Nicholas Renville of the Participatory Culture Foundation, and one of the co-makers of the Democracy Player, has published an important contribution on the future of open video infrastructures.
Because of its key importance, I’m republishing it in several installments.
Nicholas Renville:
QUESTION 1: Will internet video viewing be primarily web-page based or will it be primarily RSS based?
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QUESTION 2: Will internet video be centralized in huge services like YouTube or Google Video, or will it be more broadly distributed (like blogs and web pages are), with huge (youtube), big (blip), medium (rocketboom), and small (average video bloggers on their own site) players?
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These are not entirely distinct questions, and that’s a central message of this essay.
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If video online is mostly web-based (question 1), the biggest centralized services have huge advantages (question 2).
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If centralized services win, many of the wonderful things that can come from TV meeting the internet will evaporate.
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Are We Moving in the Wrong Direction?
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So far, the answers to both of these questions have gone mostly in what I believe is the ‘wrong’ direction: towards two huge centralized services (YouTube and Google Video) and towards browser-based viewing. That’s not to say that video RSS isn’t doing well. It is. We’ve seen the number of channels in the Democracy Channel Guide increase 6 fold in the past year and channels are getting created faster and faster every day. But there’s big and then there’s BIG. YouTube is gigantic in a way that video RSS doesn’t approach right now. YouTube doesn’t need defending, but I want to to be clear about exactly where my concerns are focused.
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As a service and a universe, YouTube is amazing. It has become a visual search engine of human experiences. So far, YouTube has done more to democratize video online than my organization or any of the companies, organizations, and advocates that are working for open-access and open-standards. But –and this is crucial– YouTube is spending money like crazy. At some point, they’ll need to make it all back. I’m nervous about how they will do that. Do YouTube executives have any option other than to hold viewers and creators hostage to ads on videos?
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Furthermore, I worry that the near-monopoly strength of YouTube’s network effect is dragging along people who don’t actually want to use the service– “If my video isn’t on YouTube, how will anyone find it??”
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In the social networking domain, MySpace is the best example of this un-resistable social pressure in action– how many web 2.0 gurus cringe everyday when they try to login and update their MySpace page? MySpace, by the way, is trying to be the next YouTube (if you’re looking for a real dystopia for online video, it’s that). The network effect of online video services doesn’t just endanger creators and viewers, it also stifles competition. Smaller web video services that don’t have YouTube’s network effect will become backwaters.