I sat down with Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week to talk about his business.
Brightcove isn’t the sexiest startup out there. They’re a video platform – giving websites the tools they need to host and stream video, for a fee ranging from $100/month to “six figures per year” for the largest customers. For the most part users never see the Brightcove brand. And Allaire is just fine with that. He just wants happy customers.
The company launched in 2005, has raised just over $90 million in venture capital, and is approaching profitability, he says. Allaire says he wants to build a public company, and is happy being based in Boston.
The full video is below. → Read More
When cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner talk about “TV Everywhere,” they are generally talking about a Web video portal they control themselves which gives their regular cable TV subscribers access to at least some of the same programming online. If viewership is going to shift online, they want to be the ones providing it—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But when Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire talks about TV Everywhere, he envisions more of a federated model where TV programmers make more of their shows available on their own sites to visitors who are authenticated as paying cable subscribers.
It’s a video paywall across the Web, and he wants to make it possible with a new Brightcove TV Everywhere product that allows programmers to authenticate which visitors are cable subscribers and which ones are not. So in addition to Comcast or Time Warner offering subscribers an online version of their channels, each channel (i.e., NBC, ABC, HBO, Discovery) can also offer a fuller spectrum of their TV shows and movies on their own individual Websites. Comcast could easily do Hulu one better, but all of those videos should also be available on HBO.com, NBC.com, and elsewhere. All they need is an authentication system and an online video platform, hence Brightcove’s interest in providing the video plumbing to make it all work. Allaire explains this to me via email: → Read More
Ooyala, a US-based provider of video platform applications and services, and Telegraph Media Group (TMG) are today announcing that they have signed an agreement for Ooyala to power online video on the publisher’s websites, which includes news site Telegraph.co.uk.
In addition, Ooyala and TMG’s “Euston Project” team will co-develop new technologies to improve the way information is delivered and consumed online. → Read More
If you own an Internet-connected TV that is compatible with Yahoo’s TV widgets (AKA, a Yahoo Connected TV), you may soon start seeing video produced for the Web on your TV. Brightcove announced today that media publishers using its online video platform can now distribute their videos through Yahoo’s Widget Engine, which powers the widgets on Yahoo-Connected TVs. These TVs are made by Sony, Samsung, Vizio, and LG, which show widgets along the bottom displaying data and content from the Web. These include your Facebook and Twitter streams, stock quotes, the weather, Amazon on-demand videos, and now Web videos powered by Brightcove.
A lot of print publications use Brightcove to power video on their Websites, and some of these already have Yahoo Connecetd TV widgets. These include MyRecipes, Cooking Light, Real Simple, Southern Living, Sunset, AllYou and ThisOldHouse. There are a lot of Time Inc. titles in there. TheStreet.com, Wine Spectator, Slate, and The Hollywood Reporter now also have TV widgets through Brightcove.
Yahoo also announced a partnership with MIPS Technologies today, which makes processors for Internet-connected TVs and set-top boxes. The idea that you need a special TV to watch video content from the Web seems strange. As long as it’s a flat-panel TV, why should it matter, right? But these integrations are more about bringing data to TVs from the Web in a friendly format. → Read More
If you own an Internet-connected TV that is compatible with Yahoo’s TV widgets (AKA, a Yahoo Connected TV), you may soon start seeing video produced for the Web on your TV. Brightcove announced today that media publishers using its online video platform can now distribute their videos through Yahoo’s Widget Engine, which powers the widgets on Yahoo-Connected TVs. These TVs are made by Sony, Samsung, Vizio, and LG, which show widgets along the bottom displaying data and content from the Web. These include your Facebook and Twitter streams, stock quotes, the weather, Amazon on-demand videos, and now Web videos powered by Brightcove. → Read More
New year, new faces as two of the most innovative technology companies on the planet are making some changes in their management team.
Norwegian developer of desktop and mobile browsers and related technologies Opera Software has appointed a new Chief Executive Officer, while Brightcove has managed to steal away a long-time Adobe and Macromedia exec to become its new President and Chief Operating Officer. → Read More
When Preetam Mukherjee started Marcellus.tv in March 2007, his company was one of the very few players in the professional online video hosting space. He believed he was building a killer product that would become a blockbuster and would compete handily with the one established player in the space, Brightcove. To ensure that he wouldn’t tip off any potential competitors, he went into “stealth mode”. Secrecy was the key to success. He would not even tell his close friends what he was building until his product was complete (after all, who can you trust these days?). Then he would send Mike Arrington an email, get a TechCrunch feature and watch fame and fortune beat a path to his door.
