Online Video Leaders: Steve Garfield - The Nicest Guy in Online Video

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.

It was January 1, 2004 when Steve Garfield took his videos and added them to his blog. That very well could make him the Father of Video Blogging or Vlogging. It definitely makes him a pioneer in online video and an Online Video Leader.

Since the early days Steve has been a correspondent for RocketBoom, a work for hire video guy / video blogger, an online radio show host, he teaches at Boston University and even got his Mother video blogging.

Last year Loic le Meur of video conversation site, Seesmic interviewed Steve Garfield in this video and there's some great info in it as Steve talks about video blogs he's discovered and how people are making money in online video.

I run into Steve at conferences and trade shows every now and again where he's speaking and I'm always impressed how Steve manages to find the coolest new cutting edge technology faster than anyone else and gets into it like a kid opening presents on Christmas day. Steve's curiosity and boyish charm have served him well on the Internet. As a true leader in Online Video, Steve is also known in the online video community as the nicest guy in Internet Video.

There's also another great Interview with the Father of Video Blogging on Veoh.

Be Sure and Visit: Steve Garfield Dot Com where you can try and keep up with what Steve Garfield is up to next.

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Navigating Episodic Internet Shows

With the exception of Apple's iTunes Podcast subscription I have yet to find an enjoyable way of watching Episodic Shows on the Internet.

When Prom Queen launched earlier this year it was a pain in the ass to watch the shows in order and catch up if you missed one. Eventually team Vuguru created a weekly recap show but it was hard to figure out where I left off and it still required some work. When the Big Fantastic launched their Summer season of Prom Queen called Summer Heat, Vuguru sent out a daily email and this made it much easier to catch up if I missed an episode. I could just go to my Apple mail and sort my messages from Prom and click on the shows in order.

If you go to Youtube or Revver or Veoh or Metacafe or any other video site and search for your favorite Episodic Show you will find it and it's trailers/promos in some crazy order. If you are at work trying to find that episode that you missed before your boss walks by and busts you for goofing off at work you are going to bail and wait till later to find that episode if you ever get around to it.

So far there are no Episodic shows on the front page of Youtube's Most Viewed (All Time) All: page. This says a lot about how we are still in a time of "spectacle" and have not yet moved into "Story" as far as Internet video goes. Even the Internet's biggest "Hit" story Lonely Girl 15's most popular episode only has had 1,708,683 views and if you want to start from never having seen an episode of LG15 and get all caught up, good luck. There are over 21 pages of search results for "Lonely Girl 15" on Revver and I couldn't find Episode number one so I went to LG15.com. There I found a place to start and a recap video of season one that brought me up to speed but that was work.

We need to speak with our contacts at the video sites and ask them what they can do to help. One viral video could bring a ton of viewers to your show but if that viewer can't find the next episode or the previous ones in a nice neat way that is easy to navigate it will take us all a lot longer to build audiences. The big boys in Hollywood already know how to make a programming dial work. It won't be long before they figure this out too and make it even harder for us little guys to break through the clutter.

Sure there are work-arounds but that involves "work".