Media 2.0 and The World of Online Video - Never Mind the Quality see the Marketshare
Media 2.0 and The World of Online Video - Never Mind the Quality see the Marketshare
By Web 2.0 Blog Contributing Editor Mark Scrimshire
It increasingly obvious that the traditional publish and consumption model has outlived its usefulness and applicability. That model has big media businesses generating content and we, the consumer, passively consuming it. Up to now our only control has been the channel flipper or the power button. What is clear is that the power of community, should not be underestimated in the battle to define the future of the emerging online video industry. The traditional content generating enterprises are having a difficult time adapting to the new order where the consumer has increasing control over the timing, channel and format by which we absorb content. A big battle is looming, driven by the experimentation of emerging Web 2.0 businesses like YouTube. YouTube's emergence as a major destination on the Internet has been covered in earlier blogs here. YouTube's growth has been fueled by turning a blind eye to copyright ownership. Users of the service have ripped video from TV and Video and posted it to YouTube to share with friends. At the other end of the spectrum, media enterprises have been campaigning to implement broadcast flags to prevent copying and keep pushing to create onerous restrictions that seek to prevent consumers from moving content we have legitimately purchased to an alternative medium in order to view material on our own terms and in our own time. Apple should be lauded for showing the way to a digital future. Their simple and reasonable approach adopted for pricing on the iTunes Music Store has encouraged consumers (a billion times over) to comply with reasonable licensing terms. Let's hope they can encourage Hollywood to see the light with movie licensing. While YouTube is grabbing headlines There is plenty of opportunity for other to experiment with different approaches. There are so many facets to the emerging online video market there is room for a number of players. Let's look at some examples. One way to look at the on-line video industry is to segment it in to two modes: Media Battle 2.0 is brewing
The leaders in these two markets are YouTube in the streaming field and the iTunes Music Store in the download field. One marked difference between the two is the size of video material being handled. We are poised to see dramatic growth in media download size with Apple's much covered entry today to the market for movie downloading through iTunes and competitors such as MovieLink making a big splash. I have contrasted the streaming and download segments in the visual below.
The digitization of video coupled with the growth in broadband Internet access has dramatically boosted interest in video content. Another way to look at the on-line video industry is to look at what we, as consumers and creators, do with video content. There is more to Video than simply viewing content. We create, edit, view, find, review and share content. Rich Internet Applications, an integral part of Web 2.0, are emerging that address these different activities. The video star below illustrates the different activities we engage in with video an identifies some of the emerging players in each area.
Web 2.0 Players in the Video Market
Let's review some of the Web 2.0 players in the online video market. In this review we will look at applications that are Internet-based. Some of the new entrants in the video editing arena provide downloadable tools. We are not looking at those tools in this review. Strength: Online Editing.
Eyespot is a very interesting Web 2.0 solution. This Rich Internet Application enables you to upload and edit your videos. Most other sites expect you to perform the editing on your PC, Apple Mac or Linux machine and then upload the result. EyeSpot provides online tools to mix video and music to create a finished video. EyeSpot allows you to upload and mix video, music and photos. Here is a quick video of images I uploaded, compiled and mixed in a few minutes. EyeSpot has a lot of potential since their online tools can be integrated as a front-end to a number of other services such as blip.tv and veoh. Indeed, you can setup publishing to blogger, LiveJournal, veoh and Blip.tv in your EyeSpot profile. Strength: Sharing
Blip.tv is a video sharing site. has already made headlines by winning a deal to provide video services to support media companies including CNN. As Marshall Kirkpatrick pointed out in TechCrunch's August 15th Blog EyeSpot has partnered with Blip.tv. The two startups offer services that are highly complimentary. Strength: Sharing Veoh is a video sharing site. While it is possible to view video online the real power of Veoh comes from the downloaded client for PCs and Macs. The client creates a peer-to-peer network for sharing video and allows subscribers to view high quality, full screen video. The benefit of this approach is the distribution of video becomes highly scalable. Veoh is definitely attracting interest and investment. They recently raised $12.5 million in a B venture round from investors including former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Time Warner. Strength: Sharing
VideoJug appears to be a video sharing site with a mission. To explain life on film. VideoJug is seeding their site with educational videos but is encouraging the Internet community to contribute instructional video. It will be interesting to see if they can differentiate themselves from the likes of YouTube and build up a critical mass of educational content. Strength: Sharing
Flurl is a video sharing and search site. It allows media to be uploaded anonymously in a variety of formats. There is a 20MB cap on uploads that limits the size of video content. The service is advertising supported. The terms of service prevent linking to media files directly. Links are made to links that serve the content. This enables Flurl to serve advertising to viewers. Strength: Sharing
YouTube is now one of the top ten destination sites on the Internet serving over 100 million videos each day. It has achieved this position by making it exceedingly easy to upload and share video. YouTube hosts videos converting them from multiple sources to flash movies. Video is limited to 10 minutes in length or 100MB in size. Strength: Search Yahoo Video is evolving as a competitor to YouTube. Yahoo members are able to upload video to Yahoo Video. Yahoo provides video search to find video content on the Internet. Video uploads are limited to 100MB and multiple formats are supported. Yahoo supports tagging, rating and sharing of videos. Strength: Search
Google has a video search site. Google recently added the ability to upload and share video on their beta site. Uploads are limited to 100MB and the popular video file formats are supported. Google provides a desktop uploader for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms that allows files larger than 100Mb to be uploaded. During the beta phase Google offered the option to charge for video downloading. This feature is currently suspended but expect it to return. It will be another example of Google leveraging it's core capabilities and extending in to new areas. In this instance use your Google Account to manage upload of videos. Use Google analytics to check on the popularity of your video and charge for premium content using Google Checkout.
Stength: Review
MovieTally is somewhat of an anomaly but is worth mentioning as a new site in very early beta. MovieTally does not host video, nor does it search the Internet for content. MovieTally is a community-based movie collection. It uses tagging and wiki type concepts to compile movie information. I believe the site could benefit from leveraging Amazon, for example finding movies from their database if the information does not exist in MovieTally. I can see real e-commerce potential with link ups with services such as Fandango, to purchase Movie tickets, and Amazon, to buy movies.
The site is worth a visit. Register (its a quick process) and enter a couple of your favorite movies. MovieTally demonstrates many of the traits of a Web 2.0 application where network effects make the site more valuable as more people use it. I have reservations that people will really take the time to enter in Movie information, such as actor, director and plot summaries when Amazon is just a click away - but at the outset very few people expected Wikipedia to grow in to the extensive resource that it has become. I think this issue can be addressed by pulling information from Amazon using their web services toolkit. The developer, Hayden Metsky, has certainly paid attention to building a participative architecture with cross linkages embedded throughout the site. I intend to keep an eye on the evolution of this site in the coming months. There is an opportunity for MovieTally because people are looking for a movie recommendations and ratings site that they can trust - one that reflects their perspectives and those of their friends.
What are your favorite online video resources on the Web? Let us know and join the conversation by leaving your comments below.
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