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iamnojedii · 4 years

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19. Give us a headcanon about your muse that you never shared to anyone else or wanting to explore deeper.

@pryceism

I don’t think I have one that I haven’t shared in some way, but the one I’ve talked about the least I vaguely mentioned here, because I see discrepancy in eye color between Clone Wars and Rebels and canon is my playground. Strap in because in this essay I actually will--

Deep Force Lore™ is one of my favorite things about Star Wars, and in both series we get to see aspects of the Force in balance and out of balance, and plenty of debate on what balance actually means. In Clone Wars we meet the Mortis gods who are literal personifications of the light and the dark and the balance. In Rebels, we meet the Bendu, who - when referred to as a Force-wielder - says:

The Jedi and Sith wield the Ashla and Bogan, the light and the dark. I’m the one in the middle, the Bendu.

Which is super cool, because there’s a lot canonized in that one scene. Also Bendu’s views on conflict are pretty interesting, because he helps the protagonists at times, but it’s more like...nudging someone to make their own choices and not being bothered one way or the other what happens to them; when petitioned for help against the invading Empire, he unleashes a terrible storm that threatens the lives of both the Imperials and the rebels.

BUY ANYWAY-- Ahsoka’s eyes.

They’re a completely different shade of blue by the time we get to the years leading up to the Galactic Civil War. Even Ahsoka’s Force vision of her future self has the same eye color as she does during the Clone Wars era (also no striations to her montrals/lekku, but that’s another Sarah Essay™ for another time). Why the change? Animation differences aside, Ahsoka’s skin and stripe coloring on her montrals and lekku are exactly the same. What changed is Ahsoka’s concentrated focus/relationship with the Force and how she uses it.

Ahsoka’s always been a naturally gifted Force-user even from a young age. Her abilities have always been described to be “advanced”, and we’ve seen her use mind tricks and force choke-slam Trandoshans and stall Nu-class attack shuttles mid-flight and shut off lightsabers by dampening their energy with the Force, but she also has some interesting stuff going on beyond that.

First being what went down on Mortis: her death and resurrection due to The Daughter’s lifeforce being transferred to her. We’ve seen very little of what that implies, outside of the convor bird, Morai, following Ahsoka wherever she goes, which is described in Rebels as “a servant of The Daughter, or The Daughter herself when acting as a spirit guide.” Also, I love the on-the-nose implications of Morai’s namesake regarding Greek mythology.

Another thing that’s important and something that’s repeatedly been driven home throughout Clone Wars is the contradictions within Ahsoka herself that lend themselves to the dark side. Which brings me to the second point; Malachor in Rebels.

Malachor is home to a Sith temple, which...okay, that’s bad, but I like how Dave Filoni talks about the symbolism and dichotomy of that temple:

When the characters are above ground, it’s daylight and they’re looking down at a black surface. When they are below, it’s nighttime and they’re looking up at what seem to be stars. The design elements were important to reinforce the concepts of night and day, light and dark, life and death. Those things are part of Malachor’s DNA and its architecture.

Which is pretty on par with all the themes of Twilight of the Apprentice but also important to what ends up happening to Ahsoka at the end of her confrontation with Vader. She descends into the depths of the Sith temple, through the same ‘exit’ we saw Maul and Ezra emerge from. You know, the one Maul was all Rule of Two-ing Ezra about in regards to how to navigate the temple. We don’t really know what happened after that aside from some Topps digital card art that Filoni did, where he talks about her journey from the realm of the dead to the realm of the living, but it’s safe to say she navigated that temple alone with Morai as a kind of spiritual guide. I also think it’s safe to say that, similar to Jedi temples, Sith temples can be just as “tricky” in terms of having various pathways they can lead an individual down. A rebirth can be just as much of a death as a new form of life, which is pointed out to Ahsoka by Bendu:

BENDU: Understand this, much will change as a result of this encounter. AHSOKA: Isn’t that true of all things, as time advances? BENDU: My dear, when I say change, I mean death. AHSOKA: So I will die? BENDU: Will you? I didn’t know that. Goodbye then, Ahsoka Tano, former Jedi Knight.

Ahsoka, at her core, is a good person. Much of what drives and motivates Ahsoka is doing the right thing-- as she sees it. We all know people can believe something wrong is something right, and I don’t think Ahsoka is exactly averse to using less-than-upstanding means to accomplish a goal (see: using Darth Maul as a fatal distraction to help ensure her and Rex’s escape, being totally chill with ordering others to use violent means to get information out of targets, being totally chill observing others using violence as a means to a ‘good’ end-- seen predominantly in her apprenticeship to Anakin). All of these things aren’t exactly good actions or decisions, but she justifies them because they’re being done to achieve something she deems as good or righteous. Ahsoka is someone who is not above revenge and seeking vengeance for her loved ones or for wrongs committed to others/her ideals. This is a textbook un-Jedi way of thought, more in line with someone who leans towards the darker aspects of the Force. That being said, Ahsoka isn’t someone who seeks power, not for herself or over others. She isn’t cruel, no matter how ruthless her actions can come across. She’s not entirely selfless, but she’s not consumed by the concept of self.

