If I wanted to sound like a douche-bag, I’d assert that I am indeed a “content creator” looking to enter the “VOD-sphere” and possibly “hypersyndicate.” Or I could just tell you that I make videos, and yeah, you can watch them online if you want. After attending a three-day conference on the subject of streaming video and listening to some of the questions asked, I can’t help but feel there’s a lot of misinformation going on around the ideas of online video that I’d like to set straight. Now, I’m in no way an expert, but just because I don’t bill myself as a social media consultant doesn’t mean I’m completely clueless about the subject. Let’s just say there are 10 really obvious myths about streaming video that with just a little research are fairly easy to disprove, if not easy to dispel.

1. Your video can only survive if it’s interactive.
Flat out wrong. Social media is great, I’m a huge fan of it, but in the excitement over its development, a few of us seem to have lost touch. First of all, avid social networkers are a small piece of the pie. Not everyone’s on facebook, and not everyone on facebook is an active participant. If this wasn’t proof enough, let’s take something like TV. Just about every home has a television nowadays, including your grandma’s, but I would love to shake the hand of the grandma that’s on twitter (no offence to grandmas) and catches up on her soap operas via the internet. The point is, youtube may have caught on, and “vote for your favourite!” is the standard now, but to put all your eggs in the social media/interactive basket is to only appeal to a small percentage of your possible audience. Second of all, your product can’t be all that great of a product if it can’t stand on its own without the social aspect. I’m a member of the Gowalla community and not a member of the Foursquare or Brightkite community. Why? Because none of my real-life friends are into that sort of thing. Foursquare sucks without a network of people you actually know, and Brightkite has no purpose if all your “friends” are strangers you’d never meet up with. Gowalla on the other hand is still fun even if it’s just a location tracking app. Social is cool, but your product/service/purpose still has to be at least a little fun without the social aspect.

2. You can make money off of online video.
This is a huge misconception that’s hurting the industry rather than helping it. Now, if you’re online video is associated with a broadcast or studio content available elsewhere, then you can still be making money off of the endeavour (I’m talking to you, Netflix and CNN Money), but if you’re relying on online video itself to foot your bills, then you’re chasing a wave that will never come. The costs are still too high, there’s no good advertising model that actually delivers, and while users will pay for services, they’ll almost never pay for content. Should you be able to make money off of online video? Yes, but it’s damn near impossible unless you’ve already got a billion-dollar budget at present or unless you’re using it as a promotional tool to sell something else.

3. HD is the standard now (and everything is going mobile).
This is a big whopper of a lie. HD still has almost no demand; it’s all culture. If you offer HD you look legit, but pretty much no one is watching in high definition. The percentage of people who subscribe to HD cable and own a HD television is still a fraction of the market, and the number of online video viewers who can even stream video at speeds fast enough to accommodate HD still hasn’t reached 10%. It’s the trend to move towards HD certainly, but right now it’s still in infancy. There’s no HD standards, little HD-capable device proliferation, and a minority of carriers even providing it. Going for HD might be reaching for the stars, and our media rocket hasn’t broken the atmosphere quite yet. Same goes for mobile devices. Sure more and more of us have single-use, multi-use, and “smart” mobile devices, like cell phones, in-flight DVD players, and automobile flat screens, but being able to watch youtube on your droid doesn’t necessarily mean mobile streaming is here. There are hundreds of problems with streaming that much data to users, even fewer players in the CDN market able to deliver consistently, and almost no telcos ready, able, and willing to step up the game. Like HD, video-enabled devices are certainly the direction we’re going, but the train’s only just left the platform and it’s a long journey ahead.

4. Subscription is dead.
Not true. Subscription is hardly dead, and the model might be the saving grace of the industry if we can ever get it together enough to offer more software as a service and make the subscriptions worth paying for. As I mentioned before, pursuing ad-supported online video isn’t really working well. Either you don’t get the bills paid, or you inundate your customers with cheap advertising and they have a terrible user experience. Neither sounds like a great option. But give ad-free, unlimited access so long as you pay your subscription fee, and it isn’t such a bad idea. In fact it works with video on demand precisely because it doesn’t work with services like Napster. Streaming video on demand isn’t something you own, like a CD is, it’s something you do. You don’t suddenly lose all the music you thought you owned if you don’t pay the bill, because you can’t lose the experience of having watched a movie. The problem isn’t finding an alternative to subscriptions, it’s making the subscriptions feature-rich and easily available enough to be satisfying and the price point still low enough to reach the masses.

5. Digital distribution has totally taken off.
Don’t let iTunes statistics fool you; there are still some major problems with digital media distribution models. It’s great for the distributors, but there’s absolutely zero incentive for the customer to invest in digital assets. A blockbuster on iTunes (if you download to own) is at least double the price of going out and buying the DVD. You could buy a Blu-Ray disc of a new release at Best Buy for less than you could download an ’80s classic on iTunes. It’s even worse for other digital distributors. So how did we buy into this model? Because the music industry wanted you to. Downloading an mp3 of the latest Vampire Weekend album on Amazon’s MP3 store is actually less expensive than it is to have the physical CD shipped to you. Buying that album is better than pirating it because it’s faster, better quality, and you know what you’re getting. They tricked us into thinking record stores were a thing of the past. But downloading a movie is slower, worse quality, and harder to find than just buying or renting or netflixing it. No incentive, no selection, and no storage space means digital distribution of video is still taxi-ing before takeoff.

6. Viral is good.
Viral is not good. It’s hardly an advertising model, and it drives me bonkers when I’m asked to begin a viral campaign for anything. You can’t force viral. You can push through word-of-mouth — package it as clever and interesting and it gets re-tweeted, re-embedded, and re-purposed, giving it exposure to many more eyeballs than before — and that’s a good idea. Even if I could make a video reach viral status on command, “going viral” is a terrible idea, because by definition viral content is short-term. It’s quick, explosive, and then gets so oversaturated that everyone goes from loving to hating your product faster than the guy that lists side effects of drugs after commercials. Want examples? “Headon. Apply directly to the forehead.” See what I mean? You want your product to be treated seriously, thoughtfully, and well-recieved if and when it’s circulated around the cyber-rodeo, not as a constant source of wisecracks for decades to come (”Where’s the beef?” anyone?) or as the posterchild for THAT thing (remember the poor lightsaber kid!). So get over viral and go back to marketing basics.