On Socializing Streaming Content

I have been in love with the idea of online streaming content since 2005. My love affair with entrepreneurship began with a business I called TV Smack. It combined a social platform with streaming TV shows. After a year of research and writing I finally finished a full 30 page business plan with awesome graphs and charts. When I shopped it around to VC's, I don't think many people got the idea. This was before Hulu and when Netflix began streaming content. After rejection after rejection, I put it away and never thought I would revisit it again. 

It wasn't until I was listening to one of my favorite Podcast (TWIST), that my old idea came rushing over me again. When I get cool ideas I start pacing and then I instantly start surfing the net in order to figure out ways to implement them. That very day I bought a domain name and a Ning website. (Side note: I am not a programmer, so I use whatever tool I need to get started. My real vision is nothing like a Ning site, but I need a MVP.) My goal was to build a simple Ning website and fill it with undervalued content. (EX: TV piolits, short run TV series, and old made for TV movies) What I didn't know is that acquiring that content would lead me into a wall of various TV companies Vice Presidents whom have no idea who I should talk to. To be fair I may have reached the wrong people. My content acquisition plan was to Google search VP's and then cold call them. In any case I was back pounding the pavement and again enduring rejection after rejection.


As I was about to send an introduction email. It donned on me that maybe the reason everyone doesn't understand it is that they think of social in terms of networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Path, etc. What I think of when I think of social, I think of social drivers. I know it was a mistake to write a long introduction email and I probably will not get a reply, but I had to express myself. The email was as follows:

It is my belief that online streaming content should be social. Many companies such as Netflix and Hulu have not pursued the social aspects of streaming content. I think their focus on acquiring premium content has blinded them to the opportunities that exist in the social realm. By "Social" I do not mean the traditional since of shoving a bunch of videos into a Facebook like website. Nor am I suggesting user generated content like YouTube. What I am suggesting is a platform that creates social solutions for professional streaming content that use's drivers as catalyst for social engagement. The 3 drivers I have identified are brand, celebrity and nostalgia. The first 2 may seem obvious, but you can go in various directions in driving user engagement. The most obvious direction to go in is to identify the most popular brand or celebrity content (Premium Content) and stream it on your platform. Most content distributors employ this model Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and the majority of other streaming content distributors. This model in my belief is the wrong way to go. It drives up the cost of popular content and make licensing cost untenable. Also, it does not give you the type of users that drive engagement. What I say is screw the premium content. Give me the long bereft celebrities and brands of yesteryear that small pockets of individuals have heard of. Within these small tranches of users you will find passionate people. These people not only watch the content, but blog about the content, they tell their friends that they should watch the content, they form groups dedicated to that content, and are content evangelist. Unlike premium content evangelist, many of the evangelist of the obscure have more of an incentive to get others on board with what they love, due to the fact that what they love is obscure. I argue that a collection of more obscure content is worth more than a collection of premium content. (With the exception of popular franchises.) Nostalgia lends itself to content discovery. Watching older content takes users back to a time and place. Even if it is content users have not seen before. It is almost as disposable as most premium content, but it has the chance of brand revitalization. Where most premium content falls off a steep cliff after its first 6 months. In summary the old obscure content is cheaper, drives user engagement, and opens up a variety of revenue streams. Telebeast seeks to fill this void within online streaming content. It will change they way the world engages content. I have attached my business plan and notes. I look forward to hearing from you. 

"For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity." Jean Dubuffet

Label me insane.

