Midomi – media streaming creates new dimension

Vast majority of media sites play one way streaming. Gaming is “interactive”, but even in that case only small pieces of control commands are sent to the server. And all user interactions are through mouse and keyboard.

Midomi is different that it uses two-way streaming. It is a music site that adds a new dimension of user interaction through the effective use of uplink streaming and voice recognition.

It allows the user to search for music in four different ways:

• Sing or hum a few seconds of the song, midomi will find it
• Say the name of the song or artist
• Type (the traditional method)
• Grab, use a sound source like radio

Sound feeds into the microphone and sent uplink to the server, the voice recognition software dynamically finds the matching song and plays it. According to user feedback, it works amazingly well. I guess you have to try it out for yourself J

Looking beyond its song recognition features (which is cool but not for everybody), midomi can really give us a few hints about the potential power of media streaming not just for content playback, but also user interaction:

Discovery

Just like google not only give “a” result, but hundreds of finds for exploration. This is really provides the foundation for a voice search engine. This new search paradigm creates a lot of new opportunities.

User participation

The model can be adapted to some sort of online contests and shows. Users may also create their own music or sing/mix their sound.

Mobile

Midomi is already supported on iphone. Speech recognition becomes a very powerful tool particularly in mobile setting. We should envision the day when

Check it out, live your “American Idol” dream online.

The Wimbledon Test

I quickly found out researching for streaming websites can be a highly distracting (although enjoyable) experience. It’s really hard to stay on one site while there are hundreds of others screaming “click me”! In fact, what starts with one site often leads to elsewhere, and onto other subjects totally not where I started.

 

I did manage to focus on one subject, catching some Wimbledon actions. Tracking the little tennis ball on screen turned out to be a good test for streaming.

 

I wanted to see a few players and actions in the earlier rounds. I started with MSN Video, and to my disappointment, the search hardly came up with anything. What it did have was mostly “network” content, Fox, NBC etc. Not easily giving up on Microsoft, I went to video search on Live, and it came up with more results, still most are similar short news stories from the media outlets…At this point it’s hard to resist the temptation of, what else, youtube. This is really where the richness of user generated content shines. The result definitely looked promising. Well, after watching a few clips, my initial excitement waned quite a bit. Interviews were great, player actions were ok, but I can’t track the tiny (and fast moving) tennis ball!

 

After watching a few clips (hours?) of standup comedy, which clearly doesn’t demand the same video quality (talking about distractions). I finally came up with a comparison of two sites:

 

	MSN Video	YouTube
What I like	·    Excellent video quality ·    What appears to be a rather structured layout (and consistent user experience) may appear to older (more affluent) audience	·    Rich content (user generated) ·    Very international, which is a big plus for the content ·    Good cross references (why average user stay on youtube longer!)
What I dislike	·    Too little content ·    The same structured layout maybe unattractive to younger audiences ·    Search often came back blank with a blank screen (waste of opportunity to engage user) ·    Advertisement in front of every clip (not a big deal)	·    Most clips are of barely viewable quality ·    Too much content, no good classification/rating mechanism. User tend to randomly hop around and subject to instincts and distractions ·    “Free for all” feel is great for user who want to “kill” time, but not so for user who values their time (even for entertainment)
How it could be better	·    Seriously expand the footage beyond a few media outlets ·    Differentiate from YouTube by quality of experience ·    Consider creating special interest “channels”, open up for third party and users to bring rich content	·    Improve overall quality of experience to the point that it can be shown in living room TV ·    Label high quality video and make them searchable ·    Use ad to fund HD

 

I’d summarize my experience from a user point of view:

·       Content is still king, but the days of internet video as pure amusement are probably numbered

·       Quality experience has the real “wow” factor, users’ expectation can be raised almost instantly when they see HD

·       Obviously, combining rich content with high quality video provides an unparalleled user experience. This is the key to go from “dorm room” to “living room”.

·       As users grow older (more emphasis on work, family and structures), random surfing and short clip model is not sufficient for their entertainment needs. These users value their time and will demand a high quality experience (and pay for it)

·       Advertisement is ok. Users are willing to accept that in exchange for quality (think choosing between HD/Ad and low res/no ad). In fact, a short funny commercial maybe an attraction to the audience.

 

I came across some really interesting sites in the process (vuze), topic for next time.