Internet Tech Boston

Dan Tynam of PC World online recently wrote an article describing The 10 Most Disruptive Technology Combinations. He describes “10 marriages of technologies that have shaken the digital world over the last 25 years.” At the end of the article he lists 5 things he’d like to see disrupted. There, in the list at #3 is:

Rich Media Ads on the Web: If we wanted to watch commercials, we’d be sitting on the couch in front of Oprah. Stop with the swirling, scrolling, popping, video ads; they’re not working.

Of course, he’s talking about the ubiquitous pre-roll. The take-over or overlay ad that flies in and demands you watch it or hunt and peck for the tiny little “close” button to get rid of it. At PermissionTV, we’re working on ways to disrupt that technology – to take it to the next level. Instead of locking the user into a passive experience they don’t want in the first place, we’re imagining a Rich Internet Video Advertising experience that allows people to get an engaging experience that’s actually relevant to them.

I’ve blogged about our concept of Video 2.0 before. I guess I really do enjoying working for a company that is striving to change the way people experience the web. We’re not interested in the status-quo and that’s alright by me. I guess it’s alright to the folks at PC World too.

The recent explosion of online video will be one of the hallmarks of the online industry in 2008. Already in 2008, Yahoo’s acquisition of Maven Networks for $160 million a couple weeks ago has gotten the attention of many people, even if it was overshadowed by talks of Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo.

I work at a smaller competitor to Maven called PermissionTV. Our newest product, the PermissionTV smartplayer™ is the first intelligent, interactive online video platform that reacts and responds to the interests, desires and actions of website visitors. Where Video 1.0 was a purely passive experience, we’ll be paving the way for a truly interactive experience with the web visitor. That’s what we’re calling Video 2.0. Here’s a marketing video that describes our latest product.

The web that you search is not complete. Far from complete, in fact. When you use any search engine (ex. Google, MSN, Yahoo) to search for results on the web, you’re relying on the the completeness of results found in the search engine’s index or cache. In other words, all search engines, even Google, can only provide results based on what it has found itself. The term Deep Web refers to all web sites, content pages, and files that are inaccesible to search engines, and therefore can not be included in any result pages displayed for any query. 

Some of the content that is contained in the Deep Web is found on pages that do not have any inbound links, dynamic content that can not be accessed, or content secured behind password-protected websites. More interesting is the Deep Web found inside video and image content. Since search engines can’t actually look at a picture or watch an online video, this content is widely ignored. Combine this fact with the rise of online video for both business and personal use, and you can begin to see the ramifications. As more and more written blogs give way to video blogs and podcasts, this once searchable content will become part of the Deep Web - inaccessible to search engines or users’ searches.

Companies exist that create tags for videos. In other words, they watch the video, and create text that describes the content of the video, which are called tags. But rather than create tags that describe the video as a whole, Deep Tagging is the process of creating tags for parts of the video. Search engines read these tags and then can match online videos to search engine queries.  However, this process is very human-intensive manual, and Deep Tagging companies have struggled to stay in business. 

Online video is clearly becoming the next wave for online communication. It’s become easier and easier to make, manage, produce, and maintain video for both business and residential users.  Companies that can tap into deep web content such as video will surely be ones to watch in 2008 and beyond.