On Cool songs by artist you dislike

One of my favorite Podcast is the Adam Carrola Podcast. It is an awesome podcast from one of my favorite comedians. On the Podcast he was discussing his disgust with Rod Stewart's music. He explained while Rod Stewart has good songs, the good ones are written by someone else. For example, "The First Cut Is The Deepest" was written by Cat Stevens ( Now Usef Islam). I'm not sure about his assessment of Rod Stewart's music because I do enjoy "Maggie May", but he does have a point. A while back I found myself enjoying a song that I was sure I should dislike. I would listen to my local radio station and every time One Republics "Apologize" would come on, I couldn't turn away. After listening to the song over and over again I finally decided to do some research. What I found was that the song was a Timbaland track. Timbaland is one of my favorite artist. He produced songs for Magoo, Missy Elliot, Aaliyah, etc. So, I was taken aback by the fact that my favorite artist sucked me into being a One Republican. It was classic bait and switch. This would totally be OK if it did not spur me to listen to more One Republic songs. I thought maybe it was not just Timbaland, but they were a good band as well. It turned out only to be the Timbaland beat. One Republic took away 3:52 min of my life. I found their song "Secrets", lets just say it should have stayed that way. After that horrific experience all I can say is "You got me this time Mr. Timbaland. I wont let you make a monkey out of me again!" 

On The Future of Mobile Technology

This may sound strange, but the state of mobile technology seems dated to me. Smart phones and other devices are still cool. My main issue with them is that they seem to be stuck in hand held technologies. Also, tablets seem like they have been around for a long time. Current tablets remind me of very efficient Palm Pilots. My compliments to Apple for bringing tablets full circle. They are a great company and I have loved many of their products, but it is possibly Google who owns the future. Project Glass seems to be the future of mobile technology. The following are my suggestions for the mobile device of the future. By combining a few technologies that exist today a more mobile platform can be created. My goal is to provide ideas based on what currently exist. It is up to you to imagine what the use cases may be. Today I write science fiction!

The mobile device of the future should combine 4 parts glasses (Google Project Glass), blue tooth, rings (Think Kinect or Wii technology), and the cloud.

Glasses: The glasses should consist of projection film, left/right forward/backward rolling pin cameras, and a manual on off switch. It should allow you to view/interact with both your virtual and physical world.  I don't think a company should sell just their pair of mobile glasses. Glasses choices are driven by fashion, so a better thing to do would be to retrofit preexisting glasses with a companies mobile technology.

Blue Tooth: The glasses and Bluetooth are one unit connected by a series of flexible wires. Bluetooth technology is pretty straight forward. You want to be able to make phone calls, as well as issue commands to your glasses. This Bluetooth may be a bit larger than your typical device. Your ear would be the place that shoulders the load for much of the systems that power your mobile device.

Rings: A wireless ring on each hand should help with hand recognition. You should be able to swipe and move things on your virtual desktop. Made of silicon and powered by a rechargeable watch battery; these rings will make your virtual interactions more precise.

Cloud: The mobile platform of the future will have an extremely stripped down OS. Much of your information will be stored on cloud services.

What do you think? It's pretty simple. Now lets go out there and build it! Maybe I will. Now where did I place my duct tape.

On Mr. Peanut

On my way to buy some Halloween candy I spotted a can of Planters honey-roasted peanuts. Those things are tasty and very addictive. So, of course I had to buy them. After starring at the can while I stood in the checkout line, I became curious about Mr. Peanuts fashion choices. Why a top hat and a monocle. No one wears these things anymore. I guess because hes over 106 years old at least. Like many old people he is set in his ways. Even so, these were odd fashion choices in his youth. I know Lincoln wore a top hat to make himself look even taller and monocles seemed to be a sign of wealth in early 20th century England. Mr. Peanut wears both, taking cues from both Lincoln and the British.With my appetite now craving more Mr. Peanut information. I turned to the one place that knows all about him, the internet. The information I found was both illuminating and changed everything I thought I knew about the elusive nut.

