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What'll happen to the video platforms?
Online video services proliferated like rabbits in the last few years, but can the market keep up?
Silicon Valley has a way of getting ahead of itself. The bust in 2000 didn’t happen because the internet was overhyped—it is, as promised, transforming the world economy at breakneck speed. The bust happened because the Valley wanted it to change just a few years faster. Speculation in anything that ended in .com outpaced the need for capital, and the valley tripped in its sprint.
Something similar is happening in online video. YouTube busted open the floodgates on pent-up demand for auto-broadcasting. Entrepreneurs grasped the new market, and now we have a family of MiniTubes trying to host and monetize online video: Veoh, Brightcove, Ooyala, Delve, Move Networks, Kaltura, Fliqz, Magnify…. And the live-streaming variety of Ustream, Kyte, Justin.tv, Stickam, Livestream, blogTV, Seero, Monetize Media... all trying to avoid the fate of Revver, LiveUniverse, Maven Networks and Mevee.
A lot of these started out with ad-based business models, but the ad dollars still haven’t shifted online as image-conscious brands stall for better solutions, and the recession slows online ad growth. The recession also dealt a blow to venture capital, and the Sequoia Slides said everyone had to monetize, so many of the platforms shifted to a SaaS model, offering premium hosting services for mid-level professional sites.
A few have grabbed the big ABC / Fox / ESPN clients. Brightcove and Move Networks will probably corner the premium market. Brightcove has deals CBS News and Fox, and Move works with ABC, Fox, the Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet. Move showed signs of intelligent growth in April with its acquisition of Inuk.
Most of the others platforms are gunning for the mid-tail, but the market for mid-level publishers who can pay $10,000 / month for video solutions just isn’t big enough, yet, and cutthroat competition for growth means the video services themselves still offer plenty of free solutions.With Capital harder to come by and video hosting as expensive as it is, we could be in for some serious online video carnage.
Some of them may shop themselves around to old-school media companies in need of online video talent. Magnify may be well positioned for this, having raised only $3 million, including $500k just this month, and keeping a lean team of 12 while attracting the attention of big clients like New York Magazine, Etsy and the Weather Channel.
Sometime soon, every small business will do in-house video production, and ad dollars will support mid-tail publishing, but those markets just can’t mature as quickly as the Valley’s imagination. Whether this crop of hosting companies will tap the coming market depends on whether they can slow their pace from sprint to jog.
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Related Companies, Investors, and Entrepreneurs
Ooyala
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Ooyala is a video technology company that provides an integrated platform enabling the delivery, management, and monetization of high quality video content. Focused on innovation and scalability, Ooyala is committed to providing the most comprehensive video solutions to companies worldwide.Ooyala is headquartered in Mountain View, Ca with sales operations in New York, NY and London, UK.
"Ooyala" means cradle in Telugu, a Southern Indian language. We like the name because it demonstrates what we are doing -- cradling a new form of innovation.
Ooyala was founded in early 2007 by Sean Knapp, Belsasar Lepe and Bismarck Lepe - all former Google employees. While at Google, they worked on the development and launch of various monetization and content distribution products such as AdSense, AdWords and Google Web Search. After four years of engineering and product development at the biggest Internet company in the world, the three left Google to start Ooyala. Ooyala has raised over 10 million dollars in funding and has in excess of 5000 publishers using its syndication platform - Backlot. Ooyala's goal is to build a successful technology company that focuses on delivering the best video experience to video content providers, advertisers and most importantly consumers.
Monetize Media, Inc.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Monetize Media provides a complete online video platform with high-quality live streaming video and on-demand video capabilities. Our browser-based platform provides software as a service for online video management, encoding delivery, syndication, and monetization. Our robust online video platform streamlines the content management process with full distribution control, ad integration, and detailed analytics in an easy to use interface. Monetize Media provides everything you need to publish, distribute, and most importantly- monetize your online video content.
Revver
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Revver is an online media network built the way the internet really works. We support the free and unlimited sharing of media. Our unique technology pairs videos with targeted ads and tracks them as they spread across the web. So no matter where your video travels, you benefit because we share the advertising revenue with you.
Stickam
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Stickam an online service that offers a free streaming video and live video chat on your personal web pages, online auctions, company web sites and blogs with ease.
Maven Networks
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Maven Networks is driving the Internet TV revolution. An invaluable strategic technology partner to professional media companies, we help them to quickly and easily create, distribute, and manage engaging, scalable direct-to-consumer broadband video channels. It's our mission to help customers realize all that Internet TV has to offer. To that end, we've developed the Maven Internet TV Platform, which strengthens their brand presence and generates new and profitable revenue streams.
