This is quite an about-face for the Google-owned company. Google’s Eric Schmidt has previously praised the virtues of free content, an easy stance to take when your business model is wholly based on user-generated content. Then YouTube started funding its own original content to the tune of $100 million, and suddenly realized that, maybe, artists and writers should get paid for their work.

It also raises some questions about how they’ll index their subscription content. Right now, Google preferences free content in its search and Google News rankings, and tells content creators to make their videos free-to-view on YouTube, frustrating publishers trying to make a dime off their video content (it’s possible to index content behind a paywall, but it takes a careful reading of Google’s instructions).

However, given the companies recent move to preference Google+ information over other social media data, any decision to create YouTube subscription channels will likely preference that content over any other video subscription platform. It’s a bit like Apple’s move to control the content and distribution of iBooks.

Old-school journalism used to believe in the separation of church and state when it came to editorial content and advertising. In the digital age,  perhaps we need to create a separation of content creation tools/platforms (YouTube,  iBooks, Kindle) and their distribution systems (Google, Apple stores, Amazon.com)?

While the Hollywood-backed service has been around for a little while now, it hasn’t really taken off, and Amazon is the first major online video supplier to ink a deal. UltraViolet lets users combine digital purchases from any retailer and store it in a “locker.” More over, it can be used by multiple members of a family, and each family member can personalize their cloud-based list of videos.

This seems like a solid solution to consumers’ desire to view movies on a multiplicity of devices. The problem is that because Hollywood waited so long to provide a digital solutions, online retailers like Amazon and Apple already have their own locker (albeit, not as multi-user or mutli-device friendly). BestBuy and Walmart have endorsed the service but have not made it an active option for their consumers.

Most notably, the service does not require a subscription, which may be bad news for subscription sites. Hollywood hopes UltraViolet will encourage people to go back to buying rather than renting DVDs, which may just happen — if you have a portable locker, downloading favorites and buying one-offs of streaming video may be more favorable. But the service does integrate with subscription sites like Amazon and LoveFilm, so time will tell which way consumers are swaying.

On the other side of the world, Indian telecom giant Reliance recently announced its plans to launch an on-demand movie service at www.Bigflixplus.com, streaming 500+ movies in HD on your PC or mobile device. This is perhaps overdue, seeing as how India has the largest movie industry in the world and most individuals get on the Internet through their mobile phone.

However, movie studios seem to be looking for ways to stymy the growing popularity of on-demand online services. Warner Brothers is poised to announce this week that they will double the delay of DVD rentals online from 28 to 56 days after the DVD is made available for sale in stores. This seems like an echo of the same resistance that got publishing houses in trouble when e-books became popular. It would be nice to see companies work with online subscription companies as they decrease torrenting and bootlegging, and consumers are clearly displaying their preference for them over brick-and-mortar rental outlets or buying DVDs. Don’t they know that, in the 21st century, only the nimble survive?

The main difference vs Hulu is that all of TumTiki’s premium content sales are run through Amazon.com. We presume Frontier has negotiated a much larger cut of the resulting income than Amazon’s normal 7-8% affiliate commission structure.

One other difference between TumTiki and almost every other major site we know of (not to mention Fortune 500 companies), the site’s ‘about us’ page boasts a “100% U.S.-based workforce.”

Here’s the thing — it’s the same audience demographic, the same content, and even the same size on the screen (our video streaming allows our videos to be blown up to full-screen by our members.) The only difference is a webinar is presented “live” and often includes a Q&A session at the end, while an on-demand version is by definition recorded.
One might expect the viewing patterns to be fairly similar.

But they’re not. Not at all. Shockingly dissimilar in fact.

Generally 80% or more of live webinar attendees stay on through an entire presentation. However, when you look at stats for the recorded version of the exact same webinar, boy do they change! A big chunk of viewers bail in the first 30 seconds or so. Then another big chunk bail around the 4-5 minute mark. The ones who stick it out then will generally stay around for the entire video. Perhaps 50% make it all the way to the end.

If you’re selling memberships to your content as we are, your entire business model is bound up in your members finding your content engrossing and valuable. Clearly the live version of the webinar was, but the canned was not so much. I’ve noted these same stats with several different sites, so although it’s anecdotal data, it’s compelling enough to consider acting on.

How? Well, first of all we’re often not using the “live” version of the webinar for our on-demand version. Instead, we’re recording a separate version that’s generally 25-40% shorter. It’s the same slides (now) and same key points, but we hone the delivery so there are fewer digressions and less ‘chatting’. We’re also paying particular attention to the first five minute of the recording, recognizing it’s the “hump” we have to get more of the audience through to carry them to the end.

There’s no more attention for a meandering introduction or gentle build up to the sexiest points of your speech. You have to come in and hook them from the start! That’s not to say we’re perfect at that yet, it’s a video editorial art we’re gradually learning how to do.

So, while repurposing your webinar content for your membership site sounds easily practicable, it’s actually more work than one might suspect. It’s not just popping up an MP4 with a few edits. It’s thinking through, recording and producing an entirely new version. Who said the Internet age would be easy? Well, at least it’s never boring!

Speaking as someone who has managed tech teams building in-house subscription platforms, my hat is off to them.  It’s way more complicated than anyone thinks.  Yes, you can buy a piece of crappy software online for $99 to turn your blog “into” a subscription site… but trust me, it’s crappy.  For basic DRM, recurring billing processing, subscriber records, marketing reports, etc, let alone the kind of uber-sleak Apple-esque cart experience we’d all expect from the Hulu Brand, it’s gonna be a long tech row to hoe.

Funnily enough, just before I built and managed subscription sites, I was the marketing director in the mid-90s for a publications such as Digital Video News and CableFAX Daily.  Our reporters breathlessly dashed out exclusives about America’s upcoming “500 channels” future coming soon with on-demand video for sure! This was back when the Internet was still called the ‘Information Superhighway’.

15 years later, we have 300 million+ channels online and yet we’re still waiting around for really, truly video on demand.  As in any TV show or video that I want, when I want it, now, now now and yes I will pay a subscription.  My step-daughter has to pay a PC guy to debug her computer every few weeks because she can’t wait for the new episode of House to show up on Hulu, so she downloads it from a shady Asian site.  So, we’ve got this as a household budget item already.

Yes, people will pay for TV.  Even TV with commercials. If it’s what they desire to watch at the moment they desire it.  Convenience is a mighty powerful motivator.   Not to mention Hugh Laurie.