Xavier Alabart's Blog

Creating a Multi-Channel Network (MCN) today is a quite hard task and it's getting harder and harder.

Reasons for getting harder

YouTube ecosystem has grown significantly and therefore professionality has kicked in. Time for amateurs has past.

YouTube is changing the rules to get in, Today you need to be "bigger" to be accepted/invited to be an MCN. And every month the number goes up. To know the exact number today please ask your YouTube Content Manager.

Another change is that for some time MCNs had the exclusivity of being capable to monetize content in YouTube, now this exclusivity is gone. Any channel can earn money directly. (There are some things a simple Partner can not do so as having ContentID)

Effective CPM (Real Cost per Mile views) has been decreasing, and therefore intrinsic profit of content. There are a few reasons why this is happening, being one of them the exponential boom of mobile views (that are less monetizable due to technology lack of capability to place ads). The other big reason is that there are more views than ads to place. So today its harder to earn money from the same number of views. Some experts say this trend will change soon. As the ad investments go away from the traditional media to online better deals online will be expected, but nobody knows when that will happen.

3 ways to become an MCN

Method 1: Start Small

Create a Lean Minimal Business Plan

Define a Content Strategy. ( what you love to create? )

Create or find Content based on your Defined Content Strategy.

Help (as consultant mode) to growth other channels. From this you will learn all the necessary basics of how to create content and promote it. Being a MCN is about helping others to make money.

Request a Sub-Network agreement from any well known Network. They usually provide you with all tech necessary to manage the Sub-Network and take around 50% of your earnings, so you will need to be lean!!.

Execute, Execute and Execute. Do Business as usual.

At some point you will have enough, channels, watch time, views and experience to make the case to YouTube to upgrade and have your own CMS with MCN status.

Method 2: Start Different

Create a Lean Business Plan focusing on why you are different.

Don't forget to include in the plan all necessary tools and technologies to run the company: There are companies that provide such technologies already bundled.

You will need at least ( probably more as you grow)

Creator Dashboard (to inform your creators)

Creator-Network Communication (Forums and Messages)

Contract Manager (to keep track of terms agreed with your creators)

CRM, Creator Relationship Manager, (all together)

Reporting (to known your earnings)

Payments Automatization (to do Payments to all your creators)

Get some investors based on your Business Plan. Remember that you will need to prove them, that you are actually different. Don't be fool, you might convince your investors that know nothing about video, but you will not be able to convince YouTube, so think deeply about why your differentiation is worthy.

Some Differentiation strategies are: Technolgy, Own Content, Own Facilities, Niche Content, New Content Category, Country of operations, etc.

For this method you need zero views under your belt, but you really need to prove that you know what you are doing.

With all that proved you can go to YouTube Partner manager and present your Proposal. If your idea truly adds value to the YouTube ecosystem you will get your own CMS with MCN status.

Method 3: Start Big (but not alone)

Create a Business Plan.

Convince an existing Media Company to create a new business opportunity on YouTube.

Pile as much professional content as you can to get "green light" from YouTube.

Plan the use all leverage from your Media Company.

About 6 months ago we started using DesignThinking methodology at Aether Consulting and the impact so far it's good.

This time allow us to validate that the methodology also works in software development because DesignThinking has allowed us to understand better our clients. In simple words allows us to put in their shoes and crafting better solutions for them.

What's DesignThinking applied in Web Solution Development?  The first step of DT (DesignThinking) it´s in many ways a holistic expansion of "User Experience" that is already an accepted in the web industry.

But their application is wider than web development, we also started using it to define SOA (Software Oriented Architecture) solutions, and understanding each node as "user" with it's inherent needs, ways and particularities. We discovered that helps us to really understand what the application needs to do and how split it in services.

Another particular aspect of DesignThinking that suits us is the acceptance of test, change and rapid prototyping as part of the natural flow. It basically allows us to accept the changes in a project more comfortably. 

Despite changes in the scope of the project the real bottom need of the client rarely changes which means that changes are psychology less traumatic for the developers, because changes actually make sense and are usually perceived as smaller changes.

For this reason we agreed to change the name of our developers to designers ... so we don't want to consider ourselves as just developers we are now DESIGNERs ... we believe that a wider view allow us to better craft solutions for our clients.

If you are interested to know more about our experiences in DesignThinking please contact us at www.aetherconsulting.net

Quieres que tu niño/a sea astronauta? En Spaii todo es posible.

We all have been un-ready ... at some point or another, for example when we start a new job we can be productive from the first day, there is always little things that you don't know, that don't understand ... that basically make you not ready? But that different from being not profesional.

As the first un-readiness the later if more permanent. With year I learn that in both cases the same approach is valid.

Step 0

Define your work and the other profesional clearly to your boss, if not the overall low quality of work might fireback you because no one will be able to differentiate you in the team.

Step 1

Define your boundaries in terms of what types of behavior you will and won't tolerate in the team. Clearly defining these limits according to your own standards of professionalism makes it easier to ignore smaller incidents. It also makes it easier to speak up when unprofessional behavior does cross the line.

Step 2

Demonstrate professional behavior yourself at every opportunity. Anyone outside of your team, including customers and other managers, if not others may be inclined to view you and your colleague as part of the same group of unprofessional  Demonstrating the contrast between your professionalism and that of your colleague makes it less likely his behavior will reflect on you. 

Step 3

Take note of your colleague's good qualities and remind yourself of these when he acts unprofessionally. This is especially helpful after small incidents that do not warrant you taking action.

