Online Video Leaders: Andrew Baron

http://1timstreet.com

Online Video Leaders a series of blog posts to honor those pioneers who have laid the groundwork in getting Internet video to where it is today.

On October 26, 2004, Andrew Baron launched a daily news video blog with co-creator and host Amanda Congdon called Rocketboom. Andrew's comic newscast was inspirational to the likes of Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine of Ask A Ninja as well as Tiki Bar TV's Jeff Macpherson who inspired me to create French Maid TV.

Since then Andrew Baron has gone on to inspire many others and both in creating videos and in political activities.

Early on Andrew pushed the boundaries of online video super distribution in the early days making his show available for consumption on as many different formats as possible. Andrew was also the first to explore alternative advertising models by auctioning off Rocketboom's advertising on ebay.

After a few bumps in the road like breaking up with his partner Amanda, replacing her as host and a few false starts on partnering with others, Andrew signed a distribution and advertising deal this year with Sony Pictures Television for a seven-figure guarantee plus a share of future revenues generated by the show.

Rocketboom is now distributed across many digital platforms like Sony's Crackle, the PS3, the PSP and Bravia Internet video link televisions. Rocketboom is also be available on its website, TiVo, iTunes, Miro, Apple TV, Pando, TVTonic and other web video portals, including YouTube, Metacafe, blip.tv and Vuze.

My sympathies go out to Andrew as last week he lost his father to cancer but even as his father lay dying this true leader of online video used the tools of the Internet and social media to try and save his father's life. In doing so Andrew has shed light on drugs that may one day be of help to others with the type of cancer his father had.

I think Andrew Baron will continue to break new ground in online video and inspire others to do so as well.

You can read Andrew Baron's blog at Dembot.com.

SONY PICTURES ACQUIRES EXCLUSIVE WORLDWIDE CROSS PLATFORM DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS TO ROCKETBOOM

Andrew Baron tells all about it in his blog.

International Day of the Ninja

The very first episode of Ask A Ninja was posted in late 2005 on a blogspot blog for Beatbox Giant. The first question was Matt's questions about when and where ninjas get their uniforms. (I wonder who Matt is? Maybe the bass player for the band that does the theme some but I never asked the Ninja)

In the Question #1: The Ninja-Mart Store episode the Ninja didn't even have a real Ninja uniform because the shows creators Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine couldn't afford one. They shot the show with a broken camera, a good mic and launched with a catchy theme song "I Am Ninja", by the German band The Neu Tickles. Two years later it is the International Day of the Ninja and Kent and Douglas are grossing $100,000 per month in advertising revenues.

That's right $100k per month for a guy dressed in a Ninja suit standing in front of a wall yelling answers to a question that one of their viewers asked via email. But keep in mind their videos do get millions of views.

At the risk of being killed by the Ninja I'm going to give you a little bit of the story on how it all came together.

Kent and Douglas met in an Improvisational acting class in the Los Angeles area. From there they started creating an animated show about Ninjas living in Orange County, California. As they got further and further into developing the show for another production company they realized that animation was really, really hard to pull off so they were ready to throw in the towel and call it quits but Douglas wouldn't let it die. Douglas started asking Kent questions about video production and internet videos and how they could do something - anything - on the cheap. After spending some time watching other popular videos on YouTube they came up with Ask A Ninja.

I first met Kent in the Spring of 2006 at Vloggercon. We were on a panel together about creating characters and I got slammed by the crowd. They hated me but loved the Ninja. At that time Kent and I were both amazed by what Andrew Baron and what he was doing with Rocketboom but then came the big break up. Andrew and Amanda from Rocketbook had a big public falling out.

Later in the Summer I met Douglas for the first time when Kent and I were on another panel together at Comic-con and Kent and Douglas were making changes fast.

At that point because of the big Rocketboom breakup Kent and Douglas realized that no one in this online video space knew what they were doing when it came to monetizing online video. So Kent and Douglas decided they would figure it out for themselves and to do that they knew they would need money, which they borrowed from their family.

They were using Revver to host their videos and Podtrac to get advertisers and both services worked but just not on a big enough scale to make enough money to live on and pay back the money they had borrowed.

The Ninja boys also had a few great little things happen. They were asked by NPR to do a movie review for Pirates of the Caribbean and the Ninja was asked to be the judge of the Yahoo Talent Show. Both events gave Ask A Ninja more visibility and more video views.

Along the way Kent and Douglas picked up UTA as an agent and signed with a high profile Manager and high powered entertainment attorney.

Once they had those pieces in place they started talking with an online video podcasting company, Podtech about taking over advertising for the Ask A Ninja videos but at about the same time they also met with a very smart man by the name of John Battelle from an online advertising agency called Federated Media to talk about handling the advertising inventory for both their website and their videos.


Now keep in mind that Federated Media had never monetized online video before but John Battelle put together a very detailed and well thought out plan of how Federated Media would bring money to the Ask A Ninja Brand and Kent and Douglas liked the man and they liked his plan.

UTA brokered the deal with Federated, it took a few months to get things up and running but now my best guess is that the Ninja boys are taking home around 30-40K each per month and in the scheme of things they are just getting started.

Best of all Kent and Douglas are still nice guys, they are now dept free AND they still own Ask A Ninja. Now that’s something worth creating a special day to celebrate.

The Real Number for 800-GoFedEx

So if you have a new or used Blackberry Pearl, a Blackberry 8800 series or a Blackberry Curve and you try to dial 800-GoFedEx you might not get connected to the phone number for Fedex (800)463-3339 because you don't have the old letters on numbers that old phones have. The real number for 800 Go Fed Ex is 800 463-3339. Why is an online video guy blogging about the real number for FEDEX? Well...

Today I needed to call FedEx and ask about shipping a FedEx package to Canada. So I Googled "phone number for FedEx" and got 888-GO-FEDEX and not the real fedex number of 800-463-3339. I kept Googleing and along the way I discovered 1-800-GOOG-411, Google's new 411 service. I called GOOG-411 or 1-800-GOOG-411 or 1-800-466-4411 and asked for FedEX. Its automated voice recognition service didn't understand me and sent me to San Francisco where I then asked for "Federal Express" and it connected me to FedEx. I went through a series of automated questions and finally got to a human, got my question answered and was on my way to the nearest local Fedex drop box. On the walk to the fedex drop box I thought about how I must not be the only person going through this problem and that got me thinking some more...

But as I was googeling all this I discovered the GOOG-411 video up above that I thought I should share because it's a great example of what small businesses should do with online video. It's fun, simple and does a super job of explaining what GOOG-411 is and how you can use it. It also has a little interactive contest attached to build community.

So other than the GOOG411 video the reason a video guy is blogging about FedEx's phone number is that I thought I would blog about fedex using different spellings of FEdEX to see if it brought me natural traffic through Google Search.

We'll have to wait a few weeks to see how this little experiment on contextual search works out. It's not like blogging about Robert Scoble, Mark Zuckerberg or Andrew Baron from Rocketboom where you know it will get you a few clicks just cause everyone is using their Google Alerts to track those boys.