One of the great pleasures of new distribution technologies is the ever-greater variety of content they make available. Not only can the people with obscure and eclectic tastes find quality content much more easily, but other consumers can develop an appreciation for such things. The long tail of content is more accessible for everybody.
This week we're reviewing a site that's aiming to be, for video, synonymous with "niche": it's called Babelgum.
Babelgum brings to the internet a dedicated platform for independent, yet professionally produced, video. That's right, they have standards: they require a decent video and audio quality, they confirm that all videos are done by professionals.
Babelgum is aiming for the content that lies between the familiar networks and the roughest of the emerging talent. Babelgum is an online video site for the next generation of creators.
Instead of mainstream entertainment content, Babelgum carries content from film festivals and independent films of all kinds (including music videos). For these Babelgum offers awards - not for the bald purposes of a talent search but to highlight good work. It carries sports you probably won't catch on your TV, and various networks with niche appeal, with a particular specialization in content with themes of social and environmental issues - hence the "green bubble" logo and the extensive use of green throughout the site.
Incidentally, the Babelgum name is relevant, too: "Babel" for the scriptural Babel composed of the united people of the world, speaking one tongue and proud enough to build the Tower to the heavens; and "gum" for the "social glue" holding us together.
All of this content is launched through a downloaded player which is typically kept at full-screen. At that size, the video is very decent albeit slightly below broadcast quality. And the player has all kinds of little tools around the edge of the video that fade away during regular playback, bringing the full range of the site's tools onto one screen: video settings, personal profiles, widgets, a channel guide, and more.
Users can create their own "smart channels" as a couple of other sites have attempted, this one using tags (so if you enjoy a motorcycle race, Babelgum looks for other videos labeled with motorcycle, motorsports, racing, etc.) in addition to personal favorites and ratings. Users can also create and join "communities" based around similar videos, although Babelgum's quality standards sometimes leave it with insufficient content to sustain many unique communities.
That said, there's enough variety of obscure content that new users will find some things to enjoy that they've never seen before. And as Babelgum builds up more content over time, that's bound to enrich the experience.
Why aren't there a bunch of other Babelgum-like sites out there? Until recently, hosting a range of niche content was prohibitively expensive; but Babelgum boasts its own peer-to-peer (P2P) backbone to lower the cost of distribution (see our post on P2P). The ability to do this helped them create a viable business model.
Babelgum preserves the experience--and the low, low cost of $Free--by using rather unobtrusive advertising: rather than regular commercial breaks that other sites have, Babelgum's ads skirt around the edge of the screen and allow the video to continue. The ads can be distracting (it is advertising, after all), but they don't monopolize your attention or create a mandatory break in the action.
The result is, new and relatively low-profile creators get to strut their stuff without being crowded by blockbusters. Consumers get a one-stop outlet for fairly high-quality independent content. That's Babelgum.
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