One of the stories in today’s business papers is especially poignant to Flip the Media. Just over two years after it acquired pocket-size Flip video camera from manufacturer Pure Digital Technologies, Cisco Systems is shutting down a number of its consumer businesses. Sadly, one of the casualties is the little camera that was the inspiration for the Flip the Media name.
Begun as a blog for students to share lessons learned in a Winter 2008 MCDM video class, FTM continued on after the class ended and evolved into the news journal you are reading now. Living on Internet time, Flip the Media has gone through several iterations in the past three years and will continue to change just as the digital world around us changes.
Is there a lesson to be learned from the fate of the Flip camera? What does the end of something that showed quality video could be made with something that fit in the palm of your hand tell us? Drawing grandiose conclusions from Cisco’s action might be premature. Yet, for those of us who don’t sit in boardrooms or study corporate balance sheets, the speed (two years!) with which the company went from spending $600 million to buy the technology to dropping it like hot potato is startling.
On the other hand, once quality video cameras became standard fare on Apple and Android cellphones, the Flip became redundant to most of its’ target market. That moment coincided exactly with Cisco buying PDT.
Perhaps the lesson is this: If you always chase after the latest thing, you’ll spend all your time chasing. In a blog post published (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not) at the close of this year’s South by Southwest Interactive, digital pundit Seth Godin makes the argument for not focusing on the next big thing. Godin instead encourages us to use established technologies to do real work–even when those technologies have been declared “dead” by what he calls the “drive-by technorati.”
“Dead technology” is a different concept for hardware than it is for software. When Cisco stops production of the Flip, it will be dead in a way that the Web will never be dead. This despite Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff’s incendiary front-cover obituary that Wired published last year. But the lesson is the same: By trying to be au courant, Cisco ended up with nothing. In a drive-by purchase, Cisco –perhaps blinded by the shininess of a disruptive product–bought something with no long-term future.
As a noun, the Flip may be no more. As a verb, we can all continue to “Flip the Media” by ferreting out the real value of technologies and applying those technologies to the work we do. There are lots of shiny objects out there. What the world needs more of are people with the ability to distinguish the shine from a gold nugget from that of a rock wrapped in aluminum foil.
I have a long running fantasy about going back in time just ten years or so and writing sci-fi stories about what’s happening now. It would no doubt be declared preposterous and ridiculed. I’m just happy the term Flip will live on in your program. Gives it even more panache.
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We’re all talking about this on the MCDM Facebook page – so I thought I’d also chime in here on the post:
I suspect that personal video making just didn’t get adopted as quickly as most marketers thought it would. It’s for a certain type of person really. The average person just likes to take the occasional photo here and there, video taking (and video editing) is cumbersome. Had there been more of a niche for this, I believe the Flip could have survived.
So, I think adoption and use is more of the issue here than rushing to judgement that a device like the iPhone 4 (with HD integrated video) killed it.
How sad! The flip had many uses beyond just a carry-with-you-everywhere camera. It would go boldly where large cameras couldn’t- the best little camera for unique and unexpected POV shots. Plus, who could top the $30 underwater housing? I wouldn’t dangle my phone off a ship in the middle of the Pacific, even with housing. Maybe they’ll be revived into a hipster fad, like the Holga. RIP dear, dear Flip.
Hi Eric,
To reiterate — and hopefully clarify — what I said on FB, I tend to agree with you about the potential market for simple video devices being smaller than Pure Digital/Cisco wanted it to be. But I’m not sure that contradicts what I — and others — have been saying about video smartphones’ role in the Flip’s demise.
Instead of thinking of it in terms of absolute numbers, think of it in terms of percentages. It doesn’t matter if the potential market for the Flip in a world without video smartphones was 10 thousand per year or 10 million per year: If 95% of the people who actually might have bought a Flip suddenly realize they can buy a smartphone that has the same capability, the market for the Flip completely collapses. And to me it seems clear that’s what happened, no matter the actual size of the potential market.
There’s an open question of whether Flip could have gone upmarket and tried competing for the camcorder market, but that probably didn’t fit with Cisco’s vision for consumer products so it never happened.
-Brook
I wonder how sales are for Kodak’s Zi8. If Eric is right and video ended up being more of a niche market then marketers expected, I wonder if the lack of an external mic input like the Zi8 has is actually what killed the flips sales within the video producer’s niche
Personally, I must admit that I bought a flip about a year ago and never really used it, except for educational purposes. Always ended up deciding that if something was worth shooting, it was worth shooting on my big ol’ DSLR, and if it wasn’t, than it didn’t matter if I just used the crappy video on my phone. There wasn’t any middle ground that the flip could fill.
Keep in mind that Cisco didn’t kill just the Flip. The Flip was supposed to fit into a living room ecosystem based around the ūmi video conference box plugged into your TV.
Today Cisco made a strategic tactical retreat and dumped their entire consumer products division, repositioning the ūmi into their enterprise division. They really only saw the Flip as a strictly amateur device that you used to share videos online with family and an external mic would have been a needless complication. Without the ūmi, and without more advanced features Flip no longer had anything to recommend it as a product line that could be sold to someone else.
