Valleywag reports that eensy weensy (771K visitors for July, according to compete.com) Web 2.0 content tools provider Lulu.com is suing huge behemoth NewsCorp/NBC JV Hulu.com for trademark infringement and deceptive trade practices. Lulu clearly hasn't thought this through; their traffic's bound to go up, at least a bit, from the occasional (if somewhat unlikely) typos that Hulu visitors are going to generate.
Actually, if anyone's going to sue Hulu it should be Mr. Sulu. There's not, after all, that much difference between the ability to navigate to the stars of online video and the ability to navigate among the stars on video.
Okay that should get the geekiness out of my system for a while.
Argh. I try to put personal feelings aside when I'm in analyst blogging mode, but this is a tough one. I watched a fair chunk of the previous season of Sci-Fi's awesome "Battlestar Galactica" (BSG) via iTunes downloads (I was traveling a lot, don't have a slingbox, and it was easier to view them via laptop). $1.99 was a fine price to pay.
As Michael pointed out, Apple's spinmeisters have masterfully seized control of the situation, making NBC look downright rapacious ($4.99 an episode! Highway robbery!) Apple's also pulling the plug on NBC's shows before the new season starts (robbing NBC of the opportunity to promote new programs via iTunes). That hurts both sides, but shows Apple's dead serious about this.
I suppose if NBC's JV with News Corp, Hulu.com, offers BSG next day for free, that's a fair enough alternative in my book, and lets me keep watching online legally if I need to.
But it's our view that in these early days of online video, it makes more sense to distribute video content far and wide (controlling piracy of course) so that it is where the audience is, rather than making the audience seek out the video. And iTunes is where the audience is today.
Here's hoping this all gets resolved before the year is out and I can still get my cylon fix on my laptop or iPod if I want it there.
It's been ages since I blogged about telecoms stuff, ever since I handed off broadband coverage to my colleague Doug, in favor of the wild world of online video.
But once in a while, nostalgia wins out, as in the story in the LA Times about the end of Time--that is, the service where you could dial a free local number and get a recorded woman's voice, well, telling you what time it was. For the kids reading this, this was useful if you wanted to synchronize watches, or reset the clock if you had a blackout, back before the Internet and cellphones.
The article's well worth reading, even if it does go overboard with the time-related turns of phrase ("To be sure, time marches on. Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.") It turns out that in every state but CA and NV, Time ended long ago, but for whatever reason, it hung on there until this year.
For telecom history geeks, there's some good historical stuff about the Time Ladies over the years, and how the gear worked, and even, if you're particularly geeky, the interesting fact that:
"AT&T says doing away with time would enable the creation of about 300,000 new phone numbers in California beginning with the 853 or 767 prefixes. (No such numbers have been issued to date because, when coupled with any four other digits, you get time.)"
So another little piece of Ma Bell history fades in our new, dynamic age of communication. This one probably was a little past its prime, to be sure.
Just when everyone thought that the silver lining to Paramount going HD DVD exclusively was at least we wouldn't have to see Transformers 2, director Michael Bay has backed down from his earlier strong condemnation of the decision.
His reasoning for this?
"So today I saw 300 on HD, it rocks!
So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!"
The Gizmodo folks speculate entertainingly about some of the other persuasive things Paramount could've done to inspire this sudden about face, but then again 300 buff, mostly naked, hi-def Spartans wreaking mayhem can be very convincing.
In a bid to, what?, keep Monday Night Football in line with the times? ESPN's going to be inviting people to submit their own videos via the Internet, and will be picking two (count 'em) that will be broadcast each week.
It's certainly an example I'm going to be citing often of the ever-more-blurry line between professionally created and user-generated video. Or at least of the co-opting of the latter by the former.
But does anyone think this is going to make Monday Night Football any more appealing? I mean, outside of the families of the folks whose videos get selected...
Paramount created a stir yesterday by announcing that it (and Dreamworks) would go HD DVD only for movie releases.
