The online microlender KIVA is bringing its services to the United States. Traditionally, KIVA provides “crowd powered” micro-loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world. Not amymore, it is now facilitating micro loans in select U.S. cities.
The service has been very successful. Since it’s existence Kiva says it has has raised more than “$75-million from 500,000 people and lent the money to about 180,000 entrepreneurs in 44 countries”. (source:globe and mail)
For those organizations, companies who have no clue how to leverage Twitter, here is a good reference guide, courtesy of the magazine muchmor
Twitter Usage Diagram
Here is a very interesting post about a study that looked at the impact of New York City’s waterfalls public art project. Last fall, there were 4 man-made waterfalls in various parts of NYC harbour.
The study from MIT SENSeable City lab guaged the digital footprint of these attractions by mapping the distribution of visitors to the respectives exhibits, grabbing where photos were taken etc.,
By collecting and analysing this type of digital information a city now has sophistacted tools to track the return on investement for such projects.
Fascintating stuff.
Here is niffty online service. TubeChop lets you easil edit youtube video and share them with your friends and network.
What I like I about TubeChop is it simply does what it says – and does that one thing shorten, cut down youtube videos very well
Amitabh Bachan | Amar, Akbar, Anthony
It has faint echoes of the now retired online video application JumpCut – while jumpcut was great for people who wanted a fairly robust online flash editing platform it tried to do too much.
TubeChop doesn’t make that mistake. Notice how you can share and embed easily and see the original version too boot
Here is the cut down video, please ignore the fact I butchered a crazy, favourite Bollywood tune
There has been a lot of talk lately about the emergence of Hulu as the next big thing in online video, with some pointing out that though Hulu is small its ultimate business model may be more viable.
More viable because it has licenced content, it is doing deals, it is easier to monetize the video and so on. All valid points but what people don’t talk about is that Youtube and Hulu fulfil very distinct audience needs.
Hulu is more a lean back experience, and experience that I mostly will do by myself, watching an episode of Battlestar Gallactica before I crash.
Youtube actually is much more social. I have seen my nephew hanging out with his friends, each taking turns driving youtube with their wireless keboard in front of a big LCD display. They were at it for what seemed like hours. I myself did it the other night with a few friends and it was a blast, digging up wicked bollywood videos, crazy japanese dancehall footage, the list goes on – we laughed, we cringed, we cried (OK we didn’t cry).
Youtube it seems is trying to leverage this type of behaviour with Realtime.
Youtube says with Realtime you can
Creating that social layer is a direction that makes sense for Youtube the question is what impact will that have on its monetization strategy?
In fact, Youtube has many questions that need to be answered.
What should Live video streaming strategy should Youtube have? It is clearly on thier radar, with recent a partnership with Ustream, a live video streaming service.
What should youtube do about Long form video considering it is viewed by many as a place for short form content?
What implications do any these decsions have on their bandwidth costs with must be through the roof?
Is the Youtube design just too clunky? Consider Hulu has a super slick interface.
What about search? Youtube’s search isn’t the greatest, odd considering it is owned by Google.
Indeed, Youtube has many, many outstanding issues. Hulu by contrast seems more focused. It will be intresting to see how all of this shakes out, considering in the world of online video Youtube is the sleeping elephant in the room – and you don’t want to be next to it when it rolls over.
