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November 29, 2005

Video Sharing, Vlogging, etc.

A slew of new video sharing services have hit the net -- YouTube, ClipShack, Vimeo, OurMedia, Vimmer, VideoEgg... This is the second wave of such companies; the first (of which I was a part of) happened in 1999-2000 with companies like Videoshare, Eveo, Earthnoise, Spotlife. Many of these new companies presented at Chris Shipley's prestigious Demo conference in 2005 much like Earthnoise presented in Demo 2000. I wonder if Chris is laughing to herself seeing a repeat of the failures of 2000 in this space. Unlike 2000, the bandwidth is now in tens of millions of homes. Unlike 2000, blogging tools create an easy publishing framework for video to sit upon. Unlike 2000, podcast receivers make it easy to subscribe and receive video enclosures. Despite all this,

there is still no business model to these sites. Consumers still expect to stream video for free. They'll play with these sites and bore after a few weeks. Video is still difficult and too time-consuming for your average joe to create. Perhaps the only one who will make money off this second wave are the bandwidth providers...or infrastructure software providers such as Brightcove and Google that make money whether these sites succeed or fail.

Posted by raza at 4:02 PM | Comments (0)

November 7, 2005

From the anti-iPod Department

Microsoft is increasing their anti-iPod efforts. There are the goofy "taglines" added to the playsforsure logo for Audio and video devices and software. The "checklists" that accompany the Plays for Sure logo are hilarious -- http://www.playsforsure.com/ItemDetail.aspx?id=26 They may actually succeed in lowering returns but I doubt it will increase sales.

Of more interest are the behind-the-scenes efforts...foremost, the effort to standardize their Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) through the USB Implementers Forum. It won't be the first time that Microsoft offers a technology to an industry standard body (they've done this with WMV9 for the digital cinema industry) but it would be the first to my knowledge at the driver (read: OS component) level. Device manufacturers have to be questioning themselves how tied to Windows is the MTP infrastructure -- that is to say, will any other PC operating system ever support MTP? The PC is still the digital media hub and the place where all media collections are stored.

The next step in this effort from MS is to standardize portable device connectors (as in docking stations for automotive). There is a large ancilliary industry behind the iPod which does not exist elsewhere because of the fragmented nature of the market. The No. 2 player only has about 7% of the market. Standardizing the physical connector, the software protocols to control the devices and eventually the way the content is represented (some XML specification, I presume) will allow companies building products that connect to portable music players to support only two standards: iPod and non-iPod (or MS, if they have their way). Going the open standards route is enables MS to be open and trustworthy but I imagine it slows down the process considerably which must frustrate them to no end.

Posted by raza at 3:09 PM | Comments (0)