????你是喜歡自己擁有分銷渠道還是外包？

????自己擁有分銷渠道無疑是有好處的，但是我對這些優勢的看法和傳統人士的看法并不一樣。我并不傾向于壟斷渠道，那種日子已經過去了。但是擁有渠道意味著你可以獲取更多數據。理想化的方式是混合式渠道，你既有大量觀眾，同時又有自己掌握的部分。

????你們的哪些工作做得最好，哪些根本沒有效果？

????我們在設立這間工作室時，最大的賭注是在運營和管理方面。我們從短片團隊內部抽調人員成立了團隊，他們都是多面手，而且我們希望他們每周至少可以制作一兩部視頻。其次，我們否定了那種把宣傳調門定得很高、把標準定得很低的觀念，并且試圖讓大家覺得媒體總是關注他們想要解決的問題。

????這是兩個定得很高的理念，而且最讓我感到驚訝的，是它起到的效果。它催生了一支非常自主、熱忱而且有很多不同愿景的團隊。它是一種在組織上讓大家放手去干的形式，同時它也教會我，現代媒體界的復雜性可能無法被每個個人所理解。它一定會復制網絡本身的復雜性。我們需要在最高層面從不同的觀點思考這些東西。

????聽起來好像只是很混亂。

????令人吃驚的是，它并不混亂。有意思的是，如果我走出來看看大家在做什么，很少有人告訴我他們在制作哪一個單獨的視頻，而是會跟我說一些更大的問題。比如他們會說：“我在做后文字主義的視頻，我在視頻中減少了對某一種語言的依賴，而且通過它在國際上的增長看到了它的成功。”這是一個非常困難的問題，而他們會做6到10個視頻，然后研究其效果。

????其它一些問題是什么？

????內容的交付機制如何在某種程度上改變內容的展示方式。比如Facebook的自動播放，這并不是小事，而是一次非常重大的調整。曾幾何時，你制作的內容甚至是沒有聲音的，因此你必須重視它。內容如何構建以及內容的順序都會產生影響。另一個問題是移動設備與聲音有著很有趣的關系。有很多人關心如何做不依賴聲音的內容，但是加上聲音就等于加上了一些價值。

????他們會注意觀眾的一些反應以及數據的異常，然后他們會跟進并試圖理解究竟發生了什么事。旅行視頻一般會在“80后”一代中引起巨大的反響，所以現在又有一類視頻叫做“80后的渴望”，下面還有一個小類別叫“旅行熱”。所以我們想知道為什么會有這種情況。

????約拿提到，你們倆曾經分享過為什么視頻會走紅的一個哲學方法。

????我是在2007年做視頻博客時走紅的，當時也有人買我的作品。我工作的方式，以及越來越多進入好萊塢的人工作的方式，都是快節奏的，是重復的，內容的制作和銷售在同一天。而且他們也與觀眾進行實時互動并獲取數據。顯然不論我想在這座城市做任何事，都得犧牲掉那種工作方式。在某種程度上，我所建立的正是我當時就想擁有的一座工作室。

????Would you prefer to own the distribution rather than outsource it?

????There are definitely advantages to owning distribution pipes, but I don’t tend to think of the advantages in the same way that I think traditional folks think about it. The idea is not a monopolistic intention. Those days are gone. But owned distribution means you can get a lot more data. Ideally it’s a blend where we’re looking at lots of audiences, but you also have a segment that’s owned.

????What have you done that works best and what doesn’t work at all?

????The biggest gamble that we took in setting up this studio was on the operational and managerial side. We architected teams within the short-form group that were generalists and faced with the expectation that they’d produce one to two videos a week, if not more. The second thing was we took away the idea of pitch up and approval down, and tried to get people to think along experimental lines where the media is always focused on a problem they are trying to solve.

????Those are two high-minded principles and that’s one of the most surprising things to me is the degree to which that worked. It has created a very autonomous, but earnest, team that has lots of different visions. It’s a form of letting go, organizationally, but what it’s taught me that I don’t think the complexities of the modern media landscape can really be understood by individuals. It has to mimic the complexity of the network itself. We need lots of different viewpoints thinking about this stuff at the top level.

????That sounds like pure chaos.

????It’s surprisingly not. What I find fascinating is if I go out and walk around and see what people are doing, rarely do people tell me the individual video they’re working on, but the bigger problem. They say, “I’m doing post-literate pieces, where I’m reducing the reliance on what language the video is in, and can see the success by its international growth.” It’s a really difficult problem and these folks are doing six to 10 videos and studying the result.

????What are some other problems?

????How the delivery mechanism changes some of the ways you might think about the presentation of the content. Things like autoplay inside Facebook. That’s not trivial. That’s a pretty massive adjustment. There’s moment of no-sound presentation of what you’ve made and you have to take that seriously. That has implications of how you set things up and the ordering of the content. Another one is that mobile generally has an interesting relationship to sound. There are a lot of people thinking about how you can do things that are non-sound reliant, but where adding the sound adds some value.

????People will notice something in the audience reaction or a spike the data and then they follow it up and try to make sense of what’s happening. Travel videos around travel in your 20’s are resonating huge in Gen-Y, so there’s now a format class called “Gen-Y Aspirationalism, Subclass: Wanderlust,” and so people are focusing on trying to figure out why that is.

????Jonah mentioned you both shared a philosophical approach to why things go viral.

????I came out where in 2007 in the middle of producing this year-long video blog, and I was shopped around. The way that I worked, and increasingly, the people that are coming to Hollywood to work, is fast-paced, it’s iterative, the production is the same day as the distribution, and they’re interacting with audiences and getting data in real time. It was obvious that I had to sacrifice that way of working in order to do anything in this town. In a way, what I’ve built is the studio I wish existed at that time.