'Video Snacking' New Frontier For Media Creators

News.com has up a piece from the NYT about the concept of 'video snacking', a new focus for media companies as they gain a certain savvy about the internet. They're increasingly targeting the 'lunch market' for office workers, creating short to-the-point videos that can be consumed over a sandwich. "The midday spike in Web traffic is not a new phenomenon, but media companies have started responding in a meaningful way over the last year. They are creating new shows, timing the posts to coincide with hunger pangs. And they are rejiggering the way they sell advertising online, recognizing that noontime programs can command a premium. In 2007, a growing number of local television stations, including WNCN in Raleigh, N.C., and WCMH in Columbus, Ohio, began producing noon programming exclusively for the Web."

Wah?

[Alexx K]

You mean, not everyone spends their lunchtimes reading Slashdot?

Re:Wah?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, not everyone spends their lunchtimes reading Slashdot?

Of course not. Lunch time is too special for Slashdot. That's what the rest of the day is for.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

which lunchtime? Last I checked, noon occurs multiple times across the globe. Not to mention that my lunchtime is usually closer to 3pm than noon in my own timezone.

Re:

[Tangent128]

If you mean for the purpose of advertising rate calculation, they can probably just geolocate the IP. Or just designate a larger block that covers mainland America's noons, as they are presumably the target audience.

Re:

[Drooling Iguana]

Eastern time: The only timezone that matters.

Re:Wah?

[4D6963]

You mean, not everyone spends their lunchtimes reading Slashdot?

No, in Soviet Russia, Slashdot reads your lunch while it eats you.

Re:

[Nullav]

'Mordor does not simply walk into one'?

Re:

[Sonnekki]

Augh! The food metaphors are killing me!

Re:

[ILuvRamen]

naw, I just check it all day hehehe. No seriously, on the 150 fresh imaged laptops this was my go to site for a login that would let me disable the "want IE to remember password" dialog so I was here A LOT.
btw I feel obligated to point out what the moronic author left out. If it's on the internet, people anywhere in the world can see it which means lunch is at a very different time in every time zone. So no, you can't really sell premium lunchtime advertising. There's what like 4 different noon to 1 ti

Re:

[Tatsh]

Well, I would click Tools -> Options and so forth to disable that if I wanted it to be disabled on the master box then copy that image to the other PCs. That saves a lot of time. If you seriously attempted to log in on 150 PCs, then you wasted probably a lot of time, bandwidth for Slashdot (now I feel bad for them XD), and bandwidth for the company (if that's how they buy it). That was a huge waste of resources regardless of cost, no offence. Could have saved some time and resources my man.

Re:

[jesse285]

You mean, not everyone spends their lunchtimes reading Slashdot?

So the money machine never die? well get use to it, for it will be around when we are all gone.

Times have really changed.

[Junior J. Junior III]

It used to be, I'd grab a snack in order to avoid a short video.

Re:

[Khyber]

Umm, my Merriam-Webster dictionary, circa 1988, open and in my lap, states the first definition of Nigger as "1. noun : An ignorant person. 2. Noun: A socially disadvantaged person. 3. noun (slang:) A racial term for people of dark skin color."

Why the hell do you people even bother with the web? It's constantly changing, therefore everything is suspect. Rely upon a hard copy or disconnect yourself from the internet, please. The internet is NOT the end-all-be-all of knowledge, and in most cases it's WRONG to

Re:

[Khyber]

You forget, Latin is a dead language, therefore we no longer use it. :P On second note, since you insist on using that particular definition, I'm caucasian.

Sorry to knit-pick

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

M-W.com IS the Merriam-Webster dictionary, my friend, and seems just as credible as your paper edition. If the source was wikipedia, then I might agree with you. It was MUCH more credible than your un(easily)verifiable claim - face it, your claim isn't backed up by the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It is backed up with "Because this is what I am telling you."

So - "constantly changing"? I think not, if you bought a current hard edition you would find the exact same definition. Webster changes at a rate of a

Re:

[poor_boi]

Why the hell do you people even bother with the web?

Because there are trusted resources on the web. Like your Merriam Webster, for example, can be found at http://m-w.com [m-w.com]. It's produced and backed by the publisher as much as your hard copy is. Not everything on the web is Wikipedia.

Re:

[killmofasta]

And "WHERE ARE THE WHITE WOMEN AT?" -Sheriff

The spike at lunch time around the globe is four fold. People checking email before they go to lunch, people checking email after they come back from lunch, and the same two crowds checking headlines.

What is really disturbing about this, is that now sound bites, now called 'McSound Bites(tm)' have to fit into a 5 1/4 min time frame so as not to loose the attention of a scarfing moron, irregardless of the depth of the story, let alone 'The Chief' is either gone to

Re:

[JustOK]

The meaning of life is to be a good consumer. The more you consume, the better a person you are. They are giving you more to consume so you must consume more.

Re:

[Farmer Tim]

A jigger [wikipedia.org] is a measure used for alcoholic drinks, so rejiggering must be using on on a repeated basis.

That's my kind of lunch. Cheers!

One tequilla, Two tequilla...

[Smordnys s'regrepsA]

Only alcoholics drink before noon... good thing my lunch is around 1!

Just thinking out loud now - if it is always 5 o'clock somewhere, it stands to reason that it is also 12 o'clock. Therefore I'm only an alcoholic in certain regions of the world. Here comes a shot of daddy's little helper!

Lunchtime routine

[xant]

I got a new video iPod for christmas. I also have a fairly stressful job dealing with constant communication 8+ hours a day. So at lunch I want to get away from people. My routine has been to listen to fiction podcasts (short stories.. escape pod, pseudopod, drabblecast, etc.) while I walk to lunch, and then when I actually get my food, sit down and continue to tune out with a show of some kind.

I'm partial to Heroes, but I'll be caught up with that pretty soon (I'm up to episode 9 of season 2.)

There is a real niche here. I REALLY WOULD like media companies to market ipod-format media to me.. I would watch it. There's a space in my day for it, exactly the thing to use to tune out the world for that half hour when I really need it tuned out. I will say this though: my standards for quality of content stay just as high at lunch as they do the rest of the day. :-) If you want to market to me, it had better be watchable.