In Episode 2 of VentureBeat’s “VB Engage” podcast, we are pleased to have the one-and-only Amy Vernon, director of audience development at The Daily Dot. Did you miss Episode 1 with Gary Vaynerchuk? Fear not — we got you.
As is now traditional — after two whole episodes — Stewart and Travis dissect the most interesting news stories of the week at the top of the podcast.
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Yep – we went there.
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Why live video? Well, it is huge right now. Facebook is taking a big swing at livestreaming (going as far as to add 360-degree livestreaming support), and it is looking to add video comment capabilities from within both the desktop and mobile versions of the platform. Soon, instead of typing out text, you’ll be able to just click to post your video response. Is this a good idea? And Google is making moves in livestreaming, too. When the big guns get behind something, it is probably time to get involved.
In our interview with Amy Vernon, she tells us about her role at the “hometown paper of the Internet,” The Daily Dot, where her job is to help engage the audience and build the community through their site and Facebook, Facebook, Facebook.
So we ask the obvious question. What happens when Facebook owns everything? It’s never a good thing when one company runs the show. We need diversity of audience, alternate ways to consume content, and other options.
This raises the topic of Peach and Ello. Remember them? History teaches us that taking on Facebook, Twitter, or any of the incumbent platforms is a high-risk strategy. The attempt to grab land didn’t work for Peach, or for Ello, but it did for Instagram and Snapchat.
Amy then shares her thoughts on how publishers should be looking at “stories” for platforms like Snapchat and Instagram and weaving different parts of the story together for those apps.
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But she also believes that the publishers who are seeing the biggest success on Snapchat are spending tons on resources to make it all happen.
We reminisce a little, too. Things have changed substantially in Amy’s world. Before her current position, she was a newspaper journalist for almost 20 years. She has some interesting stories of her time working in Broward County, FL, which, if you didn’t know, is the home of 2 Live Crew!
Above: One of these people is on-brand.
Amy also says that due diligence has suffered in the modern Internet age. There is not as much fact-checking anymore, as everyone is trying to publish first to get that coveted Google ranking. But original content is King and Amy is the Bacon Queen, reminding us that everything is better with bacon.
Next time, we dive even deeper into the topic of live video, Snapchat, and personal branding with Joel Comm.
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Thanks to our launch sponsor Braintree for helping to make VB Engage possible.