Allow Me to Introduce Spidvid
Note: This blog post along with the next 8 that follow were previously posted, but due to a hacker attack I’m now re-posting them since the content was lost in that unfortunate event.
Spidvid.com has been a long time coming, but the journey has certainly been worth it. The initial idea for Spidvid’s creation was last Spring so it has taken over a year to design, develop, and release its private beta. We will start spreading the word about Spidvid in a couple of weeks, so if you’re reading this there is a good chance that you are already a Spidvid insider which is great.
I’m Jeremy Campbell, founder of Socially Collaborative Media Inc. the parent company of Spidvid.com, and I would like to take this opportunity to share the story of how Spidvid.com originated.
The story
Back in April 2008 I was watching an online video which had a very cool animation effect in it. I felt like the special effect really added a lot of entertainment value and others did as well as they shared and their comments below the video. The producer of these effects was asked to collaborate with the original video’s creator to provide the effect, and got a “special thanks to…”. Upon further research I kept seeing similar examples popping up across the web. I found these collaborations very intriguing so I dreamed up a vision to expand on the overall concept, introduce a model which could be effective on a larger scale, and benefit everyone involved.
The traditional studio model
I currently view studios as bank-like entities which exist to connect together a group of individuals who each have the skills and talent it takes to implement an idea/script into a marketable media product. Unless your a big name actor or director, it’s the studios which retain the vast majority of the revenues that are generated by the video content.
Spidvid’s collaborative model
With Spidvid, individuals can connect and collaborate together across the globe to form on-demand production teams. Teams that contain the necessary talent needed to take in ideas, set objectives, achieve goals, and output quality video content. This content can then be shared and engaged with viewers across the social web, and each individual who contributed to the team is compensated for his or her efforts.
Core user-base
There are two main groups of individuals we’re focusing on. Type a) individuals who currently work in, or have experience in the video production space, have spare time and want to be part of some interesting passion projects and pursue new opportunities. Type b) are individuals in film and production schools and/or programs, who believe in new and innovative collaborative models like Spidvid.com offers.
Do you have a remarkable idea for a video?
For viewers and consumers of content who have creative ideas to offer our production community we offer a production ideas page where ideas can be submitted, edited wiki-style, rated, and community ranked according to their popularity. Our hope is that one day this area will play an important generator of ideas and scripts that the Spidvid production community can use and ultimately have them promoted by the very community that generated their popularity in the first place.
Future blog posts
I hope to post every Monday and Friday for the next few weeks so get subscribed to stay updated on all of our news, beta invitations, and illustration models which help outline Spidvid’s model more clearly from a visual standpoint. Also how the community adopts and uses the website to challenge the way that video content is typically produced will also be an important topic for us to share here too.
Ebook manifesto
I recently released an ebook manifesto entitled “Hollywood Is Doomed – The Rise of Collaborative Creation Teams”. You can view it here, and download it here. If you find the PDF document interesting then please share it with your friends, family, and colleagues, I really appreciate it. Also follow us on Twitter, and fan us up on our small but growing Facebook Page.
It’s go time
After waiting a year to finally start promoting Spidvid I’m going to make the most of it because it is a passion of mine to one day say that I was so lucky to collaboratively build and grow a production community which helped redefine how videos could be created, produced, distributed, and promoted. I sometimes refer to Spidvid as an open “Hollyweb” sort of ecosystem, but I’ll leave that up to the online community to decide on.