Your Truman Show & the Age of Online Video

[Arturo Artom, at Stanford University with mood-sensitive lamp from previous enterprise.  Photo from BAIA.]

My craft is writing.  I have long been aware of its limitations compared with video. I can write Pulitzer level words to tell you what an experience was like. But video actually shows what happened. I have long been convinced that the Internet is better suited for video/audio experiences than mere virtually printed words.

There's all sorts of significant stuff happening in online video these days. My Podtech friends Jeremiah Owyang and Robert Scoble broke new ground recently when they took UStream.tv cameras into the Web 2.0 conference and live broadcast what they saw. I've seen much recently under NDA, including technology that promises to make online more interactive and my hope is that the vision of those entreprenuers becomes reality soon.

But a few days ago Italy's Arturo Artom, one of Europe's most successful serial tech entrepreneurs showed me his latest, and perhaps most significant, innovation in Your Truman Show.

Arturo has teamed up with a boyhood friend Luca Ferraro, now one of Italy's preeminent commercial television producers.  The two grew up in the northern industrial city of Turin, where they used to hang out at a local computer shop and build radio-operated model airplanes together. They've remained close friends and are both now commuting from Italy to San Francisco  and Hollywood for this new collaboration.

You may recall the original 1998 Truman Show, Jim Carey's finest film. Carey played Truman, a nice shnook who lived an average, everyday life.  Unbeknown to him, his entire life was a television program, and the world he lived in was an artificial set and the products he used were paid for by sponsors. His wife was from central casting as was his best friend.

Arturo and Luca have purchased the rights to the "Truman Show" name from Paramount and are using it for what I think is this unique, and I think, brilliant project. Here's how it works.

When it goes live, hopefully in June, everyday people will be asked to video record themselves on a regular basis, just talking to the camera as they do whatever it is they do, then upload it to the yourtrumanshow.com site [just a placekeeper now], where the videos received will be divided into multiple, yet-to-be-determined categories. Then the public will review them.  Along with these very personal video blogs, the reviewers themselves will be reviewed for the quality of their pans and recommendations.

This is cool, but what makes Your Truman Show extremely cool is the monetization model. Once Your Truman Show reaches a critical mass, its founders intend to leverage into the continuing popularity of reality TV. They plan to cut licensing deals with Hollywood producers of TV, movies and even print.  They are contemplating a few models on how commercial producers will license or acquire the content, but in most cases, the actual every day video blogger can become a TV or movie star and end up dealing directly with producers, sort of a video blogger's version of American idol.

The concept also hits at the soul of blogging, or so it seems to me. Blogging is all about real people in real jobs speaking in a real language. There are few things more compelling then hearing the single story of one person who shares joy, pain, adventure or the tedium of a real life. When big media writes about a natural disaster, they don't lead with statistics.  They tell you one person's story and it engages you in very compelling fashion.  When you visit a Holocaust Museum, you are handed a single card of a singe person who was one of nine million victims and  it drives the story home in dramatic fashion.

People are drawn more to the stories of other people than perhaps anything else.

Arturo shared with me a view of the future's site in alpha.  I watched some guy talk about his love for sun glasses. At first, I just saw some lame guy who did not interest me.  But after two or three clips, I started knowing more about this guy than he may have intended and I found myself completely engaged.

Right now, Your Truman Show wants to expand its alpha program.  It is looking for volunteers who will start filming pieces of their lives on a daily basis. If you are interested, you can email Matteo Fabiano, the San Francisco-based VP Marketing.  Tell him Shel sent you.

One final note, with this post I have started an "Online Video" category.  It is an area I intend to follow more closely.  If you have something in this area to share, I'd love to hear about it. You can email me here.