Positioning

Create, share, discover great grassroots media

Ourmedia 1.0 was a place to upload media for free. We need to take it to the next level by getting simpler, more personal, more creative. Ourmedia 2.0 will be all about community.

In Ourmedia 2.0, we want to give partner sites the ability to help contribute to our home page programming with their own channels. They will need to share our philosophy:

Open Media Principles

Open media principles:

• We believe in the creative power of the individual. We all have meaningful stories to tell. Individual lives and opinions are interesting, important and worth sharing.

• Media is not just something done to us by big media and the entertainment companies. People are hungry for authentic voices and the immediacy and intimacy of personal media. We want to encourage the public to take up the tools of personal publishing.

• We support open media, open standards and interoperability. It's not about walled gardens. The Web is about openness, connectedness and participation.

• We support open source. In addition, we support any project or company that supports the Commons, community and the public interest.

• Quality matters. We support efforts that encourage and teach people how to create high-value grassroots media that offers meaning and context.

• The public benefits from long-term archives that preserve grassroots media for future generations.

• We support remix culture. We believe in the idea of giving people access to video, audio, music and images for them to mash up and remix in a way that's easy, convenient and legal.

• We believe in fair use and sensible copyright laws. Creative Commons and the GNU Public License enrich the culture while preserving creators' rights.

• We support the right of long-tail artists, like all artists, to profit from their creations. We do not support unfettered file sharing of others' works without their permission.

How is Ourmedia different from YouTube and the 97 other flavors of video hosting sites out there? Let us count the ways!

Ourmedia's vision

1) We're about participation and community. Most other video hosting sites cater to passive consumers who watch, or who upload a single video and leave. We cater to empowered users, who can create, remix or download video to any device. Ourmedia is a public resource that supports the Commons, the public interest and the goal of civic engagement by an informed community. Every user must choose a license, and we encourage people to use Creative Commons. So we're not just a place to store your personal media and watch video, we're a community of media users who want to use media: download it to any device, consume it on your terms, possibly remix it. Ourmedia is for users, not just consumers.

2) We're about learning. Ourmedia is a gathering place for people to learn how to create media -- and create better media -- through our Learning Center and a community that connects newbies with experienced media makers. We're working with Node101 and a dozen universities to broaden the public's access to digital media learning tools.

3) We're a hub for open source and open media. We're lightnet. That is, we're about open media. Open standards. Open source. An open registry. No DRM. We want to serve as glue to help bring together disparate open media sites and repositories rather than offering just another stand-alone, enclosed, walled-garden destination site. We're building open source tools that can be shared across other sites. The lightnet and glue factors are what make Ourmedia an interesting open source project and not just a web site.

4) We're about creativity and quality media. We don't want to be a firehose -- a black hole sucking bandwidth and emitting no light. We don't want to be a free-for-all site where people just post frothy, dumb videos. We're after something deeper: telling meaningful stories. We want to nourish high-value grassroots media. We support metadata that encourages people to supply textual context and backstory.

5) We support Remix Culture. We're working with Creative Commons, Outhink and several open media projects and repositories to create a space for people to mash up and remix video, audio, music and images. We are providing collaborative tools for the next wave of online creativity: collaboration, in which artists borrow from each other and the culture at large to create new works.

6) We offer a long shelf life for all kinds of personal media, not just video. As media convergence happens, users will look for solutions that tie together video, audio, games, images and text. Ourmedia is a life-long hosting solution that believes in your work. We are inextricably linked to the Internet Archive, which has a 10-year record of preserving and refreshing digital media. We are not a transient hosting service that won't be around three years from now.

Now, we need to become easy to use and way cooler than the competing services.

As M. Verdi says:

• Create an account
• Name your blog
• Pick a template
• Make your first post, including uploading a video
• Done - you have a videoblog with an RSS 2 feed.

As Ryanne says:

• this is my dream: ourmedia blogs that are fully customizable with RSS 2.0 enclosure feeds with buttons automatically on the sidebar

• i want to be able to change my header and sidebar and colors with ease; no blog service lets me do this without hassle or knowledge of HTML or CSS. It should be as easy as clicking a hex color box and attaching a new header (just like uploading any other media type); no other service makes this easy for non-techie nerds (watch our "customize your header" tutorial in Freevlog, it's so dumb..."scroll through your html code template". what? you think my mom is going to do that???) i want moms all over the world being able to customize a blog and upload media to it and have the name be http://momblog.ourmedia.org

talk about a community.

