www.dpingram.com

The video industry doesn’t seem to have learnt anything from the music industry. A few years ago the music industry tried to stop all music download websites (no, not just websites, but the whole damn business). They took the approach of trying to sue the up coming juggernaught of a new consumer trend imnto the ditch.

It took them a few years to realise the trend was unstoppable and by that time the biggest record company wasn’t a record company anymore, it was a computer company (by the name of Apple).

Now Viacom is trying to do the same with the new web video industry by trying to sue YouTube to the tune of $1bn.

Guy’s, you may think you can stop it but you can’t. The best way is to work out how you can work with it (and the new players) so that you’re in the winning position to capitalise and make a shed load when it really becomes mass market.

Jeff Jarvis paraphrases a Morgan Stanley consultant:
“You can’t obstruct markets. You have to anticipate them. You need to go with the flow.”

The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned. (source: C-Net).

Hmm, that’ll be a nightmare for all the upload websites and may be considered a huge intrusion of personal privacy and liberties.

This could be another factor that will continue the push towards self-serving from your own PC as provided by izimi.

At izimi I’m always talking about disintermediation in relation to websites that get you to upload your stuff to them in order to share it with your friends. The current genre of user generated content sites work just like that. BUT, what happens when you get better technology, thats easier to use, in the hands of us little people? Well, those big guys start to get cut out (thats disintermediation).

I first came across this in the 90’s with supply chain management software. It started with e-commerce and ended up with whole supply chains rebuilding themselves to be shorter, faster, leaner, and better.

Now, after shouting about this concept recently in media and analyst briefings in San Fran, its nice to see the views being echoed here by Francis McInerney (Managing Director of North River Ventures).

Revolutions are not easy to spot in the beginning, but they always change the world and overthrow old ways. izimi is a revolutionary concept for sharing files that’s ahead of the curve of mass adoption. But d’you know what? I’d rather be ahead of it and ready, than behind it and dead. As broadband speeds increase (a given), and as people get used to leaving PCs on (also given, driven by things like P2P, Skype, Joost, home media servers, etc), it’s absolutely natural that we’ll just click and share stuff – straight from our own PCs (not forgetting you Mac fans, who’ll be doing it too). We won’t bother to upload it to anyone else’s servers when we can easily do it ourselves in a few clicks, and no waiting for uploads. This will become as obvious as email. (Remember, they said no-one was going to buy books online. And households were never going to get broadband speeds).

Like a lot of internet start-ups, I bet, there is a healthy frustration in izimi that we don’t immediately have gzillions of users as a result of our initial launch. There’s the natural questioning about the “what” that we’re doing, and its natural human instinct to question if what we’re doing is right, but this shouldn’t leak over into an assumption that the “what” that we’re doing is wrong. It’s a time for focus and drive.

Lest we forget, izimi has a fantastic unique set of features that save users time and hassle (just click and share – much faster than uploading it all). Though we all want instant success we need to spend more than two weeks telling people about this unique benefit (our revolution) before we even consider fundamental changes. When you’re doing something revolutionary, don’t expect everyone to get it and defect in two weeks.

Most start-ups don’t have a sustainable unique; izimi does. Our unique is that whatever you want to share, whatever, you can just click and share, and anyone can see it without having to get any special software, and you can choose to have it indexed by search engines. Let’s remember how this is different?

Click and share – no need to wait for uploads, just click and share, no waiting

Whatever you want – others only accept certain file types (because they are in the old ‘upload and store’ model

Anyone can see it – the alternatives that let you click and share are P2P networks, but they need your audience to have their software. With izimi they don’t need any special software.

Indexed by search engines – when you share a file with izimi it’s indexed by the major search engines, including Google, so the entire internet population can find you. Izimi content ranks particularly highly in search engine rankings.

We are lucky/clever enough to have a sustainable unique, and we shouldn’t take that for granted. It’s every tech company’s dream to have such a unique (we only know of less than a handful of other companies in the entire world doing anything like what we are doing) – what a position.

