News Picks: February 12, 2007
Wii-specific Video Web Applications
I mentioned in today's Wii homebrew posting that the Wii's popularity is definitely garnering the attention of web developers. Coincidently I noticed two more web applications attempting to ride on the success of the Wii and YouTube. One is called WiiToob the other a Wii version of StumbleUpon.
The Wii is selling incredibly well (though TechCrunch's 6 million number is high) and I would expect to see plenty of companies trying to capitalize on its success particularly when the web is an available development platform. I'm curious, however, how either of these two video sites will be able to maintain their businesses in the long term, certainly without some form of major backing.
Pretty interesting, but I'm still curious to see why users would prefer these over just using YouTube through the wii opera browser ;) Not to mention, unless they are just wrapping youtube content, I find it difficult to believe that people will start loading content to these sites instead of youtube.
On the topic of monetization -- the previous web bubble was largely based on eyeballs and advertising to masses of users. With the dot-com bubble, the idea was to just sell advertising and do clickthroughs to some extent. Unless the Wii and other console platforms have slick, secure, and easy to use UIs and input devices the idea of having clickthroughs or selling products on any of these consoles will need to be tied into some type of easy payment mechanism unless they just want to make impressions on the users. Interestingly enough, I've heard that traditional USB keyboards don't even work with the wii -- I haven't researched this but perhaps they don't support the full HID stack?
IMO, I think it's a long shot for any of these sites to make money unless they support all consoles, browsers, and really create captivating content that works on any platform, and then have a way of turning that into money either through ad-revenue or some sort of subscription model (ugh. another subscription to pay!)
... so said 'Ming' on 02/13/2007 @ 09:23:40 PM [Direct Link]
Hey Ming. Well I'm not sure what WiiToob is actually bringing to the table other than something that looks Wii-like. StumbleUpon is actually a fun time-waster. It learns what you like and you can just explore and see interesting things. Not sure how either can sustain a business long-term, though StumbleUpon has been around since 2001.
As for using the Wii for online shopping, I'm sure Nintendo would prefer everything go through them. Since that isn't the case, sites could fairly easily make UI adjustments to make it easier for the Wii user. The Wii supports SSL, and if the sites store contact/billing/credit card information, it may not be that bad ... after the first time you enter your information :).
... so said 'Joseph Molnar' on 02/13/2007 @ 10:36:08 PM [Direct Link]