A Roundup Of This Week’s Biggest News In VR

What Happened
This past week has been a busy week for VR announcements, with Facebook, Vimeo, and CNN all announced noteworthy VR initiatives. Let’s take a look one by one.

On Wednesday, Facebook debuted its first dedicated virtual reality app, Facebook 360. As its first dedicated VR app, the app will serve as a hub for the 360 video and photo content posted to the site. At launch, the Facebook 360 app will be available only for the Gear VR mobile headset.

Also on Wednesday, popular online video site Vimeo announced it has added support for 360-degree videos. 360-degree playback is now integrated into the Vimeo website as well as the iOS and Android apps. At launch, you can view Vimeo’s 360-degree videos in select mobile-powered VR headsets, including Google Daydream, Samsung’s Gear VR, and the Zeiss VR One. Vimeo says support for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive is coming soon.

Earlier this week, CNN launched of CNNVR, a new immersive journalism unit that will put a virtual spin on cable news. The dedicated team will produce videos and live streams of major news events, along with a weekly virtual reality experience that viewers can access via CNNVR on the Samsung VR app, the Oculus Video app on Rift, or on the CNNVR app on Google Daydream.

What Brands Need To Do
This initiative should help further push virtual reality content into the mainstream consumer market. Facebook 360 and the VR support on Vimeo should provide two new valuable channes for brands to distribute their VR content, and CNN’s VR content unit could potentially spell marketing opportunities. As more mainstream tech and media companies rush into VR to capitalize on the booming popularity of the emerging medium, bands should take a cue and start developing VR content that truly enhances brand messaging and contributes to the campaign objectives.

How We Can Help
Our dedicated team of VR experts is here to guide marketers through the distribution landscape. We work closely with brands to develop sustainable VR content strategies to promote branded VR and 360 video content across various apps and platforms. With our proprietary technology stack powered by a combination of best-in-class VR partners and backed by the media fire-power of IPG Mediabrands, we offer customized solutions for distributing and measuring branded VR content that truly enhance brand messaging and contribute to the campaign objectives.

The Lab currently has several VR headsets, including a PlayStation VR, an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and a Google Daydream, all ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

 


Sources: as linked in the article

Vimeo Adds Subscription Model To Help Creators Monetize

Read original story on: TechCrunch

Vimeo will now allow video creators to charge for monthly subscriptions to their libraries of content, in addition to the video-on-demand feature it added back in 2013 for content owners to rent out or sell access to their videos. If successful, this new feature could spur many “mini-Netflixes”, further fragmenting the online video audience.

Positioned as an alternative to YouTube, Vimeo has always been averse to pre-roll ads or other forms of video advertising, focusing on exploring other ways of monetization instead. Adding support for the subscription model seems like a natural progression, if not a belated one. For media owners, this new feature poses a great opportunity to try out the increasingly popular subscription model.

Vimeo Debuts New VOD Network For Web Publishers

Read the original on: WSJ Blog

Vimeo is rolling out a new Vimeo On Demand Publisher Network, a collection of websites that will use Vimeo’s technology to build custom video-on-demand libraries for online publishers. Early partners include The Atlantic, CBS Interactive, and TEN: The Enthusiast Network, who will also employ Vimeo’s payment system, which enable video rental or purchase.

Vimeo-owned Cameo App Looks To Music

Cameo, the video-creation app recently acquired by Vimeo, just got its biggest update yet, with a deep Vimeo integration and a shifted focus onto music discovery. This update brought a complete overhaul of its interface, including a whole new soundtrack browser, genre sorting and an interactive preview feature. As the short-form video apps continues to be dominated by Twitter-backed Vine and Facebook-owned Instagram, this update of Cameo comes as a smart pivoting effort to differentiate itself from the rest. In order to compete with the market leaders, smaller companies could certainly use such branding strategy to help establish their products in this increasingly fractured market.

Vimeo Announces “Looks” For Its Enhancer Toolbox

Video sharing company Vimeo has added “Looks” to its Enhancer Toolbox in an attempt to stay current with the filters trend pioneered by Instagram. Looks has the potential to add over 500 visual effects filters to any video project, right in the web browser, and you can preview the video in realtime to see the effect. The Looks app was developed in conjunction with Vivoom and is organized by mood category; this is perhaps the most useful feature of Looks, and makes it very simple for amateur film-makers to sort through the overwhelming number of options. So although until this point Vimeo has maintained its image as the “artsy youtube,” with many complete films replete with post-production, Looks seems like an attempt to bring users into the fold who might not have access to the hollywood-style after effects that take a video or film to the next level. 

What’s the future of the web?

A new short film provides a thoughtful look at the future of the world wide web. Technologists believe it’s a new take on the old refrain–a smarter web that understands requests for information and can return more relevant responses to our queries–called the semantic web. The documentary film by Kate Ray explores just how much information is now available, and how the sheer volume of information (trillions of pages) is making it harder to find the information you’re seeking (“we’re drowning in our richness”). As semantic web engineer Nova Spivack (Twine, Live Matrix) says in the video, “Google doesn’t scale to that.”  The film also includes interviews with internet luminaries including the “inventor” of the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee. Worth every minute.

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.