March 4, 2011
Cindy McCreery
Cindy is a graduate of the Walt Disney/ABC Feature Writing Fellowship program for the 2002-2003 year. In 2006 National Geographic Films hired Cindy to rewrite ELEPHANT WILD and later in 2007 in partnership with Warner Brothers, they hired her again to develop and write FREE WILLY: ESCAPE FROM PIRATES COVE. Cindy also teaches Advanced Screenwriting at UCLA.
Beginning December 15, 2010 I helped organize Vpype’s second Hollywood Screenplay Pitch Contest, which ran until the end of January. As some of you might recall, the first pitch contest held December 2009 through April 2010 turned out to be a very big success as we had over 400 five-minute-pitches submitted via Vpype’s Facebook application, vBroadcast. We had contestants from all over the world with ideas ranging from epic period pieces to massive blockbusters to outlandish comedies to touching dramatic true stories. Not only did the winner of the contest get the opportunity to develop her pitch into a screenplay with a known producer, but many of the top ten were contacted by judges and are still currently working on ideas as well.
This year, we made some changes to the contest. Rather than running it for several months, we decided to run it for two months and make it a three-minute pitch, rather than five. We also had participants use Vpype’s newest application, vComedy, which has a three-minute cap already in place, to pitch their screenplay. We had a 100 pitches submitted from all over the world including Spain, Germany, Pakistan and India. Many of the judges from last year participated as well, including Julie Richardson, Producer of “Collateral” and “The Collector” and Christopher Lockhart story editor for William Morris Endeavor and producer of “The Collector” and most recently the documentary, “Most Valuable Players”. The other judges included former Disney executives, Producers and even a Professor from the top screenwriting program in the country.
Pitching is a funny thing because writers generally are not actors or extroverts. It’s especially tough to pitch alone in a room to a camera because you can’t read your audiences body language. Also, getting across an entire story from start to finish in under three minutes is really an art and I must admit I was very impressed with the quality of the pitches this year. I was also inspired by the courage it took to actually do it! One of the top 10 from this year is a speech therapist who isn’t in “the biz”, in fact lives in a very small town far from Hollywood and sent me a Facebook message admitting to me how terrified she was, but she did it and did a great job. All of her friends and family who watched her pitch were impressed and proud of her, as they should be! At least when I have a meeting with a producer and pitch them my idea it’s not recorded and posted on Facebook for everyone to see and critique! The judges were all impressed with everyone as well and I’m encouraged by the fact that many of the judges personally reached out to several of the top ten, wanting to read their work and or further discuss their pitches.
This year’s winner is Joe Palladino from Santa Barbara, California. His winning pitch, “Towers of London”, is a fictionalized account of Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jack the Ripper. Joe’s story was not only compelling, clever and simply a lot of fun, but his actual pitch was very clear, very well thought out and a delight to watch. His personality shined through and he made it enjoyable for his audience. All of the judges agreed that they easily envisioned the movie – both the tone and the hook of it, which isn’t an easy thing to pull off!
Vpype - Hollywood Screenplay Pitch Contest
Wilton Richards, who came in second with his pitch “The Hitman”, pitched twelve ideas all of which were really fun and original. His other pitch, “Battle For Earth” made it into the top twenty. “The Hitman” is fun action comedy about a hitman who is dying of cancer and puts a hit out on himself but is cured and must save himself from the other hitmen. Wilton lives in The Bahamas and I am pleased that this contest brought Hollywood within reach for him and that he has been in contact with two of the judges.
In third place was AD Smiths, “The Assigned” which was definitely the most entertaining of the entire contest as he had props, music and he even acted out a scene using cardboard cutouts! I have to admit that I watched his pitch at least five times because the theatrics of his pitch were so fun. AD has a very natural pitching ability, which I’m a little jealous of.
Hollywood can feel very far away for most aspiring screenwriters, even for those of us who live in Los Angeles and it’s exciting when you come across a company like Vpype who has the resources to make it just a little more accessible. Having a voice, but not being heard is a very frustrating and lonely thing and I’d like to hope that this contest has helped a few writers feel as though they’re being heard. If anything, everyone who participated in the contest now has a community of other writers who they can share their ideas with.
