Splainers Video: SMS for Life

Splainers recently published a new video for the Roll Back Malaria Partnership.  I'm impressed, not only with the video explanation, but the idea behind SMS for Life, which uses mobile phones to ensure that malaria medicines are available for families who may need to travel to find treatment. It's great to see Splainers working on such a worthy cause and matching their skills to an idea that becomes more clear through video.

Splainers, like all members of the Common Craft Explainer Network, can be hired to create videos explaining your product or services.

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Common Craft - NOT a Viral Video Company

I've been really excited to see the feedback about the new Web License. Asking people to pay to embed a video has raised questions and responding to them has been an interesting experience. If nothing else, it's eye-opening to see what people are assuming about our business.

For example, Mike Masnick at Techdirt wrote an article called "Viral Video Producers Want To Charge You to Embed Their Videos."  Then, Steven Hodson at Inquisitor follow up the Techdirt article with "Common Craft Seems to Forget What Makes Viral Video... Well Viral."

Both these articles assume (mostly incorrectly) a few things:

1. Viral video is our business/marketing model
2. YouTube is required to build a business on video
3. Our Web License is focused on viral distribution

It's really interesting to me that, after 3 years of making nearly 30 of our own videos, people still think we're a viral video company. We haven't had a viral hit in a very long time, or thought we could build a business on viral videos. In fact, I'm not sure successful businesses can be sustained that way. I assumed, perhaps optimistically, that a visit to our web site would make that clear.

Now I'm wondering if what has appeared on a few blogs is a widely held perception? Are we not explaining our own business well enough? 

The truth is, we make high quality educational videos - videos that help organizations and individuals accomplish goals.  These are videos (unlike most viral videos) that people are happy to pay to license because they are useful. The best we can do is make a quality product and attract people and organizations that want to buy it. Part of this strategy is making commoncraft.com the home of our videos - not a host like YouTube.

The Web License model is something that (as far as we know) has never been offered before. In the context of purely viral videos, it would be a very difficult model.  But the value of our videos is not so much in blog posts or viral distribution, it's in solving problems for people and organizations whose job is to inform and educate others, on and off the web. That's where you'll find us in the future.

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Amit Asks: Will You Pay to Embed a Video on Your Website?

Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration has been a fan of Common Craft for a while and we've always enjoyed his thoughful analysis of our videos and business.  The news yesterday about our Web License prompted him to write about it - and question the business case for paying to embed videos.  We welcome this kind of analysis. 

He writes:

The good old YouTube days are over as Common Craft has created a new “web license” for their videos that would require bloggers and websites to pay a monthly subscription fee for embedding videos on their site. And this is not a small amount.

I am huge fan of the entire Common Craft series and admire the fact that they have come up with such a unique business model to distribute their “high value” content online. At the same time, stories published on blogs, unlike the newswires, stay forever so the cost of embedding a single video could easily run into a few thousand dollars over time and that may not make lot of business sense.

I think there is an important distinction to be made here that explains our licensing model. Amit, and I'm sure many observers, think of online video in the business-to-consumer YouTube model. It's social media currency - something to be shared broadly on blogs for free via YouTube. This is obviously a valid and dominant model. However, it's not the only model for online video.  Our approach is based not on bloggers or individuals, but organizations that will put the videos to work.

Over time, we've learned that Common Craft videos can be used as valuable business tools for organizations who are looking for high quality content to attract, engage and educate visitors, and potentially turn them into customers.  These videos don't normally reside on blog pages.

In our blog post about the new license and relationship with Wistia we say:

“This means a technology company can educate visitors on the basics of wikis, or cloud computing. A financial institution can educate potential customers on the stock market or borrowing money. A service organization can educate citizens about preparing an emergency kit.”

We're targeting the business-to-business market – organizations that will put the videos to work. We believe that the model makes sense for organizations because the videos can contribute to organizational goals. Plus, these same organizations want the hassle-free nature of embeddable videos that also come with Wistia’s analytics. This is very different from marketing the videos to bloggers.

Of course, this is uncharted territory for us all.  Over time, I'm a big believer that we're only starting to discover how video producers can build businesses around quality content. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

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Introducing Our New "Web License" and Partnership with Wistia

For a while now, we've heard a common request from potential customers.  They want an easy way to license and share Common Craft videos on their website. Today we're announcing a new partnership with video sharing company Wistia that will help us serve this need with our new "Web License."

