Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

YouTube will be offering high-resolution content

Mar 13, 2008 4 Comments »

Personally it doesn’t make a big difference because the Internet connection on my side or at least the package that I use, is so slow that even now it takes ages to buffer the lowest quality videos. It is a real put off whenever I’m trying to see a video on YouTube. I wonder how much time my connection will take to buffer high-resolution YouTube videos.

You can already watch the high-resolution versions of some existing videos by adding &fmt=6 to the URL of the video. Of course for this to work the high-resolution version of the video should exist.

Will it increase the popularity of YouTube? I think it is already enough popular. Yes, you will be able to watch quality video content with greater regularity. Recently my wife and I watched a complete movie (an old Hindi classic from the 50s); it would have been better if the video was clearer.

YouTube showing high resolution content doesn’t or shouldn’t mean that it will take longer to upload files to YouTube. I think usually the quality is quite fair when you upload the video; it gets blurry when it is converted to the YouTube format or the FLV format.

Although I don’t have much time to watch videos these days but yes given a better connection and higher resolution I would prefer to spend some extra time at YouTube watching the videos that I really want to watch.

Read/Write Web suggests that YouTube might be collaborating with Hulu to give its users a better quality video experience. Sadly Hulu content is not available from my side of the world.

Is it time to move from user-generated content to expert-generated content?

Mar 09, 2008 2 Comments »

Especially content to be used as critical reference like technical, historical and medical? Web 2.0 has been the era of user-generated content, may it be YouTube, the millions of blogs or MySpace. Social media took the Internet by storm and became the buzzword. There is nobody it seems who surfs the Internet and is not aware of some or the other social media or social networking website. Most of the content existing on social media websites and blogs is generated by the users, and not by "experts".

Websites like Wikipedia, where some of the users are also authors and editors, are being viewed suspiciously because sometimes they have erroneous information on them. This is also a reason why journalists tend to take bloggers lightly — they often complain that they (journalists) do all the hard work and bloggers keep commenting on them as "armchair journalists". Inaccuracies often creep up when the content is generated voluntarily, free of cost. The magnitude of the problem gets amplified when even the references used cannot be relied upon.

This is a problem discussed in detail at this link.

As usual I agree and disagree. Not all user-generated content is inferior and unreliable, and I personally believe content-quality is going to be self-sustaining, as more and more content is generated to generate advertising revenue. If your content is not reliable and cannot be trusted, sooner or later people will stop visiting your website or blog. Blogs and websites that depend on repeat visits will have to ensure quality and trust. The link above claims there are many inaccuracies at Wikipedia, but I think every kind of medium has its pluses and minuses. Nobody is suggesting that you derive nuclear science theories after taking references from Wikipedia. As a research tool you can begin with Wikipedia and then verify the information from other online and offline resources.

The same holds true for every kind of blog and website. You access the content, and if you need to verify then go to other resources available to you. This also holds true for information that exists outside of the realms of the Internet.

As far as blogging is concerned, I don’t think user-generated content here is just a passing phase. Blogging is not merely a publishing tool in the hands of the literate mob. It is going to stay, and advance, as one of the most potent communication tools the civilization has ever witnessed.

How to create valuable content

Mar 07, 2008 4 Comments »

While to people come to your blog or website? They are certainly looking for something. whenever you go to a link you have a specific objective in your mind; you just don’t randomly visit websites without any purpose. Wherever you go, whatever you do on the Internet there is a purpose involved. If your content solves that purpose then you have got valuable content.

Whenever you are creating content for your blog or website you should ask the following questions from yourself:

• Why would your visitors appreciate that content?
• Is it providing to them what they are looking for?
• Is your content so unique that they cannot find it anywhere else?
• Would you find your content useful if you accessed it or another website?

If the answer to all these questions is "yes"  then you are creating valuable content for your visitors.

Should blog writers be paid for the work they do or for their performance

Mar 06, 2008 2 Comments »

In commercial blogging, what they call these days "pro-blogging" there is a very thin line that divides "writing" and "performance". Writing for blogs means simply generating content so that it can be published. Performing means, how much buzz individual blog posts can generate and how many page views or impressions can be generated for the blog as well as the advertisers advertising on that blog.

Gawker media, according to this post, pays its employees by their performance, not by virtue of being its employees; that means, you not only have to write content for Gawker media, you also have to write content that brings in more profit for the advertisers.

Is it right or wrong? Depends on the model your blog publishing is following. Your blog, in order to be profitable, surely has to generate traffic and traffic comes with high-quality content generation and non-stop promotion. Given that the writer produces high-quality content, whose work is it to promote the blog non-stop? Is it the employer’s job, that is Gawker media, or the writer’s job?

If the writer is supposed to generate traffic that isn’t Gawker media dumping the entire responsibility of the blog upon the writer who is just supposed to write quality content? I think for a writer who is hired to write blog content this can prove to be a great distraction. Promotion should be handled by another team and not by the writers.

Again, there is some content that can be easily promoted, for instance technology, gaming, programming, music, celebrity gossip, earning money, but other, less appealing subjects need strategic and targeted promotion. By solely holding the writer responsible for the page views the employer shrugs away from the responsibility. Would I take up such a job as a blog writer? Only if I’m paid lots of money (lots of money according to my standards). If I am both writing high quality content and promoting it I might as well run my own blog and earn greater rewards.

Creatively selling content on the Internet: Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails

Mar 06, 2008 2 Comments »

It is becoming increasingly difficult to sell content, especially non-tangible content like text, video and audio over the Internet because so much variety is available for free. Free content is irresistible to most surfers even if they have to compromise on quality a bit.

But giving your content for free doesn’t mean earning no money. Recently a rock group called Radiohead offered its music at whatever price its fans wanted to pay and became a huge success. Their album "In Rainbows" made record sales (in terms of artists themselves selling and promoting their music on the Internet) and now even in the conventional format (CDs is being sold in the retail stores) they are making brisk sales. This album was not as big a success as their previous album but compared to the current music sales trends in the market it was a decent business.

The Radiohead had an advantage compared to a lesser-known artist trying to sell his or her creation over the Internet: they are a know British rock band. Nonetheless there are many artists as well as music companies that are not doing well following the conventional music business model.

In another such fete Nine Inch Nails is offering free music over the Internet accompanied with varied formats of prices. For instance, you can download the first nine tracks for free and for $5 you can download all 36 tracks. And this doesn’t mean they’re not making sales in the conventional sense. At various other prizes one can buy CDs, DVDs, and a $300 "ultra-delux limited edition pack" can get you an assortment of the band’s paraphernalia, with the music of course.

I think this is a very creative strategy to sell content on the Internet. The Internet audience is used to getting stuff for free and then paying for it later on, if it finds it worth paying for. Besides, instead of people not listen to your tracks or pirating them, it is a lot better to offer the music for free so that you can lay ground for further/future sales. By doing this you are not forcing your fans to engage in illegal activities in order to listen to your music.

The traditional content companies should follow the same flexible model over the Internet. A great thing about digital content is, once it is created, there are practically no production costs and you can create as many versions as possible. Even if you create one music file it can be downloaded by millions of fans, whether they pay or not.