The Hollywood VPYPE Pitch Contest group page on Facebook has become a sort of water cooler hang out for a lot of aspiring screenwriters and it continues to grow every week. Also, the vComedy application page has become a place to share ideas and notes on each other’s work. Every pitch that was submitted has been viewed multiple times and many have comments and suggestions from other participants. I hope that writers in the group will continue to share their ideas with each other and really use each other as sounding boards. I know that some members have used vBroadcast to discuss ideas with each other and over the next few weeks, I’m hoping to created a “writer’s group” using vBroadcast where each week a writer will broadcast their own ideas live, while other members of the group can watch and chat with them live.
What every aspiring screenwriter dreams of is an audience and Vpype has helped provide one!
Joe Palladino’s pitch, TOWERS OF LONDON on vComedy…
http://apps.facebook.com/vcomedy/vcomedyviewer?auth_token=82020b1098aa9a22b34c89b2453ffb1c
Wilton’s pitch, THE HITMAN on vComedy…
http://apps.facebook.com/vcomedy/vcomedyviewer?ref=ts
AD Smith’s pitch, THE ASSIGNED on vComedy…
http://apps.facebook.com/vcomedy/vcomedyviewer?ref=ts
Tags: cindy mccreery, Facebook, facebook fan pages, hollywood, joe palladino, julie richardson, live video, screenplay pitch contest, shoieb yunus, social media, social networking, social video, social viewing, social web, towers of london, vbroadcast, vcomedy, Vpype, vpype live
Posted in citizen journalism, cloud computing, cloud storage, comedy, Facebook, hollywood, hollywood scriptwriting, humanties, interactive tv, internet, movies, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, technology, video, video platform, virtual computing | Leave a Comment »
February 7, 2011
Gary Klein
Gary Klein, Product Manager, Vpype Corporation
Facebook has revolutionized the web by providing consumers with an easy to use interface and common sense controls over how they share the digital information of their lives. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world, with a population in excess of 600 Million. Facebook Pages, special sites just for businesses and brands, have become the new standard for marketing to this global audience. Consumers can “Like” your brand, and then are automatically subscribed to updates from your business; when you share information with them, it aggregates in their News Feed right along with pictures and updates from their friends and family.
The Facebook platform is in a near constant state of development, changing frequently, and it can be difficult for marketers to find quality tools to help them leverage this market. Other streaming video companies have launched Facebook applications but then failed to maintain them or integrate them fully with Facebook. Justin.tv, Ustream, and Livestream all claim to support Facebook streaming.
Justin.tv uses a single Facebook Live Stream next to any of their embedded videos, meaning users may not even be chatting about your content, and you have no moderation tools or transcript. Ustream will custom build a viewer for you in fourteen days, but wants you to pay for a subscription first and requires your Facebook Page to have 1,000 followers before they will begin the work. Livestream has a Facebook application, but subscriptions start at $350.00 per month if you want to remove advertising. None of these applications integrate with Facebook Events.
Vpype identified the strategic importance of Facebook several years ago, and designed our real time communications system to integrate fully with Facebook as well as the web. Our premier application, vBroadcast, requires no software download and runs as a hosted service from the cloud, allowing you to stream live video events straight to your Facebook Page and Web Site simultaneously. Viewers can use your Facebook Page, your Web Site, or the vBroadcast application to view and interact with the live show; Facebook Connect, Facebook Live Stream, and Twitter are all supported.
vBroadcast scheduler integrates with the Facebook Events system so your fans will know when you are planning to go live. When you begin the broadcast, we can notify your followers on Facebook and Twitter for you, so everyone can find the show. Once you have finished, we can notify anyone who could not attend, and give them a link to the recorded show, complete with chat transcript.
Whenever you want to reach out to your audience, vBroadcast makes it easy to interact with your customers, wherever they congregate.