A Little Background...

We license our videos to individuals and organizations. Two of our most popular licenses (Individual and Site) are for offline use. Customers download video files for use on intranets/extranets, training programs, classrooms and presentations. The videos are really useful internally, but they can't be displayed on public websites. Of course, some customers want to do just that.

Problem Solved

Our new partnership with Wistia means that our customers can license high quality Common Craft videos and use Wistia's video sharing tools to easily display them. This makes adding a Common Craft video to your website:

    •    Easy - Add videos with simple copy-and-paste embed code.
    •    Smart - Gather rich info on who watches the videos and how they watch them
    •    Flexible - Choose from multiple plans, based on monthly views

This means a technology company can educate visitors on the basics of wikis, or cloud computing.
A financial institution can educate potential customers on the stock market or borrowing money.
A service organization can educate citizens about preparing an emergency kit. 

Our Web License means that any website can benefit from Common Craft videos.

This 52-second video helps explain the relationship:

If you're interested in licensing Common Craft videos for your website, look for the "Web License" option on any video at CommonCraft.com.

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Video: Secure Websites in Plain English

We've published a new video called "Secure Websites in Plain English"

Security is obviously an important part of using the Web. Thankfully, through cooperation between a number of organizations, standards have been developed to communicate when a site is secure.  Unfortunately these clues are not always known to everyday Web users.  This video covers the basics of web site security - the common threats, the basics of encryption and how to tell when a site is secure.

The video also covers a new and growing standard that gives banks and other organizations a way to communicate that their site is the genuine article. This new standard, called EV SSL Certification, is meant to battle phishing scams. 

This video, like all our videos, is available for licensing and use by individuals, organizations and websites. Learn more.

Here are other videos in our growing "Net Safety" series...

Phishing Scams
Protecting Reputations Online

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The Proposition 8 Video - NOT Common Craft

California's controversial Proposition 8 is back in the news, which means a fresh round of people asking if we made the video on You Tube that supports the ban on gay marriage. Though the video could be confused for a Common Craft video, it's not.

Let me be as clear.  We would never, ever make such a video. Aside from our own views on the subject, we recognize that dealing in polarizing political issues is not good for our business. Our goal is to be as unbiased as possible and make videos that appeal to largest possible audience.

Please don't feel the need to contact the person that made the video.  We've been in touch multiple times and he is well aware of our position.  In fact, he agreed to remove the "in Plain English" title to help avoid confusion. Part of my motivation in writing this post is to make sure that if anyone searches for "Common Craft" and "Proposition 8", this post will help them understand the situation.

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New Video: Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English

Today we published a new video called Protecting Online Reputations in Plain English.

Aimed at younger or inexperienced web users, this video helps explain the long-term risks of sharing inappropriate photos, videos and stories on the Web. We've seen the stories and heard personal accounts about people who shared an inappropriate photo that eventually caused them to lose their job or miss an opportunity. Preventing this kind of problem can come from increased awareness about how the Web works and what it means to share something with the public. This video is about taking responsibility and making choices to protect reputations. 

 

 

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Daniel Sevitt on The 3 Types of Online Video for Business

Daniel Sevitt of EyeView wrote a great article on ReelSEO.com called "The Three Types of Online Video for Business." The article deserves a full read, but I was struck by this simple diagram that illustrates the types of videos and their expected outcomes.

Image courtesy of EyeView

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Time Lapse Video: The Making of Twitter Search in Plain English

This video was made from the raw, unedited footage from the making of Twitter Search in Plain English.

Watch another time-lapse Common Craft video shoot here.

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Video: Cloud Computing in Plain English

Today we published a new video called Cloud Computing in Plain English:

This title has been one of our most requested and for good reason.  Cloud Computing is a subject that has an explanation problem - people have a hard time understanding it because it's difficult to explain quickly.  Like Social Media, it's a subject that is very broad and lacks broad consensus in terms of clear explanations. Our hope with this video is to lay bit of groundwork so people can see the big ideas.

We asked a number of people for input on the video and I want to thank: Tony Wright, Chris Savage, Uri Budnick, Jeff Dickey and lots of others who I bugged over the last year.

Lastly, this video is available for embedding with a monthly subscription fee.  If you're interested, learn more or contact us.

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