Gadgetory

hey everybody I'm Hollywood from cnet com here at South by Southwest 2012 it goes on the second market recovery lounge yeah Brian Fallon was seeing it as well and joining us today we have reached my co-founder and CEO of shelby TV a video product that really kind of collects the videos that appear on your social networks but for people that don't know about you guys can you obviously describe it and tell us what is it all about sure um you know I love video first of all my whole team were just like we watched a lot of video yeah you know there's so much great content out there but it's a it's a little hard to get through all that right how do you find the good stuff and so we look at the people around you is the best curators for you so i looked i think is shelby is my place for my video and we start by looking at my friends on twitter and facebook and we pull the videos that they share all into shelby and it's both a web app an iphone app ipad app and we're on mobile web but our real goal is to get smart about what you like and don't like we want to basically understand your preferences as a video watcher and say hey you know what you might like more of these videos from Molly you might like more videos from Reese or you have an interest here how about some more stuff here and be able to recommend great video for you in a number of ways but the goal is not to create more noise it's to create more signal there's tons of content out there so it's about getting the good stuff to you so well so at first what do you tell me you are just get you're seeing like all the video that your friends on these networks posts yeah exactly right now you know at first and right now and just the way the product works right now you sign in you're gonna see videos from Twitter Facebook and Tumblr if you authorize with those services our goal in the next few months it start to build out sort of our social video graph where we're going to understand what you like and be able to say hey you know what you're you're looking for more video in this certain area here's how you can find more so then you start to see video that wasn't just my friend yeah exactly exactly but always with the social relevance of some sort you know this is coming through your friend of a friend yeah or this is coming through because you like this video from your friend here you might also like videos like these for me I never go to youtube and hunt and peck and click videos right like yeah neither do i no I mean like there's there's a lot of great content there and and but for me I don't want to go just explore you too now one of the things also as the practice of all veena I'm sure you guys are finding new ways to kind of tweak the algorithm what's working with people what's not what are some of the challenges with that with you know how are you guys really targeting it into what's the video that someone like me wants to see sure it's tough because you know people try to do recommendations before and a lot of people will say that doing recommendations you have to improve by 10 x in order to really have an impact on the user we find that the social filter by looking at videos that users have shared that's a great improvement because it filters out a lot in the crap you know the after you watch a video those suggested videos we're usually kind of not more of what you want like if I went to watch you know charlie bit my finger I don't necessarily want to watch 30 more baby videos is because I wanted to have that one conversation with my friend and I mean a laugh about that one thing so it's trying to figure that out so for us it's it's it's looking at all the data that we can collect collect as much as we can try and get smart about it and then try and make sure we message a user correctly when we presented I think the great example is that target article recently did you guys see that yeah about a girl was being marketed to as if she was pregnant and the father came in and yelled at the targets or said yeah it was like how dare you market to her and they were lay there like sorry our bad and it turns out she actually was pregnant because that's how smart target is about their users so how is this a better experience because right now on my facebook I see the videos that my friends are posting sure how do you say to these or this is better than getting a video one at a time so our big thing is we think that video deserves its own space deserves its own place right it's a different consumption then text or then photos I can be online in my email and scan my news feed and Facebook really quickly I can pay attention to twitter just with a quick scan but once you commit to a video you're committing your full band was to watching that usually and so that's when once i get that mode i want to be there so Shelby's creating that experience I think that there's power and just being focused on video so making sure that one we do it right for the user who is in facebook and maybe wants to get through all their Facebook stuff but not commit to three videos but giving them a way to watch that later so video play exactly we have a lot of users who love to open it up on a Sunday morning we have a couple features that help with that one is a watch later button so it was a bookmarklet that if you're on a YouTube page or a vimeo page or any of the supported video players we have you click that and it then pulls that video into your shelby feed and later on when you're on your iPad your iPhone you're like okay cool I got time to watch us now and then we also we took that a little bit further and built in what we're calling the video radar which is a Chrome extension that we launched last week and it basically picks up that video for you on a page automatically so as soon as you're on a page with video says hey I want to add this year watch later or do you want to watch it here and like it right there so Shelby's now collecting your video for you all over the place but getting you that spot to to watch it later so what are the economics of that because obviously sites monetize their video how are you grabbing that video and do the ads run so right now as a small start-up we don't want to pick fights with the big guys so what we do but want to pick the right fights so right now we pull the ads through so for pulling a youtube video you will see the YouTube ad and we're not getting any cut of that we just say we want to create an experience we think there's a lot of value in this space so we're going to do what we do and we have a few ideas around revenue models for later but right now anybody who's got an ad it plays and we just kind of deal with it so you know your hair South by Southwest what would be maybe some of those Reb models like that you know that that are curious for you that you know that you would try with this I mean I I look at you know the video space is still really nation still really young still growing and I look at content is changing so I see you know advertising in video evolving right i think you know we've seen a couple recent changes in how ads are displayed in video and i don't think they're great i think they're clever i'm talking about likely the salt thing you know instead of watching pre-roll you can now enter in a word to get past to get past it right you're still interrupting the experience with me watching that video how about trying to bring me more relevant advertising which is essentially content if you look at a lot of big brands they're shifting ad dollars to content creation so you're thinking of you got a bunch of users you have a pretty good idea what you like yeah you can do better exactly I mean there are some ads that I love I mean there are certain stuff it's really great and that's because they create great stuff so is that imply that Shelby would want to potentially create content that serves as an ad generator for these videos you watch is that what you're implying so so our last part of the model we've joked that if all else fails Wilkos go into video production and like creative services consulting because we have ideas like that but no that's not the goal I mean really we think we're building this valuable technology that's going to help marketers understand users better and understand how to get relevant video to the right people whether it's a cool movie trailer that you can't fit on TV or it's you know all twice's latest campaign which crazier so how do you encourage that kind of viral video if what the most of the video that you're getting is from your friends like are you it seems like the sharing gets a little bit more limited right if the universe gets smaller the universe gets smaller the sharing yeah sure what's the video you see is not you're not going to stumbleupon as much video there's a chance thank you there's a chance that you're not going to see the most popular video on YouTube but that's okay I mean there's stuff that I miss that that's okay that I miss it but at the same time there's stuff that I love when I find that early stuff and my friend share its means like oh cool you know honey badger is a great example from last year right honey badger blew up just before South by I remember seen that video really early on and I was so cool so that's where I wanted to share it and then I became part of that early viral trend and if you are you are and if you're not you're too late and so be it right is what it is yeah all right well good luck with anything are you announcing specific things here at South by the smile you guys are so obvious you can you like oh sorry that little short sleeves a little nugget we can't keep the secret you can keep this well it looked the cats out of the bag now actually no good so so we can we can tell you what's going on so we didn't thing called Project goats com sounds ridiculous because it is but there's a Twitter a character named fake Grimlock and he's a great start of personality and we actually were able to get him to come to South by Southwest and do these really selective interviews with great startup people we filmed it all and we're going to be showing it on Shelby and it'll be a project goats calm so that will like training Chris Hansen I referred but it was marketing you know all right good luck with everything I'm a fan so thank you I'll be watching google thanks Reese thanks you can find all these interviews and much much more of course as seen on TV com