Blog Posts About: blogs

We've been lucky over the years. Our videos tend to speak for themselves and have helped to build a little buzz and help our brand without too much formal PR.  But with the launch of the new site, we thought a little buzz would help get the word out about the our new direction. Below are links and excerpts from a few blog posts about the new Common Craft.

Seattle’s Common Craft video firm has built a business out of simple, explanatory online videos made of paper cutouts — most famously the “Twitter in Plain English” video that was featured for more than a year on the Twitter home page. Now the small company is trying to carve out a new business model — switching to a membership approach and moving away from pay-per-download videos.

Three years ago we wrote here about how the two person team quit doing client work and moved into a model based entirely on licensing rights to the educational videos they produced. Their videos were available for free online, but corporate customers happily pay to have the rights to show the content to their employees. This week Common Craft changed models again. From an iTunes model to a Rhapsody model, co-founder Lee LeFever says. Customers will now buy subscriptions and have access to all the videos Common Craft produces. It's an interesting twist in a story that any independent content producer online could find inspiring.

All in all, I think it’s a great move. Today more than ever, teachers and businesses are looking for ways to incorporate video into their educational practices. But there’s a shortage of quality video to choose from, and for many, creating their own videos is simply not feasible.

Enter Common Craft, who already has a reputation as a top creator of short, practical educational videos. Says LeFever:

“We’re building a platform that will allow us to understand the needs of our members and grow our video library significantly based on that relationship. It’s a win-win.”

If you use video to education clients, employees, or students, I’d recommend giving Common Craft’s video subscription service a look. You’ll be hard pressed to find many other sources for videos that entertain and charm as much as they educate.

But I also think the two videos above just prove one thing, Common Craft cannot be copied. No one but Lee and Sachi have the pixie dust to turn 3 minute videos into something magical. I totally agree with this piece of the press release:

"The simple format, clear communication and lighthearted attitude connects with people on a fundamental level. They make people smile in three minutes."

As the pay-TV industry has learned over the years - and Netflix has more recently - the pay-once/watch-as-much-as-you'd like aspect of subscriptions is very compelling. The purchase decision needs to be made just once up-front and thereafter the provider can focus on delivering value. That's the approach Common Craft is now using and it looks like a smart move.

There are a lot of reasons I'm delighted by this latest evolution, not the least of which is my happiness at seeing friends succeed. But maybe the biggest one is this:

Nearly every traditional business model for content creation is in turmoil these days. Books, newspapers, television, movies, music — all of those industries are scrambling to cope with the challenges of a new and dynamic digital world. So when someone comes along who can create something terrific, who can do it really well, and can turn that into a viable business, it offers real hope for anyone who wants to earn a livelihood from their creative talents and skills.

I've been really excited to see the feedback about the new Web License. Asking people to pay to embed a video has raised questions and responding to them has been an interesting experience. If nothing else, it's eye-opening to see what people are assuming about our business.

For example, Mike Masnick at Techdirt wrote an article called "Viral Video Producers Want To Charge You to Embed Their Videos."  Then, Steven Hodson at Inquisitor follow up the Techdirt article with "Common Craft Seems to Forget What Makes Viral Video... Well Viral."

Both these articles assume (mostly incorrectly) a few things:

1. Viral video is our business/marketing model
2. YouTube is required to build a business on video
3. Our Web License is focused on viral distribution

It's really interesting to me that, after 3 years of making nearly 30 of our own videos, people still think we're a viral video company. We haven't had a viral hit in a very long time, or thought we could build a business on viral videos. In fact, I'm not sure successful businesses can be sustained that way. I assumed, perhaps optimistically, that a visit to our web site would make that clear.

Now I'm wondering if what has appeared on a few blogs is a widely held perception? Are we not explaining our own business well enough? 

The truth is, we make high quality educational videos - videos that help organizations and individuals accomplish goals.  These are videos (unlike most viral videos) that people are happy to pay to license because they are useful. The best we can do is make a quality product and attract people and organizations that want to buy it. Part of this strategy is making commoncraft.com the home of our videos - not a host like YouTube.

The Web License model is something that (as far as we know) has never been offered before. In the context of purely viral videos, it would be a very difficult model.  But the value of our videos is not so much in blog posts or viral distribution, it's in solving problems for people and organizations whose job is to inform and educate others, on and off the web. That's where you'll find us in the future.

