The Latest on Food Network and Technology
Thursday, August 09, 2007 | posted by Mike
Just about every type of business has been taking a nice, long look at how they can make the InterGoogle work for them. We had Amazon, who realized that they could offer books that no brick and mortar bookstore would ever keep in stock, and Apple, who provided the listening device which created a huge market for legal online downloading of music. The big thing these days, however, is figuring out how to take advantage of the trend of user-created content, including viral videos and blogs. And which companies are in the best position to take advantage of this sort of thing?
Why, those that already create content for a living, of course.
And so Broadcast Newsroom brings us word of another new-media acquisition on the part of Food Network's parent, Scripps Networks.
Scripps Networks, whose Web properties are among the top-rated lifestyle content providers on the Internet, took another step to solidify its leadership position in the interactive space with the acquisition of Incando Corporation, its second new media purchase in less than a month.
Incando is known for its personal media sharing service Pickle.com and the user-generated content management platform Powered by Pickle. Based on proprietary software, Incando's Web2.0 technology enables speedy uploads of photos and videos from computers, mobile phones or digital cameras to any Web site and will enhance the user-centric, social media and personalization functionality around Scripps Networks.
You can take a look at Pickle.com, which is already touting the acquisition on the home page.
The video interface seems (at least to this semi-trained eye) to be more accessible and smooth than the embedded players that Food Network has been using to date. And, with the popularity of Next Food Network Star where viewers could upload their own videos as part of the application process, we'll probably see this as one of the main submission methods.
Beyond that, you could make it so that users are able to upload photos or videos of themselves cooking various recipes. Really, any kind of "submit your own..." show could be run with this platform, and programs like that are appealing to programmers also because they're pretty inexpensive to produce (once you get past the original cost of the technology). So, it will be interesting to see how they use this new toy.
One other technology story about Food Network right now is a note on NorthJersey.com saying that there were some glitches with the text message voting during NFNS.
The Food Network said this week that it discarded all text-message votes for its reality show after a technical glitch caused votes for Schepisi to initially be rejected. The winner, Amy Finley of California, was named after earning the most online votes. Carrie Welch, the Food Network's director of public relations, said text-message votes were a small percentage of total votes and didn't impact the margin.
I think the last thing this season needed was a recount, so I'm sure everyone is glad we're able to move on to the next round.
Labels: Food Network