Ahsoka’s relationship with the Force is parallel to her own personal moral compass. Her white lightsabers are perfect reflection of that. True Neutral. She has no affiliation with the Jedi, but she also holds no leanings towards Sith ideology either.

Lucasfilm story person Matt Martin, when asked about the concept of “Gray Jedi”, tweeted about how a Force user who wields both light and dark aspects of the Force can’t do so without consequences. I find that interesting, because it’s not a “that’s not possible” answer, just a “sure, but there’s a price to pay” answer. Which I vibe with.

We already know that the Force at its extremes has a visible affect on the users body (and sometimes mind). We’ve mostly seen this in Sith and other dark side users, predominately yellow/red eyes and sometimes actual degradation of the users body (gross). But we’ve also seen this in other beings. The Bendu? The mystic space moose talking about residing firmly in the middle of the Force who can control the weather and open Sith holocrons like it’s no big deal? He’s blind. So Ahsoka, someone who has a powerful connection to The Daughter, someone whose moral compass can justify ethically muddled choices for a righteous cause, sees a visible mark indicating her relationship with the Force: indigo eyes.

Some of my favorite quotes from the Ahsoka novel sum up her relationship with the Force very nicely, I think:

A sharp whine reached Ahsoka’s ears, the dark and light song of the crystals struggling for balance.... When Ahsoka opened her hands, she was not surprised to find that two lightsabers, rough and unfinished, were waiting. They would need more work, but they were hers. When she turned them on, they shone the brightest white.

BAIL: I’ve never seen white ones before. AHSOKA: They used to be red. When the creature had them, they were red. But I heard them before I ever saw him on Raada, and knew that they were meant for me. BAIL: You changed their nature? AHSOKA: I restored them. I freed them.

BAIL: In this fight, there will be people like Barriss who are focused on the past. And there will be people who focus strongly on the future. Neither of them is wrong, exactly, but even if we don’t always walk the same path as one another, ours must be the middle road. AHSOKA: [Ahsoka smiled] That’s what I thought when I was trying to find the crystals that power my lightsabers.... I want something in the middle of that, still useful but different than before.

#;headcanon #//allow me to always sunny-escape meme theorize about space magic for a moment #//my dash: sarah shut tf up challenge #//honestly this is what an almost-degree in english and years spent analyzing media has come to #//so clearly i'm not at fault xoxo #//also putting this in a text post bc tumblr makes readmores weird in asks ??

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maychorian · 6 years

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Weekly Voltron Fic Recs #54

A little shorter this week. I took some vacation days and did a lot of other stuff besides reading fanfiction, because yeah, ironically, I read the most fanfiction when I’m at work.

Rules: You can find past weekly rec lists here, and non-list recs in my general fic rec tag. Also follow @maychorianrecs for individually tagged posts, the easier to search and reblog. This is stuff I like, and I have a huge bias toward Lance, hurt/comfort, and general fluff, in that order. Gen unless otherwise noted. Please comment on the fics if you read and enjoy them!

Know Yourself by exclamation Words: 28,139 Author’s Summary: In trying to reconnect to the black lion, Shiro makes a worrying discovery: he might not really be Shiro. Suspecting that he might be a clone, Shiro decides to go on a mission back to the Galra science base where he was held captive. He’s not ready to tell the others what he suspects yet, but when Matt catches him sneaking out of the castle, it’s clear he’s not going on this mission alone. Shiro has to find out what was done to him, and if there is another version of him out there in need of saving. My Comments: Excellent exploration of the Shiro clone theory with some awesome plot twists, great characterization, and powerful action scenes. I really enjoyed this a lot.

The Christmas Episode by FunkyWashingMachine Words: 1,422 Author’s Summary: It’s Christmas on the castle ship, and no one loves it more than Lance. To his slight dismay. My Comments: Sweet and funny and just a little angsty. Lance deserves a happy Christmas, for sure.

Precious Cargo by LightPinkTheColorOfMyAura Words: 5,315 Author’s Summary: The team is tasked with rescuing an alien princess. Pidge and the others are not very excited to watch Lance fall all over himself for a pretty girl, so they decide to keep him…busy. When their plan falls through and they find someone unexpected, Lance pulls through like they should have expected. My Comments: Sweet, a little angsty, very cute. I don’t wanna spoil the twist, but it’s good. I enjoyed this very much.

Beacon by glitteringconstellations Words: 21,863 (6/?) Author’s Summary: An emergency mission to answer a distress call wasn’t unusual. The urgency in Allura’s voice wasn’t necessarily unusual, either—she was very much of the mind that Voltron was obligated to answer every single distress callbrought to their attention. Being the defender of the known universe came with a certain number of responsibilities, after all. But seeing the pinched, pale look on both Allura and Coran’s faces when they converged on the bridge was unusual. “The universe is vast even in terms of those planets still yet beyond the grips of the Galra. But…. the distress call came from the Terra Firma Quadrant.” Earth. My Comments: This story is absolutely harrowing, evoking all kinds of horrific things from Earth’s past, but on a global scale. Really, really, amazingly good. Very suspenseful and exciting, and it’s very cool to find a story not quite like any other Voltron fanfic I’ve read. Highly recommended if you can stand some pain.

