For young people nothing is hotter than video these days so this site makes so much sense for Disney. It’s a great example of a large brand using elements of the social net to great effect. The only thing I see missing are links to purchase the source content. The Disney Video site is a place I can see kids spending a lot of time on which keeps them connected and engaged with the brand.

This week Google launched Hangouts On Air for all of it’s Google+ users. Hangouts are online video chats for the Google+ social network. Until now, Hangouts were limited to 10 participants and video chats were not recorded for later viewing. Hangouts On Air provides a true live broadcasting capability with virtually unlimited viewers and in addition, Hangouts are recorded and posted to YouTube for viewing later. This puts Hangouts on par with other broadcasting systems like Ustream and Justin.tv. Of course Ustream.tv has more features, a more mature platform and user base, but whenever a giant fish jumps into a small pond, it’s going to create big splash. Another big advantage for Google, Hangouts On Air are already connected to your growing social network on Google, whereas Ustream.tv does not have nearly the social network features.

What all this means for your business is video continues to grow in new and different ways. It’s a force you will not be able to avoid soon. What kind of video content could your business provide on these platforms?

RedBox has been a massive hit without large stores because they put their vending machines where people already are, like the supermarket. No extra trip or hassle required. And at $1 a movie, Blockbuster doesn’t stand a chance. It’s interesting that Blockbuster has watched all this go on in the past few years but has not been able to do much of anything about it. They’ve experimented with a few things, but halfheartedly and they have been failures. Someone at corporate didn’t want to hurt the mainline retail business, which was really bad strategy because that business is dead now anyway and they have nothing to show for it.

Blockbuster has misread and misunderstood most every new business reality of the digital age. There CEO talks a good game but somehow I doubt they will have the boldness and smarts to actually do what it takes to catch up. The only thing they have going for themselves is a still strong brand name. If they can just find the guts to capitalize on it.

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So the question we always want to answer here at Connected World Media, what does this mean to your business? It means the world of the big screen TV may be opening up for you. In the past there was virtually no way anybody but the largest businesses with the most money could get onto television. TV advertising is just too expensive for most businesses. But now, the TV is open to the Internet and services that nearly any business can participate in. Already there is opportunity with YouTube as Apple TV will show those videos. I can’t imagine it won’t be too long before the Vizio connected TV starts supporting YouTube and possibly other Internet video services. You could develop a Boxee application and gain access via that route. Bottom line, there are effective and inexpensive ways for your company, your brand to get onto peoples big screen TV’s. But don’t hit them with the same old garbage from your marketing department (sorry marketeers). You had better be engaging, relevant and entertaining.

What does it mean for your business? All this new video is going to drive more people to YouTube to watch. It will solidify YouTube’s dominance in the online video world. If you are doing any kind of video for your company and you do not have a YouTube channel yet, you are passing up a massive opportunity. You simply cannot afford not to be on YouTube. You should also be watching and monitoring YouYube for videos about your company or your industry. What are people saying, what are they thinking? This is the best market research/customer opinion lab you have ever had. You may not like all the content, but you had better pay attention and be ready to respond and engage.

What kind of opportunities are you giving your customers, your raving fans to share their videos? Maybe you should share the best YouTube videos on your main website. What other ways can you encourage people to create good video content about your company? These are the kinds of things you should be brainstorming with your social media consultant. Don’t have one? You might want to give me a call, I’m happy to help.

YouTube is the granddaddy of them all and is an important platform to be on because that’s where the numbers are. YouTube has far and away the largest numbers of viewers. I don’t think you an afford to avoid YouTube under any circumstances. YouTube is also compatible with both Apple TV and the iPhone so there is another large and growing channel.  The video quality is decent, maybe not quite as good as other services, but the HD video looks on par to me. YouTube also makes it super easy to post videos to your blog and has a customizable player.

Viddler is another good site with some unique features. Video quality on Viddler is very good and the real draw is the built in ability to overlay your own logo onto the video. This custom branding of videos is very desirable for any brand.

