Yes, another in my series of “5 Question Interviews”. Today we talk a bit with Steven Rosenbaum, we featured his company Magnify.net in a post the other day.
1. Obvious first question, but how do you feel about the competition out there today? Do you feel that Magnify has something more compelling to offer, or do you feel that you can grab enough of the market share to sustain and be profitable?
Well, I guess I don’t look at the other companies in our space as competition. I think there are some great folks doing important – in some cases groundbreaking work. I think that Ning is going a great job in the social network space, I think that Splashcast has built a great user driven video player. And we’re huge fans of Dabble and Brightcove.
But the real question is: How prevalent will video become on the web and what are the different needs of sites to embrace video?
We think video will be as ubiquitous as text and photos. And we see it happening quickly – within 24 months. So if you imagine a world in which the large majority of web sites are video enabled by 2009, then there’s a huge demand for platforms to build on.
Magnify.net is focused on serving sites that already have traffic, community, voice and identity. We have almost 10,000 sites using our service and by and large they’re either folks who’ve added our video meta-search tools to their url or they’re folks who are building a channel from scratch, but have a real plan to build a content community that has both traffic and social media tool around a single idea or editorial focus.
In terms of market share, we’re an aggregator of targeted media channels – so as long as the mass media continues to atomize into smaller more focused particles, we’re going to do very well.
2. What are some of the differences you find online vs. working in the traditional mainstream environment of some of the companies you have worked at (MTV, A&E, Discovery, TLC, The History Channel, National Geographic, Court TV, Trio, HBO, VH1, MSNBC, and CNN)? Do you find it a challenge incorporating what you learned and applying it to the online world?
Well, I was always somewhat of an anomaly in the cable world, because going back to my earlier days I thought that listening to the audience and deputizing them to get new perspectives and voices was pretty darn exciting.
At MTV I created and ran the show UNfiltered for 4 years. We sent cameras to kids to record their lives and their stories never got old.
At most of the networks were my company worked we were pushing the envelope in terms of either technology or audience interaction. At MTV we were the first show to bring in Avid editing (non-linear), at A&E we were the first program on the air shot in Mini-DV, at CBS we had young Video Journalists (VJ’s) with handheld DV cameras doing daily diaries recording their impressions of the stories they were covering.
The list goes on and on.
But most importantly, I think we’ve been on the forefront of shifting the media from a lecture to a conversation – and that is what has me fired up every day when I come to work.
3. Who do you feel is someone that has really guided you in your transition phase? Or have you just flown by the seat of your pants in making this change from mainstream to web oriented?
Well, again – I’ve been leading the charge for a long time, so I’m not sure when the transition began. I do read a lot of what Yoachi Benkler has written about Peer Production and I think he’s spot on. And, no surprise, I’m a huge fan of Chris Anderson and the Long Tail thesis. I think Long Tail empowers creators and shifts the base from distribution to content creators. At the same time, I also think most of my real learning comes from listening to folks who are making media. Whether it’s folks who comment on my blog, post to my YouTube videos, or grab me at a conference and tell me that UNfiltered had a real impact on their lives.
4. Could you share with us some other company specific information, such as how many are working there, whether you are seeking a round of VC funding soon, etc. Whatever you can share with the readers.
Sure, happy to.
We’ve had an amazing launch and we’re really flying fast. We’ve got a staff of 7 – with our CTO and partner Simon Cavaletto leading the development efforts.
We are just over a year old, we raised a round of angel funding in early part of the year and have been building out features and elements of the platform almost daily. It’s been a great deal of fun to listen to our customers, and evolve the service in partnership with our channel builders. We have almost 8,000 sites live and we’re growing every day. We’re delivering 7 Million pages a month and our partners are building features and elements on their own that are really helping us get traction fast.
5. Anything else you would like to say about Magnify or anything in general?
Yes. User-Generated content isn’t a flash in the plan. It isn’t a fad. It isn’t like pet rocks or the CB radio. It’s the beginning of a whole new way to make media – with communities powering content creation and validation.
Magnify.net is built to power those networks. So whether it’s a group of Radio Controlled Airplane fans at RCUVideos.com or a Mom and her two daughters building out the prettytough.tv network, Magnify.net believes that if you build it – they will watch, contribute, share, and make your site better.
This is a big deal. It’s pretty exhilarating and we’re just proud to be part of this moment in history.
Technically Speaking, I will agree that video is on the rise and socializing them is the way to go.
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