What people don't know is that Mr. Peanut is a British transplant. He has always been in the protein business, being first cousin to the Wellingtons. Due to a drought at his families estate in the province of worchestire, his families Hazelnut business was left in ruins. So much so, Mr. Peanuts father died in debtors prison. He, his mother and 2 sisters were forced to live with the Wellingtons. Mr. Peanut, who's real name is P.B.J Hazelnut III, vowed to rebuild his families business. He tried to get a loan from his wealthy Uncle H.R Wellington, but all of his money was tied up in his business. Wellington was in an intense battle for Britain's dinner tables with the Earl of Sandwich. Being of entrepreneurial stock and longing to restore his families name P.B.J. decided to board a ship to America in search of better opportunities.

Once he landed in New York P.B.J took a job in a hat factory in the garment district. This began his lifelong obsession with what he called toperwear. In the Spring of 1900 P.B.J received a letter from his Mother. On her deathbed she informed him that he was in fact adopted. That she and his father P.B.J Hazelnut II found him at an orphanage in Virginia. No longer being able to conceive after the birth of their two daughters, the Hazelnuts desperately wanted a boy. This was also a practical thing to do at the time, since estate rights were less than equitable for women. Another reason for them adopting an American baby could have been to protect their standing in British society. No one knows exactly why they adopted young P.B.J. Devastated by his mothers death P.B.J began to rethink his life. Much of his time had been spent at parties and events where he could showcase his multitude of hats. He began to become serious about starting his own nut business.

With the $20 he had saved he rented a horse drawn carriage and bought 20 pounds of peanuts. Peanuts being the preferred nut in America at the time. He decided it would be more lucrative to sell. Also, hazelnuts were extremely expensive. His family was the worlds largest hazelnut provider. After they went under hazelnut prices went through the roof. P.B.J's door to door peanut sales company soon became the dominant nut provider in the New York nut scene. So much so people referred to him as Mr. Peanut. Being the savvy business man that he his. P.B.J Hazelnut III legally changed his name to Mr. Peanut. As his business success took off, in the fall of 1905 tragedy struck Mr. Peanut. He was involved in a carriage accident that crushed his right orbital socket and broke his left femur. This tragic accident led to his use of a monocle and cane until this very day. Nevertheless, he was not deterred from his quest to become the king of nuts. His company has grown into the dominant nut provider of today. They now sell, cashews, peanuts, almonds, walnuts, and even hazelnuts. It is reported that now Mr. Peanut is a billionaire, he has since bought back his families estate. I tried to contact Mr. Peanut at his headquarters in Suffolk Virginia, but I was unable to get him to verify these facts. Still an aficionado of fine toperwear; Mr. Peanut is now a philanthropist and toast of the Virginia social scene. At an undisclosed age of over 100 he is still nuts about nuts, one tough nut to crack, and at a time when it was nuts to sell nuts, he proved that like his father P.B.J Hazelnut II, the acorn does not fall far from the tree.

On Feng Shui

This is really my fountain.

Feng Shui to me has never been very important. It was only until I was talking to a friend about decorating his girlfriends apartment that I realized I have been Feng Shuing all along. At first I had a general idea of what Feng Shui was, I knew it had something to do with earth, water, and fire, but I had no idea what the core principles were. So, like any modern curious person I checked Wikipedia. Hopefully all of the facts were right, but I found it had a deeper spiritual meaning. Thus, I decided to look for ways to Feng Shui my bedroom. I don't have much in my bedroom and as a dude I take pride in the fact that the focal point of the room is my 42 inch TV. What I found was shocking. It filled me with the spirit of Feng Shui. I have a all in one Feng Shui machine! My fountain (Water) in my bedroom has copper pipes (Metal), rocks (Earth), an electrical light (Fire), and sand dollars I got from the beach. Hopefully that adds points. It seems I have been basking in the glow of Feng Shuiness for years. Maybe I am still getting the concept wrong; if I am I blame Wikipedia.

On TV

Tonight I found myself awake at 1:30 AM watching Farscape on Netflix. It got me to thinking about the growth of television. Specifically televisions evolution as I see it. As a life long TV watcher I think I have a unique perspective. In my opinion if radio is the theater of the mind, then TV is the theater of the mind personified. It has had three acts. The first is Mash, the second is Sex and The City/Arliss, the third is Angel. I will explain each in detail.

