GroovyGreen.com – Start Today :: Save Tomorrow

Can you remember two years ago? If so, you might recollect that streaming video was something very little of us could implement, much less afford. 24 months later, it’s now incredibly easy to film something and get it up online for all to see. Video sharing, publishing, and downloading are now the wild new frontiers. You no longer need a lucky break through public access television to reach an audience. Your great skit, message, or on-the-scene report can be uploaded and catapult you onto CNN or MSNBC the next week. It’s an exciting time and there are several options for showing off your work.

Treemo.com is one such player in the field of ‘media sharing’. What makes their service so appealing, however, is the social mission their business follows — from supporting environmental causes to promoting the arts. If Youtube is the urban playground, Treemo is the wild beauty just outside the city limits. Groovy Green is in the process of switching our videos to their site; not just because we feel the quality is better than others, but because Treemo’s mission is the same as our’s. I recently had the opportunity to throw at few questions at Brent Brooker, the CEO and Founder of Treemo.

Groovy: Tell us a little bit about Treemo, its mission, and your involvement. Also, how did the name come about?

Brent: Treemo is a ‘media sharing’ web site and mobile application. We allow users to upload, view and share video, photos, audio and text both on the web and mobile phones. We also are unique in that we have integrated a ‘social mission’ into our business where we are promoting recycling and social programs. We changed our name to Treemo to reflect the ‘green’ influence, that a ‘tree’ has. We also like the tree metaphor for so many other reasons. One of our taglines, is, “It’s Growing.”

I am the founder and CEO. Started the company in October 2005, but had the genesis of the idea a long time ago.

Groovy: Related to number one a bit, Treemo mentions that its “Accountability Trifecta” is people, planet and profits – in that order. Can you elaborate on that thinking?

Brent: The new line of thinking is to build companies that have interests behind just profits and financial success.

People means our employees and our users and the social programs we’ve created. We treat our employees well; from health care benefits to sane working hours to a ‘bottoms up’ philosophy where any idea from anyone can be acted on as we try to build consensus. For our users, we are trying to build a safe community on the internet and mobile phones. This means promoting the content that is responsible and has a good message and banning users who violate our terms of service. We also are working with a couple non-profits to teach digital photography to disadvantaged or low income youth. We’re on our second class right now and it is very gratifying to seeing these kids ‘express themselves’ on Treemo.

Planet – we have dedicated a section of our site, called ‘Get Involved’, where we promote recycling and our social programs. We all need to dispose of the mobile phones, digital cameras and computers responsibly or the planet is going to suffer. We also make great efforts to run our business as a green business – recycled paper and other office supplies, we have looked into carbon offsets for our electricity, and we are thinking of getting an ‘office’ bike, so anyone can run errands with the bike.

Profit – that is pretty self-explanatory, but is also a challenge to weigh all interests in every decision we make as a company. While we would always like to put people and planet first, we have a business to build and we’re in a pretty competitive space.

 Groovy: Treemo is aimed at the creative video market – in a world of YouTube and Google Video, do you find yourself attracting a more mature audience of individuals looking to share for the benefit of the message rather than shock value like on other sites?

Brent: Our intention is to become the ‘media sharing’ platform for the green movement on the web; but because we are also integrating with mobile phone carriers, we are getting users from a younger demographic and the mainstream market. Our goal is to promote our green ideals and socially responsible message and if we go into the mainstream, we have the opportunity to convert or educate the masses. It seems that there is some talk of the green movement going mainstream and that is going to come when the dialogue moves from preaching to the converted to preaching to the uninformed. We are happy to be in that position. One challenge that we face is that we have an open community and platform and we promote freedom of expression. What happens when people express themselves in ways that you don’t want to promote?

Groovy: Any thoughts to offsetting a percentage of Treemo’s electric bill through wind credits?

Brent: Yes, we have looked into that, and the issue we have is that we are sub-leasing our space and therefore can’t use wind power directly. In the course of looking into it, my family has now offset a portion of our personal electriticy with wind power through our electrical company.

Groovy: What happens if someone reaches their 1000MB quota? YouTube has something called Director Accounts that place no such limits on their producers. Are there any plans to offer something like this for people with lots to share?

Brent: We plan on launching a ‘pro’ service that will allow essentially unlimited storage for a $2.99/month charge. We haven’t determined the exact amount of storage but around 2gb/month. We also plan on launching an revenue sharing program for our pro users where we will share back advertising revenue.

Groovy: The Mobile Phone appears to be the next frontier for user generated video. How has Treemo positioned itself to take advantage of this?

Brent: We think we’re very well positioned for that. Right now, every video that is uploaded is converted to a format used on most mobile phones (that support video). We are also in discussions with a number of mobile phone carriers to have Treemo available on their phones. We just recently launched our TreemoTXT SMS service. This allows users to get to their Treemo channel on their mobile phone quickly and easily, all you do is text the username to Treemo or 873366. Currently, this is only available on Cingular and Sprint.

Groovy: Video sharing sites are now starting to offer revenue sharing opportunities for creators of popular videos. Are there plans for Treemo to offer this as well? Could such revenue also be offered to charity or additional notable causes?

Brent: The charity angle is something that we have discussed and we might support down the road. We have other ideas as well like allowing users to have petition signups or similar links on their channel or content.

Groovy: Do you have a favorite video on Treemo that you would like to point out? (Groovy-aside! )

Brent: From the artistic to the auteristic, to the journalistic (like Groovy Green), but my favorite videos have to be of my daughter. I like to take quick videos of her and I can watch them over and over again. I can’t wait to chronicle her life through Treemo through the years.

Groovy: Where will Treemo be 12 months from now? What goals are on the horizon?

Brent: I have no idea where we’ll be in 12 months. We have lots of goals, so we will continue to refine our technology and work on getting more traffic and distribution. We hope to ‘break’ some stories or launch some creative careers, or make some further innovations of our platform.