• we need easily customizable blogs

wordpress is not even as easy or indepth as i want it to be
i picture what the customize page looks like
i think i need to draw it on paper and show you guys.
maybe it can be written as a WP plug in if that's what we choose for our blogging platform.
i want the choice to make my blog look a certain way, as do most people.
it's freakin simple, i want custom headers and custom sidebars
and custom colors/themes to choose from
it's insanely easy if you know the code
but not everyone knows code, nor should they.

page will include
upload field for header
upload fields/link adding for sidebar
hex color box for color choices
and/or color themes to choose like on this site
http://www.hypergurl.com/colormatch.php

Ourmedia 2.0 will be all about creating a thriving community of people who create, share, discover and learn how to make better grassroots media.

At the same time, we need to internalize lessons from the success of the YouTubes of the world so that:

• it's easy to become a member.
• it's easy to upload video.
• it's easy to watch video.
• it's easy to tag/collect video.
• it's easy to make friends.
• it's easy to navigate the whole site.

jay adds:

In the Videoblogging Group, there is all kinds of arguments why
Youtube-like services are good.
They make it easy to post video online. Isn't this good enough?
well, as Lucas writes above...we're searching for more.

Creating better media is the key.
and defining what "better media" is the conversation we need to have
on the site.

For the record, there is so much good video being uploadedto OM now.
Its all hidden, but even now we are getting people uploading video
that is exploring the world around them.

One point.
YouTube is very important at this moment in time becasue they have
proven how easy it is to post video. Nathan from I/ON made a great
point that his young cousin just wants his video up.
Freevlog is great....but that was last year. people want 3-click blog
creation and video uploads.
they dont want to go to 4 different services to get their videoblog going.

so I want to define what I want OurMedia to become.
This may be blue-sky...but we need to dream here.

I want to go to OM.
Create one single account.
I create a blog in OM. (a customized wordpress blog)
I make a post, type in some text, and upload a video in the blog post.
Done.

My OM blog at http://jaydedman.ourmedia.org already has RSS 2.0 with enclosures.
I dont even need to add a feed button since its already there by default.
I can pimp out my blog easily by adding a new header etc.
When I upload videos, it lets me cross post to any other blog i may have.

If we can accomplish the above, we will be as easy as these Flash
services...but we'll have a much richer community.
I think we can do it.

michael sullivan adds:

its totally feasible.

in fact, if used properly, videobloggers.org back-end system achieves similar result....
technically, you upload a video, and thats all you technically need to do to update your RSS feed with the enclosure. You can add a description too. Their is also meta data extracted from the media file which can be included in the RSS.
This is how its been for almost a year ;-)

I also like to pimp this stuff:
http://podesk.com/

Just a few early examples that do try to cut through all the hassle.

We can do this! Drupal can be made to do this!
We need to do this!

Sull

michael meiser:

I guess to back up a little, flickr has that right balance between ownership and community... perhaps we don't need customizable design templates as I suggested in my last email.. but we at least must keep such a platform up to date and competitive with other webservices. I question though how well wordpress could be tied in with ourmedia's more "social" or community oriented functions.

perhaps there's some way we could partner with feedburner or some of these other services so that users could automatically gain the ability of these services.

I.E. claim their feed on feedburner and then customize it.

What about also developing cross posting interoperability with MT, Blogger, wordpress even if or though me might offer someone a wordpress blog?

I still question though when looking at flickr pages, and myspace and livehournal if we really need full design customization... I'm perhaps much more partial to the relationship I have between flickr and my blog in which flickr stores all my photos but I can cross post galleries of thumbnails or individual photos to my blog.

I guess this issue of customizeablity of the blog really depends on wether these independant blog pages would have ourmedia "community" pages in them. If it's going to be community orinented people are going to have to travel around ourmedia THROUGH these user vlog pages, and hence perhaps the design shouldn't be customizeable otherwise people will become wildely disoriented when traveling around. I think this is more the case then later. It's a tough call. How much ownership can we give users vs. how much community? ...