Breathe by SuperKat Words: 2,192 Author’s Summary: The first wave of panic hits Keith out of nowhere. One second, Lance is “catching him up” on everything that’s happened since he left Voltron, and the next second Keith has a flash of memory – the two of them, walking through this hall, talking and bantering, just like this – and suddenly his breath leaves him. My Comments: I have a soft spot for someone having a panic attack and someone else talking them through, as anyone who has read my stuff will know. This was a great one.

Christmas on the Castleship by slowbronite Words: 1,939 Author’s Summary: The team raids the Space Mall’s Earth store for Christmas decor and subsequently freaks Coran out with the concept of Santa Claus. My Comments: Very cute fic with a slight focus on Coran that I really enjoyed. Happy paladins are always good to see.

War Games by FunkyWashingMachine Words: 2,160 Author’s Summary: The paladins build opposing pillow forts and declare war. Shiro is both liaison and collateral. My Comments: So cute and funny, gah, it’s wonderful to see the kids enjoying themselves. I’m pretty sure Shiro was pretending to be neutral just play off both sides, though, sneaky.

fight in the ring by ebonynightwriter Words: 2,605 Author’s Summary: When a rescue mission goes south, Allura and the team find themselves in a hard situation. // “Wait, Shiro’s the Champion?! Since when?” My Comments: Very cool little action fic.

Geslorp’s House of Terrors by AmnesiaticRoses Words: 6,815 Author’s Summary: Lance is excited when Hunk agrees to visit a carnival-style space haunted house with him. The haunted house should be fun, and Hunk’s reactions should be funny. But Lance forgot to account for the power of technological curiosity… My Comments: Cute fic with my favorite boys having an adventure together. It kind of backfires on Lance, haha.

Plundered Plumage by Quiddity Words: 5,374 Author’s Summary: Something odd crashes to the deck of the ship during a sudden storm. An avian. More common than their siren cousins, but stil rarely seen and never captured. Until now. Captain Sendak wastes no time in securing the exhausted avian, Shiro, intent on handing him over to the Pirate King Zarkon for his own gain. However, Keith, sold to Zarkon as a slave as a child and forced into a life of piracy, just might have trouble sitting back and allowing that to happen. My Comments: Really fun Pirate AU with Keith taking a big, big risk to save Shiro. The fic is short, but the world feels fully realized, and I loved the cameos from the other characters.

Rebuild all your Ruins by BossToaster (ChaoticReactions) Words: 6,074 Author’s Summary: There are consequences to Shiro’s refusal to kill. Pain hasn’t worked on him so far, but another tactic might. My Comments: This is hurt with no comfort, so know what you’re getting into. Awful stuff, but very well-written, as always.

Where the Heart Is by SmolGooDragon Words: 5,153 Author’s Summary: Lance has graduated from the Garrison at the top of his class, and will be leaving for a mission to space in a few weeks. He’s happy to be with his family and everything is going perfectly, but he feels like there’s something he can’t quite remember… like something’s missing. My Comments: Starts out as Lance going home to see his family, but there’s a twist! A good one! I don’t wanna spoil it. Just read the fic. If you like the hurt!Lance recs I typically post here, you will love this story.

Don’t Forget to Call Home by isabeau25 Words: 8,827 Author’s Summary: Just because Keith has decided to join the Blades of Marmora, doesn’t mean the team is going to let him disappear from their lives. My Comments: Absolutely beautiful fic about the other paladins keeping in contact with Keith while he’s away in Season Four. I especially loved Lance here; isabeau25 always writes Lance so very, very well. But everyone else was wonderful too. The end scene, after Keith’s nearly disastrous decision, is especially warm and comforting. So, so good.

Burning Bright by IcyPanther Words: 9,693 Author’s Summary: Last chance, they told him. If this family didn’t work out then it was back to the group home for him. And as much as Keith disliked the foster system, he hated the group home. He’d endure anything life threw at him to avoid going back. But when he meets Shiro, Keith realizes that, perhaps, there’s more to life than just enduring. His world is about to become a whole lot brighter. My Comments: Heartbreaking and heartwarming backstory for Keith and Shiro that matches up with my personal headcanons very nicely. I really felt everything Keith was going through, from the despair to the pain to the dawning pleasure and ultimate joy. So good, so satisfying, I just love it.

Seven Vargas by VelkynKarma for buttered_onions Words: 18,006 Author’s Summary: Shiro has a bad habit of disappearing unexpectedly. But the team really should have anticipated it this time, with him being the most wanted person on the planet. My Comments: This is a thrilling read of the action/adventure type, but with a healthy dollop of pathos, too. Shiro has a really rough time of it, but it was great to see him constantly fighting to get himself free by whatever means he could, and of course the others’ frantic need to find him and rescue was lovely.

