A free API and recent redesign have demonstrated a clearer focus on quality channel growth. Justin.tv has “leveled up” to the Adoption Phase of its Life Cycle. The Adoption phase is marked by a small upswing in a core group of early adopters coming to understand the value of the medium and providing relevant, frequent, high-quality content to a wider audience. It’s also usually when ‘internet celebrities’ for the platform or channel are discovered.
Justin.tv Cleans Up Its Act, Makes it to Adoption Phase
By Brad Schwarzenbach | Published August 24th, 2009Get on Get Satisfaction Now
By Brad Schwarzenbach | Published August 17th, 2009Normally my Life Cycle Updates include some fancy graphs and some basic statistical analysis. However, I’d like to get a bit more personal this week. A brief digression. I just had an unbelievably bad restaurant experience. Inattentive service, attitude, incorrectly cooked food (that I could not send back due to an absent server), and plenty…
Livestream’s Focus on Technology Enables Quality Growth
By Brad Schwarzenbach | Published August 10th, 2009Livestream’s move into the Gestation Phase was driven largely by a core group of niche users empowered by Livestream’s intuitive editing tools to create cheaply produced yet valuable content. The overall quality of content in the channel is improving as they make video production and integration with other media channels easier.
Vimeo Preparing for Monetization
By Brad Schwarzenbach | Published August 3rd, 2009Vimeo is the best site out there to find high-quality, creative video content. A couple months ago, we reported Vimeo was in the Escalation Phase of its New Media Life Cycle. The channel continues to evolve, and while it’s too early to declare that Vimeo is in full monetization, it is showing signs of maturing….
Newspaper Vending Machines 2.0
By Brad Schwarzenbach | Published July 27th, 2009Micropayments could be the next big thing in web content monetization. While paying one small price for media has worked for iTunes, are people ready to part with a dollar to read a news article they can’t get anywhere else?
Contenture and TipJoy are two new sites experimenting with micropayment functionality.
Docstoc enters the Adoption Phase of its New Media Life Cycle
By Andrew Davis | Published July 13th, 2009Professional document-sharing site Docstoc has a very robust functionality that has driven it past Experimentation and into the Adoption Phase of its New Media Life Cycle. However, ridding the channel of spam and illegal content, in addition to attracting more valuable content, will be hurdles it needs to overcome to get to Gestation and beyond.
Tumblr Meets its Match in Posterous
By Andrew Davis | Published July 6th, 2009Blog site Posterous is drawing attention and traffic by offering a dead simple email and publish interface. No signup, no login. Any email will do. But can they build a quality channel?
Has Twitter Missed Their Monetization Boat?
By Andrew Davis | Published June 22nd, 2009While Twitter and Time Magazine hail Twitter as the next big thing in social media, I think that not only is this premature, it might be just plain wrong. There are already signs that attrition is on the rise at Twitter as users struggle to find value in the content.
YouTube, Hulu, and a War the TV Networks Could Lose
By Andrew Davis | Published June 15th, 2009To assume that Hulu has won as the channel of choice for online video distribution is very premature. Despite predictions of YouTube’s demise due to poor channel content growth and weak revenues, I am here to tell you that this is a long war that YouTube can win.
Flickr.com in Maintain Phase of Life Cycle
By Andrew Davis | Published June 9th, 2009Flickr’s traffic has been essentially flat for the past six months, with traffic hovering just under 30 million uniques daily. Just because Flickr has reached the “end” of our life cycle model doesn’t mean it’s done innovating. Any site needs to continually grow with the needs of its already enthusiastic userbase. Here again, Flickr is making excellent moves.
Vimeo.com: Honda Insight The Medium is the Message
By Andrew Davis | Published June 1st, 2009“Vimeo is a thriving community of people who love to make and share video.” Now reaching more than 4 million unique views a month, Vimeo continues to focus more on quality than on quantity. Vimeo also has a robust community channel, where users can create “projects” and users from anywhere can collaborate on production.
If you’re not on Scribd, seriously, what are you waiting for?
By Andrew Davis | Published May 25th, 2009Back in March, I reported that Scribd.com had just entered the monetization phase of its New Media Life Cycle. As the name indicates, this phase is marked by mainstream users looking to monetize their content. Well, it was heavily reported today that Scribd is now a Scribd Store with a very attractive monetization program for users.
Perfect Time To Sell Skype: In the Gestation Phase
By Andrew Davis | Published May 21st, 2009Today’s Oprah show will travel around the world using Skype’s video telecommunications technology. It’s a perfect opportunity to talk about why this is the best time to sell Skype. It’s no secret that eBay wants to sell Skype and their partnership with Oprah provides all the fuel for the right kind of sales strategy for a startup like Skype.
12-second Cocktails Demonstrate Power of 12seconds.tv
By Andrew Davis | Published May 4th, 2009Back in February I documented how 12seconds.tv had entered the gestation phase of its New Media Life Cycle, characterized by a small group of dedicated users embracing the new micro-vlogging platform, with overall quality remaining mediocre at best while the early adopters experiment to define the content. May is upon us and it’s time for…
Twitter and the ‘What Now Factor’
By Andrew Davis | Published April 18th, 2009As Twitter nears the peak of escalation, I thought we should look to the past for an example of how a channel, like Twitter, starts losing its luster; its most powerful users and its mass appeal.