Mash: When I was a kid we had a small yellow TV that had a dial and an antenna that required foil. I remember being the designated adjuster for my older sister. We would try to watch A different World and I would adjust while she screamed stay there. I think the TV only had 13 channels. Maybe 14 if you include the random Spanish language channel on 23 or 24. In any case, I was a avid TV watcher. Whenever my mom would go to sleep and tell me to go to bed, I would watch TV. After the fun TV shows like Gilligans Island, usually a western and I love Lucy, and before the Flag Salute and the beeping bars, there was Mash. Mash to me was a horrible show. It was set in a War but you never saw fighting, the opening music was weird (I now know its called "Suicide is Painless".), and the lead character seemed nice, but he was always yelling about something. In a nutshell this show sucked. Yet I tried to tune in every night.

  Sex and the City and Arliss: Cable television changed my life. No longer was I trapped in a box of 13 maybe 14 channels. Cable offered over a hundred channels. My favorite channels were HBO and The Box. HBO at that time for me was a revelation. I thought to myself, this is what TV should look like. I had two HBO shows I would watch religiously. Sex in the City and Arliss. Sex in the City was about exactly what the title expresses. Women having sex with multiple guys in New York. Now consider that this is before the age of internet porn and I was a teenager. Lets just say I enjoyed watching Charlotte. 

Arliss was an awesome show. It was about a sports super agent. They would have a lot of  athletes on and it was very funny. (Fun fact, that was when I discovered Sandra Oh from Greys anatomy. She played Arliss's assistant and the sister of extremely hot 9 ball champion Jennet Lee "The Black Widow".)  In retrospect, I think HBO catered to the fantasies of teenage boys. 

Angel: At this time I was of college age. Websites like Limewire and Bearshare were all the rage. At that point everyone found you can find your favorite TV shows online. My girlfriend now wife, had borrowed a book filled with ripped TV shows from her sister (I don't think we ever returned them). In that book we found the TV show Angel. She wanted to watch Buffy, but me being a movie purest, I can only accept Christy Swanson as Buffy. So, we watched Angel. We were hooked. We spent a week or two shut into her co-op room. We watched every episode. It was a glimpse of what TV will be and set the stage for modern streaming services.

Modern TV viewing is in a state of limbo. We are still stuck between cable and online services. I think eventually the online services will win out. I have dropped my cable provider and now rely on a variety of streaming services. Individuals crave choices. And the whole idea of channels limits choice. Hulu and Netflix bring a wide array of shows to the consumer on demand and still we crave more. To the point were the definition of TV has changed. Viewers feed on small snippets of cat videos on Youtube. The human fascination with TV is part voyeur and part connection. We will create more and more things to watch until the possibilities become infinite. And at that point we will still shut off the TV and exclaim there is nothing to watch.

On Rain

It has begun to rain. For me rain is both comforting and exciting. When it comes I either walk or stand in it. Many times without a jacket because I love the way it feels on my skin. At times when I'm feeling extremely excited , I stand in the rain without any shirt on at all. My wife has told me I am insane. When we began dating, I used to drag her out to either walk or dance in the rain. As time has passed, she has voiced her true opinions about my percipi-philia tendencies. "It's to cold!", "My hair gets wet!", "Why would I be out on a gloomy day?", "Why do you do this?". I usually do not have a response to the last question. Many times when she says that. I stare blankly and walk into the rain. Now that I have time with my thoughts, I can express what I would say. I would say rain expresses the beauty and power of nature. To listen to rain fall is one of the most relaxing sounds you will ever hear. That seeing rain roll off of anything, if captured in a picture can be considered art. Most of all the fact that it rains water from the sky. Water, which most of all living things and much of the earth are made of. If that does not make you feel one with the world, I do not know what does. As I type this I hear the droplets peck at my window. I think it's time for a walk.