Signals From Space by Eastofthemoon Words: 3,814 Author’s Summary: Fame spreads farther than anyone could have known. My Comments: Lance’s family is sweet and funny and perfect, and this is a delightful way for them to find out that Lance is alive. The final chapter was especially heartwarming.

reprise, refrain by obstinateRixatrix Words: 8,180 Author’s Summary: When the castle picks up an Altean distress signal, Allura desperately hopes to find surviving Alteans. She does - just not in the way she was expecting. My Comments: I like the canon version of this episode just fine, but this is also a very fun alternate take, and much easier on Allura’s heart, I think. All of the OCs are delightful.

What Happens Under a Full Moon by imperiality Words: 9,136 Author’s Summary: When Lance accidentally partakes in a new planet’s ritual under their greatest full moon, the paladins have to find out how to reverse his spell. Or, he could have just taken off the mask to begin with. My Comments: Fantastic worldbuilding here, very immersive and enjoyable to read. It’s like taking a journey, traveling with Lance through this exciting festival he enjoys so much. And the solution to the trouble he finds himself in made me very, very happy.

Previously Recced Fics That Updated:

The Purity of Sin (22254 words) Home and a Half (109291 words) As Color Fades Away (217819 words) Gate Keeper (119177 words) Why it sucks to be a snake in space(59933 words)

#voltron legendary defender #weekly voltron fic recs #fic rec #vldgen

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latestnews2018-blog · 6 years

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For IGTV, Instagram needs slow to mean steady

New Post has been published on https://latestnews2018.com/for-igtv-instagram-needs-slow-to-mean-steady/

For IGTV, Instagram needs slow to mean steady

Instagram has never truly failed at anything, but judging by modest initial view counts, IGTV could get stuck with a reputation as an abandoned theater if the company isn’t careful. It’s no flop, but the long-form video hub certainly isn’t an instant hit like Instagram Stories. Two months after that launched in 2016, Instagram was happy to trumpet how its Snapchat clone had hit 100 million users. Yet two months after IGTV’s launch, the Facebook subsidiary has been silent on its traction.

“It’s a new format. It’s different. We have to wait for people to adopt it and that takes time,” Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told me. “Think of it this way: we just invested in a startup called IGTV, but it’s small, and it’s like Instagram was ‘early days.’”

It’s indeed too early for a scientific analysis, and Instagram’s feed has been around since 2010, so it’s obviously not a fair comparison, but we took a look at the IGTV view counts of some of the feature’s launch partner creators. Across six of those creators, their recent feed videos are getting roughly 6.8X as many views as their IGTV posts. If IGTV’s launch partners that benefited from early access and guidance aren’t doing so hot, it means there’s likely no free view count bonanza in store from other creators or regular users.

They, and IGTV, will have to work for their audience. That’s already proving difficult for the standalone IGTV app. Though it peaked at the #25 overall US iPhone app and has seen 2.5 million downloads across iOS and Android according to Sensor Tower, it’s since dropped to #1497 and seen a 94 percent decrease in weekly installs to just 70,000 last week.

Instagram will have to be in it for the long haul if it wants to win at long-form video. Entering the market 13 years after YouTube with a vertical format no one’s quite sure what to do with, IGTV must play the tortoise. If it can avoid getting scrapped or buried, and offer the right incentives and flexibility to creators, IGTV could deliver the spontaneous video viewing experience Instagram lacks. Otherwise, IGTV risks becoming the next Google Plus — a ghost town inside an otherwise thriving product ecosystem.

A glitzy, glitchy start

Instagram gave IGTV a red carpet premiere June 20th in hopes of making it look like the new digital hotspot. The San Francisco launch event offered attendees several types of avocado toast, spa water and ‘Gram-worthy portrait backdrops reminiscent of the Color Factory or Museum of Ice Cream. Instagram hadn’t held a flashy press event since the 2013 launch of video sharing, so it pulled out all the stops. Balloon sculptures lined the entrance to a massive warehouse packed with social media stars and ad execs shouting to each other over the din of the DJ.

But things were rocky from the start. Leaks led TechCrunch to report on the IGTV name and details in the preceding weeks. Technical difficulties with Systrom’s presentation pushed back the start, but not the rollout of IGTV’s code. Tipster Jane Manchun Wong sent TechCrunch screenshots of the new app and features a half hour before it was announced, and Instagram’s own Business Blog jumped the gun by posting details of the launch. The web already knew how IGTV would let people upload vertical videos up to an hour long and browse them through categories like “Popular” and “For You” by the time Systrom took the stage.