This bucks an industry trend; while Jupiter hasn't made a call on which format we think will win, with Blockbuster and Target Blu-Ray only, and Blu-Ray disks outselling HD DVDs 2 to 1, the momentum seemed to be in the other direction. I think smart consumers are going to be all the more reluctant to buy both Blu-Ray AND HD DVD after Paramount's announcement.
"I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!"
Creative types are SO sensitive about these things! There's hope for Michael Bay, though: Spielberg's movies for Dreamworks will still be available in Blu-Ray. Perhaps other directors will be able to negotiate similar arrangements.
A number of collegues and I have been having a conversation via e-mail about the future of YouTube, the likelihood of its being sued out of existence, who was likely to do the suing, and whether the whole analogy to Napster [InformationWeek] really applies.
In the course of this, one of us mentioned "Battle at Kruger," a current huge (and non-copyright-infringing) YT hit-- 12.7m views and counting!-- featuring some exciting African wildlife action. It's an example of YT video becoming part of the culture, as everyone (at least everyone at a birthday party for a small kid in the UK) seemed to know about it.
On seeing it, it occurred to me that the one kind of illuminates the other. Watch "Battle at Kruger," with the following in mind:
Buffalo calf: YouTube
Hungry lions: Media companies
Crocodiles: Lawyers
Big herd of buffalo: Google
The moral is something like: if you're a juicy young buffalo calf, everyone wants a piece of you, but sometimes the big herd wins in the end.
Oh and the tourists? I'd say "press"...but "analysts" might work as well.
Comcast's long-awaited foray into the online video destination (or perhaps e-EPG?) business took off today with the beta launch of Fancast. It's definitely worth checking out. One early surprise: Comcast's famous Fan, the UI for video on the Comcast.net portal, is apparently not a part of Fancast.
Comcast's doing 3 things at present: national TV listings, movie tickets (hello, Fandango), and online video (heavily geared toward pro content--movie trailers, TV episodes, etc.)
The most interesting thing I've run across so far is something called "Six Degrees." On most show info pages, you can click on the six degrees button and it pops open a new window with the show or actor you're looking at and an array of 5 other related things, presented in an interactive flashcard style. Click on one of the other cards and you see 5 new things. Breadcrumbs indicate past things you've clicked on, and related titles, actors, and tags are presented in a more traditional list form at the bottom of the screen. Haven't played with it enough to give a thumbs up or down yet, but I'm intrigued by it.
Although the video destination market is getting extremely crowded, Comcast brings a lot to the table. I'm looking forward to seeing how Fancast evolves.
NBC-U (actually USA Networks) announced today the creation of "Didja," which they describe far better than I could, so I'll just quote from the press release:
"A free online archive of current and classic television commercials, movie trailers and other brand-related content, Didja.com is a social networking destination that reinvents the commercial viewing experience by celebrating advertising as entertainment."
I fully respect the notion that the best commercials attain the status of cultural reference points, and more than that, they're art (Sony did an ad for its Bravia TVs in Europe featuring a kajillion bouncy balls in San Francisco that takes my breath away every time I see it). And sure, those greatest ads are things people might want to watch online.
But does that really call for a destination site that sounds like it's going to bury the very best amongst, well, every other commercial ever made? I'm kind of doubting it. Only about 8% of consumers said commercials were a genre of video they watched online in the past year; better than movies and traffic video, but way behind the leading genres (news clips, music videos and movie trailers, and yeah, the last one (or two) are kind of commercials, but cut me some slack).
There's industry interest around commercials of course, but that's pretty well served already, for example by AdForum.
I've been a fan of video sites on specific topics as an antidote to YouTube's catholicism. But whereas topics like travel and anime come with ready-made audiences, I'm not so sure I think commercials do as well as a standalone motivator to go to a destination.
Disney yesterday announced it was acquiring kid-oriented, web-based "virtual world" Club Penguin, for $350m cash up front and another up to $350m performance-based over the next couple years.
The price seems high, but this is very smart. It's probably easier to buy a virtual world phenomenon than to create your own. Despite lots of competition in the kid social space (Neopets--which Viacom bought a couple of years ago, Habbo Hotel, Webkins, etc etc), CP has a strong community, good buzz, and it's growing fast.
