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Guest Blog Post & Blab By Preston Odenbrett

What Is Your Favourite Travel Destination? (Blab Video Replay)

Video marketing has definitely arrived in a big way!!

YouTube statistics indicate that it has more views and more uploads per minute than many other major channels and both individuals and businesses alike are consuming video at an ever increasing rate.

Why would that be surprising? Look at how long it took TV to take over households back in the 1950’s when radio was the major medium for most households.

I believe TV gained 50% adoption five years less time than radio did.

Video today is getting a massive lift due in part that Social Media is allowing video to be part of postings.

Many who are in the video business have been watching this bubble grow larger each and every year and some people say that video will take over the internet in the next five years or less.

It helps that bandwidth speeds have gone up and providers are allowing the bandwidth to go through cable but also through the air using many mobile devices that are in the market today.

Virtual Reality (VR)

The future is here - users can now be in a room at their home or office and be able to place an object lets say a motorcycle and be able to rotate and actually manipulate the object in anyway the user decides.

If you remember Star Trek and some other TV shows in which you can change the environment that they are in and be able to share that with others to collaborate in real time.

Halolense is a great leap into that direction.

So if video is the best thing since sliced bread, why are businesses slow in adopting this in their arsenal to create and maintain revenues?

I believe it stems in the fact that people in general do not like change.

We like , myself included, to be in the comfort zone of what we know.

To go out of the comfort causes dis-comfort and people like to stay comfortable as long as they can.

Now don’t get me wrong there are many businesses who see the future coming and embracing it, spending the necessary money to capture a big share of what ever industry they are in.

They see that the future of video is starting now in 2016 and will explode in so many ways over the next decade.

What technologies have come into our online world that have changed the way people feel about video?

Newer Video Technologies

Each of them have started down this path years ago.

Google I believe was first on the scene with a new concept called “Hangouts”.

It was a new technology that could be a new way to communicate as it was live video feed of people all over the world, hanging out together.

People mostly in the tech fields embraced this in a big way.

They looked at ways that they can use this to be able to have a video conference with their teams, customers, and even family and friends.

It was good, many people flocked to this new way to actually communicate face to face.

You can share videos, screen, share PDF’s.

Like video conferencing in way that allowed more people to be on live video using their webcams that they have on the computer or phone.

Not everyone embraced it but the true pioneers did and they created a huge following and more revenue then they could have using the traditional methods of yesteryear and it would not cost them a dime, since Google gave it away for free.

There are some really good articles about this and what kind of explosion and users came to this new platform.

Just do a Google search and you will see a multitude of information on this platform.

I will be honest with you that It was a little scary at first as you see yourself on video like you are looking into a mirror in a virtual room and you see other “strangers” coming into that room also on video.

Up to ten people could come on video but it would be on a similar film strip on the bottom of each persons view.

It was very unnerving when I first tried as my four year old son was with me at the time and we connected to someone in Germany that of course spoke German and we did not, maybe translation by video is just around the corner?

What fascinated me about this after I got the value of this was that we were now at the age where we can meet people anywhere in the world and they could meet us.

We could do business now not by fax, phone, or by taking a trip to the business or destination, but just set up a virtual room and have ten other people join us “live”.

Live Video Broadcasting

The next part of this growth was when Meerkat came out in February 2015

It was a way for someone who is very good with talking about what ever subject they wanted and many people from that community would watch, learn and interact.

It was only a one way interaction, best for people who did not need to get feedback by talking to another, but it has a mechanism built in that the audiance who is watching can communicate by typing and giving hearts to the person that was speaking to show them they liked what was being said.

However depending on the size of the audience there was no way to follow all the amount of text that was flowing in.

Periscope followed soon after. It has been very similar to this except they added a better way to start a broadcast and they have unique ways to broadcast and give a call to action after it is over.

I have used this platform a few times and I liked that I can use my tablet in Horizontal mode when I do broadcast.

I am not very comfortable talking about the subject or my expertise and just seeing comments come in but not have real conversations.

The battle between Periscope and Meerkat reminds me when I grew up when many knew that Beta was a lot better then VHS - but they did not have a huge amount of consumers that embraced it as they did with VHS.