IGTV’s launch event featured Instagram-themed donuts and elaborate portrait backdrops. Images via Vicki’s Donuts and Mai Lanpham

“What I’m most proud of is that Instagram took a stand and tried a brand new thing that is frankly hard to pull off. Full-screen vertical video that’s mobile only. That doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Systrom tells me. It was indeed ambitious. Creators were already comfortable making short-form vertical Snapchat Stories by the time Instagram launched its own version. IGTV would have to start from scratch.

Systrom sees the steep learning curve as a differentiator, though. “One of the things I like most about the new format is that it’s actually fairly difficult to just take videos that exist online and simply repost them. That’s not true in feed. That basically forces everyone to create new stuff,” Systrom tells me. “It’s not to say that there isn’t other stuff on there but in general it incentivizes people to produce new things from scratch. And that’s really what we’re looking for. Even if the volume of that stuff at the beginning is smaller than what you might see on the popular page [of Instagram Explore].”

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom unveils IGTV at the glitzy June 20th launch event

Instagram forced creators to adopt this proprietary format. But it forget to train Stories stars how to entertain us for five or 15 minutes, not 15 seconds, or convince landscape YouTube moguls to purposefully shoot or crop their clips for the way we normally hold our phones.

IGTV’s Popular page features plenty of random viral pap, foreign language content, and poor cropping

That should have been the real purpose of the launch party — demonstrating a variety of ways to turn these format constraints or lack thereof into unique content. Vertical video frames people better than places, and the length allows sustained eye-to-lens contacts that can engender an emotional connection. But a shallow array of initial content and too much confidence that creators would figure it out on their own deprived IGTV of emergent norms that other videographers could emulate to wet their feet.

Now IGTV feels haphazard, with trashy viral videos and miscropped ports amongst its Popular section alongside a few creators trying to produce made-for-IGTV talk shows and cooking tutorials. It’s yet to have its breakout “Chewbacca Mom” or “Rubberbanded Watermelon” blockbuster like Facebook Live. Even an interview with mega celeb Kylie Jenner only had 11,000 views.

Instagram wants to put the focus on the author, not the individual works of art. “Because we don’t have full text search and you can’t just search any random thing, it’s about the creators” Systrom explains. “I think that at its base level that it’s personality driven and creator driven means that you’re going to get really unique content that you won’t find anywhere else and that’s the goal.”

Yet being unique requires extra effort that creators might not invest if they’re unsure of the payoff in either reach or revenue. Michael Sayman, formerly Facebook’s youngest employee who was hired at age 17 to build apps for teens and who now works for Google, summed it up saying: “Many times in my own career, I’ve tried to make something with a unique spin or a special twist because I felt that’s the only way I could make my product stand out from the crowd, only to realize that it was those very twists and spins that made my products feel out of place and confusing to users. Sometimes, the best product is one that doesn’t create any new twists, but rather perfects and builds on top of what has been proven to already be extremely successful.”

A fraction of feed views

Instead, it was ignorable. IGTV didn’t get the benefit of the home screen spotlight like Instagram Stories. Blow past that one orange button and avoid downloading the separate app, and users could go right on tapping and scrolling through Instagram without coming across IGTV’s longer videos.

View counts of the launch partners reflect that. We looked at six launch partner creators, comparing their last six feed and IGTV videos older than a week and less than six months old, or fewer videos if that’s all they’d posted.

Only one of the six, BabyAriel, saw an obvious growth trend in her IGTV videos. Her candid IGTV monologues are performing the best of the six compared to feed. She’s earning an average of 243,000 views per IGTV video, about a third as many as she gets on her feed videos. “I’m really happy with my view counts because IGTV is just starting” BabyAriel tells me. She thinks the format will be good for behind-the-scenes clips that complement her longer YouTube videos and shorter Stories. “When I record anything, It’s vertical. When I turn my phone horizontal I think of an hour-long movie.”

Lele Pons, a Latin American comedy and music star who’s one of the most popular Instagram celebrities, gets about 5.7X more feed views than on her IGTV cooking show that averages 1.9 million hits. Instagram posted some IGTV highlights from the first month, but the most popular of now has 4.3 million views — less than half of what Pons gets on her average feed video.

Fitness guides from Katie Austin averaged just 3,600 views on IGTV while she gets 7.5X more in the feed. Lauren Godwin’s colorful comedy fared 5.2X better in the feed. Bryce Xavier saw the biggest differential, earning 15.9X more views for his dance and culture videos. And in the most direct comparison, K-Pop dancer Susie Shu sometimes posts cuts from the same performance to the two destinations, like one that got 273,000 views in feed but just 27,000 on IGTV, with similar clips fairing an average of 7.8X better.

Again, this isn’t to say IGTV is a lame horse. It just isn’t roaring out of the gates. Systrom remains optimistic about inventing a new format. “The question is can we pull that off and the early signs are really good,” he tells me. “We’ve been pretty blown away by the reception and the usage upfront,” though he declined to share any specific statistics. Instagram promised to provide more insight into traction in the future.

