Gadgetory

Millennials those cord-cutting snake people who always seem to be on the cutting edge of what school parents just don't understand them but brands are desperate to win their affection in fact one of America's biggest brands Verizon just launched a massive marketing campaign for something called go 90 the app is verizon's attempt to transform itself from a stodgy old phone company into a hip mobile media service so this is go 90 it's a pretty standard mobile video app verizon is paid big bucks to get folks like comedy central ESPN in the NFL in here now normally you'd need a paid subscription to watch that stuff on mobile here you just have to sit through some ads and of course there's also a lot of videos on here you'd recognize from youtube verizon is also paying web video creators to make original content folks like vice and Nerdist news the idea is to have lots of live events so we have great network for doing live video over our mobile network so we can do live events and we have music we have news and we have sports there's a combination of content that is a traditional television content you know things like The Daily Show and Internet content so it's only place you can get those things put together in whole and we have a fair amount of original content that we're bringing it okay before you get too excited you won't be seeing verizon's version of house of cards anytime soon they're going to be paying web video creators to make originals that you can't find on youtube and they're going after people like vice and Nerdist news hoping that they can bring their community of youthful audience with them now what that means is that Verizon isn't just trying to create a video platform it's also hoping to build a social network when you first look at the app even when you just browse content social is inherent in the solution so you can like shows you can comment on shows or you can create these these these groups called crews and then you can have a dialogue around a show inside that crew so share that out to your crew let's dance oh gosh what's happening this morning like I see some monster dunk I can come in there and I can i can create that clip and then if i click continue it takes a thumbnail that represents the click and I can say cool whatever kids say so ignoring the painfully street-savvy approach of crews clipping may be my favorite part of go 90 you can easily grab short little highlights your favorite joke or sports dunk and then you can share those with friends it's a smart bet I believe what we are doing is we're in the process of at least reinventing part of Verizon to see that around the other deals verizon has done bringing an AOL it is about changing the DNA it's about you know bringing bringing the company around to more of a technology focus more of a experience focus they think you know the apples in the Facebook's of the world are the sexy products right and and we want to have a compelling solution for them as well and not not make them think of Verizon as a you know a telco or phone company verizon has a big business telling cable TV subscriptions but it knows that market is shrinking and fast now teens may not think of verizon as a brand they love but millions of Millennials do rely on its mobile data network to power their smartphone habits so verizon is dreaming of a world where they're not just the dumb pipe carrying that video but also the media company creating and packaging content like this going anyway they landscape as you can see creating verizon original content that isn't cringe-worthy is going to be an uphill battle if it was as simple as collecting video from a lot of other places and putting them in front of a big audience then Samsung's milk video would have been a hit instead it's closing next month love it or hate it go 90 is going to be around for a while verizon is putting a ton of money behind this project and there are lots of media companies old and new were more than happy to take it time will tell if this is actually a product which can connect with the youth or just a very expensive experiment from an aging telecom trying to reinvent its brand high knees are pretty weird yeah but gonna he's pretty cool it's the ultimate recommendation engine high five