Seth Gilbert, 12-18-2007
Few new technologies have generated more PR and press coverage during periods of the past year than IPTV: peer to peer television broadcast over the net. Companies like Joost have billed themselves as TV’s future. Joost’s raised huge pools of funding, recruited a high profile CEO, even partnered with talent agency Creative Artists . Then they went quiet. Not much has been said about Joost in a while. Yesterday, they captured a few new headlines with the announcement of a partnership with the NBA. Today, they added PBS. Joost is back in the spotlight.
In partnering with the NBA, Joost will launch a channel showing current and classic NBA highlights on the Joost platform. The web distribution channel will be similar to other programming the NBA makes available via digital media, including offerings on YouTube and MySpace.
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Seth Gilbert, 12-17-2007
It can takes hours or days or even weeks of dedicated play to reach milestones in the virtual worlds of online gaming. A player addicted to World of Warcraft might search aimlessly to find a tool or special weapon. To help, there are online forums: tips and suggestions, even auctions within the game itself. There’s also a less savory choice. A black-market of sorts has arisen where players and fans can sell and trade already established accounts, or in some games, the in-game components that move a character. It’s real money paying for virtual, cash in exchange for time saved.
Live Gamer, a New York based startup is aiming to add legitimacy and security to these kinds of trades. They estimate the market represents $1.8b in real money exchanged. Their solution, which was announced today, is to offer a publisher supported platform for “real money trading of virtual property.”
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Seth Gilbert, 12-12-2007
When networking giant Cisco acquired social network software developer Five Across last February it raised a few eyebrows. Cisco is known for its hardware, the switches and routers that power the Internet behind the scenes and in our homes. What they wanted with Web 2.0 software platforms was a curiosity. Now, ten months later, their vision is still not well explained, but a few more facts have emerged.
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Seth Gilbert,
Some years holiday presents come early, some late. Over the past few weeks, a good handful of companies have gotten their gifts from venture capital firms. From Red Room to Spotzer, MixerCast and Edgecast to 56.com and Kyte.TV, here’s the latest Venture Roundup: Metue’s regular recap of companies recently receiving funding.
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Seth Gilbert, 12-6-2007
Global venture capital investments are at a six year high and technology continues to encroach on the domain of entertainment and media. We have net radio, TV and print news increasingly available online. Even actors and movie industry veterans have moved to create both their own online distribution outlets, and their own brands of online content. Think Will Ferrel’s Funny or Die, the Coen brothers with 60 Frames Entertainment, or Jerry Zucker (of Airplane fame) with National Banana. It makes sense, given all this to see Hollywood jumping deeper into venture capital, private equity and early stage investment.
Earlier this week, PaidContent discovered the latest entry will come from Hollywood’s elite talent agencies. Creative Artists (CAA), the biggest of the bunch, is reportedly raising $150m to $200m for venture investment in digital entertainment. They are seeking funds from traditional limited partners like pension funds and being advised by experienced Silicon Valley VC’s.
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Seth Gilbert, 12-4-2007
Earlier today Adobe announced the availability of the latest update for their popular browser video player software. This latest version of Flash, previously codenamed Moviestar, had been in Beta since August. Now available, it brings to market full support for high definition video. Hulu, NBCU and Newscorp’s high profile video site wasted now time in taking advantage and supporting the upgrade.
Logging into Hulu’s beta moments ago, I was able to watch HD quality content streamed over the web. Available content was limited. There were approximately a dozen movie trailers. I watched three; the previews for the now playing film, Hitman, Angelina Jolie’s upcoming movie, Wanted, and the soon to be released Charlie Wilson’s War trailer. I was impressed. Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert,
Lots of people know of news aggregator services like Digg. Fewer are familiar with Mixx, a competitor launched in October. That may soon begin to change. Today, the LA Times Media Group struck a content and marketing partnership with the Web 2.0 news site. The Times also made a small equity investment, the size of which was not disclosed.
Mixx is based in McLean Virginia and owned by Recommended Reading, Inc. Like social news sites Digg, Propeller or Thoof, Mixx is built around users submitting links to web content and voting on those links. It is entirely “crowd sourced.” There are no editors. More popular submissions get higher profile displays.
The strength of Mixx is their user interface. Compared to other sites, there is a greater opportunity and more intuitive tools to customize the look and feel of your landing page as a subscriber. It’s more a cross with a personalized home page and a news aggregator than competitors.
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