June 17, 2005

Kaneva Beta Fun - You're Invited!

Having recently given beta feedback for Technorati, and for Highbeam, I'm now having beta fun exploring Kaneva.

It's actually fun trying to describe Kaneva. It's a kind of multi-media flickr (pre-fame) meets ebay on steroids, or an online marketplace for folks hyped on digital entertainment. An Intertainment Hub. A platform and host. Kaneva is really an interesting model.

What Kaneva is officially? "The world's first online digital entertainment marketplace enabling customers to watch, play, create, and market films and games." But you know the net--films and games are a start....video blogging, podcasting, combinations thereof, the sky could really be the limit. Kaneva could easily become a one-stop shop for downloading the newest (think blog-post frequency)amateur and indie entertainment. Because Kaneva also deals in currency, it gives new media creators a place and an audience for distributing and selling their work.

What Kaneva says:
The Long Tail represents that the aggregate of the less popular content is greater in revenue than only the blockbuster hits. Amazon and Netflix reflect this in their business models. There is a need for an infinite library of entertainment content available at all times for anyone from anywhere.

I think that's right on. Like blogging is to writing, and like flicker is tophotographyy, Kaneva could be to film, music, video and games.

Kaneva is the brainchild of Chris Klaus, founder of ISS and Really. Smart. Guy. See Chris' interview in Computer Games Magazine, and check out the Klaus Entertainment site for more Kaneva news.

Complete with tags, and a "blog this item" link to push Kaneva content outside the platform, I really like where Kaneva is going.

After watching some of the free movies and trailers, I'm transported back in time when there was no MTV and then there was. And, in college at the time, we watched it every night and felt something happening to our brains -- our visual and auditory sensory skills opening wide. Because most of us in our teens and early 20s watched MTV late into the night, MTV changed the way a generation dreamed. If you didn't know TV and Music before MTV, it's hard to explain. It has nothing to do with what MTV is like today.

But some of the original content on Kaneva feels like that first blush of MTV awakening. That expanding of possibilities.

Anyway, if you want to have beta fun, dig in. I'll see you there.