YouTube star Casey Neistat is less bullish. He doesn’t think IGTV is working and that engagement has been weak. If IGTV views were surpassing those of YouTube, creators would flock to it, but so far view counts are uninspiring and not worth diverting creative attention, Neistat says. “YouTube offers the best sit-back consumption, and Stories offers active consumption. Where does IGTV fit in? I’m not sure” he tells me. “Why create all of this unique content if it gets lower views, it’s not monetizable, and the viewers aren’t there?”

Susie Shu averages 7.8X more video views in the Instagram feed than on IGTV

For now, the combination of an unfamiliar format, the absence of direction for how to use it and the relatively buried placement has likely tempered IGTV’s traction. Two months in, Instagram Stories was proving itself an existential threat to Snapchat — which it’s in fact become. IGTV doesn’t pose the same danger to YouTube yet, and it will need a strategy to support a more slow-burn trajectory.

The chicken and the IG problem

The first step to becoming a real YouTube challenger is to build up some tent-pole content that gives people a reason to open IGTV. Until there’s something that captures attention, any cross-promotion traffic Instagram sends it will be like pouring water into a bucket with a giant hole in the bottom. Yet until there’s enough viewers, it’s tough to persuade creators to shoot for IGTV since it won’t do a ton to boost their fan base.

Fortnite champion Ninja shares a photo of IGTV launch partners gathered backstage at the press event

Meanwhile, Instagram hasn’t committed to a monetization or revenue-sharing strategy for IGTV. Systrom said at the launch that “There’s no ads in IGTV today,” but noted it’s “obviously a very reasonable place [for ads] to end up.” Without enough views, though, ads won’t earn enough for a revenue split to incentivize creators. Perhaps Instagram will heavily integrate its in-app shopping features and sponsored content partnerships, but even those rely on having more traffic. Vine withered at Twitter in part from creators bailing due to its omission of native monetization options.

So how does IGTV solve the chicken-and-egg problem? It may need to swallow its pride and pay early adopters directly for content until it racks up enough views to offer sustainable revenue sharing. Instagram has never publicly copped to paying for content before, unlike its parent Facebook, which offered stipends ranging into the millions of dollars for publishers to shoot Live broadcasts and long-form Watch shows. Neither have led to a booming viewership, but perhaps that’s because Facebook has lost its edge with the teens who love video.

Instagram could do better if it paid the right creators to weather IGTV’s initial slim pickings. Settling on ad strategy creators can count on earning money from in the future might also get them to hang tight. Those deals could mimic the 55 percent split of mid-roll ad breaks Facebook gives creators on some videos. But again, the views must come first.

Alternatively, or additionally, it could double down on the launch strategy of luring creators with the potential to become the big fish in IGTV’s small-for-now pond. Backroom deals to trade being highlighted in its IGTV algorithm in exchange for high-quality content could win the hearts of these stars and their managers. Instagram would be wise to pair these incentives with vertical long-form video content creation workshops. It could bring its community, product and analytics leaders together with partnered stars to suss out what works best in the format and help them shoot it.

The cross-promo spigot

Once there’s something worth watching on IGTV, the company could open the cross-promo traffic spigot. At first, Instagram would send notifications about top content or IGTV posts from people you follow, and call them out with a little orange text banner atop its main app. Now it seems to understand it will need to be more coercive.

Last month, TechCrunch tipster Jane Manchun Wong spotted Instagram showing promos for individual IGTV shows in the middle of the feed, hoping to redirect eyeballs there. And today, TechCrunch researcher Matt Navarra found Instagram getting more aggressive by putting a bigger call out featuring a relevant IGTV clip with preview image above your Stories tray on the home screen. It may need to boost the frequency of these cross-promotions and stick them in-between Stories and Explore sections as well to give IGTV the limelight. These could expose users to creators they don’t follow already but might enjoy.

“It’s still early but I do think there’s a lot of potential when they figure out two things since the feature is so new,” says John Shahidi, who runs the Justin Bieber-backed Shots Studios, which produces and distributes content for Lele Pons, Rudy Mancuso and other Insta celebs. “1. Product. IGTV is not in your face so Instagram users aren’t changing behavior to consume. Timeline and Instagram Stories are in your face so those two are the most used features. 2. Discoverability. I want to see videos from people I don’t follow. Interesting stuff like cooking, product review, interesting content from brands but without following the accounts.” In the meantime, Shots Studios is launching a vertical-only channel on YouTube that Shahidi believes is the first of its kind.

Instagram will have to balance its strategic imperative to grow the long-form video hub and avoid spamming users until they hate the brand as a whole. Some think it’s already gone too far. “I think it’s super intrusive right now,” says Tiffany Zhong, once known as the world’s youngest venture capitalist who now runs Generation Z consulting firm Zebra Intelligence. “I personally find all the IGTV videos super boring and click out within seconds (and the only time I watch them are if I accidentally tapped on the icon when I tried to go to my DMs instead).” Desperately funneling traffic to the feature before there’s enough great content to power relevant recommendations for everyone could prematurely sour users on IGTV.

