Brightcove Streaming 700 Million Videos A Month; Granted Broad Patent For Online Video

Brightcove was issued a broad patent for the “Distribution of content,” which covers the basic features of a professional online video platform. Patent No. 7,925,973, which was applied for on August 12, 2005 by CEO Jeremy Allaire and CTO Bob Mason, describes some of the basic features of all professional online video players such as customizable players, digital rights management, and syndication. In other words, how video is experienced, and how it is controlled—essential aspects for professional video publishers.

Of course, Brightcove has done just fine so far without that patent. Brightcove is now streaming 700 million videos a month, I have learned, which it believes would place it among the top five online video platforms on the web. That number is up from 400 million videos streams per month in March, 2010. Of course, those videos are spread out among Brightcove’s 3,000 paying customers—mostly professionals publishers, media sites, and brands—instead from coming from one destination like YouTube.

By comparison, YouTube does billions of video streams per day , but it is also an order of magnitude bigger than everyone else. But if Brightcove represents the long tail of professional video, there is a lot of it and it is growing fast. In the past 6 months, Brightcove publishers uploaded as much video to it servers as they did during the entire first five years of Brightcove’s existence. Every minute, Brightcove encodes 5 hours worth of new video content. It was about an hour’s worth every minute 18 months ago.

Correction: The original post cited growth from 400,000 video streams a day to 700 million. The first number has been corrected to 400 million.