Marshall at ReadWriteWeb, posted a story today about Common Craft that was actually published a few months back, but has been reposted at a "redux."  It's one of my favorite bits of press and called "How Common Craft Stopped Doing Client Work, in Plain English."  I don't know of any other blog post that tells our story better.

Since the original story was posted in September, we've created a resource that helps organizations in need of custom videos find producers who can help.  It's called the Common Craft Explainer Network.  I wrote about it here. 

While we've significantly limited our client work to focus on our educational videos, we see an opportunity to play a role in the growing niche around explanatory videos of all types.  We want to help talented producers find great projects and create a community around explanatory videos. 

This is coming a bit late, but The Common Craft Show has been nominated for an Eddie - An Edublog Award in the category of Best Educational Use of Video/Visual.  The polls close tomorrow - we're hoping for a late-breaking victory. Thanks!

Update:  Thanks so much everyone.  We came in second, which makes us proud. You can view the results by clicking "view result" on the poll.  It wasn't even close really, Steve Spangler's Blog, which focuses on science education, got the lion's share of votes.  Congrats Steve!

By the time I discovered the blog at Explainist.com, it had gone dark.  The authors "Tom" and "Dave" had covered Common Craft , Scott McCloud's work at Google and a host of other explanation-related topics since January of 2007. Now the blog has sat unused since September 4th. 

I'm writing because I hope Explainist.com will come back.  I've tried to find the owner of the site, but the WHOIS lookup only shows the host's name.  I even thought Tom and Dave might be the Tom Crawford and Dave Gray from VizThink and Xplane (respectively), but they don't claim credit either.  

Tom and Dave, if you're listening, please consider cranking up Explainist.com again.  There are lots of great things happening in the explanation world and we'd love to see your blog help cover it all.

1000+ items.  That's what Google Reader told me I need to read to catch up with my RSS subscriptions.  It's intimidating.  My RSS feeds were mocking me. I could see them with sneaky voices "hee hee, you'll never read me, you don't have the time. ha ha."  The sad part is, they were right.

I stopped opening my RSS reader months ago.  It wasn't a concerted effort, I just didn't do it. What I found was that longer I stayed away, the easier it was to stay away.  Returns diminished with each passing day and at some point I gave up on reading anything via Google Reader.  Now, I'm happy to report that I'm back on the wagon (I think that's the right analogy).  My time away gave me some perspective on what I want to read and where I want to read it.

Culprit #1:  Twitter

I was trying to figure out a clever title for this post along the lines of "Twitter Killed the RSS Star", but it wouldn't work.  The sentiment works in my case however.  I have integrated Twitter into my life and I think that it became a surrogate for reading blogs.  Lots of people I follow share their blog posts on Twitter, I have found the relationships that are created to be more personal and it's all so lightweight. Watching Twitter updates gave me the feeling of connection, awareness and discussion that I love about blogs in an efficient and manageable package.  Before I knew it, Twitter had replaced reading RSS feeds.

Culprit #2 Subscribing to the Wrong People

Looking back, my RSS reader has been filled with people I felt I should be reading.  Let me repeat that - should be reading.  I think that's a problem. I felt like I needed to watch TechCrunch to stay on top of tech news. I felt like I needed to subscribe to experts in my field(s).  Sure, these subscriptions were educating me and raising my awareness, but I seriously question the cost/benefit.  Reading them felt like homework - and I don't like homework.

This all came to a head recently when our best friends (and former Seattle neighbors) came to town and stayed with us.  Within a little while, blogging came up and it turned out they had both posted a few entries in the run-up to the trip to Seattle.  I had no idea.  I had to tell them that I stopped reading blogs and I felt bad for not keeping up.  These people matter about a million times more than the people clogging up my RSS Reader and I had let the 1000+items-of-things-that-don't-matter scare me away.

What I Did

Like I've done before, I started over.  I opened up Google Reader, took a nice long look at the list and asked myself - does this matter to me?  Do I even know this person?  Will I be worse off without this content in my life?  No. No. No.  Nearly everything was wiped clean.

When I started adding feeds to fill the void, I did it with a filter.  My RSS reader isn't for news, it isn't for niche analysis, it isn't because I "should".  My RSS reader is now filled with subscriptions to sites that matter to me.  These posts are written by people I know and care about.  They make me feel like reading RSS is a treat - a few minutes spent being with an old friend.

It's only been a little while, but I think RSS may, once again,  become a strong contender for my passive time. Now I can miss a day of RSS reading, open the reader and have Google Reader tell me I have 10 posts to read.  That, I can do.