Broadband Jungle Blog

Zannel

For everyone not yet familiar with social networking / mobile / vc2 community Zannel: Consider giving the Zillion Channels destination a spin.

Launched in March 07 and recently upgraded to full blown networking capabilities, Zannel  already engages 100.000 plus members in instant chatting, mobile video and photo upload. With cool new widgets available, the site could be described as the Brightcove in the mobile space or 'Twitter with Pictures and Video' (recently in a terrific write-up in TechCrunch).

The model is clear and simple: Users create profiles and in return receive their personalized channels that can be shared and connected to any number of friends. Particularly impressive: Blazing-fast upload speeds that put the service ahead of its competition. In a recent  ad-hoc demo from Zannel staffers during a meeting in Santa Monica, a test clip shot midway during a conversation made it straight into Zannel in between two sips of decaf-latte. I'm not kidding.

Co-founded under the guidance of serial web entrepreneur Steve Hoffman last summer, Zannel also integrates its sizeable online following into the mobile experience.  I'm comfortable to predict lots of Zannel-surfing in the near future and plenty of room for everyone, including Kyte.

goGOOROO Video Embedding

Progressing towards branded hosting solutions as announced earlier this year, our own Internet video community goGOOROO.com recently added a video embed function for its users.

Channel and Video of the Day have moved to the homepage with embed video players prominently on display front and center. From here on, every channel and video added to goGOOROO contains embed code when available, pushing us closer to our next release: goGOOROO-curated  channels  with a revenue sharing model for  our content partners.

We've also modified our catalogue function and are editing a series of top links covering everything from the best online TV links to sports sites and movies currently in release.

Visit the GOOROO and come back often.

Welcome to GoGooroo Blog

It took us 2 months into our public beta to finally launch the BIG blog. Go figure.
Anyhow--we've been more than pleased by the warm embrace we've received from the blogging community and trade journalists around the globe. Take a look.

A big shoutout goes to Kristen Nicole at Mashable to get the ball rolling. Looks like there really was something missing in the marketplace and a lot of video fiends out there were suffocating under the weight of all their bookmarks. I know we did.

So here's the goal: We're determined to create the most useful and user-friendly platform for all these great and inspiring broadband video channels out there. In spite of our efforts, a lot of them still get lost in the shuffle. We believe in niche programming, and we believe in monster blockbusters to keep the industry's momentum going.

Not so sure how we feel about television, though--it might be the golden age of TV writing, but the platform itself seems tired and stale. We'll just have to see how far the broadband revolution goes. Creatively we certainly are experiencing an eruption of visual content not seen since the advent of cable, maybe even television.

Don't get me started about the movies -- broadband video might be what independent producers have been waiting for since the creatively insane ran the asylum in the 1970s. I do believe that. It could also mean the end of distribution and exhibition as we've known it for the past century. If you're pumping HD on demand broadband into your home theater, who's going to drag their butt into a poorly run theater anymore?

GoGOOROO is clearly a company with a global mindset. It's no coincidence that we launched parallel in  the US and Europe, and we have big plans to add more localized portals as we build this community. We also have aspirations to take a leadership role when it comes to syndicating and hosting video content for our viewers.

While we're currently indexing every channel known to man, we're also determined to create and curate some of these great new channels nobody had thought of. We're big on collaborating with other video portals and aggregators, because we're all Davids in the same boat struggling with Goliath.

And that does include Michael Eisner, a recovering Goliath. He's new to it just like we all are and that's probably what he likes about creating Prom Queen with the skills he learned in the good old TV days.

Anybody who claims they have it all licked, whether it's production, advertising, distribution, finance or storytelling is simply telling a lie. Nobody has a clue and we're all learning and making it up as we go along, just like it should be.

Gary Carter, CCO of the company who brought us American Idol, expressed it extremely well at January's NATPE conference:

“Technological development is a story which runs through human history and which shapes and is shaped by it. And part of that story is the rise (…) of what we call ‘media.’ This is about us, in a very deep and a very profound way, and it’s about the way in which we as a species are driven by creativity.”

That said--follow the Gooroo and have a great time!

Minnesota Stories

A terrific and very creative example of how to program local video content for a global audience. Well produced and delivered with great heart, Minnesota Stories offers many rewarding treasures to its viewers.