If ourmedia is to succeed as a channel for communications we need to have a solid
developer community like Wordpress or Wikipedia or any of the other
successful open access / open source solutions of the day.

At the heart of those issues is making Ourmedia NOT another flickr,
or digg, or blip.tv. I strongly suggest making it a platform for
development NOT just for end user usage. Build Ourmedia out as an
installable community package... of course other install bases will
have to use their own hosting, not archive.org but we'll benefit
tremendously from the community which installs and uses the package.
We'll get the install base up... and then gain from the contributions
other developers are making in developing and customizing their own
install base. It more than possible for us to branch drupal into a
community media sharing package and ultimately having 100, 1000 or
more other websites running this might do more to serve our goals of
democratizing media more than just one Ourmedia.org

Adam Fields:

I've thought about this a bit, and discussed it some with Jay. I'd
like to see lots of satellite ourmedia installations that anyone can
download and run on their own server, and I'd like to see the main
server exchange content with those satellites (pull up content from
them, and feed different content to them). From that perspective, the
main site becomes a directory of all of the other sites (which in turn
become mini-directories of their own). Each operator of a satellite
could pick and choose what content they want from other satellites,
and laying a classification abstraction (tagging, maybe) on top of
that would let us find similarities in what people are picking up, and
let us promote those as "interesting" collections. Obviously, this
would be heavily tied with CC-licensing, so this would also be a good
resource for people to find raw materials for remixing and other
projects.

This is the same software infrastructure that it would take to allow
individual hosting - we'd just be running the satellite software
ourselves.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any reason why those
sites couldn't also do uploads through the ourmedia collection at the
IA. It may need to be brokered by the main site, but it should be
doable.

michael meiser:

Is Ourmedia going to be more like a blogger.com or is it going to be more like a flickr.com. Blogger being complete customization, flickr the only customization really being your photos, titles and description. Oh! let's not forget your user icon. :)

While I love both services... I'm more in favor of the flickr.com type blog page based on the functionality it allows

i.e. http://flickr.com/photos/mmeiser - as refernce

blogger: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/ - fully customizeable

Limiting customizations on layout, aestetics and content on the flickr photo feed pages allows flickr enough control over my photo blog page to leverage in community services and enough continuity that flickr can flow community traffic through this page without them getting lost or confused. Of course you could do BOTH... which is to say have an independant blog at username.ourmedia.com AND a community blog at Ouremedia.com/people/username... The only difference would be the first page would be fully customizeable and independant of the community... and the second page community facing and integrating ourmedia's community features, standad ourmedia layout and design... BUT the thing is it might get a little complex two do both as it would take obviously about twice as much effort to develop.

A few other points that might factor into this.

1) One... crossposting.. if we do it it favors the flickr model... Why offer cross posting and a fully customizeable blog. If we don't do cross posting to platforms like moveabletype and wordpress we should make the blogs more customizable.

2) If we allow for full custization we're comiting ourmedia to being a full on blogging platform. We'll need things like bookmarklets and all manner of blogging craziness... well, I guess I already pointed this out, if we use something like wordpress all these full on blog features will be provided. Still it's an idealogical step away from just being a media sharing site, like flickr or youtube.

3) Branching Ourmedia out so anyone can install the source package. If we're allowing anyone to install the package we might get more uptake if we make it more flexible, building in customization options... sharing templates, etc., etc.

Anyway, I'm just illustrating the differences, the blogger.com way and the flickr.com way. Such direction is more than just aesthetic consideration it's an ideological issue... are we a more community facing, a "media sharing" site like flickr.com or are we more trying to sell people on having a fully customizeable independant media blog/vlog. ...

You know, we're starting to sound an awefully lot like blip.tv. Why
not just buy out blip, open source it and then work to create
standard datasharing infrastructure between all the blip satelites.
They're strugling with the same issues.

Blip's typical blog page...
http://blip.tv/posts/?user=joshleo

How that translates to the user blog via crossposting...
http://joshleo.blogspot.com/

I've got to say, while we are starting to sound a little like blip.
No negativity should be put on the issue. They're good guys, a good
webservice... and we could REALLY use an open source version of such
a service... there's nothing less noble about it. Wordpress
replicated Moveabletype, wikipedia started by replicating Sociatext
(I think), Firefox started by... wait, that's I.E. that is
replicating Firefox. Anyway, there's no book that says we have to be
new in order to succeed... we can succeed purely by repicating others
with the single distinguishment being that we're open source and
therefore accessible to everyone.

