Any ideas/thoughts or examples you think should use. Please feel free to shout.

This continued growth in video consumption in the US confirms what we know – that there is a lot of activity in the video related digital market. Traditional media companies are digitising more content and promoting their online video services, and then digital start-ups (like Boxee and Hulu) are gaining traction. This growth in new content and video services is not slowing down any time soon, making it easier for people to find specific content (because it is all available through search) but making it harder to discover new content because there is too much of it.

My team at The Filter have been working closely with some of the top 10 video providers in Europe and the US to increase user engagement by finding ways to help discovery through offering relevant video recommendations. The results have been really exciting – in all of the services we have been working on over the last 12 months, we have been able to deliver uplifts in video streams per visit of 20-50%, and users who get more relevant recommendations also visit more frequently.

Recent research (by Pew) has found that video watching is nearing epidemic levels among the younger age groups – 9 in 10 internet users in the age bracket 18-29 watch content on video sites. And 1 in every 3 watches video content every day.

The interesting stat I found in this report was that amongst those who watch TV shows or movies online, 23% of them have hooked their computer up to a TV. It is video content that is leading the fabled living room convergence. Make no mistake.

This all translates to a healthy and active sector in terms of investment and opportunity. Which is refreshing in the current climate.

I can back this trend up with what we have been experiencing at The Filter over the last few months. Demand for our video recommendations and relevance technologies is at an all time high: whether from content owners, distributors or aggregators, they all have a pressing business need to find intelligent ways of connecting more of their content to their customers. Editorial and popularity-based suggestions are better than nothing, but our experience is that it is only when companies start using consumption data and sophisticated and matured algorithms that they get seriously exciting results in terms of increases in dwell time, video streams per visit and visits.

The Internet has changed all that. You can now find out more about any subject online than anywhere else – the web is the ultimate source of specialist information. And even though you cannot replace the tactile nature of quality design and paper online (yet!), many magazines are finding that this feature is not enough to keep copy sales from declining and advertising revenue from going online.

The majority of publishers are struggling with the idea of protecting their current business models and making the most of the online opportunity. A growing number, however, are really starting to think beyond this idea that the web is just an additional channel for their content or brand.

Here are some of the most recent examples of magazine reinvention:
- Time Inc reforming Life as a photo portal,
- Meredith closing the print version of Child and absorbing it as a channel within its parenting portal,
- Hachette closing down the print versions of Premiere and Elle Girl in favour of online-only versions.

I will look for more examples and add top this list over the coming weeks.

And it made me think.

The Internet People open mic session was all about the lessons that the gathered London entrepreneurs had learnt. After the usual “you have to have passion”, “partner with someone you trust” kind of advice, Chris Ward (founder of isporty) stood up and said something along the lines of, “Closed networks can no longer scale in the UK, and, therefore web start-ups cannot rely on revenue models that require scale”.

I know Chris well, and have heard this view a few times whilst working with him. But it’s not until I got back home, and read Robert Scoble’s post (posted roughly at the same time Chris was talking – spooky), that I really started thinking that they are both talking sense.

Advertising is great, but start-ups need to do the maths to work out what traffic levels are needed to match their revenue needs. You need sites of scale to bring in £10K or more of CPC revenue every month. It is imperative, therefore to look for other revenue streams. Chris and isporty are aiming to make money first and foremost by offering social media tools and expertise to sports-related brands. This may well be their unique way of making enough money to give the site and company time to grow and develop.

Ok, so I have done that… now what?

A few days later, and I am embarassed to say that I don’t quite get it (yet). I’m usually quite fast off the mark with new communication stuff, but not here.

There’s already a load of praise and excitement for this micro-publishing system and I listened to a recent TWiT podcast where Leo Laporte and his friends were going on about how addictive the whole thing is. There just has to be something in it. Yet, I can’t help but feeling that unless there is a relevant reason why you want to get one-line updates of my whereabouts, mood or content of my shopping trolley, then I won’t be using this just yet.

I am wondering whether this is taking off in the US as SMS text messaging never really did. In Europe everybody took to texting years ago, and it will be interesting to see if Twitter takes off over here as much as it does in the States.