Seth Gilbert, 11-30-2007
Scratch pay per view video from AOL’s list of services. After a year of effort, AOL confirmed Friday they were scrapping their in-house service and instead opting for a partnership with Amazon and their Unbox video download store.
AOL’s Senior VP of Video explained to the A.P. that they are shifting their focus" toward an advertising business." Pay per view video didn’t fit in to that model so they decided to cut it loose.
Instead, AOL will integrate links to Amazon and also may house some Amazon content on AOL Video. The two companies will share revenue from the venture (Details or terms of the cash split weren’t disclosed.)
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Seth Gilbert, 11-29-2007
Some estimates suggest the market for global online video advertising will reach $1.3b this year. The 4 major U.S. television networks (ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC) have been coy about their share of that booty. It’s no wonder. With writers striking, one of the core negotiating points is digital revenue. The writers want a piece and the networks don’t want to lock in a rate for a market too premature to estimate accurately.
Thursday, the Financial Times put a number on the present stakes. Citing a senior vice president at Starcom, a media buying agency that spends with all 4, FT estimated a combined annual take of greater than $120m.
That’s not bad, but it’s peanuts compared to the market opportunity. Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 11-27-2007
Like much of the media industry, the U.K.’s BBC is struggling to adapt the changing ways consumers are quenching their information thirsts. At times, it seems like they’re trying everything, like anything goes; especially over the past few months.
In July, BBC released a second Beta test for peer to peer media player software dubbed iPlayer. In October, the Financial Times and other publications reported that as much as 12% of BBC staff would be layed off. Now, November, add joint venture to the mix.
Tuesday, several UK top broadcasters including the BBC (BBC Worldwide), ITV and Channel 4, announced they will jointly launch an on-demand Internet video joint venture in 2008. The partnership, which is codenamed “Project Kangaroo,” sounds a lot like NBC Universal and News Corps recently launched (beta) Hulu platform.
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Seth Gilbert, 11-23-2007
Songs capture a moment in time. They play in background as soundtracks to our lives. Games become pastimes. TV episodes, appointments. Movies remain our escapes and fantasies. At water coolers and barstools, we critique and borrow their dialog : “Here’s looking at you, kid.” “Phone home.” Don’t believe it? Fine, “No soup for you.”
From blogs to movies, webisodes and clips to comics and film, from ha-ha funny, to tear-jerker sad, we live in a world hungry for media. We feed that hunger with mass media and the alternative; with songs and sound bytes, in features and micro-chunks. We engage with it on computers, at home, at work, in the car, on the go. We consume it. On a phone. On a TV. Via consoles and portables, real-time and “time shifted” too.
“Content is King” or at least, esteemed royalty. Today, in acknowledgment of how the media world continues to evolve Metue presents a third brief collection of recent notable quotations, this time on “Content,” the manna that fuels our entertainment appetites:
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Seth Gilbert, 11-21-2007
Money flowing into Internet video startups doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Just the opposite, the sector continues to expand globally. Pacific Epoch reports Chinese language site Youku.com has closed a $25m Series C Financing.
The round was led by Brookside Capital Partners (subsidiary of Bain Capital) and the Company’s three existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital Management and Chengwei Ventures.
Youku.com is very much like a Chinese languageYouTube, right down to the colors and layout of the pages. Also like YouTube, it is a forum for displaying and interacting with user-generated/user-submitted videos.
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Seth Gilbert, 11-19-2007
With a front page letter on Amazon’s site from Jeff Bezos and a New York press conference, Amazon officially debuted Kindle today. With the launch, they are putting answer to some of the questions that hovered ahead of the e-book reader’s launch. Opinions are now flying about the quality of the interface, about the depth of available content, and even, Amazon’s long term goals. A few quick takes:
•Design
More PC than Mac, more Zune than iPod, the Kindle is an ergonomic and functional offering but it doesn’t look slick. It’s small and light. The display from E Ink is easy to read but monochrome. Taken as a whole, Kindle doesn’t have the magical kind of design that draws second looks or makes it iconic. For version 1.0, this is not a device destined for beauty pageants. But then, Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 11-16-2007
It was supposedly due in October. That deadline came and went. Now, still in time for the holidays, here comes Kindle.
Amazon’s much speculated digital book reader will debut Monday at an event to be held at the Union Square W Hotel in New York City.
Jeff Bezos will be on hand to introduce the product. A few celebrity endorsements are likely on track as well. Kindle will be Amazon’s first foray into an in-house brand of consumer electronics.
Vaunted as a competitor to Sony’s Reader, the Kindle portable book reader was built with similar easy-on-the-eyes display technology from E Ink. Like the new iPod Touch, it will be equipped with WiFi access to directly buy and download books from Amazon’s digital store. The image from early FCC filings suggests it will also have an onboard keyboard and a possible backlight for nighttime viewing. Expectations are Kindle will retail for around $399.
The question is: will Kindle, or e-Books in general, catch on with consumers. Today, the market for e-Books is conservatively estimated at less than $30m. Click to Read More
