Tag Archives: Facebook

The Best Live Streaming App for Private Events and Social Distancing Broadcasts

As you can see, this was one hot ticket!

This January, when I had my daughter baptized, I couldn’t invite any friends or family because of the pandemic. I still wanted to invite folks to see the ceremony and join with prayers remotely. This seems like a really common circumstance in 2020 and 2021 but I struggled to find an app that solved this simple problem. All I needed was:

  • An easy-to-access live stream — I couldn’t put older relatives through software downloads and didn’t want to sack folks with social media account sign-up hoops. I just wanted a link they could go visit on any device.
  • Free or inexpensive — being a very small audience, I couldn’t justify a large cost (although after hunting for solutions for hours, I got pretty close to paying whatever it would take)
  • Mobile-friendly — honestly, my iPhone 12 is probably the best all-around camera I own so the software had to be a mobile-friendly app
  • Private — I don’t want to share this stream widely — it’s basically an invite-only, private virtual ceremony I want to email to only family and friends

I went to all the usual suspects but none came even close to fitting the bill:

  • CONFERENCING SOLUTIONS – Zoom, BlueJeans and Google Meet are kind of the first thing you think of during these social distancing times but all of them are really optimized for two-way communication and I didn’t want folks talking amongst themselves or to require people to download special software.
  • CREATOR PLATFORMS – Twitch and YouTube are known for quality live streaming but because they cater to creators, they didn’t work. YouTube doesn’t allow mobile live streaming unless you have thousands of subscribers. Twitch wants you to reach an audience so their interface makes you share the broadcast into a channel — last thing I need are gamer trolls watching my baby’s baptism.
  • SOCIAL SITES – I tried Instagram, Facebook, Periscope and Twitter but all of them required you to broadcast to a select “group” for a private stream. It’s all part of their growth hacking obsession and switching cost manipulations: they want you to invite friends to make an account or continually prove the value of their network effect to folks who are already signed up.

The winning solution

I was shocked at the ultimate perfect solution: IBM Watson Media Live Streaming. I love it! I haven’t thought of IBM as a go-to problem-solving purveyor in years. You may as well tell me that the best solution is a product from Texas Instruments.

I believe the product is meant primarily for corporate live streaming but that pretty much made it an even better lock for private, secure, reliable streaming. That also means it’s probably outrageously expensive — but that’s okay for you and me and our one-off private events because they have a free 30-day trial!

IBM bought Ustream years ago and this mobile app and desktop interface is the result of that acquisition. Here’s what you get:

  • Private place to stream — generate your own private link where the stream will live, in advance, and you can even password-protect it
  • Seamless mobile app — so I can take advantage of the great camera (and decent audio capture) on my iPhone
  • Customize interactivity — you can allow or remove comments and social sharing to your liking

One important downside: the free trial only lets you have 5 live viewers of your stream. But this should be plenty for a small event where grandmas and grandpas are probably sharing devices from home anyway. You can also publish the video when it’s through which allows unlimited viewing afterward, on-demand. If 5 viewers is still too restrictive, their full account is $100/month.

Other solutions that came close

I’m sure there are others out there Googling and researching desperately as I was. If IBM isn’t the right fit, here’s what else I considered:

  • Livestream — Livestream.com was purchased by Vimeo and actually, many churches use their service because it’s so great for this use case. For whatever reason, Vimeo has bundled this in with their highest-tier $75/month account, which I came close to plunking down for, even with my small event.
  • Microsoft Stream – From what I understand, this is included free in business Office accounts, which nearly every professional has. I, unfortunately, have a “home” subscription so it wouldn’t work for me — even though that’s nearly the same cost as the business version. Microsoft should seriously reconsider this policy because it would be a nice add-value for families.

Apple’s Rumored Hardware & Content Bundle – Maybe Content is Just for Retention?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the rumor of Apple’s hardware and content subscription bundle. The idea — whether it actually happens or not — is that they’d create a very expensive subscription of $80/month or so that bundles Apple Music, the new Apple original content, Apple Care, iCloud and a new iPhone every year. This is very much a rumor but very viable avenue posited here and by Matthew Ball at Redef.

This immediately reminds me that for years, Americans paid $100+ per month for another expensive hardware and content bundle: cable TV. I remember the salesman coming to my home and explaining to my parents what cable TV included. It was much more than TV, because before the internet, that box was your only gateway to many things. It was movies, music channels, educational programming for your kids, breaking news, live concerts and the hardware to make it all look beautiful on your only screen.

