Sunday, July 30, 2006
By Stuart Derdeyn

In newspaper land the Net thingy — “it’s out there” — is still a bit of a major disconnect. As if TV alone weren’t already a thorn in our sides, now along comes even more content, much of it grossly written and stunningly inaccurate, to foul up the works. “Read Full Article”

In newspaper land the Net thingy — “it’s out there” — is still a bit of a major disconnect. As if TV alone weren’t already a thorn in our sides, now along comes even more content, much of it grossly written and stunningly inaccurate, to foul up the works.

In this context, getting up to speed on the phenomenon of online video conduits is wickedly challenging.

I’ll freely admit that ink-stained scribes all secretly chuckle to see something out there putting the boots to our broadcast brethren. And it is cool logging into blip.tv and YouTube. Plus, gotuit is generating a lot of electronic press-kit materials from major labels these days, too. There are line-ups at the digital viewing theatre.

So how do you launch yet another application into the virtual chest and make it stand out?

That’s the question I put to Aaron Novak, the guy behind Stickam (www.stickam.com), a six-month-old, free-communication tool that’s recently joined the mass of other sites desperately wanting you to use them for showing that joke reel you shot on the long weekend when you were, y’know, inspired.

“Actually, we began working on a way for video conferencing with our parent company in Japan,” says Novak. “But we also wanted to develop an all-in-one tool you could put on your sms site or blog that would let you post video, audio and all the other stuff that goes along with webcam technology.”

Flash-based, the Stickam is “pretty much” platform independent and quite happy to work with PCs, assorted webcams and Macs. As a hook to separate itself from its competitors, the idea is that Stickam.com is about enabling live video feeds from just about wherever. More than 80,000 subscribers are taking advantage of it.

“What you see a lot of is bands using it to broadcast shows and practice sessions, some people doing their own sketch-comedy shows and we’ve still got a karaoke bar that broadcasts what’s on their stage each weekend.”

The biggest audience to date is a live-broadcast online wedding. It didn’t last much more than a week.

Novak and crew have been out to major festivals such as E3 and South by Southwest, too. There’s even a Paris Hilton video floating around. It’s an interview, OK. This site is clean.

“A nice thing is that even if someone misses the live event, you can upload it with pre-recorded video.”

There are 100 megabytes of storage for video and five for photos available to each user, and a quick-record feature that loads instantly for video-bloggers is getting some interest.

“More than anything else, I see a lot of bands using us.”

A ratings system is in place to judge what’s played. Developing an actual business plan is more important.

“We’re looking at an advertising model that will bring in revenues eventually. Right now it’s more of a tool for your sms site or blog. We’d obviously like to be as big as MySpace in time.”

That’s the catch.

How does Stickam get enough action to compete with the big guns? Right now, convenience is its strong suit.

The most immediate use I can see for Stickam is to use it as a video-conferencing tool with folks and relatives across the globe. It’s cheaper than phone calls and Granny looks hilarious when those occasional glitches make the feed go breakbeat.

Other ideas subscribers on the site have archived with their 500mb of storage include:

n Promo for PHC Extreme Sports with some major-ouch wipeouts.

n Really — I mean mind-numbingly — bad hootchie dance numbers.

n Two guys making fun of Creed. Which is like shooting apples in a barrel with a 12-gauge.

n A hippie with a hula hoop who likes house music. Aaaggghhhh!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 10:04 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.