The DMW Interview with Broadcaster.com: We Are Not Just Another Video Site!
Broadcaster is a new entertainment community that is not willing to take just any content from anyone. The concept is two-fold: Filter out all the crap that is on YouTube as well as help talented creators to find a loyal audience.
"We only want the best of the best, only a thousand or so contributors", says Martin R. Wade III, President and Chief Executive Officer of Broadcaster, Inc.
Broadcaster has since its launch at the end of last year already amassed loyal audiences that upload and view millions of video files each month. Martin Wade says that the early success of Brodcaster is proof of that there is just too much content on YouTube and the vast majority of it is no good.
"They (YouTube) are willing to take anything from everyone, 80% is not worth anything", he says.
Nolan Quan was previously President of AccessMedia Networks and is now principal shareholder and consultant to Broadcaster. He describes Broadcaster.com as "the next generation community site":
"MySpace allows people to put up profiles and use very simple tools to personalize those profiles. Embedding YouTube clips is one of those simple ways of personalizing your profile. We want to go one step further and offer several multimedia applications in order to streamline the user’s ability to not only find and organize online entertainment but also create their own original podcasts, videos, and live webcasts", says Nolan Quan.
He describes the idea behind Broadcaster as to only attract the best of the best, for those who are not satisfied with what is currently available on MySpace and YouTube. By offering them free online resources such as the video editing tools Studio Pro, contributors can put together professional looking programs and then go on and help them find their audience.
When asked about business models and why contributors should use Broadcaster instead of Revver (whose approach to attracting top talent is by offering revenue split arrangements) they are quick to point out what they think is Revver’s major weakness:
"Revver and those sites that have a shared model don’t have a clue how to get people to visit the site and have as a result not been successful. We don’t want to copy people who are not successful", says Martin Wade.
What is your business model?
"It is advertising-based. We will wait until our community reaches critical mass and then introduce advertising. YouTube waited 18 months until they introduced advertising and we will most likely copy that model. In the future we see several up-selling opportunities, but that is at least two years away", says Martin Wade.
What are some of those up-selling opportunities?
"I don’t think that the studios want to cannibalize DVD sales when HD market is still solidifying - but I see the potential for an SD market for smaller windows and Internet. The studios can distribute their SD content through sites such as ours and allow it to be mashed up. We’ll charge consumers for it and eventually be a credit card processor. But all these opportunities are just gravy. Advertising will be the main source of revenue for years to come", says Nolan Quan.
What are your traffic goals for this year?
"At any given time there are up to 100,000 users on our site that are viewing content. Also, at any given time there are over 1,000 registered Broadcaster users logged in and either broadcasting on their own webcams, chatting with other users, or broadcasting content from a playlist. We are aiming to increase the number of logged in registered users at any given time to 20,000 fairly soon. Then we will decide if we stop there and start advertising or continue growing", says Martin Wade.
Joakim Baage