Justin.tv
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Justin.tv is building the destination site for broadcasting and watching live video online while chatting with friends. Justin.tv tears down the walls of traditional video and social networking sites by enabling viewers and broadcasters to interact and exchange ideas in real time through chat and live video.
In the past, live broadcasting was only available to large media corporations who were willing to spend millions of dollars. Today, Justin.tv has democratized live video by shrinking all of the functionality of an expensive TV satellite trunk into a simple laptop or desktop computer.
The Justin.tv live video network is powered by Python Media Server - a custom built live streaming video server cluster. The network can support thousands of live broadcasts and over 100,000 simultaneous viewers and is 100% owned and operated by Justin.tv.
The Justin.tv chat system is powered by the JTV Twisted Chat Server - a custom built chat server that implements a wide variety of filtering and moderation techniques and relays well over a million messages a day.
Justin.tv has hundreds of thousands registered users and receives millions of uniques and tens of millions of pageviews per month.
LiveUniverse
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
LiveUniverse is one of the world’s largest online entertainment networks, lead by Brad Greenspan, the founder of MySpace. LiveUniverse operate several successful and popular websites across three core verticals: Video, Social Networking & Music.
Magnify.net
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Sites are hungry for video content. Magnify provides a turnkey solution: Video Discovery (search), Upload, and sharing, all to increase site revenue.
MAGNIFY is a video tech platform that is a tech-enabled ad network. Platform allows customers to add a configurable suite of User Generated Video (UGV) related applications to their site. Magnify.net leverages integrated standard IAB ad units into its platform in order to sell to online ad market demand in place today. We also offer "pro" and "enterprise" offerings on a fee for service basis. Over 30,000 publishers have adopted in last 12 months.
Kyte
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Kyte is a white-label, cloud-based publishing platform for live and on-demand video. The Kyte Platform reduces the cost and complexity of delivering social video experiences to websites, mobile and connected devices. Kyte powers online video for top media companies and brands, including ABC, Armani Exchange, Clear Channel, ESPN, Fox News, MTV, Monster Energy and NATO.
blogTV.com
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Founded in June 2006, blogTV.com is a leader in online video and live broadcasting, and is a new and popular web location where viewers from all over the world can come share their personal talents and opinions; LIVE! Unlike some of its competitors, blogTV.com is extraordinarily easy to navigate, which means that no matter who you are or where you come from you will be able to use and enjoy all of blogTV's features.
BlogTV is a well recognized platform that has won several awards worldwide including the GSM "Best Made for Mobile" award in Barcelona, and the GMCA "New Trend Leader" award at the Seoul digital forum. The live interactive video site, blogTV.co.il, has been very successful in Israel since 2004. Within the first 11 months of its launch, blogTV's unique community grew to an astonishing 130000 users! At its current acquisition rate, blogTV.com's growth in the coming months will be exponential and something for its competitors to keep a close eye on.
Due to the variety of broadcasting tools provided by the wonderful blogTV programming staff, any person with a lap top or PC and a webcam is only seconds away from having their very own live broadcasts, recorded videos and television style scheduled programming! Now everyone can feel like a star, create a fan base and tell the world who they are and what they are all about!
Veoh
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Veoh is a revolutionary Internet TV service that gives viewers the power to easily discover, watch, and personalize their online viewing experience.
With a simple broadband connection Veoh gives you free access to all of the great TV and film studio content, independent productions, and user-generated videos on the Web. From hit CBS, NBC, FOX and Comedy Central shows to your favorite YouTube clips, Veoh turns the vast universe of Internet video into an easy-to-use, high-quality, personalized experience that TV fans everywhere can enjoy.
Veoh is an open platform for content publishers of all sizes and sophistication who want to reach tomorrow’s television audience. Currently more than 100,000 publishers - from forward-thinking, well-known entertainment brands to independent, made-for-the-Web producers - use Veoh to connect with an audience of more than 24 million engaged, influential viewers. In addition, Veoh’s unique publisher optimization program gives publishers powerful tools to help them raise awareness of their content and cultivate loyal viewing audiences.
With offices in San Diego and Los Angeles, CA, Veoh is home to a diverse team of entertainment industry insiders, outsiders, technologists and creative types who share a common vision: To make Veoh the most valuable video experience on the Internet. And like any good business, we have our fair share of suits -- Veoh is privately held and backed by leading technology and media investors, including Goldman Sachs, Shelter Capital, Spark Capital, Michael Eisner's Tornante Company, Time Warner Inc., Tom Freston’s Firefly3 LLC and Jonathan Dolgen.
