Video has long been the killer app. As online advertising continues to siphon away marketing dollars from traditional media such as print, outdoors, radio and television, it is a matter of when - and not if - online video will surpass today’s king of web advertising, search.
But no one is really sure whether the winner within online video will be platforms, ad networks, or content players.
Interestingly, in:
- 2006 we saw an over-investment in online video file sharing social networks, platforms in essence. Bear in mind, in this space, YouTube has already “won” and done so on only $11.5M in funding. Veoh, Daily Motion, Metacafe and Break are raising $25M and more to fight for #3, in essence, since MySpace TV is #2 after YouTube.
- 2007 the attention turned to video ad networks. We did, in all fairness, see some VC activity in video content, and I think that will continue in 2008. But next to file sharing sites or ad networks, content was underfunded given marketers aversion to UGC and traditional media companies slow migration to the Web.
At which point I asked if the bubble within online video had moved from file sharing networks to ad networks.
I think 2008 is creating another mini-bubble, did you know that there were 14 ways to stream yourself to the Web.
Is that really necessary? I guess so.
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WatchMojo NewsletterYesterday I read the following off Business Week:
Finally, Internet TV
For years, gearheads have dreamed of getting all that video from the Internet onto the big 52-inch screen in the den. But it’s a pain. Look for that to change in 2008. While Apple TV has been a dud, Steve Jobs & Co. will make an aggressive play this year for the most important screen in the house. Perhaps Apple will even make a gorgeous TV itself, with all the necessary Net capabilities inside. And if Apple can’t do it, someone else will.
It made me think: this is far closer to reality than we think. Then today I read this:
What does Jung bring to the table at Apple? Experience building and maintaining a powerful and storied brand, but also expanding it internationally in up-and-coming markets. As you’ll read in the March 12 profile, Jung has seen close up what happens when expansion into international markets goes right and when it goes wrong. I think that one of Apple’s important strategic imperatives for 2008 and beyond will be to beef up sales of its computers outside North America, and I think China will be an important market. The first Apple Store in China will open in Beijing this year, and that will go a long way toward exposing that country’s growing consumer class to the Apple brand. Jung’s insight will come in handy.
Andrea, of course, is Vudu CEO Mark Jung’s sister (yeah, if I were their parents, I’d be disappointed too… what is wrong with our education system?), who happens to be my old boss (when his IGN bought my old employer). Could we be getting a Vudu/Apple partnership soon?
What does Vudu do?
What if a sleek black box could deliver thousands of movies and your favorite TV shows instantly? Without a computer? What if the selection was constantly updated? What if the video were high-def so you could skip the HD format war? Introducing VUDU — your TV has a new best friend. Instant access to thousands of movies, HD films, and TV Shows from any Television.
Not that crazy? Actually, depending on how you slice it, Vudu and Apple are either about to compete or cooperate… but interesting nonetheless… and certainly a good addition to Apple’s board as it moves more and more into consumer electronics. But then again, Google and Apple compete and cooperate and Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s board, too.
MTV remains one of the strongest brands worldwide, but if you were to ask 10 people randomly what MTV stood for, you would get very different answers. I came across a post on MTV’s decline/demise… and I think it speaks volumes about Viacom’s failure to really build on MTV in the 21st century:
Without question, MTV has lost part of the allure that made it so great when people in or around my age group were growing up. I can thank MTV for introducing me to an array of diverse musical acts, from RUN DMC to Guns n Roses to Peter Gabriel to Michael Jackson and NWA. Unlike the current state of affairs, MTV used to be a way to explore new musical genres and be exposed to new artists.
Indeed, MTV is about anything but music. But then again, the music industry is about anything but music these days… this does not mean that music isn’t thriving, it is. It’s just that the metrics that we should measure success by have changed.
What exasperates all of this is that Viacom really failed to position itself for music in the 21st century. Sure, it’s almost a Godsend that it does not own any record labels, but Viacom is increasingly away from the epicenter of music. It’s overnight salvation could have come from MySpace, admittedly, but it lost the Intermix (MySpace’s parent) derby when Fox Interactive Media paid $580M for Intermix which made MySpace fall in Rupert Murdoch’s empire at News Corp.
