The following is from Blip.tv’s Mission and Principles page.

Democratization

We are living in an age that historians will say was characterized by the democratization of expression. Whereas the means of media production and dissemination were once concentrated in a few hands, they are now ubiquitous: everybody can be an entertainer, an educator or a pundit. The traditional constraints imposed by high costs of production and limited distribution are no more: now that anyone with a camera and a computer can produce video content, the only constraint is that imposed by the limits of human creativity. Blip’s users have shown that no such limit exists.

We believe that this liberation of the means of production is one of the most important things to happen in recent history. It allows anyone to create the next great sitcom, to share the reality of daily life across cultural boundaries, to share political thoughts and educational materials. This is a beautiful thing, and we are dedicated to furthering this democratization in a manner that always respects intellectual property rights in a venue where everyone can feel comfortable.

Openness

Ours is a new economy of plenty. It’s no longer in anyone’s best interests to put shackles on media, to tie media down to a specific Web site or to be tight-fisted with metadata. We believe that it is in the interests of the community and in the interests of blip.tv to be open with media and data about media.

We are not building a walled garden — we are actively working to break down walls in order to enable the free and open sharing of media and media metadata throughout the Web.

Watch WebProNews interview with Dina Kaplan, COO of blip.tv here.

November 1, 2006
Press Release:

With a network of over 10,000 community blogs reaching 2.4 million veterans and their families, the Departments of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW) are committed to providing important services to U.S. citizens who have served their country in combat overseas, or as their motto clearly states, “To honor the dead by helping the living.” The VFW WebCOM Network, developed by Policlicks.com LLC , the internet communications arm of VFW Departments, aims to help veterans network, keep them informed of the VFW’s political and social activity and generate revenue.

In order to serve its role in providing these much needed services to veterans, the non-profit VFW Departments receive no federal funding from the Veteran’s Administration. Without these funds, the VFW Departments - like most non-profits - need to generate additional revenue to close the gap between funds received from VFW National Headquarters in Kansas City and their operating budgets.

“In this current wartime environment, VFW National Headquarters and all the Departments are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to aid wounded soldiers, their families, and disabled veterans,” pointed out Bruce Edwards, the State Quartermaster of the Department of North Carolina.

To overcome this challenge, VFW WebCOM recognized the far-reaching and potent advertising potential of the VFW subordinate communities and developed a “Hyper-Local Advertising” strategy to turn the Departments’ Web outposts into a powerful network connecting advertisers with the highly targeted veterans demographic.

VFW WebCOM found the solution they needed with Adify.

“With its Internet advertising platform, Adify had bundled the ‘missing’ pieces we needed to deliver marketers an easy way to find and buy highly-targeted advertising online throughout our VFW Departmental and Post networks, while providing us all of the back-end functionality required to execute transactions, including ad management, tracking, reporting, billing and payment,” said Dan Romuald, CEO of Policlicks.

Policlicks manages the advertising networks in conjunction with, and the oversight of, the VFW WebCOM Network founding Departments of North Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, Delaware, and New Hampshire. Policlicks allows advertisers to target VFW members on any scale, from a blog at a single outpost, to a nationwide buy across all of the 8,500 plus Post VFW sites - a commanding target audience for political campaigns or any other marketer seeking to reach the vet demographic. A candidate running for mayor or city council can buy space on the VFW Post Web site in his or her precinct or district, a U.S. Senatorial candidate can buy ad space statewide, or a presidential candidate can buy advertising that reaches all 2.4 million VFW members - a voting block with a 90 percent voter participation rate.

Policlicks will also sell ad space to businesses and campaigns targeted to veteran’s demographics such as pharmaceutical companies, Medicare and Medicaid and veteran’s services.

Romuald said, Adify was the only online advertising network that allowed the VFW Departments to enable and optimize direct, open transactions between advertisers and the group’s Web sites. Adify set a context where the power, control and choice was placed in the hands of advertisers and the VFW Departments, rather than in the hands of a network gatekeeper. Adify enabled Policlicks to open an easy-to-use storefront allowing ad buyers to reach a highly targeted market, while creating a managed social network providing tools to a group already bound by common experiences and goals.

“During the process of due diligence in our development we had the opportunity of looking at several of the major ad server, management and sales players in the industry,” Edwards said. “Adify distinguished itself with its flexibility and the ease of assimilation into our networks and our distributed business models and through its aggressive follow-up and customer service. Adify also provided us with more control over what ad inventory moves through our networks and brought the most consolidated package of ad server, management and sales tools and services that we could find in the marketplace.”

Added Romuald, “After nearly 5 years of development and with the assistance of strong, dedicated partners like Adify, its exciting to see the VFW WebCOM Network move from vision to implementation and begin to realize its full potential for the VFW organization and its members.”

If your company or business is interested in pursuing hyper- local advertising opportunities on the VFW WebCOM Network e-mail advertise@vfwwebcom.org.