Call it what you want – content delivery, video aggregation, audience segmentation, brand networks, blah, blah, blah.  Tons of people have given it a go, but ask any of them about what they do and if it’s working, and only a handful are able to give you a clearly defined answer.

I came across an interview of Andrew Robertson, CEO at global branding agency BBDO, where he consistently refers to what they do as “The Work” and I think it’s a fantastic concept.  By defining your efforts simply and clearly stating your focus, you will help your audience understand who you are, what you do and the value you bring.

At 1CAST our “Work” is all about making digital more personal.  We define this as a user-driven, professionally delivered video news service, built around discovery – where the content follows the user rather than waiting to be found.  We call it micro-casting.

We believe that moving from search to discoverability is a natural process and one that is more closely aligned with our needs in this increasingly time constrained world.  Yet this begs the obvious question, “is there value or worth in what we do?”  And I would argue an astounding YES!

Time is a precious commodity and it can be argued that it has a higher intrinsic value than money.  For 1CAST, one of the best measures of the “worth” of our “work” is looking at how users are willing to pay with their time to access their own personalized news through our platform.

Not surprisingly, our user engagement numbers at 1CAST are off the charts for our desktop experience, our recent iTV initiatives on Boxee and especially on our mobile applications for iPhone and Android.  We believe this points to something very special about what we’ve accomplished with our micro-casting concept.  Some have called it a paradigm shift; others have called it cracking the code.

We just call it doing our “Work”.

Anthony Bontrager

Hi Everyone,

After nearly a year, 1CAST has successfully emerged from beta, bringing with it a completely re-designed user interface, new content and distribution partnerships, a bit of relief from our extremely talented development team, and heightened sense of purpose towards driving the most engaging video news experience across the three screen environment to our viewers.

Since our launch yesterday we’ve seen all of our metrics – from visits to unique viewers to streams per visit increase; but most important of all is the time spent viewing content, which continues to grow.  Already 1CAST has one of the most engaged audiences across the web and mobile spaces.  This trend continues and demonstrates the value of our micro-casting environment as a means for viewers to control what, how, when and where they get their video news.

Rest assured we are by no means finished.  Our team is already working on the next platform update, integrating our next set of content partners and a host of other initiatives that are sure to bring more value to our viewers and business partners alike.

So stay tuned!

On behalf of the 1CAST team, I want to extend a big THANK YOU to our content partners, distribution partners, advertisers, investors and most importantly our viewers.  Each of you has contributed to 1CAST’s ongoing success for which we are very grateful.

Now time to get back to work.

Anthony

Two weeks ago, 1Cast announced the launch of its private beta, bringing to consumers the world’s first personalized broadcast delivery news service.  The launch was met with much acclaim and the usage numbers for our service, including downloads of our iPhone application are already well on target with our expectations even at this early stage.

An inevitable part of any beta test is being confused with or compared to other companies in or around your target space.  1Cast has experienced much of this over the past two weeks and I thought it would be a good idea to clarify a few points about what 1Cast aspires to be.

Simply put, 1Cast is a service offering that allows everyday news consumers to build personalized news playlists (micro-casts) and have them delivered in near real-time to their desktop or smartphone device.  We believe that consumers do not want to hunt and peck for individual video clips of relevant content, but prefer that it be delivered in an easily consumable, lean-back format. 

1Cast also allows for a more of a lean-forward experience, allowing users to navigate within a micro-cast and watch individual clips, share their micro-casts or clips with friends, or even embed them in their blog or favorite social networking site through the use of our widget.  Ease of use, and timeliness of information delivered wherever and whenever you are is the focus of 1Cast.

We believe that targeting the broader market with a true service offering, rather than offering a toolset to specific niche markets, is the best possible strategy for web video consumption.  It allows us greater flexibility in the distribution channels we select, offers users an intuitive manner in which to view video news content from multiple sources, and provides our content and advertising partners a compelling distribution channel.  So far, our user feedback has affirmed this belief.

I would like to give a big THANK YOU to the 1Cast team for all their hard work and dedication these past few years.  Small teams with big dreams have led the web video explosion and we’re thankful to be a part of this evolving industry.

I would also like to thank all of our users, the blogging community, as well as our content and other strategic partners for their feedback and support during the launch of our beta.  We’re truly grateful and look forward to providing continued enhancements to our product to meet the needs of our growing user base.

In the meantime…. Enjoy!

Anthony Bontrager

Some of you may remember this 1988 film staring Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Phillips. The film is about an inner-city math teacher who decides to change an educational system that is blind to the needs of its students.  This true story is a great example of overcoming challenges to deliver on a promise.  In this case, the promise of a valid education to kids, regardless of geography or socio-economic status.

The team at 1Cast believes in the premise of “Stand and Deliver.”  For the past two years, we have been quietly developing a service that delivers on the promise of seamless mobility of professionally produced content.  This has been more than just a technological undertaking, but an educational one as well.  For us, our real challenge was to educate broadcasters and cable programmers that by giving viewers more control over how they consume content, two things happen: first, the user is able to build greater affinity with a brand if it’s flexible to use and easy to consume whenever and wherever people want.  Second, specifically in the case of perishable news content, this affinity leads to more time spent with the content and additional monetization for a product with such an inherently short shelf life.

We are extremely pleased with the response we’ve seen from national and international broadcasters and programmers to our proposition.  Yet, in the end, only the consumer has the ability to say whether we’ve delivered on our promise. 

I think the following post by political blogger Ben Domenech of RedState answers that question:

“The fine folks over at 1Cast, a new media delivery tool for smartphones, were kind enough to let me try out a beta version of their software on an iPhone during the DNC and RNC. It’s an excellent solution to a problem for smartphone users who want to find video content across multiple channels, but end up getting RickRolled by Youtube half the time, and have to deal with proprietary constraints on others.

Imagine an automatically updated RSS feed for video, personalized to your specific political, corporate, or news tags, delivered smoothly to your device, and that’s this new service. The ability, within hours of her speech, to pull up footage of Sarah Palin’s remarks and then effortlessly move to related news clips of responding coverage on a variety of networks was just wonderful when you’re on the go at a convention. To me, the untapped potential of this service for Sports is the most tempting – the day I can get an inexpensive service on my existing smartphone (as opposed to having to purchase some specific device) that delivers so quickly and smoothly that I can get fully streamed TV highlights from a first half of NFL play while sitting at the game at halftime will be a very happy day.

If you’re a gadget addict or a politics and news junkie, check them out at 1Cast.”

Anthony Bontrager