Open Letter to Howcast Media

I have to admit, I really love your site Howcast. By establishing standards for quality and content, the site has become perhaps even harder to navigate away from than YouTube, or similar short video content sites. In doing so, your company has become the gold standard in online instructional video, differentiating itself from the likes of ExpertVillage and 5min, which rely heavily in User Generated Content, dilute the content with popups, and do not specialize in quality. Howcast is polished and differentiated (love the step by step video player!), and most of it is pretty fun to watch. But is there a business segment that is missing here?

By specializing in the production of easy to follow instructional video, you have a unique opportunity. As the best provider of production video instructions, you should outsource this specialty to corporations that might be in need of your help, who could pay you for the content. Allow me to provide an example.

A friend of mine bought a “QuickPitch” tent that just explodes open when you need it. Folding it back into its case is a modern mystery, and the instructions on the tent are hilariously opaque (see in particular step 5 – ha!):

I found a video online that was created by the company as a response to customer outrage over these instructions, which tries to unravel the mystery. The guy in the video makes it look easy, but trying to replicate the process with my actual tent was [in actuality] still a HUGE challenge. It took me 30 minutes to get the tent back in its case, and I am good at stuff like this (I was the KING of LEGOs as a kid). The video has no sound, is fuzzy and really oversimplifies the hard parts:

QuickPitch tent instructions

Howcast is far better suited to do this video than these jokers. I imagine that the tent company would love to quell unsatisfied customers, but were just unsuited to do production videos in house and this was the best they could do. Howcast should lend their expertise. Doing this would allow you to get paid to CREATE the content, not just to host it. Getting businesses to back the content could allow you also to pass along the costs of search engine optimization, and gain you the 'Google juice' that you are currently lacking. Lastly, you could become THE go-to in quality instructional video outsourcing. Im sure there are plently of products in need of good instructions that you could pitch (LEGO??, search Yahoo answers for common problems), and plenty more companies that would come to you once this piece of your business gains in popularity.

Lastly, swing on down the subway on the 4/5/6 train to the NYU Tisch Film School (my alma mater!) and offer ca$h to students that might help you get your content put together on a deadline. I used to work for peanuts doing experiments for the psych department. I could earn cash in my free periods with no long term commitments to a job or emails from a boss at 9PM on a Friday night. The production process at Howcast is formulaic and clear, and could easily be outsourced one project at a time to poor, smart, commitment-averse college students and then QA’ed by your team.

Think of it as the GetSatisfaction of instructions. If you don’t do it, SOMEBODY should…

***UPDATE: Howcast has taken my advice: http://info.howcast.com/howcast-solutions***