I just got a new inexpensive video camera. I opted for the Flip’s competitor Kodak Zi6, because the codec plays well on a Mac and H.264 is simply a superior format. But, I have to say the design is not as elegant as the Flip’s and I had some issues recording with it, which seemed to have been solved by putting in a better, faster SD card. So, I finally got it to work (words that ideally should not be said about a easy-to-use camera like this) and here’s my cat video to prove it (highly compressed).
Cats are in control of this revolution and you won’t understand it until you make a cat video. Why? Production costs are soooo low that we have millions of cat videos and some of them get a tremendous amount of traffic (see example below with +1.2MM views).
It’s cheap to produce and to distribute. Get it? These are the two main ingredients that the entire communication industry is built around. Newspapers are sustained by advertising because of their distribution power (advertisers want to reach lots of people, so they are willing to pay lots of money, yet printed ads are more expensive to produce than one online); TV has lots of reach and also expensive production values that once guaranteed eyeballs; ad agencies charge a lot of money for production because we thought that glossy ads were they way to attract attention; videographers and photographers based their business models on expensive production difficult for other people to make. But inexpensive technology disrupts all this. Case in point: cat videos.
Not everything is lost though. Massive distribution is not the end-all-be-all, nor is high-end production. New sets of value are emerging and we determine our trust and reliance based on quality of content, storytelling, transparency and consistency. This describes a new order: new leaders are emerging on the ‘net…and money will follow.
This comes to my last point. If you are able to grow a loyal and large audience for your blog, videos or chosen digital content–-don’t count on a standard ad model to sustain your business. Along with the crisis in journalism and entertainment goes one in advertising and PR. We’re all rethinking and experimenting with new business models and that is the beauty of this cat revolution.
P.S. One person that gets the cat revolution is my colleague Kirk Mastin. He’s a professional photographer and videographer who’s taken on the challenge of producing high quality content with low-end consumer technology. Check out his blog: Lo-Fi-Hi-style
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