Personalized news is a reality with Internet options like Google News, Topix.net and Feedroom.com. Feedroom is a Web-based video news site basing its business model on a users thirst for news he or she can choose
Bart Feder, President and CEO of FeedRoom.com, one of the Internet’s largest streamers with over 1 million streams per day, explains why video online is a compelling way to communicate with your audience.
GREENLEE: Lets run through a few of the details about FeedRoom.
BART FEDER: A lot of folks may remember us going back five years now. Were one of the first online video destinations. The idea at the time was we were going to create an online destination for video to take advantage of the growth of broadband, and that we were going to aggregate content and become a premier brand. Then a few things happened in the intervening five years – the bubble burst and September 11. Fortunately, a lot of the lessons learned along the way allowed us to transform the company. We call ourselves now a broadband video communications company. We started working extensively with media companies and major corporations and anybody who wants to do video to scale to take advantage of what video online can offer. For media companies, it means taking advantage of the huge upswing in video advertising. For corporations, it means communicating with their target audience in a more cost effective and compelling way.
GREENLEE: How is the stream growth going for the FeedRoom?
FEDER: In the news game, its content driven. We have had some huge days. Weve seen growth in terms of time spent watching video. The truth is, experience now is such that people can spend a considerable amount of time watching video. For the second year, weve provided the application and support for the NCAA tournament online. We helped them show the three games that werent available on your local CBS station. It was subscription driven and there was in-stream advertising that went along with it. People spend a lot of time watching sports on their computers. Telemundo is a client of ours that showcases their soap operas and people spend 20 minutes at a time watching those online.
GREENLEE: People are starting to use media online differently. Back in 2000 when we started doing our radio show, people thought of online media as a short segment drop of content on your computer. Are people thinking of digital media in more of a TV type of mode?
FEDER: I think it works both ways. When I was in television, for a long time I used to implore people to think of it this way: your viewers on television making a choice every 15 seconds with that clicker in their hand. If you want to keep them for more than 15 seconds, the content has to engage them. The same is true online. Short form video online can still be successful in the same way TV does it has to be relevant, it has to be timely and, where possible, it has to be compelling. The challenge in corporate America is they have to step up to it and create content that people are going to want to watch. The benefit of online media now, and targeting and using things like search and e-mail and XML feeds and RSS feeds, is that you really can target content to the end-user and develop feeds that is not trying to reach a mass audience but a specific audience. Thats a big advantage and is what we are encouraging our clients to do more really thinking about the end-user of the content, then thinking about creating it and then think about the mechanism for reaching them with it.
The full audio interview with Bart Feder of Feedroom.com is available at http://WebTalkRadio.com. Dana Greenlee is co-host/producer of the WebTalkGuys Radio Show, a Tacoma-based nationally syndicated radio and webcast show featuring technology news and interviews.
