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BuzzMachine blogger and media critic Jeff Jarvis brought his wit and style to the Fall 2006 VON conference in Boston. Tech news followers likely remember Jeff Jarvis from his beastly encounter with Dell customer service...

Online Video Continues To Grow
Our publisher Rich Ord passed along his notes on Jeff Jarvis' talk at VON. We've buffed them up for your perusal.

...or we should say a complete lack of service as he recounted in several "Dell Hell" posts

Jarvis is doing just fine, and he spoke at pulvermedia's VON about online video coming along to explode TV.

"Trust is the King. It turns out that trying to own content and control distribution is really expensive," he said. "If conversation is king then all of us content creators are partners not competitors."

That means the big guys in media are not in control of that conversation anymore; the people are. The big old networks are in catch-up mode, and some of their actions look desperate.

The networks and the TV stations have been antagonizing each other, by posting video content online. Jarvis illustrated why the Internet is so important now that longtime partners like these would anger the other side.

"When Jon Stewart went on CNN Crossfire he had 150,000 viewers ... but then he published his appearance on iFilm and as of this moment it has been viewed on the web over 2 million times," he said. "The free network has power."

Jarvis has six suggestions for web video, which we will list here:

1. We must get on advertising act together. We must do this in an open way and an appropriate way...and 30 seconds will not be appropriate.

2. Redefine network. It is the job of the network to find the good [stuff] for us ... it is not about distribution anymore. We are no longer one size fits all. Prime time is my time. We will be networks. Our new TV needs its own remote control.

3. We need to get the old networks to distribute our content on TV. They can help bring advertising dollars. We should be convincing the networks to put their stories up on YouTube. If it is good we will distribute it for them.

(For our take on advertising and television, please read Google TV Ad Partner: Guess Who? - David)

4. Avoid the bubble. We just don't want to be stupid.

5. Don't let our videos become soulless. Realize that the golden age of TV wasn't that great. We need to encourage the good stuff.
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6. Think live. I want to see live TV on the net and mobile because it gives us the ability to communicate with each other live.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.