Wright of Way

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

The Best is Yet to Come

On Tuesday, Dec 6, Steve Rubel wrote in his blog – Micropersuasion – about the increasing number of video and TV shows becoming available on iTunes. Shows like USA’s Monk and SciFi’s Battlestar Gallactica (alas, not the Lorne Greene version).

Well, this is good news and undoubtedly more and more will jump on the online video bandwagon. And that’s great, but this is a baby step. Don’t get me wrong, putting TV shows online is very convenient and I get the whole time-shifting thing. I’ve already downloaded two Lost episodes from iTunes – very nice. And I hear they’re making money which is fantastic too. Although I still think ABC missed a golden marketing opportunity by not extending the mysteries online, as I referenced in an earlier post.

But unlocking corporate video vaults and throwing the contents online is kind of like the early days of TV when all they could think to do was put radio shows on television. It's only when we realized that TV was an entirely different medium, that it blossomed into the monstrosity that can now get away with charging $2 million for a :30 spot interspersed with a little too much of Janet Jackson (if there is such a thing).

But the web is not TV 2.0 and it's not going to be. The web is a whole different animal - the sound is different, the motion is different, and the writing is even different. The best is yet to come because we're just now scratching the surface of what the Rich Media Web can do.

Just look at sites like Nike Lab or Freedom of the Seas (two of my favorites). Or some of the creative shops doing some really hot stuff, like this featurette of an online Underworld movie promotion.

The rich media web has enabled another paradigm shift with the added element of interactivity. That's where the real innovation is going to be. When we take video assets and enliven them with interactivity, gameplay, consumer-generated feedback and more substantiative depth, then we’ll begin to see the possibilities.

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