But as happens to nearly all secretive startups like Marcellus, the blockbuster never materialized, and the attention never came. When Marcellus did come out of stealth in September 2008, there were many online video platforms available, most of which had better features than Marcellus. Preetam got his TechCrunch mention and experienced a huge spike in traffic for a few days. But when the dust settled, he found himself back in obscurity. Moreover, it was like having a really bad hangover—his product didn’t entirely meet customer needs and no one seemed to care.
As I’ll tell you later, Preetam’s story does have a happier ending, but that’s not how it is for most startups. That’s the problem with stealth. Startup guru, Eric Ries says one or two of every 10 companies he meets have what he calls a “stealth-disease”. They are too afraid to show something imperfect to the world or are afraid that a competitor will steal their idea. And they think that when they launch their product will make front-page news and grant them blockbuster success. Wasn’t it Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door”?
Well, Emerson was wrong. → Read More
When Brightcove released a major upgrade to its online video platform last month, one of the new set of features was better analytics. It turns out that Brightcove’s new video analytics suite is powered TubeMogul. Professional video publishers who use Brightcove can now measure things like the geographic distribution of their viewers, how many seconds they watch each video, their drop-off rate, number of unique viewers, number of new viewers, as well as total video plays.
The two companies have also signed a joint R&D pact to develop new video analytics products exclusively for Brightcove. TubeMogul will also become a marketing partner for Brightcove’s paid video hosting, streaming, and advertising services. About 125,000 people use TubeMogul’s free video analytics. Many of them are online video professionals Brightcove is hoping to turn into paying subscribers for its new “low-end” $99/month plan. → Read More
It’s been about a year since Brightcove released the last upgrade to its professional online video platform with Brightcove 3. On Monday, it’s going to release Brightcove 4, and it’s a massive upgrade.
Brightcove 4 now supports a native video player on the iPhone, in Facebook, and live video streaming on the Web. It’s got Twitter integration for sharing videos, faster-loading video players, the ability to switch between Flash streaming and HTTP, adaptive streaming based on a user’s device and bandwidth, behind-the-firewall video delivery, support for most major ad servers, better analytics, and a new, cheaper, entry-level subscription service called Brightcove Express.
The biggest new feature is the iPhone player. Instead of clicking off into the Quicktime player, Brightcove uses the Quicktime APIs to render the player within an app. Developers are going to love this because they can skin the player any way they want, tie it into the same ads served through a publisher’s Brightcove player on the Web, add email and Twitter sharing, and Coverflow-style browsing. → Read More
Reality Digital, a provider of white-label social media platforms for brands, is introducing a new spin-off service today called Spotlight. With the new offering, the company makes its entry into the market of online video management and distribution platforms.
This is growing into quite a saturated field with players like Ooyala, Brightcove, MIG69 and Swarmcast fighting hard for pieces of the pie. → Read More
Did you know that Failblog serves up 22 million video views per month, and Engadget gets at least 2.3 million monthly views for its gadget videos, while Joystiq gets another 2 million? All three blogs use Viddler, which is now selling ads directly for its top content providers though its just-launched Viddler AdWorks. Advertisers can see a directory of the top three dozen video producers on Viddler and buy ads on their videos (overlay, pre-roll, and post-roll).
Viddler is selling ads against 30 million views a month collectively from those top producers, out of a total of 36 million views for all the videos uploaded to Viddler. Failblog, which puts up videos of pratfalls and people acting stupidly, on its own accounts for 73 percent of Viddler’s video ad inventory, and is a big reason Viddler’s total views have gone from 10 million in January, 2009 to 36 million in August, 2009. After that, the most popular Viddler producers are Engadget and Joystiq, which are both owned by AOL, followed by niche video like WineLibraryTV (142,424 monthly views) and Gary Vaynerchuk’s personal marketing videos, which get only 27,070 views per month). → Read More
With the news surrounding the implosion of Joost and the startup’s move towards providing white label video platforms for companies, we thought it would be a good idea to check in with one of Joost’s new competitors. As we wrote in our post about Joost’s prospects as a white label video community provider, there is already plenty of competition, including Brightcove, Magnify, and Ooyala.