One way to frame Apple’s rumored hardware/content bundle is that they attract you with their device ecosystem (hardware) and then keep you hooked with their shows and music (content). The phone and its TV and cloud components are already a huge draw for audiences so their content can play the role of keeping users engaged there by making that ecosystem useful on a daily basis.

This got me thinking… maybe content isn’t really an effective audience awareness or acquisition tool AT ALL. Maybe, when all the cards fall, content is just the retention piece of a recurring payment business model and other elements of the bundle are what bring you in the door. This is somewhat reflected by the calculus Amazon did around their original video: it turned out that prestige TV shows like Mozart in the Jungle and Man in the High Castle weren’t such an efficient acquisition tool for Prime.

Amazon shows don't easily drive Prime memberships

Check out how this thinking might apply to other businesses. I’ll use this analogy: come for X (acquisition); stay for content (retention).

  • Apple hardware/content bundle – Come for the hardware ecosystem; stay for Oprah.
  • Amazon Prime – Come for free shipping; stay for Nicole Kidman.
  • HQ — Come for a cash prize; stay for the trivia.
  • Facebook — Come for your friends; stay for Facebook Watch.
  • And the corollary seems to also be true with failed SVODs and streaming services — there’s no acquisition component, just a bunch of originals and licensed content to retain the audience that never came.

There are probably a bunch of examples that prove this thesis wrong, chief of which are Netflix and HBO. (But you could argue that they OVER spend on content, trying to force content into becoming an acquisition tool.)

Even if it’s only a little true, it’s a helpful thought experiment: what if you had to launch a streaming service WITHOUT using content to acquire an audience? You’d have to offer real utility to your users — some other valuable product or service that would attract them to your subscription. Apple already has that part figured out: the phone, the ecosystem. And on the content side of your business, brands like Marvel, leagues like the NFL and celebrities like Oprah wouldn’t be as valuable because you already have a giant draw for new users. If your content is only playing the role of retention, it doesn’t need to hit an attention-grabbing must-see fever-pitch. It can be much less ambitious. You can spend way less than Netflix.

Why Netflix Needs a Mobile Content Strategy

Netflix is killin it and I continue to be bullish on their future. There’s one corner of the business I’m afraid they’re being just a little too pensive about: mobile.

This year, they’ve launched some of their first short-form programming and some new native portrait features in their mobile apps. But I’m afraid this won’t stop other mobile competitors — Google and Facebook — from locking them out of this critical piece of the entertainment pie. Now is the time for them to begin spending in the mobile content space and here’s how they should begin.

Why mobile is critical to Netflix

Let’s start with why Netflix should care.

There’s an obvious massive market of short form video consumption, well-proven by YouTube and Facebook. 34% of global internet video traffic is shortform. So, when Netflix says they’re competing with all forms of entertainment, this seems like an obvious adjacent area to pick up some additional engagement — whereas interactive, live and sports are much more of a moonshot.

But I think all of that frames this as a business expansion opportunity when I actually think this is a threat to Netflix’s stranglehold on the streaming market. Have a look at this graph, which explains the userflow of new subscribers to the service.

When this slide first broke, a lot of emphasis was put on the fact that after 6 months, 70% of Netflix subscribers were watching on a big TV. What stands out to me is that 10% are STILL watching on a mobile phone. Just 1 month in, more than 15% are still struggling to watch long form TV shows and movies on a tiny mobile screen. And right from the getgo, a full THIRD of Netflix’s new users start on a mobile device.

We are in a mobile world and who cares that people watch more content on their mobile phones — people TRANSACT more on their mobile phones. Enough people subscribe to Netflix straight through iOS that they’re trying to bypass Apple altogether — another sign of just how many folks sign up on mobile. Given that Netflix’s model is dependent on one giant transaction at the top of the funnel (their subscription), many more of their new customers are entering their ecosystem through mobile phones. And this user flows shows just how long it takes that mobile customer to begin finding big-screen-TV-type-value in their subscription. Were Netflix to actually provide valuable mobile content during that couple-month transition, they’d reduce churn among new users. (Still another strategy would be a freemium model of mobile-only content to lure users through the paywall when they realize the app’s value on another screen.)

