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
Who needs cable TV? Move Networks, which powers the Web video streaming for ABC, Fox, the Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet, streamed 180 million hours of premium video last year, 100 million of which it claims was in high-definition (at a resolution of 720p). With YouTube turning on an HD viewing option in December, and adding an HD section (as did Hulu), you can expect that 100 million hours to be dwarfed this year across all the major Web video services. → Read More
Not a week after we derided Brightcove for its difficult user interface in a story about newly emerged competitor Delve Networks, the Cambridge-based video hosting company is releasing a completely rebuilt version of its service into private beta. Existing SaaS customers now have the opportunity to try out Brightcove 3 Beta, which will be made available to new customers sometime in the Fall. Development on Brightcove 3 began about nine months ago and has focused on three primary areas: a new publishing model, support for long-form video and, last but not least, an improved user interface. → Read More
Investors are betting big on video streaming provider Move Networks. The Utah-based company just announced that it raised $46 million in a C round of venture financing. The round was led by Benchmark Capital, and also included Cisco, Comcast Interactive Media, Televisa, Steamboat Ventures and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. That brings the total raised since December, 2006 to $91.3 million. (Competitor Brightcove has raised $86.2 million and Maven Networks was bought by Yahoo for $160 million in February). When it comes to streaming HD video on the Web, Move Networks is becoming one of the preferred video streaming partners for many major media sites, including ABC.com, Discovery.com, ESPN.com,and Fox.com. According to the company, it collectively streams videos to 6.5 million people a month, who average 50 minutes of viewing time per session. But Move requires that viewers install its own proprietary video player as a plug-in to their browsers. So in a way it competes with Flash, which is getting better all the time. (Brightcove is taking a different approach by experimenting with BitTorrent and other technologies to create high-quality video experiences through a Flash player). High-definition streams still tend to run into network bottlenecks and slow connection speeds at people’s homes. Whoever can solve or bypass these problems will become adopted by more video sites as the demand for HD video rises. CrunchBase Information Move Networks Brightcove Maven Networks Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
When it comes to Web video, short clips under three minutes still make up the vast majority of what people watch. But as the quality of video improves, more people will be willing to sit and watch streams of half-hour sitcoms, hour-long dramas, and maybe even entire movies. Already, there is some anecdotal evidence of this shift. Move Networks—which powers the media players and back-end streaming infrastructure for ABC, ESPN360, Fox On-Demand, and the Discovery Channel—released the following data today for videos streamed from all its customers’ Websites collectively: · So far in November, more than 100,000 new individuals are watching long-form video (anything 20 minutes or over) online each day, twice as many as in August. · In November, the average session length is more than 50 minutes. · In October 2007, more than 6 million people watched long form streaming video online. · Since March 2007, Move has streamed almost 50 million hours of television. These numbers still pale compared to actual TV, but as the growth continues they will start to attract even more advertising dollars than they do already. CrunchBase Information Move Networks Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
