thehighcalling

Social media is attractive to small businesses because of its perceived price. You can set up a new blog, fan page, video site, and Twitter account without paying a dime. There’s no expensive software, or costly media buys. However, even though there’s a low price tag to enter the game, social media is far from free. It requires time, energy, and effort. It’s a never-ending commitment to create interesting content, listen to conversations, and respond.

What he’d like to see is an information world that “gives us a bit of Justin Bieber and a bit of Afghanistan,” marked by controls that let us filter content by its relevance, importance, comfort (topics that can be difficult to discuss or read), challenge level and points of view (with an option to see “alternative”). Of course, much of that goes against the history of the Internet, which has been marked by its ability to connect like-minded people, both for good and for bad. In other words, Google and Facebook could build such controls and even bake more human editing into their algorithms, but do people even want them?

Videola, while still in development, is on track to be the go-to distribution for Drupal-based IPTV (Internet Television).

The Facebook Recommendations plugin gives users personalized suggestions for pages on your site they might like, based on what people are sharing. Otlican displays the Recommendations at the bottom of each article — she’s found that nearly 0.6% of readers click on content in this box. You can even see how this feature will look on your site before you add it — simply enter your website address here, click on the page and it will show you the recommendations Facebook already has for your site.

Our goal is that using the distribution, you could create your own Netflix On-Demand style (subscription), Hulu style (ad supported), or Blockbuster / Amazon style (rental) streaming video websites with your own video content. Videola is currently oriented toward curated, editorial, some-to-many video sites – as opposed to many-to-many user generated content sites such as YouTube. We're also building IPTV layers in the form of apps for mobile and television-based devices such as the Roku player.

Fans are the best resource for spreading news, and therefore, video content. You know the ones: the die-hard followers on Twitter and Facebook who are always the first to comment, respond and retweet. Make sure they feel special — send your video to them directly before it goes live on your site, and make sure to emphasize their exclusive VIP access. Encourage them to share it with their followers soon and often.