Tags: Facebook, facebook fan pages, justin tv, live stream, live video, livestream, shoieb yunus, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, social viewing, social web, ustream, vbroadcast, Vpype, vpype live
Posted in cloud computing, cloud storage, Facebook, interactive tv, internet, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, technology, video platform | Leave a Comment »
January 2, 2011
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,100 times in 2010. That’s about 10 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 37 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 51 posts. There were 67 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 31mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.
The busiest day of the year was January 5th with 72 views. The most popular post that day was 2010: Year of Video → Social, Global and Mobile.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, linkedin.com, vpype.com, twitter.com, and mail.yahoo.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for “live social video”, vpype, vpypelive, julie richardson producer, and video ceo.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
2010: Year of Video → Social, Global and Mobile January 2010
2
Pitch a Screenplay via Facebook to Hollywood Insiders February 2010
1 comment
3
Screenwriters Tell Their Stories to Hollywood Executives on Facebook May 2010
4
Get Discovered by Hollywood Execs on Facebook December 2010
5
Social Sports Marketing May 2010
1 comment
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
December 16, 2010
Cindy McCreery
Cindy McCreery, Hollywood Screenwriter.
Cindy is a graduate of the Walt Disney/ABC Feature Writing Fellowship program for the 2002-2003 year. In 2006 National Geographic Films hired Cindy to rewrite ELEPHANT WILD and later in 2007 in partnership with Warner Brothers, they hired her again to develop and write FREE WILLY: ESCAPE FROM PIRATES COVE which will be released in March of 2010.
Last January Vpype held it’s first Hollywood Screenplay Pitch Contest. It was the first and only pitch contest exclusive to Facebook, which allowed users to pitch industry professionals live via webcam. Judges from MGM, Fox, William Morris Endeavor as well as many known Producers with credits that include COLLATERAL, REMEMBER ME, THE COLLECTOR, OVERBOARD and ELF. I’m proud to say that not only did the top three winners win great prizes, but also they are still currently developing their ideas with producers that judged the contest. The gains weren’t limited to the top three; in fact, many of the contestants were contacted by producers who watched their pitches.
vComedy app on Facebook
This December we’re proud to announce the 2nd annual pitch contest! This time we’ve made a few changes. First we’ve limited the pitches to three minutes, as that’s really all the time one needs to get out what their movie is! Secondly, we’ve shortened the duration of the contest to a little over a month so we don’t lose momentum. Third, participants must submit their pitches using Vpype’s latest application, vComedy, although pitches aren’t limited to a specific genre.
Many of the judges from last year will be participating including Julie Richardson, Mac Torluccio, Christopher Lockhart, Trevor Engelson and many more.
What makes this contest special is that it’s not only free but it’s open to writers all over the world. Last year we had participants from as far as Israel to Pakistan to Italy to Australia. It really opens Hollywood to writers who don’t have the resources to live in LA.
Also, what I think makes this such a special contest is that everyone involved is really dedicated to the idea of helping aspiring writers get their feet in the door. The CEO of Vpype is also a filmmaker and understands not only the importance of the writer but also the importance of making industry contacts.
This might be a small contest, but it has provided big opportunities for many writers including Marc Maxwell recently wrote this to me, “Living in Pembroke, Kentucky feels a million miles away from Hollywood. But that’s where I find myself working as a Department of Defense Guidance Counselor for the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell. As an Army Counselor, I assist our Soldiers in achieving their Adult Education goals of obtaining a degree or diploma. My writing partner, David Horne, and I started collaborating four years ago. To date, we have co-written nine sports trivia/history books through the Sports by the Numbers series, however we have always aspired to write screenplays. With me in Kentucky and Dave stationed as a civilian in Germany, the dreams of being a screenwriter were just that…dreams. Geographically, even if we had a great script, we weren’t in any position to pitch our ideas. That was, until the first Vpype Hollywood Pitch Contest came to Facebook. I heard about the contest through Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat website and immediately started working on our pitches. After pitching five ideas, we found ourselves with two submissions in the Top Thirty and one pitch in the Top Ten. Even though we didn’t win the contest, we were contacted by a judge and Hollywood Insider to send them our completed screenplay. We continue to work with them on rewrites and have been invited to submit any future screenplays we complete. Without the Vpype contest, our screenplay may never have been seen or read by movie producers. And because of this contest our dream lives on.”