Systrom remains optimistic he can iterate his way to success. “What I want to see over the next six to 12 months is a consistent drumbeat of new features that both consumers and creators are asking for, and to look at the retention curve and say ‘are people continuing to watch? Are people continuing to upload?,’” says Systrom. “So far we are seeing that all of those are healthy. But again trying to judge a very new kind of audacious format that’s never really been done before in the first months is going to be really hard.”

Differentiator or deterrent?

The biggest question remains whether IGTV will remain devout to the orthodoxy of vertical-only. Loosening up to accept landscape videos too might nullify a differentiator, but also pipe in a flood of content it could then algorithmically curate to bootstrap IGTV’s library. Reducing the friction by allowing people to easily port content to or from elsewhere might make it feel like less of a gamble for creators deciding where to put their production resources. Instagram itself expanded from square-only to portrait and landscape photos in the feed in 2015.

“My advice would be to make the videos horizontal. We’ve all come to understand vertical as ‘short form’ and horizontal as ‘long form,’” says Sayman. “It’s in the act of rotating your phone to landscape that you indicate to yourself and to your mobile device that you will not be context switching for the next few minutes, but rather intend to focus on one piece of content for an extended period of time.” This would at least give users more to watch, even if they ended up viewing landscape videos with their phones in portrait orientation.

This might be best as a last-ditch effort if it can’t get enough content flowing in through other means. But at least Instagram should offer a cropping tool that lets users manually select what vertical slice of a landscape video they want to show as they watch, rather than just grabbing the center or picking one area on the side for the whole clip. This could let creators repurpose landscape videos without things getting awkwardly half cut out of frame.

Former Facebook employee and social investor Josh Elman, who now works at Robinhood, told me he’s confident the company will experiment as much as necessary. “I think Facebook is relentless. They know that a ton of consumers watch video online. And most discover videos through influencers or their friends. (Or Netflix). Even though Watch and IGTV haven’t taken the world by storm yet, I bet Facebook won’t stop until they find the right mix.”

There’s a goldmine waiting if it does. Unlike on Facebook, there’s no Regram feature, you can’t post links, and outside of Explore you just see who you already follow on Instagram. That’s made it great at delivering friendly video and clips from your favorite stars, but leaves a gaping hole where serendipitous viewing could be. IGTV fills that gap. The hours people spend on Facebook watching random videos and their accompanying commercials have lifted the company to over $13 billion in revenue per quarter. Giving a younger audience a bottomless pit of full-screen video could produce the same behavior and profits on Instagram without polluting the feed, which can remain the purest manifestation of visual feed culture. But that’s only if IGTV can get enough content uploaded.

Puffed up by the success of besting its foe Snapchat, Instagram assumed it could take the long-form video world by storm. But the grand entrance at its debutante ball didn’t draw enough attention. Now it needs to take a different tack. Tone down the cross-promo for the moment. Concentrate on teaching creators how to find what works on the format and incentivizing them with cash and traffic. Develop some must-see IGTV and stoke a viral blockbuster. Prove the gravity of extended, personality-driven vertical video. Only then should it redirect traffic there from the feed, Stories, and Explore.

YouTube’s library wasn’t built overnight, and neither will IGTV’s. Facebook’s deep pockets and the success of Instagram’s other features give it the runway necessary to let IGTV take off. With 1 billion monthly users, and 400 million daily Stories users gathered in just two years, there are plenty of eyeballs waiting to be seduced. Systrom concludes, “Everything that is great starts small.” IGTV’s destiny will depend on Instagram’s patience.

http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jshttp://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js

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technicalsolutions88 · 6 years

Link

A glitzy, glitchy start

IGTV’s launch event featured Instagram-themed donuts and elaborate portrait backdrops. Images via Vicki’s Donuts and Mai Lanpham

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom unveils IGTV at the glitzy June 20th launch event

IGTV’s Popular page features plenty of random viral pap, foreign language content, and poor cropping

A fraction of feed views

The one big surprise of the launch event was where IGTV would exist. Instagram announced it’d live in a standalone IGTV app, but also as a feature in the main app accessible from an orange button atop the home screen that would occasionally call out that new content was inside. But in essence, it was ignorable. IGTV didn’t get the benefit of being splayed out atop Instagram like Stories did. Blow past that one button and avoid downloading the separate app, and users could go right on tapping and scrolling through Instagram without coming across IGTV’s longer videos.

Susie Shu averages 7.8X more video views in the Instagram feed than on IGTV

The chicken and the IG problem

Fortnite champion Ninja shares a photo of IGTV launch partners gathered backstage at the press event

The cross-promo spigot

Last month, TechCrunch spotted Instagram showing promos for individual IGTV shows in the middle of the feed, hoping to redirect eyeballs there. And today, we found Instagram getting more aggressive by putting a bigger call out featuring a relevant IGTV clip with preview image above your Stories tray on the home screen. It may need to boost the frequency of these cross-promotions and stick them in-between Stories and Explore sections as well to give IGTV the limelight. These could expose users to creators they don’t follow already but might enjoy.

