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Adam Kleinberg
Mark Cuban, Nalts and Videonomics
by Adam Kleinberg
Last Thursday, I spoke at the Videonomics conference in Dallas. The invite-only event drew some amazing people—the other speakers included YouTube web-lebrity Kevin Nalts (of farting in a library fame) and Mark Cuban (billionaire/Dallas Mavericks owner/king shark on Shark Tank).
The consensus on online video?
According to Mark Cuban: "Online video is irrelevant. The top videos most days on YouTube get 250-750k views. If you got that kind of traffic on TV, you'd be a huge failure."
Bummer for YouTube who just poured two hundred million dollars into original made-for-web content for marketers to put their ads next to. Of course, they made a killing selling that ad-space at the New Fronts, so they probably don't care what Cuban thinks.
Of course, Nalts was on a different page. He's produced over 1,000 videos on YouTube that have collectively garnered over a quarter of a BILLION views. Farts are funny, man. Don't believe me? Watch this.
My POV is that online video is clearly relevant, but it will never come close to the scale of TV in its current incarnation. What will happen long before that is that TV itself will become digital making the online/offline debate a moot point.
And while I don't agree with Mark's view on the relevance of digital video, I have to say, the man is brilliant. It was really a treat to see him speak and get to talk with him afterward. It's no surprise that the man is a billionaire. He is a true student of the human condition. The man's brain is huge.
One of the things we discussed was how he judged investment opportunities. Being the founder of HDNet and Broadcast.com, Mark knows the nuts and bolts of media technology. But just as important as technology is execution. Is it fun? Is it cool? Do you want to show it to your friends?
He was visibly excited about a second screen iPad app he invested in (Mark, if you could add the name of the company to comments that'd be great) that allows you to fling tomatoes at the screen on your TV.
Every time a friend comes over, Mark's kid goes berzerk: "Let me show Johnny how we go splat!
I'm going to write a post (certainly a more organized one than this) on "Culture as Interface" showing how companies like this are making the cultural execution innate to their experience design—from splatting tomatoes to Facebook pokes to Douche Bag badges on Foursquare. Stay tuned for that.
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