No matter where you live or what you do for a living, if you have a movie idea be sure to pitch it via vComedy before January 25th 2011! Who knows, this time next year you could be living out your dreams!
For more information join our Facebook Group, The Hollywood VPYPE Pitch Contest!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=259144206323
Tags: christopher lockhart, cindy mccreery, collateral movie, collector movie, Facebook, hollywood, hollywood pitch contest, how to pitch to hollywood executives, julie richardson, live video, marc maxwell, screenplay pitch, shoieb yunus, social media, social networking, social video, social viewing, technology, vbroadcast, vcomedy, Vpype, vpype live
Posted in comedy, Facebook, hollywood, hollywood scriptwriting, humanties, interactive tv, internet, movies, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, technology, video, video platform, videos | Leave a Comment »
December 9, 2010
Gary Klein
By Gary Klein, Product Manager, Vpype Corporation
It was not that many years ago when you placed an advertisement in a magazine or newspaper, paying a charge based on their total subscriber base, knowing only a small number of those readers would be interested, and hoping some even smaller number might act. If you wanted to know what your customers thought of your products, you could include a response card, and hope one percent ever replied. Today, social media has changed the landscape: restaurateurs can respond to customer reviews on Yelp, Delta Airlines monitors Twitter to remedy customer complaints, and Jack in the Box has over 300,000 friends on Facebook. Social Media Expert Mari Smith dubs this The Relationship Age in her latest book:
“With the incredible boom of online social networking sites – particularly Facebook and Twitter – what we’re seeing now is a massive paradigm shift in the way we communicate and do business around the globe.”
Social Media Expert Mari Smith doing a live broadcast
Vpype’s vBroadcast application was designed to enable you and your brand to interact with your customers in real-time. Speak directly to your customers where they socialize: on your branded Facebook Page and your branded web site. You can demonstrate products or answer questions using state of the art streaming video. Participants are identified by name and photo, and can ask questions or provide feedback immediately. Chat is recorded along with the video for time-shifted viewing. One click opens a window for participants to share posts with Facebook and Twitter, allowing them to share their experience with their friends, while integrating these feeds into a unified social stream for the broadcaster.
In the last year thousands of shows have been created, including:
• A pitch contest where screenwriters from around the world were able to pitch scripts to Hollywood studio executives (from 20th Century Fox, MGM, William Morris Endeavor and others)
• An independent tire and auto care shop shared maintenance tips and closed four new customers during their first broadcast
• A graduate program offered distance learning classes and broke their enrollment record
• A church broadcast sermons to housebound parishioners and reconnected with others that had moved away
• A realtor toured open houses with his laptop, answering questions from out of town buyers
• A specialty horse accessory maker gave tutorials and answered questions from their customers on four continents from a barn in Colorado
• A candidate for Congress fielded questions from his future constituents
How can you build stronger relationships with your customers? If you don’t, your competitor will, as when Southwest Airlines tweeted flight information to a JetBlue customer complaining about his delayed flight.
Tags: 20th Century Fox, cindy mccreery, Facebook, facebook fan pages, gary klein, hollywood, jetblue, julie richardson, live video, mari smith, MGM, relationship marketing, shoieb yunus, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, social web, southwest airlines, the relationship age, twitter, Vpype, vpype live, William Morris Endeavor, Youtube
Posted in Facebook, hollywood, hollywood scriptwriting, internet, movies, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, technology, video, video platform | Leave a Comment »
November 30, 2010
Using the Cloud for Serving Media
The content providers and media distribution companies need a server infrastructure for distributing media which is cost optimal with scalable compute and storage capabilities. When viewers connect with broadcasters they should experience low latency video across the globe. This introduces competing challenges, as one needs localized extended resources for management as well as a distributed server infrastructure across the globe.
