In my last blog post, I recognized the many contributions our users, the blogging community and our content and strategic partners have made through their feedback on the 1Cast platform.  We’re extremely fortunate to have so many people passionate about what we do and genuinely interested in seeing 1Cast succeed.

I’m pleased to announce that the team at 1Cast has released the first set of updates to the 1Cast service in response to this feedback.  I’ve detailed these updates below, and all are available on our desktop and iPhone/iPod touch experiences:

Content First:     A number of new users to our service commented that they would rather be presented with headlines first as opposed to an empty or under-populated Favorites section.  We couldn’t agree more.  Therefore, we’ve moved our Headlines, Sports, Suggested and Networks tabs to the front of the order, and placed the Favorites section next to the Make Your Own Cast search tab.

Meta-Data:     We’ve added detailed meta-data around each video clip comprising a micro-cast.  This meta-data includes a working title and descriptive sentence of the individual clip.  Our goal here is to address the needs of those users who want a more lean forward experience and be able to see what a video clip entails before they watch it.

Clip Embedding:     We’ve modified our single clip embed process, removing the necessity of deleting unwanted clips in order to embed just one video from your micro-cast.  This single checkbox function is more intuitive and does not require the disruption of your micro-cast, allowing users to quickly and easily embed clips into their favorite social networking site or blog.

Video Ads:     As we fine-tune our advertising strategy, we are researching various ad placements.  At this time, we are testing both 0:15 pre-rolls and 0:15 mid-rolls within the micro-cast to determine which format our users prefer. 

Login Viewing:     In order to put content in the hands of consumers quickly and with minimal friction, we have modified our login procedure.  As of today, you will be able to watch micro-casts from our Headlines, Sports, Suggested and Networks tab without having to formally login.  For those curious about 1Cast or want a fast news fix, this is a quick and easy way to experience the power of micro-casting without having to formally register for our service.  However, you will need to login if you want to create your own micro-cast or watch anything within your Favorites folder.  This change is our most significant as it underscores our belief that nothing should stand between a viewer and content.

We continue to work on additional enhancements to the platform, including adding more content from leading news, sports and entertainment providers.  As we get closer to these releases, I’ll be sure to let everyone know.  In the meantime, please continue to provide us with your feedback.

Anthony Bontrager

Two weeks ago, 1Cast announced the launch of its private beta, bringing to consumers the world’s first personalized broadcast delivery news service.  The launch was met with much acclaim and the usage numbers for our service, including downloads of our iPhone application are already well on target with our expectations even at this early stage.

An inevitable part of any beta test is being confused with or compared to other companies in or around your target space.  1Cast has experienced much of this over the past two weeks and I thought it would be a good idea to clarify a few points about what 1Cast aspires to be.

Simply put, 1Cast is a service offering that allows everyday news consumers to build personalized news playlists (micro-casts) and have them delivered in near real-time to their desktop or smartphone device.  We believe that consumers do not want to hunt and peck for individual video clips of relevant content, but prefer that it be delivered in an easily consumable, lean-back format. 

1Cast also allows for a more of a lean-forward experience, allowing users to navigate within a micro-cast and watch individual clips, share their micro-casts or clips with friends, or even embed them in their blog or favorite social networking site through the use of our widget.  Ease of use, and timeliness of information delivered wherever and whenever you are is the focus of 1Cast.

We believe that targeting the broader market with a true service offering, rather than offering a toolset to specific niche markets, is the best possible strategy for web video consumption.  It allows us greater flexibility in the distribution channels we select, offers users an intuitive manner in which to view video news content from multiple sources, and provides our content and advertising partners a compelling distribution channel.  So far, our user feedback has affirmed this belief.

I would like to give a big THANK YOU to the 1Cast team for all their hard work and dedication these past few years.  Small teams with big dreams have led the web video explosion and we’re thankful to be a part of this evolving industry.

I would also like to thank all of our users, the blogging community, as well as our content and other strategic partners for their feedback and support during the launch of our beta.  We’re truly grateful and look forward to providing continued enhancements to our product to meet the needs of our growing user base.

In the meantime…. Enjoy!

Anthony Bontrager

1Cast is pleased to announce today that we have launched a private beta version of the world’s first on-demand personalized broadcast delivery news service!  Today’s launch marks the culmination of nearly two years of behind the scenes work with the goal of building an online platform that brings multiple news broadcasters together into one complete user experience. Anyone can now access professional broadcast news whenever and wherever they want, only minutes after original broadcast.  

1Cast and our personalized news service, which we call Micro-Casting, allows users to discover a wealth of atomized video news content by keyword or phrase, then sit back and watch or engage with the news that matters to them.

Users of 1Cast can also share this content across the Web, finally giving social networking and blogging sites a legitimate source of embeddable, professionally produced video content from national and international news sources.

 
We’ll be extending only a limited number of invitations to the private beta, and access is provided on a first come, first serve basis.  Anyone can sign-up now for beta access at www.1cast.com.

Anthony Bontrager

Today we announced that 1Cast has extended an open invitation to the coming private beta of 1Cast to all former users of Redlasso.com.  As the first online news service to obtain legal distribution rights with several major national and international networks and cable news operations, those of you inside and outside of the blogosphere will no longer have to worry about embedding or linking to illegitimate video content.

In the coming weeks, 1Cast will officially launch, in beta, the world’s first on-demand personalized broadcast delivery news service, a project that has been under development for more than two years.  

