subscribe to these alternate screens? What if to understand the full story you had to do more than just watch it on Sunday or VOD?

Something like a txt based alternate storyline might be a way to do this. A show like Entourage would lend itself well to this type of content. What did Turtle do all week? I would know if I subscribed to his feed. When they mentioned one of those "events" during the show I would know what they were talking about. In this way you could franchise the character of Turtle and build a "syndication" channel for Entourage. You are essentially broadcasting a secondary set of episodes via txt and could build new ways of monetizing the broadcast – think product placement, recommendations and clubs.

This brings me back to Jim and what made me think of this in the first place. Jim did something very gracious when I was talking to him at the conference. He twittered to all of his friends that we were having a conversation. And not only did he tell everyone… he gave Silverlight a great endorsement – "Harry Mower of Microsoft is showing me how sexy Silverlight player is. Watching HSN.tv" (http://twitter.com/newmediajim/statuses/378790272) . Jim has a following of almost 1,300 people. How much was that endorsement worth? Could Jim charge others to have them mention their product on his feed? From the little I know of Jim it doesn't seem likely that this is something he would do. But I think most would agree that it could be possible.

I'm not sure how feasible a model this is or if it is so super niche that it's not a model at all. Bu It would be great to hear what others think. I'd be more than happy to explore the possibilities of creating this type of product with anyone willing to try something new. At the end I guess it's interesting that at a video conference I learned not all good "content" going forward needs to be video. Good stories can be shared with just 200 character txt msgs and advertisers might just be willing to pay to be part of those stories.

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