Still, Disney has to be careful not to alienate the user base; while community-based social offerings have some inherent stickiness to them, if groups of friends decide they'd rather play elsewhere little will stop them.
Disney has been talking about launching a pirate-oriented massively multiplayer for years now (planned for this fall), and of course pioneering kids' MMOG Toontown is still around, too. But with the end of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise, who knows how long pirate chic will endure? And Toontown's been around for ages.
By contrast, penguins are cool, and assembling a stable of multiplayer offerings aimed at different ages and interests is better than putting all your eggs in one virtual basket.
Two things: first, among my favorite online video sources these days, I must highly highly recommend the Onion's video news foray, which so far they've executed just as pitch-perfectly as their print edition.
Case in point: when the Internet crashes someday, it'll go something like this:
I'm embedding a version of this from YouTube b/c even though the Onion has an "embed this link" option, I couldn't copy the vast URL into Movable Type. Shrug.
Second, I sure hope the Internet DOESN'T crash. I'd be out of a job.
Last year Sony spent $65m getting into the user generated video game by buying Grouper, one of countless small aspirants to the then-fashionable YouTube model.
Now that everyone's woken up to the fact that the Long Tail isn't taking over anytime soon, Sony's remade Grouper into Crackle, which is decidedly not about user generated content, but rather like Revver and Veoh (and a host of other small aspirants) is trying to make a business out of "semi-pro" or "mid-tail" content.
User-generated video sites consist of a community, a brand, and maybe a library of content--but little else. Sony's evicted the community, dumped the brand, and I don't know how much Grouper content made it through to Crackle, but I bet it's not going to be featured.
Sony may get lucky, nurture an Internet hit or two, and see Crackle start to attract viewers and advertisers. Still, though, they could've built it from scratch for way cheaper than they paid for Grouper.
So, the question arises, WHO has reaped the most benefits from most spectacular launch of a consumer device in recent memory? Steve Jobs? Arguably. Would-be eBay resellers? Not a chance, actually.
I'm tempted to argue that Times tech columnist David Pogue has perhaps gotten more (and certainly more amusing) mileage out of the iPhone than just about anybody. And he gets to sing about it, too.
Sad to say, I've generally used cnn.com as an example when I talk about news sites deploying video online. Sad because I didn't think it worked too well: the lack of embedded video, pokey pop-up player, big buffering time, and preroll ad generally trained people NOT to click on links with the little camera icon next to them.
So it's interesting to see cnn's relaunch. I like a lot of the stuff they're doing.
Most importantly, given the thing I found less than sanguine about the old site, the new flash video player is much slicker, starting to play almost instantly once it loads. If you choose not to embed video, fast playback is the next best thing.
There's other nice things about the site as well: CNN now features "video search" as an option at the top of the page, something I'm sure we'll see more of from other news organizations. And there's a little video box prominently off to the top right with previews of video topics.
What would I still change? Well, there's some finicky layout stuff but I leave thinking about that to Barry Parr. One video-related suggestion: in the video box, CNN includes in gray the length of each clip. That's a great practice, one that I wish they would pull into the video links under "Latest News;" consumers looking for the latest on a topic would probably be more inclined to click if they knew how much of a commitment they were getting into.
My next report is for Jupiter's News and Info service, it'll look more at best practices for delivering news video online. Clients should keep an eye here over the next few weeks.
Far be it from this blog to provide weekend activity suggestions, but if you're in Brooklyn this Saturday, maybe you want to check out Wiimbledon.
Two reasons for mentioning it here: one is that it's an amazingly clever coinage; I know one of the organizers, this is one good demonstration of why he's a brilliant PR guy and I'm not. Related: remember when everyone was hating on Nintendo for choosing the name "wii"? Between this and Nintendo's own smart "wii would like to play" tagline, I've come to really like it.
Second it's just another good example of Wii as cultural phenomenon; Jupiter's in the midst of revising our console games forecast for the year; I don't think it's giving anything away to say that last year, based on the best available data and expectations, we undershot on Wii sales; look for an upcoming report in our games service to fix that.