Vpype looked at establishing dedicated server farms with bandwidth for millions of simultaneous videos. This approach makes the development work easier and maintenance of the servers less expensive. Issues of hardware and software upgrades, data backup, security, etc. are simpler for server farms localized to a low cost area. On the other hand, the latency of content creators to the servers and then the distribution to users become a concern. Another issue of longer hops is packet jitter and loss. The quality of media when transmitted over longer Internet hops results in jitter and increased video delays. One needs to use internal dedicated lines or infrastructure to minimize this between the computer servers.
To ensure high quality of media for users, Vpype has chosen a reliable, global cloud-computing platform.
The inter-cluster high-performance architecture allows minimization of latency by using optimized internal connect to get the best latency across the globe. By optimizing the usage between compute and edge servers the best experience can be delivered to customers.
Using cloud technology allows Vpype to be highly scalable. Individual streams or bundles of streams are encompassed as pipes that allow a range of bandwidth and quality options to be traded off within the pipe. A user may experience trade-off between the quality and number of streams before increasing the capacity. This allows Vpype customers to optimize the cloud to their needs.
Using cloud storage allows Vpype to scale both in terms of compute for delivering media and storage for keeping video files. It can transport rich media content on demand from a few to hundreds and even thousands of rich media streams. It can also scale disk space from a few gigabytes to petabytes. Excellent latency and best in class cost infrastructure keeps Vpype ahead of its competition.
Managing the cloud
Vpype has created a number of cloud management utilities to manage the compute and bandwidth usage on the cloud. These programs guide the cloud to use the best number of resources for optimal performance.
Vpype Value Proposition
Using load sharing, strategies beyond those provided by cloud computing service providers, Vpype can optimize resources on its infrastructure. On one hand, it offers a high level of service by reserving enough resources to allow for rapid usage spikes at minimum delays, and on the other hand it manages the resources to get the best cost when the demand is low.
Vpype architecture aims to get the lowest cost bandwidth and storage costs in the industry. This allows Vpype to offer competitive rates for broadcast and storage.
Creating the ‘Pypes’
Streaming infrastructure design is critical for moving video streams from the broadcaster to millions of viewers without quality loss. This involves transcoding, audio/video optimization and tuning from the application to the Cloud. Vpype creates a blend of transcoding options to maximize its services from the customer machine to its cloud compute instances.
Many companies today are using third-party web tools and connecting to content network providers (CDN) to deliver media framework. However, Vpype constructs the solution at the application front-end and as well as the cloud backend. This approach allows Vpype optimize the whole distribution path and offer the best solutions to its users.
Summary
At the simplest level, Vpype vBroadcast is a Facebook app. At a much deeper level, Vpype has designed, developed and deployed a video cloud-based compute and storage platform. The building blocks of Vpype video platform are customizable, flexible and scalable.
Offering Vpype solutions for ‘media pypes’ between video creators and millions of consumers at the best cost and performance is Vpype’s goal. Vpype provides solutions and capabilities that should be used by the consumers, businesses, brands, digital ad agencies and academic institutions looking to provide competitive solutions in this space.
VpypeLive app: http://apps.facebook.com/vpypelive
Start your show today: http://apps.facebook.com/vbroadcast
Tags: amazon, cloud computing, cloud storage, data center, Facebook, facebook fan pages, hosted server, live video, realtime video, red hat, shoieb yunus, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, social web, video platform, virtualization, Vpype, Youtube
Posted in cloud computing, cloud storage, Facebook, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, software development, technology, video, video platform, virtual computing | Leave a Comment »
October 4, 2010
Najeeb Nadeem
Guest Writer Series, Part 7 Najeeb Nadeem, Vpype User Community and IT Support Manager. Najeeb is an IT expert, responsible for user community activities, web infrastructure support and cloud management services.