Seero
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Seero.com is a geo-broadcasting platform for users to broadcast and experience destinations around the world. Seero fuses live and on-demand video with GPS mapping to create a rich and unique user experience. Our goal is to shake the foundations of how you see video with a platform that promotes exploration and geographical awareness.
If you are looking for another typical video site, or 'Television Online', this probably isn't the place for you. If you want to experience a new way to see the world, welcome. Seero utilizes the vast potential of the internet to create an original brand of content. If you are a citizen journalist, local tour guide, back road explorer, talented performer, or simply have a great destination to unveil, Seero is your platform to broadcast your world.
Brightcove
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Brightcove is an Internet TV platform.
We're dedicated to harnessing the inherent power of the Internet to transform the distribution and consumption of media.
Brightcove empowers content owners—from independent producers to major broadcast networks—to reach their audiences directly through the Internet. At the same time, we help web publishers enrich their sites with syndicated video programming, and we give marketers more ways to communicate and engage with their consumers.
Most importantly, we give people the freedom to easily find, watch and participate in a broad range of video content—when and where they choose.
delve-networks
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Delve Networks is leading the next generation of development for Video Platform, allowing them to engage users through our "Search Inside" technology, where they can pin point content "inside the video".
Our unique business model also allows companies to reduce operational costs or recognize savings over thier existing service.
We offer a Free Trial and here is a look at the Obama Inauguration usring our technology.
http://blog.delvenetworks.com/2009/01/20/search-inside-obama%E2%80%99s-inaugural-speech/
Kaltura
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Kaltura – The 1st Open-Source Platform for Video Creation, Management, Interaction, and Collaboration
Kaltura's open source platform enables any site to seamlessly and cost–effectively integrate advanced interactive rich–media functionalities, including video searching, uploading, importing, editing, annotating, remixing, and sharing. Kaltura' goal is to bring interactive video to every site and to create the world's largest distributed video network.
Dubbed by many as "Wiki meets YouTube™", Kaltura's platform includes unique collaboration functionalities that allow groups of users to 'lean forward' while creating and consuming rich media together. This active collaboration increases user engagement by adding a social element to the online video experience, and creates enhanced monetization and advertising opportunities for authors and publishers.
The Kaltura Network transcends the boundaries of individual websites by aggregating content across its member sites into the largest repository of sharable and remixable rich-media content. The network provides publishers of all sizes new syndication opportunities, and enables them to gain access to third-party web services – such as DVD burning, professional video editing, and high-CPM advertising opportunities that are only attainable due to the network's economies-of-scale.
Kaltura recently partnered with the Wikimedia Foundation to provide collaborative video functionality to Wikipedia's 207 Million unique visitors. Other customers integrating the platform include media companies, social networks, UGC sites, video sharing sites, major brands, non-profits, bloggers, enterprises and more. Just about any site can boost its users' engagement and monetization using the Kaltura platform.
UStream
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size.
In less than two minutes, anyone can become a broadcaster by creating their own channel on Ustream or by broadcasting through their own site, empowering them to engage with their audience and further build their brand. Click here to start a broadcast now or learn more about broadcasting.
Ustream's one-to-many live interactive video encourages broadcast-to-viewer and viewer-to-viewer interaction, empowering a much more engaging experience for everyone involved.
With Ustream's interactive broadcast functionality, viewers can personally interact directly with whoever is broadcasting -- including personalities like their favorite musician or politician. Ustream viewers can watch specific broadcasts, explore our networks ranging from music, talk shows, sports and politics to discover a world of interesting new broadcasts, or review our past broadcasts.
Ustream opens up a new world of possibilities and experiences to broadcasters and viewers alike, which the pre-recorded static video that's predominated the Internet to date just can't provide. Today, people are Ustreaming everything including:
Move Networks
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Move Networks, Inc. is the leader in providing high-quality video streaming over the Internet. With headquarters in American Fork, Utah, Move Networks provides Move Media Services to leading broadcast networks, stations, and video publishers to provide them with the best online publishing solutions available for their high-value video assets.
Move Networks’ video services represent a new paradigm for the delivery of live and on-demand long‑form video content such as television episodes, news, and sports programming. Using patented, proprietary technology, Move Networks provides video delivery services to premium content owners and aggregators at a substantially lower cost and with much higher quality than competing solutions. Furthermore, Move’s scalable platform is the only service able to stream high‑quality, long-form video to millions of viewers simultaneously while maintaining a best‑of‑breed viewing experience.
Move’s services operate with the highest efficiency across the standard infrastructure of the critical broadband access networks viewers rely on to experience the standard and high-definition television quality that major broadcasters are streaming today. The net results of Move’s solution are dramatic increases in viewing frequency and equally important reductions in delivery costs for publishers and broadband service providers.
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