The trick now is to stay focused, refine what we have and improve our offering, not be tempted to make it wider and more confusing. Narrow your focus to broaden your appeal. Izimi is unique and it is hot, there is money there by executing correctly, and where we’re at now, post launch is that now is the time for refining our message and execution.

Izimi is the next logical step in self-publishing; izimi empowers you to publish what you want, when you want, and keeps you in control - no-one’s making the rules except you.

The old social networking services dictated what you could publish, but hey, that was fine when we had no alternatives. But, as Dylan said… the times they are a changin’… (lucky you can’t actually hear my singing). Now we have alteratives.

But, what worries me most are things like the Revver spam mail I got this week (they even gave me a link cos they knew my Outlook spam filter would censor it). Two (strike that, three) things concerned me:

- First: why did I get this email into the izimi help email??? Revver MUST be harvesting email addresses from the Internet, that’s the only way I can explain it. We’re not in the habit of using corporate help emails to sign up to other people’s services. Point one: I don’t like being spammed by these corporations. Don’t spam me.

- Second: MySpace is blocking Revver embeds. Awww, shame. Isn’t that just the point, they’re as bad as one another. Revver is spamming me, and News Corp is taking it upon itself to dictate what its loyal MySpace users can and can’t publish. It really sucks.

- Third (and this just occurred to me as I write), why is Revver asking me to tell MySpace what I think. Talk about using me as a pawn in its own battles (quote “send a message to Tom and tell him that you value MySpace as an open platform and that you hope they’ll reinstate Revver embeds”). Geez, I’m just a humble user, I guess I should just do what they say and be grateful that these guys let me play with them. Nope, think again.

It’s quite sad really, kinda like two lumbering old giants having a bitch-fight - not very pretty. And they’re trying to drag me into it too. Even worse still, what’s the fight about??? Control of YOUR content! Nice one.

We’ve spent a few days now meeting a whole bunch of really knowledgable people in the new media, web 2.0, internet space. We’ve had some amazing discussions and great insights from them all. To put some names to that we’ve met, so far this week, Robert Scoble (PodTech and of course the great Scobleizer), Chris Nuttal (FT), Rob Enderle (Enderle Group), Rafe Needleman (CNet), Ed Baig (USA Today), Eric Taub (NYT), Judy Rosall (ABI Research), Dave Needle (Internetnews.com), and Jeff O’Brien (Fortune Magazine).

What’s pretty clear is that these guys see the big picture, not just whats happening right in front of their noses today. That got me thinking, and I figured it would be important to really try to set the scene, place into context if you will, why izimi is so important. So let me try.

The internet is a rapidly changing space – what’s unheard of one year becomes plainly obvious the next. The whole social networking, social media, and user generated content phenomenon is one example: It’s a fundamental movement that characterises an increasing democratization of the web, putting more power into the hands of consumers (and distributing it away from the traditional big media players).

Yet, those consumers today must still upload their content to other people’s servers who act as intermediaries in getting the content from one person to the next. There are still big companies of power sitting in the middle of all these consumers, making all the rules, and they still hold the power. But democratization is a powerful force, and people demand greater control and power over time – and what I love about technology of that it is THE great enabler.

izimi is right on the curve of this, and its a fundamental change, and continues to introduce more power to the consumers, it’s the next logical step in the movement (although I suspect like many other ‘new ideas’, for some people this will only become obvious later).

izimi IS the future of internet publishing. izimi enables you to serve files, photos, music, videos (in fact any content you wish) straight from your own PC to anyone with a web browser - anyone with a web browser, direct from your own PC. There’s no need to upload you stuff to anywhere else, and there are no limitations on what you can publish, its all in your hands.

That is why I joined izimi, I can see the shift and as I speak to more and more people about izimi I see that I’m not the only one.

I just realised it might be a good time to put some faces to names, so here are two of the izimi team. This is Marc Lyne (CEO) on the left, and me, David Ingram (VP Product) on the right. Thats us at 440 Pacific Avenue…