Is there a role for consumer video beyond all the LonelyGirl115 wannabes and budding Aaron Sorkins (The Burg)? Is this a sustainable trend for social networking or is this just a fad like CB radios in the ’70s. Can we shape this trend to integrate it as deeply into people’s lives as the Internet itself?

Sharpe Partners’ research gives us the place to start. We know that 54% of online consumers take video. We know that there is a group of people who have traditionally been the most dedicated to sharing their lives with pictures and video: online parents over 35+ with children, HHI $50k+. Over 30% of that highly lucrative marketing target is online and taking video. Just 11% are putting it online.

Why the log-jam? Simple: lack of time and tools. These people are taking the equivalent of video snap shots. They don’t have time to figure out video editing software, nor do they necessarily want join a site (sorry, jumpcut.com) to do it. They just want “to make the video I want and send it to who I want”. They’d love to cut in some extra video – a shot of Mickey Mouse, supplied by Disney - but don’t want to spend more than 5 minutes doing it.

How do we get them going? Start with delivering the simple tools - the point and shoots of the video world. Stop handcuffing them to sites, but connect them to the brand with value added content. Hey stream it. Finally think about the long term: this market will only fade away when parents stop taking their kids’ picture, moving or otherwise. That’s something to build a monetization model on.

In the 1900s as the Movie business entered its 2nd decade the single biggest concern for all “would-be” movie moguls were patents; patents on critical parts of cameras and projectors. One apocryphal story attributes the birth of Hollywood to outlaw producers trying to avoid the reach of the patent police. During the Patent Wars everyone in movies was obsessed with machines. Content was just the stuff that ran through them.

Now we seem to know better. Major movie studios and content producers are bulls-eyed in on content and most are currently retaining control of it on the Internet. We have entered the era of The Copyright Wars with all eyes watching who will sue who and estimates of payments spiraling. Fears that this will irreparably slow the growth of this new internet bubble are rampant.

Let’s take a breath, iris out our focus and look at the bigger picture. For the next several months accommodations will need to be met, Google seemed to have accepted that when they bought youtube.com. But after those first payouts (they’ll be the biggest), the realization that the balance of power has shifted should begin to set in. Now the perception is that the content owners are in control with the law on their side. However perceptions and laws change.

Content without distribution is useless, not unlike a movie camera without film. Increasingly the channels of distribution are shifting to the Internet and away from channels controlled by the content owners. As this continues to happen the deals between the content owners and the sites will change. Everyone will begin to seriously figure out ways to deliver and monetize distribution and the content owners will find millions of new screens. Issues of copyright will begin to fade away, like concerns about camera patents. Another forgotten phase in business history. Iris-In.

YouTube. GooTube. Lawsuit. What is the deal? Are the media companies really freaking out about copyright infringement or is all this court action just a bargaining tool? (Or is the term blackmail more appropriate?) Whatever it is, everyone just needs to shut up for a minute and think.

Getting a couple cents for a song in some high school kid’s schlock video isn’t worth the effort. Ripping clips of the Daily Show off YouTube and slapping them up on ComedyCentral.com isn’t going to save the day. The $400/hr lawyers and Harvard MBAs need to accept, embrace and exploit YouTube for what it is and what it can be.

What it is:
Advertising. Free Advertising. Advertising that’s welcomed, not shunned. Advertising that feels honest, not contrived. Advertising for their show, band, movie or product that exists and runs without them lifting a finger.

Here’s a scenario: Bob watches the Daily Show. Lewis Black does a bit that leaves Bob rolling on the floor. The next day, he asks Steve if he saw it. Steve doesn’t watch the Daily Show. Outraged and flabbergasted, Bob hops on YouTube, finds the clip and sends it to Steve. Steve loves it. He’s hooked. He forwards the clip to 3 friends and becomes a loyal viewer.

It’s not rocket science. Dealers have been doing for years. Give a little sample. Wet the appetite. Invite the friends.

What it can be:
The Holy Grail of sales. Forget advertising on YouTube. Forget licensing. What you need is a link to a retail outlet. Like that Mr. T video? Click to buy the first season of the A-Team. Like the song that the weird Lonelygirl15 Joey Potter wannabe is listening to? Click to buy the CD.

Like crack? You’re going to love heroin.

I don’t like many TV ads. They seldom show any understanding of the products they’re advertising; more often than not, it’s the opposite. They seem even less likely to demonstrate an insight into the target market. The old discipline that led to identifying a consumer problem and then showing how your product can solve that problem has seemed all but lost, or maybe not.

Check out the new Dunkin’ Doughnut campaign “Alarm Clock Catastrophe.” Based on a very real insight into life in the morning, it delivers the product message, a funky (still in my head) theme tune and neatly positions the product and the brand as a solution. Oh yeah, but this time they aren’t selling doughnuts.

I can probably watch it 2 or 3 more times before I start to hate it.

With the new release of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7, I only have one question: when is Microsoft going to make a web developer’s life easier? For the past few years we have been demanding web compliance, and we are even more organized now under the banner of the World Wide Web Consortium, but IE still does not support CSS 2.1 and has spotty glitches with XHTML when its competitors already perform these tasks with ease. That only means that IE will continue to be that one browser that we cannot quite get our web page to look right in. After IE 7 failed the Acid 2 test, a web compliance test created by The Web Standards Project, lead programmer Chris Wilson stated that it was more of a “wish list” than a “compliance test.” The Web Standards Project has given kudos to Microsoft for acknowledging failing the test, but I say it just shows they are even more incompetent when it comes to web compliance.

For the past couple of years as IE 7 was in development, fearful web developers were worried that because of Microsoft’s worldwide control, IE would decide what we can and cannot use when it comes to web technology. Everybody started pushing Firefox to steal from Microsoft’s power. Though, with this release it seems Microsoft’s thunder is dying. The tone of that predicted technology takeover seems like it was wasted worrying. With IE 7 only having 3 million downloads in the past few weeks, it still did not beat Mozilla’s record of 2 million downloads in the first 24 hours of the its release of Firefox 2.0. It’s still too early to see who will win the browser war, but with its lack of web compliance, still existing security issues, and finally incorporating features that only mimic what other browsers can do, its pretty much safe to say Microsoft will always be on the losing side.