What Netflix is already trying in mobile

Netflix is not completely blind to this. They’ve launched a few new short-form originals and mobile products this year. For those trying to reverse-engineer their mobile content strategy, here’s a recap of their short form content:

  • The Comedy Lineup (15 minutes) – Mini stand-up comedy specials
  • Explained (14-18 minutes) – Newsmagazine (Vox)
  • Follow This (16-18 minutes) – Newsmagazine (Buzzfeed)
  • Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (12-25 minute) – Celebrity interviews with Jerry Seinfeld
  • Marching Orders (12 minutes) – Docuseries
  • Cooking on High (14 minutes) – Competition reality

In the scheme of Netflix’s $6 billion content spend, I’d call this an extremely modest beginning — it’s really just a test. It’s heavy on news and unscripted, there are no filmmakers, high-value talents or standout IPs. I estimate their 2018 spend on short form around $20MM at most. To make a meaningful move into mobile, they’ll need to spend 5-10x that.

How Netflix could form a mobile content strategy

It’s clear that Netflix needs to get into the mobile content game ASAP. But how? So many short form content platforms from go90 to Watchable have flamed out because of a lack of distribution.

Broadly, I’d approach this similarly to the rest of Netflix’s business:

  1. START FAST with a mountain of inexpensive mobile content that’s easy and fast to launch.
  2. PIVOT TO PREMIUM – Use the analytics gathered from starting fast to inform a mobile Originals strategy and finance exclusive new series.

Why this two-part strategy always works is the subject of a whole other blog post. But Netflix is in a unique position to build a war chest of start-fast mobile content at a low cost-per minute without sacrificing their premium values. Step one of fast/easy/quick mobile content — pretty obvious — is licensing. Now is a fantastic time to cheaply license premium mobile content. Every mobile content studio is clamoring to work with Netflix which earns them outrageous leverage. Plus, many of them were gifted back go90 or other mobile series that they have no place to distribute. The second source of start-fast content is probably less obvious: the content they already have. Netflix outright owns a lot of their shows and by getting creative, they’ll find a new life if they’re re-cut for a shorter runtime or carefully cropped for a vertical screen.

When audiences coalesce around their start-fast mobile content, they can decide where it makes sense to pivot to premium, maintain licenses or trim back.

In sum, I think mobile is a crucial growth area for Netflix and a place they have some natural competitive advantages. They could quickly turn a source of churn into a new source of revenue and expansion. I predict they’ll make some dedicated moves in this space but it’s going to take a larger commitment to realize the potential mobile content has in Netflix’s future.

Media and Tech Moguls’ ‘Rare Displays of Mortality’ Will Make You Feel Better About Your Mistakes

Jeff Bezos is #1 on Vanity Fair's listWeighted way-too-heavily with tech platform executives, journalists and media moguls, Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list (out today) is basically a who’s-who of people I idolize… But my favorite part of the list is how they recap their picks and in particular, an occasional category dubbed “RARE DISPLAY OF MORTALITY” which highlights one of their colossal missteps in 2017, instead of how they continued to dominate.

I’m a perfectionist. I’m an asshole to myself when I make mistakes. So it helped me a ton to read a laundry list of mistakes and embarrassments made by a usually infallible elite. They’re just like us! Here are some highlights:

  • Peter Thiel would have $6 billion if he hadn’t unloaded his Facebook stock soon after the IPO
  • Two of Shonda Rhimes‘s new shows were cancelled this year
  • The joke was on Stephen Colbert and Showtime’s Election Night Special when the election results upended the entire show
  • Remember when Mark Zuckerberg said it was “crazy” that Facebook might have swung the election?
  • Larry Page‘s own CFO is giving hell to his pet-projects like Fiber
  • Tim Cook helms a company about to be worth a trillion dollars… but his latest innovation is an Echo rip-off and their first original program was Planet of the Apps which one reviewer said “feels like something that was developed at a cocktail party”
  • Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet/Google, made a $2.7-billion-dollar anti-trust mistake in the EU
  • The New York Times is firing hundreds of employees
  • Snap’s stock is down 40% and it was probably the most-anticipated IPO of the year
  • Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss announced their next project was about an alternate-history where the Confederates won the Civil War and it was naturally hosed into submission online
  • Head of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy has had to fire 3 directors of Star Wars installments
  • Marc Andreessen has never hired a female partner at Andreessen Horowitz
  • But of course Jeff Bezos, #1 for the second year in a row… is perfect

The Google/Facebook Digital Ad Duopoly by the Numbers – 2017 Advertising Revenue by Company

Digital ad revenue by company 2017People keep saying that Google and Facebook get 90% of digital ad spending… though still a concerning stat, this is somewhat of a distortion. The rumor started with Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report and has been paraphrased and rounded up. The real stat is that the duopoly gets about 90% of digital spending growth. So, as advertisers and agencies spend more on digital ads, Google and Facebook are gobbling up most of the new money. That doesn’t really make them a monopoly… it just means they’re doing a great job at keeping other companies from growing in a white-hot space.

eMarketer released some reports giving us real insight into their dominance. Turns out, the duopoly has about 63.1% of the spending. Again, this should still be concerning to you if you work in advertising for anyone but Google and Facebook… but it paints a slightly more optimistic picture.