Step 4

Document any unprofessional incidents in a private journal if you believe the behavior exhibited by your colleague may jeopardize your own career and team performance. Include dates and times, as well as any witnesses who were present. This documentation may be useful if your colleague's actions put you in a position where you are facing a review, demotion or termination.

Step 5

Ask to speak to your colleague privately whenever his unprofessional behavior is unacceptable to you. Describe the incident and his behavior without speculating on what you believe may be the cause of the behaviour.

Every day we are hearing more and more talk about APIs, and how they are changing the way we are developing applications (web and mobile) even CEOs from non-technical companies are learning what API is about.

The growth is so great that Andreessen Horowitz it's calling it a plague. and it's investing some bucks in making it less a mess.

Platforms like Apigee or Mashery and others are focusing in the infrastructure point of view, how to deal with the high volume of requests and creating hubs for merging legacy APIs and adding some layer of control to be able to monetize.

Some other type of companies are more focused in the creation point of view, how you can externalise information internally to make it profitable for the company and the society, Among these are Datownia as well as Apigee  and Mashery mentioned before with their consoles.

The fact is that the growth is un-stoppable.

Why? Because they are service centric, in order to build an API to exploit you have no other chance to really thing what information is really relevant, which content is really relevant, ( content is king ).

In conclusion the use of API foce to get the most of the data because intends to be useful and at the end of the day developers are really practical.

These model of understanding the service I would say is translation of "added value methodology" such technique intends to split business process in order to understand what they really produce, to what extend they create value. The technique of course focuses in the business value rather than the estructure as itself but functionality is clearly a byproduct.

I would say that finally business managers understand what a functional analysis is ... hurra :)

There is a but, (always is) "functionality" is not exactly the same as "service" a service it's a higher level of abstraction since it could include really a few functionalities. I will say is the same difference there is between an API and a Webservice.

Now we clarified what a Service is and why and API is more like a service oriented programming we can start talking about the future.

These changes on programming will have an impact on how the next generation softwares are defined, modelled. The focus will be the service in a very low level. Companies will not be using a ERP or CRM, they will be using Solutions that aggregate different services, services that will be designed to be replaced by another service, in the same way we change a while in a car once we got a flat tire. We will stop buying complete integrated one vendor solutions we will have "Frankensteins" that comply with a sort of services that we need covered.

So yes, Solutions will need to be extremely dynamic, flexible and adaptive to level that today are unthinkable.

And there in this area is where the next wave of innovations in the API sector will come, the Interconnection point of view. When i say interconnection I am not talking about integrate, I am taling about "Plug and Play" systems.

 Hiroshi Mikitani 

(via http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130425135940-52782505-search-is-not-shopping ) 

One of the problems with e-commerce today is the tendency to equate “search” with “shopping.” They are not the same thing. In fact, they represent two very different visions for the future of e-commerce.

Search is what you find when you visit some of the leading e-commerce sites. You’ll find a box. You type in what you want. The technology does its job and sends back a list of products. You evaluate, click and the transaction is done.

Then there’s shopping. In our vision of e-commerce, shopping is not a utilitarian function, but instead, a process of discovery. Think of a time you visited a store and found something wonderful, something unexpected. You don’t have to give that up in order to shop online. Now think of a time when you went shopping but needed advice, so you tapped the knowledge of a merchant or even a fellow shopper. Again, we see no reason to abandon those experiences just to have the efficiency of the digital age.

At Rakuten, we offer not search, but discovery.

We deliver people. Who are the people behind the screen? When your e-commerce experience is all about search, there are no people. In our vision, the merchants of the digital marketplace are present to connect with customers, share with them news and information, be a resource to the shopper.

We deliver community. When we shop, we want more than just goods or services. We also look to connect with others who share our interests. Perhaps we want to discuss literature with other book lovers, share funny photos with other pet owners, talk about the challenges of parenthood or career? A search function can’t help you. A discovery-based experience can do all of this and more.

So much of what is new and exciting today in the digital world is all about discovery – consider popular services such as Pinterest and Instagram. Consumers don’t gravitate to them to type into a search box. They are there to discover something new.

Here you can see a presentation from Andrew Hoppin which I had the pleasure to meet in Barcelona about how open data will make Governments more efficient and transparent. Andrew was first CIO of NewYork Senate and now a consultant in the area.

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What's open data? ( from wiki )

Nicole Merchant about the #socialEra ... very interesting overview of the impact of the social aspect in the business.

This chart comes from Business Insider Intelligence, a new research and and analysis service focused on the mobile and Internet industries. 

Second screen commerce — the purchase of products shown on TV with a mobile device — could become a lucrative niche.

To begin with, consumers are already shopping on their mobile devices while watching TV (over 40 percent of tablet owners do so), so it's just a matter of steering shoppers toward specific products and shopping platforms.

Second screen commerce would also be a natural extension of advertising and product placement strategies. If you like a product advertised on television, it should be easy to act on impulse and purchase it immediately via a mobile device. Similarly, if there's a prominent product placement on a popular show, it should only take a few clicks to find it on your smartphone or tablet and buy it. 

There are some experiments in this space that have seen some success.

The "Watch With eBay" app, for example, steers shoppers to merchandise and memorabilia tied to shows or sports teams, so we find things like viewers of the hit AMC crime drama "Breaking Bad" being able to purchase t-shirts with the logo of "Pollos Hermanos," a chicken restaurant that features prominently in the show. 

However, before second screen commerce can take off, second screen behavior itself must become firmly established.

BI Intelligence