I’m definitely intrigued by VYou.com, currently in beta, which allows you to set up your own video Q&A channel and have people ask you questions (short, in text) which you answer with a video response. In time, the system supposedly will automatically play responses from your archived video answers based on the question asked. If nothing from your answer archive matches, you’re prompted to record an original video answer.

I can see how this would be nice for online retail or customer support. But I’m most interested in potential news/journalism applications. This coming semester, the editor-in-chief of CUIndependent.com, Sara Morrey, will give VYou a try as a way to better interact with and answer questions of her site’s audience (CU-Boulder students, mostly). That should be interesting.

Meanwhile, I’ve created my own beta VYou profile page, and you can ask me a question, if you care to…

I’m wondering if this little Twitter experiment I just posted will get any traction. We’ll see.

The amazing thing about Twitter is all the creative (and practical) uses people are finding for it.

Show us your best self-photo!

My teen daughter got seriously hooked on the Showtime TV series Dexter, which is about a “noble” serial killer who works as a police forensics expert. A few months ago a friend at her boarding school loaned her the season 1 DVD and it quickly became her favorite show. She told me how great the show is, and, well, I had to check it out myself. It did feel a bit odd that my teenager was so in love with a show where the hero is a serial killer, so naturally I needed to investigate!

We don’t get Showtime (a premium cable channel) at home, so I watched the pilot episode as an iTunes download. OK, daughter No. 1 was on to something. I quickly got hooked on Dexter; it may be the best and most entertaining TV show I’ve ever gotten hooked on (and that includes The Sopranos). I absolutely love this show!

OK, so watching seasons 1 and 2 I could do legitimately, using either iTunes or Amazon Video On Demand (formerly Unbox). There are a few other paid online options.

Now Showtime is almost finished with season 3. I’ve watched episodes 1-11, and can’t wait for the season finale next week. Of course, in order to watch those episodes, I’ve had to use a site that posts free video streams of the shows. No commercials. I doubt Showtime approves, but it’s not hard to find free viewing of all the Dexter season 3 episodes.

So I ask you, how stupid is it that Showtime won’t put the current season on iTunes, Amazon Video On Demand, Blockbuster Online, et al? I’m addicted to the show. So are lots of other viewers. I’d gladly pay for season 3 episodes, but Showtime apparently won’t put them online for purchase/rental until season 3 is over. Wow, is that ever dumb.

I suppose the logic is that Dexter fans will not want to wait so they’ll add Showtime as a premium channel to their cable accounts. But that’s old thinking, for lots of us. I dumped our HBO premium account a while ago; I still watch my favorite HBO shows, but on-demand. That typically saves money over the regular monthly fee I used to pay. And I won’t add Showtime. I’ll watch its shows on-demand, either on my TiVo via Amazon Video On Demand, or sometimes on my laptop with iTunes. (And every once in a while I’ll drive to the local Blockbuster Video store and rent a DVD.)

Showtime is leaving money on the table by delaying putting its shows online right away. Old-media thinking strikes again. When will they learn?

One of Jon Stewart’s staples of humor on The Daily Show is showing how politicians contradict themselves by airing side-by-side video clips — what the politician just said today, vs. what he/she said a few months ago that completely contradicts the current stance. I’ve admired this technique, and long wondered why traditional news organizations shied away from this. (In the Youtube era, bloggers and others do this stuff often, so I have a hard time fathoming the logic of holding back.)

So I was pleased to see a NYTimes.com video report that used Stewart’s technique so effectively: “The McCain/Romney Rapprochement.” The reporter showed clips of GOP candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney criticizing each other’s issue positions during the GOP primary campaign, and today sending conflicting messages as McCain considers Romney for his VP pick.

Perhaps The Daily Show (and The Colbert Report) are beginning to have an impact on traditional media.

Have you spotted any other examples of this?

I must say, this Katie Couric Youtube channel of behind-the-scenes looks at the CBS anchor’s life when the “real” cameras aren’t on is pretty cool. Obviously, Couric is comfortable with any camera on, so it’s not a big deal, apparently, for someone to be following her around with a pocket video camera.

Here’s an example:

We’ll see if she keeps this up. At least Couric is “trying to get into the 21st Century,” as she says in this clip. ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson quips, “I’m still in the 19th Century.” Umm, that’s a problem, Charlie.