Check out their data below. Since I’m mostly concerned with market share, I’ve compiled that nicely here:

  • Google 42.17% (YouTube 4.67%)
  • Facebook 20.93% (Instagram 3.71%)
  • Microsoft 4.34% (Linkedin 0.98%)
  • Verizon 4.34%
  • Amazon 1.99%
  • Twitter 1.46%
  • Yelp 0.87%
  • Snap 0.77%
  • IAC 0.54%

Here are my observations:

  • Google has twice the market share of Facebook – When we say the word “duopoly” or call out 90% of growth and 60% of market share, we’re missing the fact that Google has more than twice the market share of Facebook. Put another way, Google has more market share than Facebook and all the other significant digital ad companies combined.
  • Instagram vs. YouTube – By the same token, Facebook has one asset that’s whooping Google: Instagram. Without much of a video product, Instagram is still only $800M behind YouTube in terms of net revenue and the eMarketer predictions have Instagram surpassing YouTube next year.
  • Photo finish for 3rd – I’m really interested in who has the best chance of eating away at the duopoly and it’s a photo-finish for third place with Microsoft and Verizon holding 4.34% of the market each. But they might not really be competitors because AOL/Verizon actually reps a lot of Microsoft’s inventory and why wouldn’t they partner to take down the Goliaths? It would be interesting if these two could start to chip away at either.
  • Snapchat is slightly better off than they look – I’m bullish on Snap because I like a good underdog. eMarketer points out that while they only have .08% of the overall digital ad market, they have more than 1% of mobile and a lot more teens than Facebook and Instagram.
  • And Amazon is lurking at 2% and they just started trying.
  • Apple isn’t on this chart.

SnapChat’s Viewability Advantage Over Facebook

What’s one of today’s prime digital advertising concerns? Viewability.

In case you’re out of the loop: Viewability is more or less a measurement of whether or not a video ad is actually viewed by an audience. (Seems odd, right? A marketer can buy and pay for an ad that was never “viewed.”) A number of factors contribute to the dwindling of this number from fast-scrolling users to bots and videos played “under the fold” or hidden in banners or buggy units.

That is why it should be very concerning that Facebook was recently accused of a less than 30% viewability rate by agencies using third-party measurement firms. Viewability is never going to be perfect and that’s OK — viewability is really just a proxy for “how much is my ad dominating that consumer’s attention” and that’s why agencies are measuring it. Some products and platforms will always perform better in this way… we love TV because that’s a big-ass screen with sight, sound and motion and I get all of it for a 30-second spot.

SnapChat’s ad product, by comparison, is extremely viewable. This is one reason that Snap has a huge advantage (esp. in terms of shifting TV ad spend), even though Facebook and Instagram have potentially slowed their growth. Snap’s ad product takes up the whole screen. It can’t be minimized, ignored or “tuned out.” Further, its users are completely engaged in the content — they’re burning the screen, skipping anything they deem unworthy of their attention. They’re leaning forward, right into your ad. Earn their consideration and you get a never-before-seen level of “dominating the consumer’s attention” for 10 seconds. It’s probably BETTER than TV.

Here’s SnapChat continuing to master product design and UI — it’s all about the user first… and just so happens to whet the advertisers’ demand for viewability.

Social network showdown

I published this piece in the Los Angeles Loyolan as part of a Myspace versus Facebook debate — indeed, a hackneyed topic. I think we both bring new things to the table. You can read the Myspace article here and mine below.

facebookcartoon

Let’s talk about our campus as though it were a social network like Facebook or MySpace. The students are represented by their profiles, McKay is like a Facebook group and John O’Connor is kind of like Tom. The confines of the bluff are what make this geographic location into its own social network. Our particular geography makes us feel safe – we’re bordered by a bluff on one side, a quaint neighborhood on the other and there’s only two gated entrances to this cute little compound. When I stand out on the bluff and watch from afar as a helicopter beams its spotlight on a burglar (hacker) in the streets below, I feel safe – which is just good enough. I feel safe, but in reality, this is Los Angeles, where people will come from off-campus. People get harassed right on Loyola Boulevard, or shot right outside the back entrance.

…Read the full story in the Los Angeles Loyolan