Predictions are never easy, and they are almost always wrong. We did predictions for the video industry last year anyway, and in a two part series we share what actually happened, and how we did.
Last year at about this time we published The Six Easiest Predictions About Video In 2016, with our take on where the video industry was heading. It may not have been as easy as we thought. This post contains the first three predictions. In a few days we will publish part 2 with the results of the remaining predictions. Read them, and then tell us how it really is/was on Twitter.
The horror of vertical video To the horror of all purists out there, 2016 was the year when vertical video made it to the masses and professionals. You know it's mainstream when the Wall Street Journal writes about it. Ogilvy did a nice write up about vertical video. Nieman Labs talked about the issues surrounding the actual making of vertical video. BBC rolled out a new app with vertical video, and National Geographics started to prepare their filmmakers for vertical video.
During 2016 Facebook started showing vertical video vertically, instead of square in users news feed. We have Flipboard running vertical ads, and the company Flite released a vertical video ad building tool. Also, it seems like Snap solved the vertical vs horizonal argument with their new Spectacles.
Snapchat just solved the portrait vs landscape video argument forever pic.twitter.com/iOsKeaeXkb
Owen (@ow) September 24, 2016
I'd say we were correct. Not convinced? You should check out the vertical video film festivals in Europe or Australia. It's another format, just as VR and the almost forgotten 3D.
VR video hardware straight for the closet Facebook's acquisition of Oculus created a boom for the VR industry in China. A boom that might look like a bust with 90% of VR companies going bankrupt. The keywords are look like , as big money is still flowing into the Chinese VR industry. What they did was miss the actual sales targets, and the VR headset makers say all is well.
This site lists 23 360 cameras on sale now, with prices ranging from 188 USD to 45000 USD, and all the big ones (not Apple yet?) have their own VR headsets, with content production increasing. Still, we are still stuck in early adopter land and most of the gear are actually used. Let's say 25% correct.
Cloud storage instead of DAM - for real I know that cloud storage cannot replace a DAM straight away, but there are many situations where a DAM is too cumbersome for simple tasks. The thing is, DAMs often come with processes. If your company runs Box, you can instead do some API magic and hey presto, super lightweight AI-boosted digital asset management. You can do the same with AWS and the Rekognition API, or with Google Storage and the Google Vision API.
Image recognition, machine learning and cloud storage does make a DAM, but the point is that cloud storage providers or third party developers connect storage with other services through APIs, making it simple to replicate DAM tasks. Sooner or later a DAM is needed, but until then, DAMs will have a hard time competing with cloud storage to solve everyday digital asset management problems.
Well, how did we do? No, this year we did not see cloud storage replace DAMs, but there are many signals showing the way forward for a more lightweight view on digital asset management. Don't worry, DAMs will live on, but competition will heat up when fast moving start-ups run in circles around the incumbents with the help of APIs and cloud storage providers.
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Predictions are never easy, and they are almost always wrong. We did predictions for the video industry last year anyway, and in a two part series we share what actually happened, and how we did. 