Besides, I'm sure if we move toward blip they'll still have plenty of
room for market differentiation. Hell, our presence may even help
them. It's not hard to take an NFP and add services to entice their
customers into trading up to something pay. Even if it's just being
the exact same thing as Ourmedia, but with private hosting and
allowing commericial media with an advertising mechanism... but I'm
sure they can do better than that. I think sometimes our pride makes
us arrogant, we reinvent the wheel.

So! how bout it, shall we just copy everything Blip.tv does!?

jay dedman:

yes, crossposting like on Blip.tv is a must.
i have a blog and i want OM to know this.
why? so i can post to my blog in one click.
Plus...OM now knows where its stored media is going.

blogger or flickr? we dont have to be one or the other.
for those of us who have blogs...we can use OM like Flickr.

but we are also creating OM to handle the new folks that YouTube is attracting.
do we want new people to just upload video without creating their own blog?
if not, why make them get a blog elsewhere?
uploading the media is only the first step.
presentation is another part of it.
Then sharing and telling stories.
All these things Youtube-like services dont do.

valentin spirik:

i like jd's 10 positioning points, i like adam's and jay's "satellite" idea/view and i think i would agree with most things posted here so far. here my view/vision (maybe sometimes repeating what has already been said):

alternative rich media hub

i see ourmedia as an alternative rich media hub, but a lot still will have to be build.

what is seen as e.g. professional film making or tv today is often just very bad film making or tv made with a lot of money. those people who have a story to tell often (still) don't get the chance or don't do it. the amateurs of today are a lot of those pros producing all this quickly made, uninspired and industrialised media work. it's boring. soon no one will want to see this, at least more and more people don't want to. and this is where i see ourmedia:

featuring the next generation of media makers (and this is not about age!). pro and grassroots becomes one, or it just does not matter. a good story is a good story. a couple of years ago they could tell you that hi-8 is not good enough to be shown on tv, with mini-dv and internet this argument does not work any more. anyone who makes media can distribute it - as long as there are sites like ourmedia... this is why we need that site: it is the future of a world wide, alternative, creative, grassroots media distribution system. maybe others will join in, but they have to be pushed a bit...

how to generate money

more often the question will be raised of how to generate money for a) the site b) for people who put a lot of work into either the site or online media. i am thinking a lot about b) these days. i want to publish my media online first: it is easy and basically for free. (i am thinking of how to combine online and real world distribution for film making: like streaming my movies to a cinema screen etc... maybe that's ourmedia 3.0.) i always want to offer - at least certain parts - of my media for free via cc-licenses. but like others (thinking of some very talented musicians/composers we have on ourmedia) i have to find a way of how to make money with this. we should also have more discussions about that at the right places.

learning centre

i like the idea of a learning centre. my vision would be a free online multi media (film) school. like wikipedia for media, but interactive and with real people. this kind of thing works if people teach each other what they know. that means: everyone has to spend some time teaching, explaining, helping, but there is also always someone who is a bit better than oneself at something. and this person than teaches you. etc... (example: the game of "go" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(board_game) is successfully taught this way online, and in real life it has been taught that way for about 4000 years - at least in asia...) obviously this only works if people understand the potential of the concept, maybe it has to be explained in ways the cc-concept has to be explained.

what ourmedia could become

my best online/virtual friend wrote the following in his blog http://realdigirev.blogspot.com/. this basically sums up what i think ourmedia could become:

"a true interactive world wide multi media online show to which everyone will be invited to contribute and watch and listen or read at the same time - the biggest free rave/party/show the world has ever seen: a "bring your own"-"take away"-"all you can mix"-event that will make look sodom and gomorrah as just another homophobic footnote in some historic scriptures - replace the literal tower of babel by a gigantic virtual people's palace of music and pictures: where love is the only authority know since it is as free as the air we breathe and as manifold and unique and special as each single snow crystal that ever was and ever will be..."

"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper." - Jean Cocteau