Since we emerged from stealth mode in August, we have been working quietly behind the scenes to test the 1Cast platform with a select group of consumers and bloggers.  The knowledge and feedback we gathered from these individuals will be reflected in the beta version of our product, and we’re very excited to share our unique service offering and wealth of up-to-the-minute video content with you soon.

In the meantime, we welcome former users of Redlasso to sign-up for our private beta at http://1cast.com/welcomerlusers.html.

Anthony Bontrager

Some of you may remember this 1988 film staring Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips. The film is about an inner-city math teacher who decides to change an educational system that is blind to the needs of its students.  This true story is a great example of overcoming challenges to deliver on a promise.  In this case, the promise of a valid education to kids, regardless of geography or socio-economic status.

The team at 1Cast believes in the premise of “Stand and Deliver.”  For the past two years, we have been quietly developing a service that delivers on the promise of seamless mobility of professionally produced content.  This has been more than just a technological undertaking, but an educational one as well.  For us, our real challenge was to educate broadcasters and cable programmers that by giving viewers more control over how they consume content, two things happen: first, the user is able to build greater affinity with a brand if it’s flexible to use and easy to consume whenever and wherever people want.  Second, specifically in the case of perishable news content, this affinity leads to more time spent with the content and additional monetization for a product with such an inherently short shelf life.

We are extremely pleased with the response we’ve seen from national and international broadcasters and programmers to our proposition.  Yet, in the end, only the consumer has the ability to say whether we’ve delivered on our promise. 

I think the following post by political blogger Ben Domenech of RedState answers that question:

“The fine folks over at 1Cast, a new media delivery tool for smartphones, were kind enough to let me try out a beta version of their software on an iPhone during the DNC and RNC. It’s an excellent solution to a problem for smartphone users who want to find video content across multiple channels, but end up getting RickRolled by Youtube half the time, and have to deal with proprietary constraints on others.

Imagine an automatically updated RSS feed for video, personalized to your specific political, corporate, or news tags, delivered smoothly to your device, and that’s this new service. The ability, within hours of her speech, to pull up footage of Sarah Palin’s remarks and then effortlessly move to related news clips of responding coverage on a variety of networks was just wonderful when you’re on the go at a convention. To me, the untapped potential of this service for Sports is the most tempting - the day I can get an inexpensive service on my existing smartphone (as opposed to having to purchase some specific device) that delivers so quickly and smoothly that I can get fully streamed TV highlights from a first half of NFL play while sitting at the game at halftime will be a very happy day.

If you’re a gadget addict or a politics and news junkie, check them out at 1Cast.”

Anthony Bontrager

While I’m a fan of Ayn Rand’s works, borrowing the title of one of her books as the theme for this blog is in many ways an anathema to modern day political correctness. 

And yet, when it comes to media consumption, specifically online video, we’re all guilty of a bit of selfishness.  We want media delivered on our terms, to our devices and at times that are convenient for us.  We rely on terms like uniqueness, relevancy, targeted and in-context to avoid the ugliness of the word “selfishness.”

But let’s call it like it is shall we?  Selfishness is the natural reflex to decades of having to deal with the one size fits all mentality of traditional media.  Today’s environment though has changed dramatically, with more content available than ever before and on more mediums than we can possibly watch in the span of a day. 

So doesn’t it stand to reason that being a bit selfish and picking the content or information that is important to us and watching it how, when and where we want is now the expected norm?  And as a corollary, by allowing me to revel in my media-centric selfishness am I not giving programmers, advertisers and others in the value-chain a better glimpse into who I am, how I think and what I’m interested in?  Doesn’t that lead to increased value?

I would argue yes to all three.  My selfishness means that if programmers want to reach me, they need to make their content more widely available and in different consumable formats so I can choose what I want.  By doing so they get the benefit of learning more about their viewers, which can lead to greater programming diversity – both in terms of content choice and distribution.  Advertisers benefit as well as they can segment viewers more effectively thereby increasing the relevancy, and arguably the ROI of the ad placement.  Finally, consumers’ benefit by having a wealth of content at their disposal that can be packaged to suit their needs.

So is selfishness really a bad thing after all? 

Anthony Bontrager

Welcome to the 1Cast company blog! Today marks the official unveiling of our corporate website and the announcement of our first round of financing. In the coming weeks, 1Cast will launch the world’s first on-demand personalized broadcast delivery news service!

For well over a year, we have been building an online experience focused on making traditional television news programming readily available online and just minutes after the original broadcast. We believe that 1Cast offers an exceptional value proposition to advertisers, who can reach connected consumers in contextual settings, and to broadcasters, who can add new distribution avenues in a way that preserves their brand integrity and adds additional revenue streams.

What does this mean for you?

The 1Cast web and mobile-based video delivery service will enable you to build your own personalized video news feed or “micro-cast” from broadcast and cable news sources around the world. For the first time ever, you will have the ability to search online for the broadcast news that is relevant to you and watch the latest coverage on that topic. Are you interested in a recap of the day’s Olympic coverage? Simply enter ‘Olympics’ as a search term and you will have the ability view your personalized micro-cast comprised of multiple Olympic news video clips in succession and from various news sources.

We look forward to transforming the consumption of quality broadcast and cable news programming from a lean back, time focused experience to a push out, receive and consume experience. We’ll update you each step of the way here at the official 1Cast blog.

You can sign up now at www.1cast.com for the beta trial!

Anthony Bontrager