Dina Kaplan: Covergence is Cool

Since it seemed like every other person at CES this year was sending video up the tubes, we asked a videoblogging authority — Blip.TV’s Dina Kaplan — for her take on the intersection of Vegas, videoblogs and the future of TV.

We caught up with Dina on her way home from Vegas, on the phone during a brief layover in Salt Lake City (sounds like a budget ticket). Her airport-lounge take? Convergence is cool, because it puts independent creators on a level playing field with big-time content. The challenge is producing content good enough to compete.

NewTeeVee: From a videoblogging perspective, what was CES like? Did everyone have a camera, or what?

Dina Kaplan: It did seem that way, didn’t it? For me the coolest thing about CES was all the talk about convergence — everyone from Sony to Cisco was talking about trying to find the right way to get video from the computer to the TV set. At Blip, we always believed video was meant to be a movable commodity. As more and more companies think that way, it’s a great win for videoblogging.

NewTeeVee: But doesn’t that mean that vloggers are now competing with Lost?

Dina Kaplan: I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game. The more the playing field is leveled, the better it is for videobloggers. If you go to iTunes now, you might see Amanda Congdon’s videoblog right next to something from ESPN, and that’s mind-boggling cool.

NewTeeVee: What was of interest specifically to Blip?

Dina Kaplan: We spent a lot of time talking to people who are putting out these players, because there is a need for content, and how to get good content. Some companies are interested in adding a consumer-generated component, and we have helped some already in that area. There is also a lot of interest in the top talent, the top videobloggers, from entertainment companies, mostly out of L.A. They were trying to get their heads around whether they needed to sign people to contracts, or how to create or leverage their own talent. There was a lot of excitement and confusion.

NewTeeVee: So maybe there will be a rush to more video… which means good along with really bad, like some of the stuff we saw this week.

Dina Kaplan: There’s going to be good, and there’s going to be stuff that is god-awful. Let’s hope that doesn’t land on the Blip home page. In the end, the best content will win.

(Dina photo by JD Lasica on Flickr)