The ingredients are simple: Information, humor and lots of very specific details about the urban Midwestern identity. Calling it This American Life from Lake Wobegon would be quite appropriate.

"A daily videoblog focused on what's going on in Minnesota, Minnesota Stories is an evolving showcase for local citizen media. There are so many stories in this state - personal stories, independent films and music, hyper-local politics - yet they're rarely seen or heard. Minnesota Stories puts a spotlight on the little gems that fall through the cracks of broadcast media."

How Do You Watch the Internet TV, their contribution to a network2.tv clip competition,  could become the comedic anthem of broadband television and deserves to be widely seen: The brilliant team from Minnesota Stories finally clear up everything you ever wanted know about Internet television in this little late night TV parody.

Minnesota Stories: How do you watch Internet TV?

Also accessible through GoGOOROO.

GoGOOROO—Internet Television Community in public beta.

From the department of shameless self-promotion:

Last year, we've seen how the Internet exploded with video content and gave birth to new models of distribution. YouTube and MySpace have become household names. But are you equally familiar with ZeFrank, It's Your Show, stickam, Galacticast, Singing Fool and LAT34.com?

In this new era, every type of video and film production stands a chance to be discovered and enjoyed by an almost unlimited global audience, including projects that would otherwise be disbanded or never produced. From here on, niche content will be king.

So far, there was only one thing missing: A capable tool that would bring order to the infinite universe of channels and videos out there, a system to help actually find stuff.

The wait is over: Last week we launched parallel public beta versions of a groundbreaking new and free online service in the US and Germany.

www.gogooroo.com (USA)
www.gogooroo.de (Germany)

We envision turning this portal into THE Internet television community destination on the web with one simple goal in mind: To cut through the broadband jungle and share the immense wealth of entertaining, inspiring and informative video programming available over the Internet today.

GoGOOROO is a guide, an index and a community all wrapped into one destination. Unlike traditional program guides, however, you, the user, are in the driver's seat here: Similar to the free Internet Encyclopedia Wikipedia, GoGOOROO is a user-generated online guide and every visitor can submit, review and rate channels and videos alongside the GoGOOROO team.

We painstakingly catalogue and describe both Internet television channels and online videos from countless sources. We've established categories such as art, lifestyle, movies, news, sports and viewer-created content and added even more sub-categories to create a searchable and useful database.

You can already find hundreds of broadband channels such as Super Deluxe, Atomfilms and Snowvision in our index, with thousands more to come. We are particularly thrilled by the arrival of small niche networks who co-exist with TV networks and major media companies on a level playing field.

We're still beta-testing, so please try as many functions as you can possibly bear, create a profile, invite friends, share videos with others and suggest new channels and videos. Most of all, if you like what you see don't be shy and recommend GoGOOROO to your friends.

We encourage you to make GoGOOROO your own and use the service for your very own purposes: List your music video, video-driven website, favorite standup, art performance or the indie feature you're promoting with us and reach a like-minded community of web-savvy enthusiasts.

Send me your feedback to this blog and if you're a blogger or have a site and would consider linking to us or filing a post, you'll know what to do.

Follow the Gooroo.

Stickam

The folks at Stickam currently have a lot going for themselves: As widely reported, including in the LA Times, this portal managed to identify two phenomena of recent months and merge them into one: The users’ urge to join and be active in online communities, and the increasingly common ability to communicate through web cameras, as pioneered through skype and i-Chat.

With a very user-friendly set-up, Stickam provides its members with a platform to engage in multi-way videoconferencing with as many friends your system can process, theoretically unlimited. Everyone visiting you online finds an open channel to interact with you and each other.

Already being hyped as yet another ‘the next MySpace,’ all this open access does come at a price: A lot of exhibitionistic dating behavior has begun to leak over from MySpace and indiscreet users have taped conversations and posted these recordings on other video sites like YouTube. Since you can leave your channel open 24/7, some people get addicted to the prospect of being able to connect to a universe of users that’s always out there, day and night.

For now, up-and-coming bands like Story Told and radio dj’s are the first to use Stickam commercially—being available on video in a branded chat room during a show and connecting to the fan-base at all hours is a temptation few bands trying to make it can resist.