Distributing your media across the web can be a beneficial way of providing your users and extended target audience with the assets that you want to provide them with (more examples of use and mis-use here)
The immediate and instant delivery of your content and media to numerous people across the web is not the stuff of the future or something so cutting edge that it requries a bespoke multi-million pound Media Distribution System.... it can be achieved easily over time, as part of your corporate site's evolution and just used combinations of several known & standard technologies & practices already out there.
So... what are they?
Content/Media Management System:
Including:categorisation (tagging & meta info), reformatting, versioning, workflow, etc. to manage the content you want to 'push'
Admin function:
This manages the permissions / rights / subscription / personalisation process
Syndication:
RSS is by far the most preferred method of distribution and updating content. Other methods of syndication can be used but RSS is now becoming a common standard for pulling content thanks to podcasts and widget technology gaining widespread usage.
Widgets :
These can be used and are just self-contained HTML components that deliver text and media. There are several standards for these and also some bespoke work may be required to fit it into some frameworks / templates. However, sometimes just the media is sent or referring URL is called.
Hosting:
It is also important that this service has an adaptive hosting facility that that can react to large fluctuations in demand across a potential global footprint, especially if streaming of audio or video is required.
5 comments:
Hi Hayden,
I quite agree with you. Nice post, with interesting and similar thoughts to my own.
Kind and best,
Lyndon
Lyndon
Thanks for your comment.
Have you any examples of where companies have benefitted from making their assets more portable (e.g. adoption by evangelist consumers, etc.)?
You may also like to read my follow-up posting on this topic:
http://press20.blogspot.com/2008/04/portable-content-more-considerations.html
thanks for reading
Hayden
Hi Hayden,
My pleasure. Unfortunately I don't have anything to hand, other than a strong hunch and some recent experience. Whether or not that recent experience is of any value, still remains to be seen.
I say this, because I took some recent work I did for adidas, out of their corporate structure and had it created as portable content. What I mean by this is that 4 recent campaigns for '08, all have embeddable content capabilities. Some have games and others have widgets. To me, it was a first step in an obvious direction. To fan out , not only campaign content, but also to provide the opportunity to see how other content could be distributed. For me it is a simple analogy of having more than one point of contact, but to create several points of contact and the opportunities to interact. To give and receive.
To me, what comes next is further portability and better content aggregation / filtering tools.
I recently posted to my own blog on a similar topic as yours -
http://tinyurl.com/47p6vn
There is incidentally a link to your own site, which I should update with your follow up.
Thanks for your time,
Lyndon
Lyndon
Thanks for the example. To be honest, although I'd considered assets (images, audio & video) I hadn't actually thought of site applications (e.g. games) being portable as well. I can see how these would benefit branding and marketing activity considerably.
Stay in touch, as I'd be interested in your thoughts on how you could aggregate & filter your content to specific users, without building a complete asset management & delivery application.
Hayden
w: http://press20.blogspot.com
e: hayden[at]idealinterface[dot]co[dot]uk
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