According to Kodak’s 2010 Annual Report* the Zi8 is in their Consumer Digital Imaging Group. The press release accompanying the Annual Report** talks about ink jets contributing to the group’s profit, but doesn’t talk about video cameras at all. My guess is they probably aren’t contributing a lot to the bottom line.
*http://www.envisionreports.com/EK/2010/38902fe10e/index.html
**http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2709&pq-locale=en_US&gpcid=0900688a80e9657e
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Always ended up deciding that if something was worth shooting, it was worth shooting on my big ol’ DSLR, and if it wasn’t, than it didn’t matter if I just used the crappy video on my phone. There wasn’t any middle ground that the flip could fill.
Some context on the origins of the name of this blog.
As Brook mentions, we originally conceived it as a connective platform for my inaugural 2008 Multimedia Storytelling class. We were early adopters of the Flip camera, and even established a relationship with that upstart company. Philosophically, as a professional journalist once held hostage by very expensive technology (and hence that technology’s high barriers to entry), I celebrated the shot across the bow that the Flip represented: accessible video for all, tied to an easy form of distribution.
To me, it’s inconsequential whether the Flip lives or dies. It heralded a change in mindset between amateur and professional, blurring the lines between the two. Smartphone, Flip, Kodak Zi8 — the device, nor the manufacturer matter little. What matters most is that so many of us now have a powerful multimedia device in our pockets today.
I have probably the best mobile phone camera currently, a super-sharp 12-megapixel autofocus Carl Zeiss-powered lens on my Nokia N8. But at a recent conference, I still whipped out my Kodak Zi8 to record a panel. The external mike, the codec and the long recording time all made sense to me. As Katherine points out above, there are just certain things you’re not going to want to put your mobile phone through. Which is why I continue to carry the Kodak in my bag of tricks.
Finally, the Flip Camera was only 1/3rd of the inspiration to this blog title. It also implies turning traditional media upside down (which is what we study in our program). And in its most irreverent connotation, it means “flipping the bird” to what we thought were immutable business models of communication.
Thanks for this post, and the great discussion that has ensued.
David Pogue has a very interesting post with a different take on the death of the Flip.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/14/the-tragic-death-of-the-flip/
I realize that it has been nearly a month since the Flip’s demise was announced (an eternity in digital years) but I can’t shake the feeling that despite its flaws, the Flip had the potential to usher in the digital age a smidge quicker for the slow-to-adopt.
I understand Cisco’s business objectives and completely agree that the digital savvy and technically literate view the Flip as little more than a novelty. As some of the previous posters have mentioned, the fact that the Flip is not necessarily the best option out there does not translated into it being useless.
Where the Flip really shined, was coaxing the previously video and digital phobic to play in the space. It broke down real and perceived barriers in both cost and expertise. For example the Flip was perfect for teachers looking to integrate new modes of communication and feedback into the classroom. Those same teachers aren’t likely to use an expensive DLSR or the “prone to walk out of the classroom” iPhone. The Flip gave them an option that didn’t require special knowledge, was cheap, and wasn’t detrimental if stolen or broken. In other words – it provided them with a low risk and high reward technology.
This unique combination of attributes is what made the Flip special but probably what also lead to its demise.
The article on Pogue’s Posts was very interesting, indeed. Thanks for linking to it, Brooke. When we all jumped to attribute the cause of death of the Flip to “lack of competitiveness in the marketplace,” really it may have been that Cisco just wanted the technology all along, and didn’t care about the business. Interesting. Maybe the business wasn’t bad, after all. Maybe this is just another sad story of a small company being bought up and killed off, while the technology giants are just getting bigger, richer, and more powerful.
This article (Pogue’s Posts) is making more and more sense. The Flip did still have a competitive edge- it wasn’t trying to be a Kodak Zi8 with extra fancy buttons and mic jacks, or an alternative to a camcorder, but simply was what it was- a quick to record, easy to use, respectable-quality video camera. It was (is) its own tool. It definitely has its own spot in my video kit. While it may not be what it had originally sought to be – the consumer camera everyone is carrying around all the time (now called “cell phone”) – it does fill a unique purpose. There is no telling what any technology or software’s real use is until, well, people start using it.
From Seth’s blog post (linked in the original posting from Brooke), innovative use is said to occur after the initial hype dies down, when technology is “dead.” This doesn’t mean it’s completely gone, just “mostly dead, not all dead.” That’s where I see the flip now- just mostly dead.
The people who are using the Flip camera are using it in new ways. We’ve figured out a good purpose for it. That’s why it doesn’t make sense that it wasn’t a competitive product in the marketplace. We all like it, lots of other people like it. People are using it. That’s why it was so surprising that Cisco killed it. After reading all of the associated comments and links, I’ve changed my mind about why and have chosen to follow Pogue’s opinion. It feels better, in a sense, that it wasn’t a slow bleed out of the market but a wrongful death. It wasn’t the Flip’s fault. It was Cisco. And maybe that is why I like this article… it feels better hating the big guy.