I posted back in early June (here) about my desire to be able to add unique/online video content into GetGlue’s application. The reasons for this are primarily selfish. I want to be able to discover new longtail content from my peers and promote real talent online. (If you looked through some of those videos, you’ll see what I mean.) Aside from that, does The Walking Dead really need help promoting its show?
I was pleasantly surprised when GetGlue reached out to me to get some more detail around some of my thoughts they also wanted a complete list of the content that was online that I had found. (Check the bottom of this post for a couple of good resources.) The conversation was good and the two primary issues around the Open Platform project raised were:
- Validating the quality of content (aka it’s not porn)
- GetGlue is primarily focused on long-form video
- Who’s going to do the work?
These are  completely valid issues and yet there are solutions. I’ll wrap all this up in an overall recommendation.
The GetGlue Open Platform would be comprised of developers creating/coding an open source extension to the GetGlue application. They would not only be coding, they would be monitoring the online/longtail content that was recommended into the system. These developers already use GetGlue and are real fans of the current system; they just need to be found. Along with monitoring, the system would utilize members to flag content that was inappropriate. As for current focus on long-form, the future of content appears to be headed two directions. The average movie time is increasing but online content is experiencing Twitterfication. Most videos I highlighted in my original post are short. 3-10 minutes short and trust me, they are of amazing quality and there are a metric ton of short form video out there I’ve not seen. Overall, the volume of short-form will outweigh the number of long form-videos. To ignore this trend would be dangerous. GetGlue knows this and that was one of the reasons they called.
The product itself would be very simple.
- Title
- URL
- Video category/categories
- Summary
- Language
- Rating (1-4 stars)
- Duration (this would be automatically populated)
- Thumbnail selection (optional)
This type of collaboration with customers will build long-term engagement, a very real community and a rabid fanbase. Not to mention a treasure trove of data. As for a comprehensive list of free online videos, I found a couple of things on Twitter that look promising.
I’m sure there are many many more and a partnership with Vimeo is a no-brainer. This would be an amazing project!