Blockbuster's decision to back Blu-Ray over HD-DVD is a huge win for the Blu-Ray camp. While HD-DVD apologists have focused on caveats and provisos in the decision (only 1,400 or so stores will carry Blu-Ray; out of 5,000+; HD-DVDs will still be available online and in 250 Blockbusters; Blockbuster itself is obsolete and will soon be dead) if I were in the Blu-Ray camp, I'd be pretty happy.
Actually, not happy so much as falling all over myself proposing joint marketing campaigns making every household in America aware of this move. While Blockbuster says it's consumer demand that prompted its choice of Blu-Ray, clearly Blockbuster can have a huge impact on consumer hardware purchase decisions. Back in the VHS-Betamax wars, rental places phasing out beta was the invasion of Normandy, the fall of Saigon, rendering the outcome pretty inevitable.
Anything that helps consumers feel confident that they're picking a winning format is likely to help spur next-gen player sales. And of course, the best thing of all would be if one format clearly won over the other; as long as the 2 are in contention, the next generation will never arrive.
Also, if you haven't seen fanboy partisans of the two techs duking it out, I highly recommend the comments over at Engadget HD. Wow. Harsh.
My coverage at Jupiter has been undergoing a slow evolution away from telecoms and broadband, and toward media (and particularly online video). As such, I kind of thought I'd have less to say about my favorite bugbear: the FCC. But in its content watchdog role I can still pick on it once in a while.
For example, a NY appellate court has just issued a nice, conservative (in the 'avoid government regulation' sense, not the 'family values' sense) ruling against the FCC [TV Week] on "fleeting expletives."
From the ruling: "The FCC's decision [fining Fox for indecency for the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards] is devoid of any evidence that suggests a fleeting expletive is harmful, let alone established that this harm is serious enough to warrant government regulation. The order provides no reasoned analysis of the purported 'problem' it is seeking to address from which this court can conclude such regulation of speech is reasonable."
What does this mean? Well, unless the FCC comes up with a better rationale for why the momentary blurting of naughty words causes deep societal problems, broadcasters can rest easier when folks like Cher and Nicole Richie let slip an F-bomb on live TV.
There's a new version of the venerable RealPlayer in town, and it's a little different. Given that the days when someone needed RealPlayer because, say, most Web video was encoded exclusively with it, are behind us, player makers need new tricks to spur downloads. Real's is interesting.
Real includes a browser plug-in that pops up by most Web video, including embedded Flash video, and says "download this video." So that you can, say, build an archive of every episode of "Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager," which you can then burn to VCD or even (if you splurge on RealPlayerPlus) DVD.
Real's supporting all the major codecs with this, mostly natively. It's intriguing; on the one hand, I kind of feel like the ephermerality of Web video means why bother downloading it (and "Chad" aside, how much is really worth keeping?) On the other hand, if this capability becomes widespread, who knows what interesting uses people will think of for it.
Be interesting, too, to see media companies' reaction to this; while Real won't download any video tagged with DRM, this would seem to facilitate, um, borrowing content without asking, and using it for one's own purposes.
As part of the 30th Anniversary celebrations around Star Wars (great, thanks for making me feel EVEN OLDER, Lucasfilm), starwars.com is launching a bunch of new video mash-up features [TV Week], which should be available/promoted on the site sometime today.
Bunches of video and audio clips from the films will be available, via an application provided by Eyespot, that lets people upload their own video and mix, match, and mash.
I find mash-ups and remixes fascinating, a kind of midway point between professionally created and user-generated content. And I'm glad to see an initiative that's embracing them as an expression of fan loyalty, rather than trying to stomp them out as copyright violations.
And I LOVE Chad Vader, though I don't think the average fan will manage anything that funny.
Torrentfreak's posted some interesting charts based on SUMOTorrent data looking at what people are sharing and downloading via BitTorrent.
The gist of their finding is that in terms of what's being downloaded, TV is by far the dominant content category, downloaded by almost 50% of people using BT at any time. General video, then games, then music come next, and only after that is adult, with a mere 6% of downloads.