Systrom remains optimistic he can iterate his way to success. “What I want to see over the next six to 12 months is a consistent drumbeat of new features that both consumers and creators are asking for, and to look at the retention curve and say ‘are people continuing to watch? Are people continuing to upload?,'” says Systrom. “So far we are seeing that all of those are healthy. But again trying to judge a very new kind of audacious format that’s never really been done before in the first months is going to be really hard.”

Differentiator or deterrent?

“My advice would be to make the videos horizontal. We’ve all come to understand vertical as ‘short form’ and horizontal as ‘long form,'” says Sayman. “It’s in the act of rotating your phone to landscape that you indicate to yourself and to your mobile device that you will not be context switching for the next few minutes, but rather intend to focus on one piece of content for an extended period of time.” This would at least give users more to watch, even if they ended up viewing landscape videos with their phones in portrait orientation.

from Mobile – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2o9VBgD ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/

#Technical Solutions #SEO #Online Earning #Youtube Marketing #Android Developer

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sheminecrafts · 6 years

Text

For IGTV, Instagram needs slow to mean steady

A glitzy, glitchy start

IGTV’s launch event featured Instagram-themed donuts and elaborate portrait backdrops. Images via Vicki’s Donuts and Mai Lanpham

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom unveils IGTV at the glitzy June 20th launch event

IGTV’s Popular page features plenty of random viral pap, foreign language content, and poor cropping

A fraction of feed views

Susie Shu averages 7.8X more video views in the Instagram feed than on IGTV

The chicken and the IG problem

Fortnite champion Ninja shares a photo of IGTV launch partners gathered backstage at the press event

The cross-promo spigot

Systrom remains optimistic he can iterate his way to success. “What I want to see over the next six to 12 months is a consistent drumbeat of new features that both consumers and creators are asking for, and to look at the retention curve and say ‘are people continuing to watch? Are people continuing to upload?,'” says Systrom. “So far we are seeing that all of those are healthy. But again trying to judge a very new kind of audacious format that’s never really been done before in the first months is going to be really hard.”

Differentiator or deterrent?

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2o9VBgD via IFTTT

#IFTTT #iraidajzsmmwtv

0 notes

theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

Link

A glitzy, glitchy start

IGTV’s launch event featured Instagram-themed donuts and elaborate portrait backdrops. Images via Vicki’s Donuts and Mai Lanpham

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom unveils IGTV at the glitzy June 20th launch event

IGTV’s Popular page features plenty of random viral pap, foreign language content, and poor cropping

A fraction of feed views

Susie Shu averages 7.8X more video views in the Instagram feed than on IGTV

The chicken and the IG problem

Fortnite champion Ninja shares a photo of IGTV launch partners gathered backstage at the press event

The cross-promo spigot

��It’s still early but I do think there’s a lot of potential when they figure out two things since the feature is so new,” says John Shahidi, who runs the Justin Bieber-backed Shots Studios, which produces and distributes content for Lele Pons, Rudy Mancuso and other Insta celebs. “1. Product. IGTV is not in your face so Instagram users aren’t changing behavior to consume. Timeline and Instagram Stories are in your face so those two are the most used features. 2. Discoverability. I want to see videos from people I don’t follow. Interesting stuff like cooking, product review, interesting content from brands but without following the accounts.” In the meantime, Shots Studios is launching a vertical-only channel on YouTube that Shahidi believes is the first of its kind.

Systrom remains optimistic he can iterate his way to success. “What I want to see over the next six to 12 months is a consistent drumbeat of new features that both consumers and creators are asking for, and to look at the retention curve and say ‘are people continuing to watch? Are people continuing to upload?,'” says Systrom. “So far we are seeing that all of those are healthy. But again trying to judge a very new kind of audacious format that’s never really been done before in the first months is going to be really hard.”

Differentiator or deterrent?

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

fmservers · 6 years

Text

For IGTV, Instagram needs slow to mean steady

A glitzy, glitchy start

IGTV’s launch event featured Instagram-themed donuts and elaborate portrait backdrops. Images via Vicki’s Donuts and Mai Lanpham

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom unveils IGTV at the glitzy June 20th launch event

IGTV’s Popular page features plenty of random viral pap, foreign language content, and poor cropping

A fraction of feed views

Susie Shu averages 7.8X more video views in the Instagram feed than on IGTV

The chicken and the IG problem

Fortnite champion Ninja shares a photo of IGTV launch partners gathered backstage at the press event

The cross-promo spigot

Systrom remains optimistic he can iterate his way to success. “What I want to see over the next six to 12 months is a consistent drumbeat of new features that both consumers and creators are asking for, and to look at the retention curve and say ‘are people continuing to watch? Are people continuing to upload?,'” says Systrom. “So far we are seeing that all of those are healthy. But again trying to judge a very new kind of audacious format that’s never really been done before in the first months is going to be really hard.”

Differentiator or deterrent?

Via Josh Constine https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

0 notes