Blip.tv has very good video as well and it’s unique feature is that it can convert video into multiple formats at one time. Upon uploading of a video it will crate a Flash video and, if you choose, an iPod compatible version. Blip also has some mild personal branding of their player but nothing as good as Viddler. Blip has very good sharing, allowing you to post your videos to your blog and even to Facebook.

Vimeo is a popular site with some because it’s video quality may be the best of all. I have not used Vimeo much at all and it appears to be somewhat limited in it’s capability other than excellent video.

An important thing to remember are the upload restrictions when dealing with these general purpose video sites. YouTube is pretty generous but has as limit of 10min. Viddler and Blip have decent limits and Vimeo has the most restrictive. HD uploading is sometimes different than non-HD video. Many of these sites will allow you to upgrade your limits with a premium paid account. Check each site for details.

Ustream is a good platform if you are going to be doing live broadcasting. Ustream is strictly a live platform. You don’t upload pre-recorded videos although any live videos you to shoot are saved to the service for viewing later. Among the live broadcast services, Ustream has the largest audience and a good set of tools, including an interactive chat room along side your video. Ustream doesn’t have a strong mobile client yet but for shooting with a built in webcam, it works well.

Qik is a specialized service for cell phones and is an amazing live mobile video service. It works really well from a jailbroken iPhone and you can even view Qik videos from a special iPhone web page. There are also Qik clients for many other cell phones including most modern Nokia phones. I use Qik for all my live mobile video.

Seesmic is a special case. Seesmic is really for video “conversation”. Videos on Seesmic are usually recorded by webcam and are very short. You might think of Seesmic as the Twitter of video. People watch videos and often start conversations with videos going back and forth, all in a public stream. The problem with Seesmic is it’s a walled garden. Inside Seesmic, you can meet good people and have interesting conversations, but video from Seesmic rarely gets outside of Seesmic. It’s a very limited audience. The other big problem with Seesmic is it can take a great deal of time to view all the videos in a conversation. A 5 video thread with each participant talking for 2 min would take 10 min of time to view. And that’s just one conversation. I don’t use Seesmic anymore as I don’t have time to view and respond to all the videos. Conversation on Twitter is faster and more efficient. Seesmic is an interesting idea, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere.

That is a somewhat technical overview but, of course, the other shoe to drop is what do you actually do with these services? How does this help my business? Stay tuned, the answers are forthcoming.

Fortunately for Dominos, someone notified them of the video and they took quick action to get it taken down. They also did a great thing by putting their president on video with a response, also posted to YouTube. The president is great in this video. He is serious, a little angry and authentic. Domoinos did well limiting this disaster but it brings up several points.

• Brand monitoring: It was very fortunate that someone notified Dominos of the video, but Dominos should have been monitoring social media sites themselves. They might have been able to catch the video even faster.
• Training: It is now critical to train all employees on the use of social media while at work and while not at work if it involves the company at all. Sensible guidelines for all employees will help safeguard employees and the company.
• Speed and Transparency: The big lesson here is the speed of response and the transparency and open honesty. Dominos did not try to hide anything that happened or sugar coat it in any way. They dealt with things head on.

This campaign was completely offline but has been dramatically effected by online as this video is now on the net and making the rounds. You couldn’t ask for a more damaging spectacle. Pepsi, for their part has admitted they completely blew it and are trying to make amends, but the damage is done and thanks to the Long Tail of the Internet, this video will live on for a long time.

Listen To The Show!

I can imagine lots of other great applications of this kind of blend. How about the Super Bowl? How about The Oscars or your favorite tv show? Can you imagine the producers of Lost getting realtime reactions and feedback from their audience as they show is airing? Want to bring people back to the live show and stop them from watching on Tivo? Make the live experience unique and exciting, something you cannot get on Tivo.

The CNN/Facebook experiment was a watershed event with far reaching implications. I have been very impressed with CNN lately and their progressive use of new meida. They were the first network to use Twitter to interact with their news audience during broadcasts.