Financial Industry: People Making Money Online

In early February we wrote about Flavors.me, a simple, beautiful aggregator that lets you pull together all of your social media identities like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Posterous, Netflix, LinkedIn, Blogger, Goodreads, Foursquare, YouTube, WordPress, Tumblr, Etsy, and RSS on a simple, personal splash page.

Just like Gmail replaced Hotmail and Facebook replaced MySpace, often times the second to the stage has the most talent. With an attitude that says, “I am your new virtual business card,” About.me is a service like Flavors.me but with more functionality, smarter options and it’s all free (for now).

Why it’s different

About.me focuses on personal branding and analytics, rather than just creating a simple online identity. With a free About.me account you can see how many people see your profile, where they’re coming from (your Twitter bio? your e-mail signature?) and what they are doing on your page.

About.me is FREE. “We don’t believe that people should pay money for a set of front end tools to set up a profile of themselves. We just dont think thats a long term business model nor do we think it’s interesting,” says About.me’s co-founder Tony Conrad.

The URL is better. It’s pretty clear that, particularly for professional cases, About.Me couldn’t be a better URL for its use. For example, let’s say you are making an e-tro. Instead of writing, “This is Courtney, the East Coast Editor of The Next Web who lives in Brooklyn and enjoys reading Russian literature….” You’d just say, “This is Courtney, and here’s her about.me.”

What’s cooking at About.me?

At first About.me limited the number of services you can connect to because “too many confuses users” but due to customer feedback, they’re adding YouTube, Vimeo, Pandora and Formspring soon. In the meantime, users can add any URL they wish to their About.me page.

They are planning to move towards a freemium model. “While we currently have a kickass free version, there’s a whole other class of users out there that will pay money for services that make sense,” says Conrad. For example, they may cater to small companies that need social media behavior analytics. Conrad also believes there’s money to be made in domain name management and providing people with About.me e-mail addresses.

Want a Beta invite? Go to the comments below and follow my instructions. Then please RT this story! :)

Co-founder Tony Conrad says, “Searching for people on Google is like dumpster diving, our site enables you to pull all of that information onto one page and that’s very powerful.”

The company was founded by Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas and Tim Young in January 2010. Their investors include True Ventures, Radar Partners, Freestyle Capital, Scott Kurnit, AOL Ventures, David Mahoney, Founder Collective, & Ron Conway.

Online video is well and truly, having the best time of its life right now. It seems to be factoring in every marketing plan worth its salt, with some incredible videos being produced by brands that are lighting up social media. I wanted to explore the state of the online video industry a bit further and delve into the stats that show the huge growth curve online video is currently on. Right now it is one of the most fascinating aspects of online, as brands continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible and engaging the audience in completely new ways. It is a seriously big business and one that every brand wants to be a part of. And it’s easy to see why..

Over 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute

This stat on its own is pretty stunning and quite hard to get your head around. But when you look at in in the context of the past 3 years, or even 6 months, you realise just how impressive this is. The graph below from Youtube shows the average hours of video uploaded every minute, back to June 2007. While this started at 6 hours, in the past 6 months it stood at 23. That’s a huge increase of 12 hours per minute in just 6 months :

That is some seriously impressive growth and also shows that just as much as brand video is growing, ugc is growing at a staggering rate, due largely to the growth in mobile and ease of uploading. As Youtube note themselves there are other factors, such as upping the time limit in videos, which would obviously attribute for an increase in the total length of video uploads. But this is impressive nonetheless.

Blinkx shares up by 400%

At the business end of video, Blinkx are showing that online video is starting to become a profitable industry. While Google still won’t reveal whether Youtube is making them money or not, Blinkx have recently announced their first ever turn in profit in the 6 months up to September. And it comes 3 years after they first launched. Blinkx make money through running ads alongside the videos they index, acting as a huge video search tool. They have certainly had a good year, as the 400% share increase shows. It’s also encouraging to see that online video isn’t just about Youtube and there are some other serious players in the market with unique offerings.

Online video ads reach half of U.S. users

While some research shows that advertisers are cautious over online video advertising, due to factors such as standardisation of ad formats, online video advertising is going from strength to strength. A recent study from ComScore (the people who measure things), found that just over 45.4% of users in America viewed at least one video ad over a month. But more impressively, were exposed to 32.2 videos each, on average. That’s over 4.3 million video ads that were served to the online U.S. population in September 2010. This shows the power of online video ads to get right in front of your target audience. And while there are some definite rights and wrongs in the content of the video ad, I think we’ll see this grow even more and prove itself as a valuable industry up there with TV.

Comedian makes $315,000 from online video

A recent study found that comedians top the bill for online video earnings, and one in particular is doing very well. A recent study found that comedian Shane Dawson, who amassed 431.7 million online video views in the past year made $315,000 from his content, through ad revenue. He came out top for independent earners on Youtube and it’s certainly an aspirational case study that shows the business of online video isn’t just for big brands.

Kia spend a third of budget on online video

In a bold move, Kia Motors have invested a third of their £2 million marketing budget for the new Sportage model, into online video. We’ve seen the motor industry embracing social media more and more – with Ford launching a model through Facebook – and this shows the commitment that some brands are making to online video. Not so much an add-on or a nice to have, but a central facet of a multi-million pound campaign. The online campaign will focus on the central characters from the TV adverts and include home-page takeovers and video ads. Cases like this help to solidify online video as a serious marketing avenue that can bring a campaign to life and help you get that extra bang for your buck.

20% of downstream internet traffic is to Netflix

In a huge coup for Netflix, a recent study found that 20% of peak time donwstream internet traffic was streaming video from their site. This is great news for Netflix, and perhaps not so great news for the DVD market. If Netflix were available in Ireland I would be there in an instant and would choose to view all films in this way, as it simply doesn’t make sense to invest in a DVD anymore and I expect that even the gift market for this may eventually die out. 20% is a huge figure and shows how much Netflix has staked its claim in this market.

2 billion videos viewed each month Facebook

In June 2010 Facebook released some interesting stats into their online video offering, which show the huge potential it has to own this market. They revealed that as well as 2 billion video views on its site each month, there were 415,000 online video uploads each day. While it may not be a contender to Youtube just yet, the sharing capabilities within Facebook and the ease of connecting with your community show the potential for this to grow. Interestingly, Youtube now offer the option of connecting with Facebook instead of logging in with your gmail account. This shows Youtube recognises the power to use the huge community on Facebook, something it can’t compete with, to combine with its own wealth of online video.

Live stream video viewing up by 650%

In their most recent report into online video, Comscore announced that the amount of live-streamed video we’re watching has grown by 648% over the past year. This is absolutely phenomenal growth and compares to a (still impressive) 68% increase in video views on Youtube. While it may still form a minor part of the online video market, live streaming is growing in popularity and use, as we become more accustomed to this form of content, both as consumers and producers. UStream are owning the market here, but Facebook are quickly getting in on the game – recently introducing LiveStream integration with Facebook pages. This has the potential to hugely increase the live stream video market and see it really reach the mainstream.

eric seiger do

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

People Making Money Online

Over 35 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute

Blinkx shares up by 400%

Online video ads reach half of U.S. users

Comedian makes $315,000 from online video

Kia spend a third of budget on online video

20% of downstream internet traffic is to Netflix

2 billion videos viewed each month Facebook

Live stream video viewing up by 650%

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