Brightcove is perhaps the best-known player in the space. But another one which has been relatively successful in creating interactive video sites for brands is Magnify.net. The video hosting and sharing platform, which launched in 2007, is rapidly growing its white label service and is expected to be cash-flow positive by the end of the year, according to co-founder Steve Rosenbaum. → Read More
At the beginning of last year, Yahoo made a fairly large acquisition with the purchase of online video distribution and advertising platform provider Maven Networks. Under the terms of the agreement, which we reported as a rumor the same day the papers were signed, the company acquired the startup for approximately $160 million. At the time, the press release touted the acquisition to lead to an expansion of the “state-of-the-art consumer video and advertising experiences on Yahoo.com and Yahoo’s network of leading premium video publishers across the web”.
Now we’ve learned Yahoo is going to kill Maven Networks instead, the most recent in a long series of deadpooling of products and services by the Sunnyvale Internet behemoth. (also see update) → Read More
Streaming video platform Brightcove has added another partner to its already-impressive group of associates. Vudu, purveyors of fine set-top boxes, have struck up a deal to stream Brightcove-associated content. Brightcove has, at last count, about twenty-one trillion API partners, and delivers video for big names like AOL and the NY Times. Those aren’t available on the Vudu box yet, though; it’s just launching now and the first (and only) video service to hit is Sony’s MyPlay, through which you’ll be able to watch Sony Music videos to your heart’s content. Joy of joys!
A year ago, I would have considered the idea of Sony letting me stream their content onto my TV for free a ridiculous notion, but here we are. Pleasant surprises are mighty rare in this sector. → Read More
In an age when anyone with a video-capable cell phone can have their own TV channel on the Web, it is still the celebrities and rock stars who are getting all the views (just as on Twitter they get the most followers). Kyte CEO Daniel Graf knows this fact all too well. Of the 215,000 video channels on Kyte, nearly all are created by consumers, but only about 1,000 account for more than 90 percent of the mobile videos streamed via the service. And those 1,000 channels are invariably the work of professionals or the cell-phone videos of famous people such as musicians Lady Gaga (iTunes link) and Soulja Boy (iTunes link)
In April, Kyte streamed 50 million videos across the Web, mobile devices, and social networks. Just to put those 50 million video streams into perspective, that is half the number of videos streamed in March, 2009 by AOL, the tenth ranked video site in the U.S. (Hulu, which is No, 3, streamed 380 million videos).
Today, Kyte is launching iPhone apps for partners including MTV, the NBA, Spin Magazine, the rock band No Doubt, and the Los Angeles radio station KCRW, which is using the app to highlight videos of bands playing live in its studios. → Read More
Web video platform Brightcove has so many API partners just two months after the release of Brightcove 3 that it had to create an alliance to contain them all. Actually, the Brightcove Alliance is more of a marketing exercise to acknowledge and promote its API partners. Nevertheless, nearly 100 companies (including Yahoo, AOL, DoubleClick, Veoh, Metacafe, Slide, Meebo, Blinkx, Sprout, Clearspring, and Visible Measures) have implemented the API in less than two months. The new APIs cover everything from advertising and analytics to mobile, search, and social media. (Update: In other news which we noted in our Layoff Tracker, the company let go 25 people last week, or 15 percent of its workforce. Brightcove still employs 147 people). → Read More
I’m not complaining, but some of the ads being paired with some of the content on Brightcove’s Syndication Marketplace may need some rethinking.
This lovely lady is doing a full-nude striptease (we’ve altered the image), along with an Office Depot advertisement promising “Free Delivery.” Which on second thought may be a brilliant idea.
If you’d like to see the evidence for yourself, the not-safe-for-work video is here, or just do a search for “new test” in the marketplace. → Read More
On the heels of announcing an expanded relationship with the New York Times website last week, Brightcove is adding all of AOL to its video-distribution client list. Like the New York Times, AOL is an investor in Brightcove.
But the deal is a coup for Brightcove 3, the latest version of its online video platform. Brightcove 3 will power all the video on AOL, which is one of the top ten destinations on the Web for video. → Read More
The New York Times is hurting financially these days, and its online business doesn’t seem to be helping much, but at least it keeps pushing forward. One area where the NYTimes.com has put a lot of effort is in video, and it has just redesigned its video page around the new Brightcove 3 player. Previously, the NYTimes was using the FeedRoom as its main video platform. (This swap doesn’t come out of the blue. The New York Times is an investor in Brightcove). → Read More
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