Vpype vBroadcast Quick Start Guide
What You Need
• A computer – Macintosh or PC will work equally well.
• A web camera – Most laptops have these built in.
• A microphone – Most laptops have these built in.
• A quiet, well-lit broadcast location with a solid Internet connection.
o You will need at least 300 Kbps, and preferably 500 Kbps, of upstream bandwidth
o You can test your upstream bandwidth at http://www.speedtest.net
• A web browser – Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari – they all work.
• The latest version of Adobe Flash – http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer
• A Facebook account – http://www.facebook.com
• Access vBroadcast and “allow” the application to install in your Facebook account – http://apps.facebook.com/vbroadcast
To Start a Live Broadcast
• Open a web browser and navigate to the vBroadcast application, http://apps.facebook.com/vbroadcast
• Click the “Broadcast” button in the menu bar
• The application will attempt to detect your webcam and microphone. If unsuccessful, you will need to manually select them to continue.
• Complete the Broadcast Information form
o Enter the Location of your broadcast.
o Show Name is required and should contain a concise title for the show
o Keywords are required and can contain any other information you would like indexed in the search engine.
o Select on how’s behalf you are going to do the show
o Select your audience
o Select the language in which the show will be conducted
o Select the category
o Start should be set to Now
o Save Recording should be selected
o Announce should be selected for Facebook and/or Twitter
o Duration should be set to the desired length
o Viewers limit should be set high enough to cover possible attendance
o When Ready, Click Start Broadcast
• You will be taken to the Broadcast panel where you can adjust your camera to ensure a good broadcast. When ready, click the Camera button to start the live show.
• You will be prompted to publish about your show on your wall and your friend’s wall
• When you see “Live” indicator in the top right hand Conner, you are Broadcasting Live
• When the show is over, click the Stop button. The show will terminate, the transcript will be closed, and the recorded show will be published the broadcaster’s Shows tab.
To Obtain Support
• For customer support, send email to support@vpype.com
Tags: Facebook, live video, shoieb yunus, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, social viewing, social web, technology, Vpype, vpype live
Posted in citizen journalism, Facebook, interactive tv, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, technology, video | Leave a Comment »
September 27, 2010
Cindy McCreery
Guest Writer Series, Part 6 Cindy McCreery, Hollywood Screenwriter. Cindy is a graduate of the Walt Disney/ABC Feature Writing Fellowship program for the 2002-2003 year. In 2006 National Geographic Films hired Cindy to rewrite ELEPHANT WILD and later in 2007 in partnership with Warner Brothers, they hired her again to develop and write FREE WILLY: ESCAPE FROM PIRATES COVE which will be released in March of 2010.
Last Sunday, September 19th, I had the pleasure of hosting a vComedy booth with the rest of the Vpype team at the 30th annual San Francisco Comedy Day in Golden Gate Park. Over forty stand-up comedians from all over the country, including actor Robin Williams, performed on one stage for five straight hours! The day started out a little shaky considering the temperature was in the 50’s, raining and windy but the crowds still came despite the weather.
30th Annual San Francisco Comedy Day
For our vComedy booth, we had laptops with web cams armed and ready to record visitor’s jokes using the vComedy application. I’m not going to lie; we had an interesting group visit our booth! First of all, we were located in the Sharon Meadows area of Golden Gate Park which sits right across from the famous or infamous Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco and secondly, as stated earlier, the weather was terrible. We had a few homeless who were thrilled to have the opportunity to be heard (and get out of the rain), we had a couple of young kids who on approaching the booth were seemingly shy but when the camera rolled, shy they definitely weren’t! We had a grandmother tell a joke that her grand children definitely should not watch and a father tell a joke dedicated to his kids.
Most of the people who stopped by our booth were college students who spend a lot of their time on Facebook and were excited to get a chance to be a part of Comedy Day by themselves telling a few jokes. Two of my UC Santa Barbara students made an appearance and did several vComedy recordings. They’re both aspiring comics and were excited to have an excuse to record some of their comedy and send it out to all of their friends.