Because of this Beta lost out and we know who ever is first in market has the advantage in most cases VHS had the largest market share. Yes for the younger readers this was before Blue Ray DVD’s they were called video cassettes.

It seems like Meerkat may be in the same boat as Beta was?

Live Streaming Events

Google then as they can do, experimented with some new technology so they purchased You Tube so they could test it out.

Video live streams were born.

However, it is really not that simple to set up a live stream, you have to know what you are doing and have the right equipment when doing it.

They have made it simpler by plugging into a 3rd party provider called xsplit to be able to decode live streams anywhere around the world, at least I think so, but maybe it is only availalable to the USA market?

Of course there are others on the market as well such as Live Stream, Ustream and a host of others that have similar services that came out before Google did.

Then Facebook the most recognized company on the planet got into video.

They did not like Youtube videos on there platform as it can take people off their platform and onto something else, even though they have allowed their users to create links on their platform.

They wanted to capture the market with video so they created a way for users to upload videos direct to their feeds.

Recently they have been rolling out live streams using their technology.

First they did through a lot of the Hollywood stars as they believed if it was adopted by them other people in the mainstream would also adopt it.

This will be seen, but they are rolling it out slowly to some select people who are known to their platform.

BLAB: The New Kid on the Block

http://Blab.im/I_Love_Roatan

Join My Regular Blab: Mondays @ 10.30am (CST)

Blab came on the scene late in 2015 and is a simple platform that anyone can, all you need is a twitter account.

Create a room, add some graphics if you want to make it look more professional and you then have what is called a “BLAB”.

The room opens up, people in the blab community see you are broadcasting and can come in.

Similar to Periscope and Meerkat except that instead of just having one person broadcast you can have 4 people on the screen in 4 separate windows so you can all talk together.

They also have what they call Props that allow you to give accolades to people in the room, if you like what you hear from them, however this can and is abused by some people and it disappears at the end when the broadcast is over, so you can’t build up any props to show how popular your broadcast is like Periscope and Meerkat do.

However, with that said It is a place where business is being done and real conversations are taking place.

It is a place to network and be able to expose your business and pick up a few friends along the way.

360° Video

The most recent technology is quite unique and called 360° video or Virtual Reality (VR)

Not computer imagery, but real live video footage that has been recorded.

This is where a special video camera you purchase has the ability to show all around the person that is shooting the video.

There are some really interesting concepts using this technique, it feels similar to the Matrix movie but instead of having many cameras around the object this is one camera that has many lenses to be able to shoot in a 360°circle around the person who is filming.

You get a really good idea of what the environment looks like, not just a 2d or 3d image but 4 D. Kinda of reminds me of the movie Back to the Future where Marty Mcfly goes to his home town and sees everything in the future.

I remember seeing the 4D digitized shark (Jaws) that leaped out at him from the top of the sign of the theatre and ate him as he was walking down the street.

When the shark accomplished its goal it just disappeared in a massive pixelated explosion, I guess the message to the one who got swallowed up was “Game Over”.

I have seen this 360 video technology being used in a number of ways to great effect.

National Geographic

Discovery

Viewmaster

Google is getting into this arena (surprise, surprise) with something called expeditions that will bring the environments all over the world to kids in classrooms.

Kids can actually see how beautiful the ocean is or the way something is built. It is a fascinating time we live in and the future is with Generation X and Z to transform our lives into something that has more technology written over it then the past ever had.

Google also has developed Google Cardboard

It can be made to view the new way to watch videos using your Android phone.

Kind of like the 3D glasses you now wear in movie theatres to watch 3D films. Even Manufactures have created their own versions as well thus Viewmaster among others.

Ideas To Implement!!

From personal experience we have a client that has placed a jerry rigged motor on one of our HD Live Stream Webcams for tourists in Greece and when people from around the world view his camera, they also get a 360°degree live video feed of Mount Olympus.

We may need to find a manufacture that can produce this as an additional equipment to our cameras, I am sure if many clients would adopt that we could go from 10 million to more then 50 million views monthly. Hmmm, need to get back to work on this idea.

ABOUT PRESTON ODENBRETT

www.PrestonOdenbrett.com

Preston has been working with small to medium sized businesses for over 24 years and has more recently been working in the travel industry developing new ways to market tourism through emerging technology.