Hulu made some serious ground last month, overtaking not only Viacom but Microsoft as well in the top US video sites category. Looks as if they can even use Yahoo as a goal for March.
comScore VideoMetrix is reporting a 42% unique and 33% stream increase in February, up from 24.5 million uniques and 250.5 million streams in January.
Sure, if we look at these stats here, yes, it’s an impressive feat what Hulu’s done, but I say, lets wait another month before we get too excited. I would attribute a huge percentage of those gains exclusively to the Super Bowl commerical (Alec Baldwin) and following TV broadcast ads (Eliza Dushku) throughout the month. The question is, will they retain these numbers in March?
Even further, it’s completely unfair to compare a site like Hulu, to the video content side of sites like of Yahoo, Google (Youtube), Myspace, and Microsoft considering the fact that all but Hulu are majority focused on user-generated content. Hulu being focused on media-generated scews the stats in a way that sets it apart from the rest. **I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if Hulu was #2 in the average-time-spent-viewing-videos category.**
What I’d really like to see is a new differentiation in comScore and Nielson’s ratings to set apart user generated from media-generated video sites. [image via: TC]
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Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp. (IAC), which struck a TV deal about the life of the crew working at their popular video destination, CollegeHumor in July, is close to airing.
The show looks to be like a younger version of the ‘office’ mixed with some of the usual craziness that comes out of the CollegeHumor production team.
They released another teaser today of the co-stars Jake and Amir, who have been in previous CollegeHumor webisodes.
The show, which was rumored to begin in the fall, is now planning on launching with MTV Q1 of 2009. Keep an eye out, this show looks like a step up from the usual MTV trash. Seems like it should have been an NBC or HBO type of series. Maybe next time fellas.
Microsoft takes the main-stage to battle Adobe and a slew of startup companies trying to be the leader in Web video and collaborative animation/web design tools. The WSJ outlines the major online destinations that have gone with each service this year. For example, Netflix, CBS, The Olynpics (via NBC.com) have all gone with Microsoft’s Silverlight player this year stealing further business from Adobe.
“Adobe’s Flash player is installed on about 98% of Internet-connected PCs, and Silverlight is only installed on about 25%, according to Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe executives said this gives the smaller company about a two-year head start. But Microsoft is “willing to invest” in order to win certain “trophy sites,” said [Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Microsoft unit responsible for Silverlight].
Places like CBS are raving about Silverlight, saying it is saving costs greatly over Adobe’s flash player. This is bad news for Adobe who has been receiving their share of bad news this year. Another big loss came in the mobile department. They have spent two years now trying to deploy their ‘flash lite’ technology to mobile phones, only to see minimal adoption. Most importantly, Apple will have nothing to do with flash on the iPhone yet, which Adobe has been banking on for quite some time. All the bad news has caused Adobe to lay off over 600 employees as well as scale back on the MacWorld Expo in January. Some say they won’t even be having their Adobe Max conference next year. Will Adobe Flash be a thing of the past?
Facebook video has flown somewhat under the radar since its launch last year. Even though it’s a small part of the site, it still pulls in some 100,000 new videos everyday, with a total of over 45 million.
Facebook just announced some upgrades to their video service that’s sure to up those numbers in the upcoming year.
The first addition is the ability to embed videos on other websites. The great thing is Facebook allows you to control your privacy settings, no matter where they’re being shared. Users can choose to share videos with their friends or selected friends (must be logged in to view) or an everyone setting.
Another piece of mediocre good news is they’ll be supporting higher resolution video with capabilities as high as 720p.
Anvato is a new startup that can identify videos across the web using an automated visual detection engine. Anvato’s technology can recognize content regardless of meta data or destination.
The company has raised $2 million in a partial Series A funding round led by Oxantium Ventures and is currently seeking more investment.
This is a great tool for publishers looking to identify their copyrighted content across the web. Once found, a content owner can decide to have the content taken down or begin an ad campaign to monetize on the videos. We have seen similar technology engines come out for finding licensed photos around the web, and recently YouTube has begun offering content owners a way to take down or monetize their videos that are beinng used illegally.
The problems I see with the company is that it’s not difficult to figure out what destinations are potentially hosting your content illegally. Places like SurfTheChannel aggregate together the sites to go watch free TV shows and if the show isn’t being hosted by one of those sites, it is probably just being downloaded on a Torrent (in which case, you don’t really have much ground to stand on).
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