People trying out vComedy app at Vpype booth
In talking to a lot of different people about vComedy what I’ve heard consistently is that being an application specifically for telling jokes, makes it easier and less frightening to actually record something. For example, if you had a funny story to tell all of your Facebook friends, it would feel kind of awkward to just record something and post it on your page. But, by doing it specifically through a comedy application, it’s wrapped up in a nice fun virtual comedy card of sorts! I think beyond using the app to tell a joke, it’s a great way to connect with friends and family. If a user wants to just say “hello” to a friend, vComedy is a great way to send a fun quick message.
Also in the coming weeks, a new feature will be added to the app, which I think will skyrocket the amount of users – an uploading feature. Users will have the choice to either record something using their webcam or they can upload a funny video. And for aspiring comics they can upload their best bits from performances and send it out as well! It’s great because many comics aren’t stand-up comedians, but rather excel at improv and by adding this feature, we’ll be opening the app up to sketch and improv comedians as well! Or maybe just a funny moment captured on video at your friends wedding!
Another feature I really like about vComedy is that it keeps a catalogue of your recordings so users can basically create their own line up of different vComedy bits, a virtual shmorgishborg of funny!
Who knows, maybe next years Comedy Day lineup will include some comics discovered by using vComedy!
Here’s the link to vComedy on Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/vcomedy
Tags: cindy mccreery, Facebook, hollywood, Human Behavior, live video, robin williams, san francisco comedy day, shoieb yunus, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, Vpype, vpype live
Posted in comedy, Facebook, hollywood, Human Behavior, humanties, internet, movies, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, technology, video | Leave a Comment »
September 21, 2010
Lou Covey
Lou Covey, CEO, Footwasher Media.
Lou is a professional communicator for more than 30 years as a journalist, technical writer and corporate communications consultant. He is CEO of the communication strategies firm Footwasher Media and editorial director of New Tech Press. Lou blogs on several issues, including the state of the media, local sustainability, public policy, social media and theology.
For the past three months, Footwasher Media (a communications strategies company) has experimented with the Vpype broadcasting system on Facebook with a variety of time slots and subjects. We have also used links to the archived broadcasts on other platforms and compared results of similar programs on Ustream and other platforms.
The importance of live streaming video
Video is the growth sector of the Internet currently driving more than 50 percent of all web traffic and live video on the Internet is the latest cool application. Lots of people want to try it. It has been observed that the most popular show on Ustream is a webcam video of a box of barn owls with an average daily viewership of 2,000. In contrast, the most popular live shows with semi-scripted content on any of the live-video platform gather fewer than 50 people live and possibly as many as 200 views in archive. This holds true even for live events that have long been established in a person’s schedule. For example, Tapestry Church in Redwood City has been using Ustream since March of 2010 to broadcast their Sunday morning services. And yet that does not mean the services are unpopular. On any given Sunday, while the video grabs 4-10 viewers live and another 20 in archive, the weekly services audio archives are downloaded in the thousands.
Promotion of the live videos on Facebook, either through posts or events, seemed to have little effect on increasing live viewership. Neither did choosing a set time, random times, or spur of the moment broadcasts. It did, however, encourage larger audiences for the archives. When the shows were promoted on just Facebook, the viewership doubled. When promoted on other sites (like www.commbasics.typepad.com), viewership quadrupled.
We believe that the reason for this is the on-demand nature of video consumption. Tivo, Youtube, on-demand cable and the like have made it possible for us all to see what we want, when we want and even comment on the content 24 hours a day. The companies like United Business Media (UBM) are discovering the same difficulty with webinars. According to Paul Miller, CEO of the EE Times Group in UBM, said they invite up to 10,000 people to each webinar, get RSVPs from 500, and consider a live audience of 50 to be acceptable. Archived versions, however, grow the audience 10 fold.
As audiences become more aware of the value of live broadcasting on the net, these audiences may increase.