This is a great quote, by Dan Gillmor (via a Twitter post by Dan Pacheco):

OK, perhaps the second sentence is paraphrased, but I really like it. “‘Dog bites man’ is newsworthy if you know the man, or dog,” so nicely sums up what I’ve been thinking for some time about what many have termed “hyper-local” journalism.

Yes, dog bites man, or 5th-grader hits winning home run, or woman wins teacher of the year award at Smith Elementary are boring items to nearly everyone — but not to the people involved and the people who know them. For the latter group, it’s important stuff.

We now have the technology available online (and for mobile devices) to deliver that boring-to-everyone-but-me stuff to the right people. We don’t need to produce a weekly give-away print product filled with boring dog-bites-man stuff, because we can deliver it to the people for whom it’s important, interesting, and vital — and not bore everyone else.

To critics of hyper-local news or “citizen journalism,” I will argue that it can be powerful stuff when and only when it’s targeted well. I can envision a future — and I look forward to it — when services are available to send me news on my smartphone letting me know that the guy down the street got bit by a dog.

Pop17.com’s Sarah Meyers recently did a nice little piece about how to produce a show like hers for very little money and low-end equipment. Useful stuff for small-media entrepreneurs, as well as any media company wanting to do more web video programming without busting budgets.

For most mainstream news publishers, as they produce video, the inclination is to host that content on their own websites. Makes sense, right? You own the videos, they should be where you have complete control over them. Right?

Actually, not necessarily. These days it makes the most sense to post video on Youtube, which has become the de facto standard for web video.

Why? The short answer is: Videos hosted on your own website don’t get nearly the exposure and distribution they’ll get when posted on Google-owned Youtube. When an online user spots your video on Youtube, they’ll be able to grab the “embed code” and place the video on their blog, website, social network page, etc. No, that’s not stealing your copyrighted content; you want them to do that, so their readers will see your content and brand and click through to your site. This is the Distributed Web strategy, and it’s smart.

What should you post on your own site: The Youtube version of your video? Or another self-hosted version? Either one is fine. If you’re willing to go to the trouble (and expense) of hosting and serving up your own videos, it makes perfect sense to have a copy that’s completely under your control. I’d highly recommend, though, that you allow viewers to pick up the embed code from that so they can spread your content around the web.

But really, it’s probably fine to stick with posting your video content on Youtube and using the Youtube-embed version on your own site. There’s no longer any shame in doing that. If you’re a small publisher, given the choice of only one video hosting, I’d go with Youtube. Your video content is more likely to get wider exposure and distribution outside of your website’s user base. Doing only self-hosting for your videos is a negative.

Of course, don’t forget about all the other places your video should appear: MySpace, Facebook, et al. You may be able to simply use Youtube video versions for some sites, while needing to upload new videos for others. The important thing is just to spread your video around widely and intelligently.

The New York Times posts some of its videos on Youtube; anyone can pick up code to republish the video online, serving as a marketing channel for NYTimes.com. On its website, however, self-hosted videos cannot be shared.

This self-hosted video on Washingtonpost.com allows viewers to pick up and share embed code.

Live streaming video. Next big thing. Sarah Meyers of Pop17.com explains it well:

When Youtube adds this sometime this year, as Meyers discovered it will, it’ll become huge. Hey, mainstream media companies: Jump on this now. Don’t wait for yet another big Internet trend to go huge before deciding then to experiment (as has happened SO many times before with other things). Let’s move a bit faster this time, eh?

Chris Pirillo is an example of leading the way on live streaming video. Experimentation is the order of the day with this. Yeah, Pirillo at his desk occasionally talking can be pretty dull. But there are interesting uses for this, you can be sure. I’d just like to see some media companies do some of the innovating.

How could traditional news and media companies best use live streaming video?

I’ve mentioned before how important it is for media companies to get their content out there — meaning everywhere, including on any blog that will carry it. (It’s the “atomization of media” thing.) I see that MSNBC.com is taking up that charge, as you can see in the screengrab below. I’d wanted to post one of its videos on this blog and went looking for its embed code; found this instead. Oh well, at least they’re working on doing the right thing!