By Reid Genauer – Chief Marketing Officer, Magisto
User generated content is the most prevalent form of media being created today. Globally, 1.5 billion photos are captured every day. In fact, 10% of every photo taken in the history of the world was taken in the last 12 months. At Magisto, our users produce 30 million personal videos every 90 days which is equivalent to every television show ever broadcast in the history of network TV.
The technology used in smartphone camera hardware has evolved faster than the associated software required to process and publish user generated content as quickly as it can be captured. Remarkably, the aggregated media shared on YouTube, Magisto, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and every other other social media outlet represents only a fraction of the content shot by consumers. Most of the photos and videos captured go unused and unshared. Clearly, there is an extraordinary amount of unrealized value in the unused media -- users just need the tools to unlock it.
Better devices, higher quality, bigger files, better connectivity and cheaper storage means more pictures and videos. With smartphone technology advancing in a predictable fashion (For example: 128GB storage becoming commonplace) personal media-capturing will accelerate through 2015 and beyond. However this year, the software required to produce, publish and consume personal media will catch up with the accelerating pace of imaging capturing hardware.
Up to now, there has not been a single UGC-creator-friendly environment. Facebook might be the perfect place to upload a video about a night on the town, but it would be inappropriate to upload that same video to YouTube. Your instructive video about the, “Value of C Minor Chords For Rhythm Guitarists,” might be awesome on your YouTube channel, but it has no place on Facebook and -- you might not want to post the, very personal, video of your newborn child anywhere (but still it needs to be seen by close friends and family in remote locations). Cloud based personal media solutions are emerging today, and you can expect significant improvements over the next few years. In the very near future, UGC creators will insist on flexibility, security and world-class search capabilities for their media.
Every story has a unique audience and Magisto’s software works to match personal movies with the most appropriate audience. The range of subjects users tell stories about is infinite, but prior to Magisto the de facto outlets to share these stories were restrictive. The existing networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo, have structures designed to be either personality or interest driven, and public or private. We are building tools that allow for multiple permutations of sharing based on the nature of the story being told.
Individuals have become both source and consumers of entertainment. This doesn’t leave a lot of room for brands to advertise. There is an excellent opportunity for advertisers to authentically be a part of personal storytelling. The challenge is to accomplish this in a scalable and repeatable way. 2015 will be the year that we see advertisers partner with individuals to support their personal narratives in ways that benefit both the brand and the individual.
Smartphones have created a personal media predicament – too much media. Software developers offer a range of solutions that create value for consumers by turning massive amounts of personal media, that is otherwise lost, into produced personal movies. Personal video is not like broadcast video, its much more varied and segmented. Pairing personal movies with the appropriate audience is another critical value that software developers are providing consumers.
Produced user generated content contains value for brands and advertisers in that the stories being told are about the lifestyles, values and emotions that brands also want to talk about. Things like love, happiness, parenting, pets, and travel. If advertisers provide value and tools that support the individuals’ stories they will be invited to be participate in the grand personal narrative that’s unfolding. If they don’t they’ll simply not be a part of the conversation. A host of new solutions have emerged that enable brands to achieve all of their marketing objectives via user generated media campaigns without sacrificing scale, predictability, accountability or brand risk.
At Magisto, we offer a free app and cloud based artificial intelligence to automate photo/video editing, production and viewing. Our software automatically transforms massive amounts of raw personal media (100 million videos and photos/month) into professional looking personal movies that impart emotion, characters, sense of place and story arc almost like a feature film.
Magisto solves for the growing surplus of personal media by automatically transforming raw photos and videos into produced personal movies. The core of Magisto’s technology is editing Themes, which tell patented artificial intelligence how to automatically produce a movie representing a life experience with almost no input from the user. For example Magistos’ Happiness Theme will edit and produce users images in a way that evokes happiness. The Sentimental Theme will elicit nostalgia.
Magisto solves the advertisers dilemma by pairing brands with editing themes and audiences that are consistent with the brand narrative. Magistos’ community of creators produce millions of movies/month about the subjects that brands care most about - passion points. Their movies can tell the brand story better than the brand can.
Over the course of 3 months Magisto users created 1 million movies about Happiness. In so doing Zappos was able to deliver happiness to over 5 million viewers with the authenticity and emotional impact that personal storytelling conveys. The following is an example of one of n user-generated travel videos created.
To learn more about branded UGC campaigns and Magisto...
Reid Genauer
Chief Marketing Officer
reid@magisto.com
www.magisto.com