I’ve had several conversations recently with people around the subject of online video in education (specifically higher education). I’ve received many interesting reactions ranging from “No one in higher education cares about video” to “Video will change everything about education”. So which is it? Admittedly, I’m biased but I’m going with the latter. And here’s why…

Does it make any sense for 5,000 teachers around the country to teach the same college algebra or macroeconomics course every semester? Of course not. Obviously, if you could take a class from Greg Mankiw or Tyler Cowen why would you resort to taking a class from some mid-level hack (assuming prices were similar)? The only reason 5,000 teachers are regurgitating the same subject in 5,000 separate classrooms around the country is because as little as a few years ago we didn’t have the technology for thousands of students around the country to learn from the same professor.

Enter UStream Justin.tv LiveStream etc etc etc

So why is higher ed largely pretending like these technologies don’t exist (OK, there are some pioneers out there but precious few on a relative basis)? I think it’s the classic case of The Innovator’s Dilemma. If you’re making money doing something the way you’ve always done it you’ll largely continuing doing it the way you’ve always done it. And that’s fine and dandy until a disruptive innovation comes along.

That disruptive innovation could quite possibly be online video. Why?

Scale.

When you have scale in education you have crazy stories like Megastudy and celebrity teachers like this guy in Hong Kong. Teachers making millions because they are able to scale their ability to thousands of students. It’s like Kobe Bryant playing at Staples Center or Jagger at Wembley. These guys make millions and are celebs because what they do scales.

Scale breeds competition. Millions of boys growing up wanting to be Kobe or Mick. Girls who want to be Michelle Wie or Taylor Swift. How many kids grow up wanting to be a famous teacher? That’s about to change. Sites like AcademicEarth and TeacherTube are putting teachers in the spotlight in a bigger way than has ever been seen. Companies like Brightstorm and Educator.com are creating new uber-platforms for the best and brightest of the teaching corps.

And this = all good. Because one of the ways this is going to help is that it’s going to lower costs for education while increasing quality. The winners (ultimately) will be students and teachers. The losers? Those that are maintaining the status quo. Want to know what the most profitable segment of education is? Freshman lecture mega-classes. Do the math. Stick 500 students in an auditorium, charge them the full tuition and then subtract out the cost of one professor and some lowly TAs and you have a recipe for ridiculous margins (Kevin Carey does a fantastic job describing this phenomenon in this article) and subsidization of most of the other (money-losing) parts of the university. Don’t think video will change the landscape for those classes? Yeah, and I have some newspaper companies to sell you who didn’t think craigslist would affect their mighty empires either.

Last week we announced online CLEP classes at eduFire (full announcement here). Through those live video courses and the accompanying exams you can gain college credits for about 80% cheaper than a place like The University of Phoenix. We’re only a small blip on the radar and like a lot of the other disruptive start-ups in the space, likely to remain tiny for a while. But over time many of these blips are going to grow larger. And as Christensen points out in industry after industry, yesterday’s disruptor becomes tomorrow’s disruptee.

Video, most notably YouTube, has changed the landscape for a lot of industries. The web is a fundamentally different and richer place than it was just a few years ago. And pretty soon, the highly disruptive force that is video is about to sweep through the education landscape. The effects of the video tsunami on education will indeed be very interesting to watch.

Based on these results we also developed a tool that any video creator can use to predict what their views will be at the end of a year, as well as what percentage of their total annual views have already lapsed. Pretty awesome.

What does all this mean? Howard’s erudite readers no doubt have insights, but here’s a stab: trends such as “evergreen” content always fetching views or videos randomly going viral are more of a rarity than an underlying trend in the data (although, in fairness to the “evergreen content,” the long tail above, while declining in potency as it approaches the x axis, would be significant if projected out a few years).

Speaking of data, yesterday we released research clarifying what counts as a “view” across video sharing sites. This study was initially published last June to great fanfare, so we re-executed it under current conditions, this time testing 14 sites to see if views are counted for refreshes, watching more than half a video, watching a video to completion and watching embedded videos.

The results? To our surprise, all but three video sites we tested logged “views” once the player starts, no matter how much of a video is viewed. YouTube and Yahoo!, which formerly had stricter, IP address-based constraints, lessened their standards since last June, now counting everything once a video starts playing. Blip and MetaCafe are lone holdouts to a stricter standard.

The study was picked up by the Los Angeles Times, Silicon Alley Insider, NewTeeVee and others.

