Kyle
(photo: dcfounders.com)
This year at Capital Connection/TechBUZZ in Washington DC, Cont3nt was just about king. Cont3nt is an awesome new platform that helps monetize citizen journalism in new ways. The theme around the site is free press and free money and it’s the brain child of founder Anton Gelman.
Before we dive all the way into the story, this particular story isn’t just about Cont3nt, it’s also about Gelman who’s family came to the United States as refugees, to seek the very freedoms that power Cont3nt. It’s also about Gelman because he is one of the nicest people in the DC startup community and a master networker. While we are in DC quite a bit we’re not based there, yet we manage to bump into Gelman at every single event.
By the time last Thursday night had rolled around we had scene Gelman’s pitch for cont3nt four times, never skipping a beat.
So what is cont3nt? Well you can learn more in the pitch video below but in summary, cont3nt is a platform for free lance semi-pro and pro videographers to post content and monetize it at the same time.
The problem today is that social media is kicking traditional medias ass in sourcing video content for major news events. While it takes major news networks hours if not days to prepare to source a story, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to boot, the citizen journalist and the semi-pro and pro freelancers can jump on the news in minutes. Sometimes, they luck into a story as it unfolds before their eyes.
Using content’s proprietary delivery methods the top traditional media firms in the world can get access to this content in minutes rather than hours or days.
Cont3nt offers a variety of methods for selling content on the site to freelance journalists. The journalist can decide if they want to sell an exclusive piece to one outlet or license it out to several.
While cont3nt bills itself as citizen journalism, by Gelman’s own admission it’s the first market place for freelancers with some experience to get their pieces sold. It almost mirrors the “stringer” system that died sometime in the 90’s. (I used to string for CNN Radio and Gannett).
There are other consumer focused citizen journalism sites out there like rawporter which is designed for anyone with a smartphone to report the news and get paid for it,
People seem to like it. That’s why Cont3nt was just about king at the recent Capital Connection/TechBUZZ conference. Gelman and cont3nt were selected a week before the conference by Startup America as their entry into the TechBUZZ competition. With minimal time to prepare Gelman pitched on Wednesday of last week at TechBUZZ.
Cont3nt was selected as one of the top 3 best of the buzz at TechBUZZ and had to pitch for a second time on Wednesday and then on Thursday again as an entry into the “main stage” pitches as part of Capital Connection.
To top that off, Gelman also pitched one more time on Thursday night at the TechCocktail event featuring a keynote from Startup America CEO Scott Case.
Check out Gelman’s pitch below:
Linkage:
Find out more about Cont3nt here at Cont3nt.com
Check out more of our Capital Connection 2012 coverage here
Where on a sneaker-strapped, nationwide startup road trip and could use your help check it out here
