By Christian Baekkelund
At first glance, Mondomedia.com seems the same as half a dozen other
internet sites. It first appears to be a site featuring a large number
of Shockwave based animations in a vein similar to that of atomfilms.com's
Shockwave area (Shockwave.com), streamingmediaworld.com, and others.
However, unlike those sites which make their money by hosting animations
on their site that they have paid for, then trying to promote their
site and make revenue off of banner ads on the site, Mondomedia tries
something radically different - and fails.
Instead, what Mondomedia attempts is a new idea of syndication for
short videos on the Web. An artist can sell a short Shockwave animation
to Mondomedia (or even a series of animations) and Mondomedia then
in turn distributes it to its customers to be displayed on their various
websites. The idea is that a number of large internet portals, such
as Lycos, NBCi, BBC Online, and so on, need content to draw people
to their site and keep them there. Mondomedia, in the form of their
Shockwave MondoMiniShows, provides this pre-packed ready-to-go content
for a fee. Therefore, the actual Mondomedia website is conspicuously
banner ad free. Mondomedia is also very well laid out and stylistically
appealing, however, at the price of being extremely bandwidth and
computationally intensive; many computers will have trouble loading
Mondomedia.com.
Alas, the core concept behind Mondomedia is flawed. First, the idea
that of syndication on multiple sites is a relic of the television
era in which programming bandwidth was restricted to a finite number
of options at any given time. Random access of any show ever broadcast
on television on any channel was never an option, and therefore, syndication
of past shows on other networks was a logical means for networks to
provide relatively cheap content that people wanted to see. However,
on the internet, this idea does not translate. At any given time,
I can access any given website, therefore, having multiple copies
of the same Shockwave show on ten different websites doesn't add anything
and is simply redundant. Secondly, as users browse major portal websites,
they generally are not too interested in secondary content that doesn't
seem very relevant to the main focus of the site. A standard user
of NBCi.com or BBC Online is not necessarily going to interested "Heavy
Metal Guy" or the "God and Devil Show". Finally, if
a user does come to Mondomedia through some means, be it a recommendation
by a friend or similar, and would like to view on of the shows advertised
on the Mondomedia website, they cannot. Instead, they are forced to
choose to redirect to one of Mondomedia's customers to go view the
show they've now selected. This additional step is even more infuriating,
because the redirect is still not directly to the show but is instead
to that portal's general media content area, where the user must then
again search for the show they just selected.
Mondomedia is a well-designed website with good and funny content
that unfortunately is based on an old of media distribution that simply
doesn't apply to the World Wide Web.