Is anyone else somewhat surprised by this? (Judging from the Broadband Reports comments, the answer is "yes.")
In terms of what's available via BT, it's mostly music and videos, TV is around fourth, and again, adult is pretty small.
I buy that TV is a big part of overall BT traffic. I know lots of people who use BT once in a while when they miss an episode of a show, if it's not available from iTunes or via next-day streaming from the relevant TV network.
As for the small share attributable to adult, well, maybe basing the analysis on sumotorrent may not be an accurate view of the entire universe of torrents. If large parts of the adult traffic centers on specialist websites, that would skew the dataset TorrentFreak had to work with.
Slashdot points out that HBO's CTO, Bob Zitter, at NCTA, called for a change of moniker for digital rights management (DRM) to digital consumer enablement (DCE).
This may be a classic example of saying what you mean, not meaning what you say. Mr. Zitter COULD mean that DRM technologies should be used in consumer-friendly ways, ways that permit new business models and new consumer offerings, not, as David Card puts it, in ways that simply shore up old, obsolete ones. He might mean that, and that changing what DRM is called would be justified by changing the way it is used.
Or.
Or he might just be saying that consumers are stupid, and if the media industry simply renames DRM, all the annoying, confusing, restrictive things it's used for will suddenly go down a lot smoother, and consumers will passively and happily accept whatever terms media companies dictate on digital content.
In which case, it's more than a little naive.
I take no public position on which interpretation I expect is the accurate one. But I do point out that "The CTO of HBO thinks renaming DRM DCE will make the EFF fall in L-U-V." is pretty funny.
World of Warcraft becomes the first MMOG with its own tie-in branded Visa card. Ok, it's great, it's a pop cultural phenomenon of sorts, and licensing a popular brand to a credit card issuer is a time-honored tradition at this point.
But...eesh...can you imagine breaking this sucker out at say your local Safeway?
You're buying...I don't know what WoW players buy...lots of cheetos and Mountain Dew, probably. Gladys, who's ringing you up, is in her 50s, those glasses like matrons always wore in "Far Side" cartoons, obviously had a long day on her feet. And you say, "charge it," and offer her your WoW Visa.
Gladys takes it from you, just wanting the transaction done with so she can get to the next one. And the next. She looks at the gnome-encrusted card. Her eyes widen. She fights the urge to smile, to laugh. She loses. She doesn't know from WoW. All she knows is no matter how loserly her life might feel at times, she's just come across someone who's on a whole other plane of existence, loser-ship-wise.
She shows the card to the bag boy, who knows WoW, and therefore feels even more superior than Gladys does. She has to share it with Edith, at the next register, and Consuela at the one after that. Soon the entire checkout line is paralyzed with hilarity. At you and your dumb-ass gnome card.
So what if it's at your own expense, you've brought a little more happiness into the world. So carry those cards proudly, boys and girls. It's a good thing.
We've always had episodes, more recently mobisodes, and now Sony's introducing the minisode [NY Times, won't be free for long, sorry permanent archival link--thanks, Barry], a sort of highly condensed, Readers-digest meets haiku version of some of its back catalog of TV shows, where you can see the key plot points of, say, Charlie's Angels in a mere 3-5 minutes.
TW's (or AOL's) in2tv.com has been one of the pioneering efforts to deliver and remonetize old TV on the Web, but it's all full episodes. Though I see mounting evidence of consumer willingness to watch full shows online (if they're passionate about a show and can see it no other way), I get the idea of boiling them down to their most salient points for shorter Web attention spans.
NOT that I think there's a big audience out there for TJ Hooker reruns or Charlie's Angels...after all, if there were, those reruns would still be places other than dead-of-night TV (if that).
Actually, this week I'm even more intrigued by the idea of remixing or mashing up episodes. I had a chat with the guys at Gotuit recently; their metatagging technology, though labor intensive, opens up some interesting possibilities for do-it-yourself highlights reels. If I could type into a search bar "jill+bikini" or "sabrina+tied up" (your tastes may vary), and view relevant scenes across episodes, I could relive some formative moments of my childhood.
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