Oftentimes, in M&A, price is determined by supply and demand and how badly you don’t want something in your opponent’s hands. Judging by MySpace’s stratospheric rise and growth after the sale to News Corp., it is surprising that MySpace “only” fetched $580M…
Last year, Wikipedia co-founder Jimbo Wales’ got on a soapbox during the otherwise quiet Holiday season and told everyone that search was broken and that he would be launching a Google killer.
His fanboys got excited, many people called him crazy… I admitted that I did not really get what Wales was trying to do, adding that a for-profit transparent search engine was a contradiction. Having built a search engine myself, I added that search is futile without distribution, and since Wikipedia added that to Wikia, then Wales stood a chance… had he not made himself a target with the Google killer-line.
Today Wikia launches in alpha (Can we drop the Beta, let alone Alpha please). Marketing Pilgrim points to a quote in NYT:
“We want to make it really clear that when people arrive and do searches, they should not expect to find a Google killer.”
Gee, where would people get that idea?
In between then and now, Mahalo basically borrowed some of Wikia’s mojo by running with the Wiki idea, and PowerSet too rode the Google-killing motif… only to downplay that rhetoric when times got hard.
This weekend, I (like many others) got the invite from Jimbo, who asked us not to blog about it. I played with it and thought it was ironic that the default search was in fact Google results (maybe he’s hoping the weight of Wikia search queries will kill Google’s servers?)
Anyway, I did not write about it because it was a non-company launching a non-product around a non-concept. But, I knew many would, and ultimately, many did.
I won’t comment much on Wikia, I gave it 3 queries before realizing that it was no match for our own MetaMojo.com, let alone Google, Yahoo!, MSN or Ask.com… but I do think it speaks volumes about the world [wide web] we live in.
HYPE, FLASH AND BUZZ
Welcome to the world of hype, flash and buzz. Once upon a time, ever the greatest of companies were built over time. Yes, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo! et al. all seemed like overnight successes thanks to a dot com bubble fueled by venture capital money and public shareholder thirst for web startups… but the truth is most of these companies really took almost a decade to become the monsters they are today.
Then, during the Internet bust, a lot of companies that hit paydirt this time around grew off the radar.
That has all changed. Actually, the process to build successful companies has not. Yes, we get odd standouts like Twitter who launch to great fanfare and retain some of their buzz (though they too face challenges in actually building a business), but by and large, we now live in a world of hype, flash and buzz and it’s really, really not healthy.
Michael Arrington’s success seems overnight, but he too had a rather lengthy path before attaining, fame, power and success. But his Tech Crunch blog is now representative with everything that is wrong with the state of the web economy. Companies no longer seem to strive to become successful over time, the goal is to get a mention or two on Tech Crunch, assuming it is the sure fire passe-partout to web glory… I recall when a Federated Media-backed daily video blog launched starring some cute girl. It got so much press in the blogosphere but I doubt the show is even up and running, let alone thriving… but Tech Crunch and the usual suspects wrote about it as if we had the second coming of David Letterman or SNL on our hands. This is wrong!
“With great power comes great responsibility…”
It’s pretty ironic and odd, fitting perhaps, that Wikia might very well be born and killed on Tech Crunch (for the record, I think Wikipedia’s awesome traffic will make Wikia a player in 1, 3 or 5 years even if it’s a lame product). But we no longer seem to have any sense of time anymore.
The biggest dichotomy in this way of thinking is that we seem to be hellbent on transparency when sometimes, we need to keep our freaking mouths shut! We launched a major partnership today with a major site. I’d love to rave and rant about it, but it’s not the right thing to do. We will disclose it soon… but it does not make sense to.
This morning, we closed a major content deal, too. Trust me, that is arguably a game-changing deal for WatchMojo.com, but talking about it alone is somewhat futile now. For one thing, it gives us a major comparative advantage. Secondly, we have to execute on the deal and make it happen. In other words, it seems ironic that we seem to think blogs will usher the death of press releases but more than ever, we’re operating in a press release mentality.
It’s a shame. The hype machine needs to stop. But, by the time you read this, we’re boosting the latest non-story.
Let it be.
PLAY