Gary is just doing it and I can only stand back and admire it. Of course Gary uses TubeMogul to help build his brand. Viddler too. Why noDisqus though dude?

Take a look . What you notice is what you can’t see. It looks like a perfect extension of TheKnot’s brand and website.

The Knot can drive it’s own heavy traffic there, get sponsors to help promote it and keep out the YouTube crazies for the most part. The videos can still go viral, but TheKnot keeps all the integrity of their brand. VSocial powers the whole thing. Win/Win. The truly bulked up video companies just can’t focus on this business…thank goodness :) .

This white label stuff is coming, at least for the big brands.

Congrats VSocial and TheKnot.com.

Disclosure- Investor in VSocial.com

My fund made an investment in Vsocial , which is a local Phoenix company (like Lifelock.com and GolfNow.com), a few months back which at the time of my investment was in a fast transition from a video sharing website to a service driven business. We have been in major think and execute mode while we chart a path in the crowded market. The new, ‘customer’, revenue and sales focused vision and product has a much better chance of success, in my opinion, that the late entrants to the video sharing business. I don’t think leaders YouTube and Veoh have it even close to figured out, so what chance do the little guys stand at this point? Little.

Today, VSocial offers “a white-label and customizable technology platform”. When a company wants to create a video-driven, branded community where consumers can upload videos, vote, comment and share those videos (and the brand’s message) out into the world via email, embed in blogs/websites, post to social media sites etc., that company does NOT want to fit their brand’s message, look and feel into a technology platform’s template.

Each brand has a unique message and a unique target market. Companies spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours building a brand. What we are seeing is they DON’T want to create a Promotional Campaign or Social Networking Community that fits into a template (not customized) and then have to promote the technology platform’s brand (not “white-label”).

The V:social technology platform is purely “white-label” and very customizable. “The V:social technology platform fits within the creative direction of the client. We don’t require the client’s creative vision to fit within the V:social technology.

Here are three examples of Promotional Campaigns (UPS, Foster’s and Vespa) and 1 example of a Social Networking Community (MyRaganTV.com). You DO NOT see VSocial in the URL, you DO NOT see VSocial anywhere on any page. That’s a true “white-label” solution.

More importantly, these examples are completely customized to the brands’ message and target market. And VSocial builds them in 30-45 days, plus provides all the “Engagement Metrics” so that brands can measure how involved their consumers are with their brand experience.

White-label, Customizable, Quick Set-Up and Measurable……I like VSocial’s focus.

Disclosure – I am an investor and board member of VSocial

We have been working on a video to the same tune about stock tickers at Wallstrip…sometimes you just get beaten to the punch. Nicely done at RichterScales.com

Gary knows how you do video and how you build an audience. I am learning from it. No tricks. It’s web 2.0 though and has never been covered at TechCrunch.

You show up, you have passion , you block and tackle. Guess what…you attract a passionate community.

Oh…and you succeed.

Thank goodness Gary stuck to wine and knows nothing about stocks. In fact, drunk CNBC is a great episode that I will write tonight for Wallstrip. Sweet.

It’s just another stupid post on TechCrunch that serves one purpose…suck readers in from Techmeme. Got me. Thanks for wasting my time.

Tucked into the last point from the punk was the only relevant information to video producers in this post:

Track your videos and stats properly using TubeMogul . Note – I am biased as an investor in TubeMogul.

To truly succeed building videos on the web you need a solid focused idea, good content, common sense social networking contacts and good tracking.

Viral is overrated. Content still underrated. Anyone who relies on these tactics or unbelieveable PAYS this punks firm to do viral strategies…is incompetent.

Forget the tricks, the ones given are old news. They don’t build audience. Who cares about 100,000 views. Wallstrip does not have one video on YouTube with 100,000 views. That was never important to Adam, Jeff and I…audience was. That comes from showing up every day with an idea and a focus. That created influence. I would say we proved that.

Mike contines to prove one thing…he’s an asshole (but smart at getting traffic).

Here are his own comments in the thread:

I will post a longer response to this later, but frankly I’m disgusted by this.

I think it would have been better to have published this anonymously, and certainly without the links to Dan’s business.

Seeing that Mike is the publisher of this now rag, you have to laugh. Nice new low.

Update – Mike continues to delete my comments and not accept linkbacks from my blog. Class act.

Also – If you don’t belive me about online video and how lame this post was, read a real pro Ashkan on the same subject matter.