Tropophilia

I wrote a little while ago about mashups, and defined them as “two or more sources of information on the web ‘mashed’ together to make a new, useful tool.”  As it turns out, mashups are actually much more encompassing than that.  The two or more sources of “information” do not necessarily have to create a “tool”; indeed, the sources don’t have to be “information” in the traditional sense at all.

For example, there are music mashups — entirely new creations that consist of clips and samples of tracks already in existence.  Remember The Grey Album, which spliced together Jay-Z and the Beatles?  Mashup.  There are also video mashups, which combine video and audio from different sources to make something completely new.  There are countless examples of these, but one hilarious illustration that I’ve just happened upon called There Will Be Vader mixes audio from There Will Be Blood with clips from Star Wars.

So just as “utility” mashups are useful remixes of several sources of information, “creative” mashups are expressive remixes of several sources of inspiration.  The tricky difference between the two is this: utility mashups generally make use of what are called APIs, or application programming interfaces, to obtain and manipulate data.  The easiest way to think of it as a sort of Rosetta Stone that a company provides to developers to allow them to access and interpret the information in their products.  For example, Google Maps and Twitter each have an API that, when correctly manipulated and designed by a developer, can become something like Twittervision.

Music and video, though, are not really the same.

To remix sounds and images, all the skill and access you need these days is Photoshop, iMovie, GarageBand, and the Internet.  No API required.  Although Digital Rights Management (DRM) was designed to protect artistic creations, it has proved to be so ineffective that many companies are dropping it altogether.

While content providers such as music labels and movie studios want to protect their content from pirating and unauthorized use and reuse, they also want to embrace the mashup culture.  Executives watch the rise of YouTube and want a piece of that action.

What is it about YouTube that makes it so popular?  It’s the conversational aspect.  I don’t mean the ability to comment on or send video responses to clips.  I mean the way YouTube has become a part of our conversation and culture.  “Dude, have you seen that YouTube video about…” is commonplace these days.

In an attempt to harness that energy, over 50 content providers including “including FOX, NBC, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros., Lionsgate, and more” launched Hulu.  Hulu is basically the YouTube of the movie and television industries.  It features full episodes from some of the most popular shows on TV, and many full-length feature films.  But that’s just the beginning.

In order to increase the conversational angle a little bit, Hulu allows you to make clips of their videos and share them with friends.  Want to share a hilarious scene from The Office without sending someone the whole video and telling them to “look after the 4 minute mark,” you can just send them the exact clip you want them to see:

Hulu offers some pre-made clips, or you can go to the full episode or movie and designate your own. Besides making something that’s a lot of fun (and vastly superior in video quality to YouTube), Hulu is guaranteeing that the content providers themselves are controlling the access to the content. Their videos are protected and cannot be captured to be independently remixed. By offering their content in pristine and somewhat editable format, they offer something that YouTube cannot, betting that consumers will go for quality and modest freedom over lower quality and superior freedom.

YouTube, of course, will respond.  They are already starting to introduce higher quality videos, and will continue to expand their content deals with the networks.  Either way, the competition is great for consumers of web video (read: us).  The line in the sand is drawn, and the battle to provide more, better, and flexible content will make the Internet an even more powerful medium.

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user greefus groinks.