Nicholas Renville on why RSS is better for a truly participative online videosphere: conclusion
Here are the concluding recommendations on what is required for an open video infrastructure.
Nicholas Reville is Executive Director of the Participatory Culture Foundation, which makes the Democracy Platform. Contact: nicholas-at-pculture.org. For more, read the Democracy Blog.
Nicholas Renville:
“Viewers: try a video RSS application like Democracy Player or FireANT. Both have BitTorrent support, can show high-resolution video, and have built-in video search. This isn’t just good medicine, it’s honestly the best online video experience you can find.
Creators: no matter where you host your content, encourage your users to subscribe to your video RSS feed. That way, they don’t have to remember to check your website, they’ll get your stuff delivered right to their desktop– you’ve got them for good. Serious video creators need rss because it lets them connect directly with their audience.
Hosting Companies: create RSS feeds for everything (users, tags, popular videos, etc). Put RSS subscribe buttons prominently on every page and explain to your viewers what it means and why they would enjoy watching with a video application.
Advocates: video online has had a 2nd rate reputation with the tech elite. It seems a little trashy and has tended to appeal to the lowest common denominator. But that’s changing. Truly excellent video channels are popping-up. Don’t forget that television is the most important mass medium in our culture– when you talk about open-source, open-standards, Firefox, net-neutrality, xhtml/css, blogosphere and netroots, you should also be talking about video over RSS.”