Live video over mobile applications
An area that has several players is using mobile devices to broadcast live video. LiveCast, Qik and several others are offering this service to users of mobile devices and smart phones, but one competitor, Bambuser has taken the lead in this area in Europe by packaging the service to local television stations are using the service and iPhones to eliminate camera crews for remote broadcasts. Locally KRON TV broadcasting company (in San Francisco, CA) is doing the same thing over Skype with limited quality. In the US however, this feature is left more to hobbyists using their cameras for recreation. The potential for broadcast stations to expand advertising platforms, increase viewership and encourage participation is enormous. The savings in personnel reduction could number in 10s of millions of dollars and spell the difference between profitability and closure for some news programs.
Summary
Vpype offers a significant benefit to Facebook users by removing restrictions on video size and duration. Vpype vBroadcast’s tight integration with Facebook gives it a significant market opportunity.
The Bridge Foursquare Church using Vpype vBroadcast app on Facebook
We see the biggest monetization opportunity in providing social video apps to businesses, brands and broadcast entities. Currently all televisions stations in the San Francisco Bay Area have Facebook presences and could greatly enhance both their online efforts as well as encourage citizen journalism. Several traditional print organizations are expanding into video online.
Lou Covey can be contacted at lou@footwashermedia.com
Tags: Facebook, footwasher media, live video, lou covey, shoieb yunus, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, social web, Vpype, Youtube
Posted in citizen journalism, cnn, Facebook, humanties, interactive tv, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, technology, Tivo, video, Youtube | Leave a Comment »
September 13, 2010
Mursil Sayed
Mursil Sayed, VP of Product Development, Vpype Corporation.
Mursil is the principal architect of Vpype products and leads the entire development effort. Mursil enjoys transforming complex technology into consumer-facing products. Prior to Vpype, Mursil was VP of Engineering at EzValidation, a fingerprint security software company.
The explosive growth of social networking has lured many software companies to develop social applications to instantly reach millions of users on various social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Social application software encompasses a range of software systems that allow users to interact and share data with their friends and network. Although it is very easy to quickly develop and launch a simple social application, it requires some skill and experience to develop an application that attracts and retain visitors.
I would like to list a few guidelines that developers and as well social media marketers may find useful and put into practice to develop an effective and maintainable social application.
1) The application must provide a simple user experience so that the users can quickly figure out what the application is all about. There should be one or two major workflows in the application and those workflows must be self-explanatory. Although this is canonical for the desktop or web application, but it is especially important for social applications because research has indicated that people usually resist installing new applications. Therefore if they are unable to find instant value of the application, they are most likely to uninstall the application. Vpype is one such social app that has an intuitive workflow for live video streaming.
Maaika Westen interviews Vpype CEO
2) Integrate social plug-in in your application to increase sharing and word of mouth (viral) marketing of your application. Facebook is providing various plug-ins for like, recommendations, comments, etc. Similarly you can get variety of plug-ins for Twitter for posting status messages and viewing communication threads.
3) Make an abstraction layer to interact with social networks. This will help in maintaining the application and will prevent the application from crashing due to change in underlying social API. Although Facebook and other major social networks provide a standard interface (Open Social) to access their services, most advanced services and new features are only accessible via their proprietary API. This API keeps on changing from time to time.
4) Don’t use your servers to store social graph (underlying social relations between people) and other information about your users (like friends, followers, etc.). The only exception to this rule is when the information is used frequently. In this case, use API calls to get this information from Social networks when needed. Most social networks are now providing interrupt based APIs that will automatically post new changes to the ‘social’ application.
5) Create a mock implementation for the social network abstraction layer so that application could be tested and debugged quickly and easily without requiring the Internet connection. All the data for the mock implementation should be stored in local databases. This will significantly reduce the development and debugging time as the mock implementation will operate from local databases and doesn’t require an Internet callback.
Tags: Facebook, facebook fan pages, live video, maaika westen, shoieb yunus, social app development, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, social viewing, social web, Vpype, vpype live
Posted in Facebook, interactive tv, social applications, social media, social networking, social tv, social video, software development, technology, video | Leave a Comment »
