The folks at Pulvermedia sent me an invite to a Network2 get-together in NYC slated for November 15, a meet-up at a cool-sounding bar for people interested in video and TV on the net. (Jeff Pulver has an open invite to all interested parties on his blog — RSVP is necessary.)
I’ve been otherwise swamped (disclosure and ironic comment here: part of what’s kept me busy is the development of a conference in conjunction with Pulver’s Video-on-the-Net) and didn’t know what Network2 is, but now I do.
It’s Pulver’s latest effort to come to grips with Internet TV, specifically video content that doesn’t appear anywhere else. Available at Network2.TV, it’s a program guide organized by category, with links and thumbnails and even reviews. Although Network2 is still sparsely populated, particularly in comparison to the massive amount of video on the Internet that might qualify as TV “shows,” Pulver has clearly put some money and time into the effort — and hopes more web-only show producers submit their shows for the index.
With the number of new Internet video clips, programs and sites growing at a crazy pace, it’s only a matter of time before something like Network2, or a comparable TV or video guide, becomes not only interesting but mandatory. Not a video search function, not a list of the top ten most viewed videos, but a bona fide interactive guide with program descriptions, links and topic categories.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:31 PM | Print | Comments (1)
Even if you have hundreds of millions of dollars, the Google search results that appear when you search on your own name matter. That’s the apparent lesson to be drawn from this Washington Post article on AOL Vice Chairman and sports team mogul Ted Leonsis.
It seems that Leonsis didn’t like the Google results that appeared when searching his name, so he rolled up his sleeves, launched a blog, name-dropped his celebrity contacts shamelessly in his postings (better to generate link love) and ultimately got what he wanted. All of this manipulation boosted his blog, Ted’s Take, to the first page of Google results.
Oh yeah, Leonsis also wanted to dip his toes into the Web 2.0 waters.
“There is something very powerful about self-expression, adding your own voice to the loud choir happening out there,” Leonsis said. Also, he said, he needed to build up his Web 2.0 street cred. “I honestly wanted to have the moral authority with employees and people in industry that I wasn’t just talking about Web 2.0, I was living it.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:08 PM | Print | Comments (1)
As anybody who follows the communications business knows, cable and phone companies are in a race to capture the triple-play customer, the home that buys its voice, video and high-speed data services all from one company in a bundle. Based on my analysis of Q3 06 data, it’s clear that cable holds the triple-play lead.
At the end of Q3 06, the top eight cable operators served almost eight million (7.82 million) voice customers, up 63% from the 4.8 million telephony customers served at the end of Q3 05 and up 5% over the 6.95 million voice customers served at the end of Q2 06. By the end of the quarter, the group as a whole passed over 89 million homes with VoIP services, up 81% year-over-year and 6% sequentially.
In contrast, the top incumbent telcos served only for 2.2 million video customers at the end of Q3 06 through its DBS partnerships. Verizon, in addition, served 118,000 multichannel video subscribers through its fiber-to-the-premises FiOS TV service by the end of Q3 06, more than double the 55,000 FiOS TV customers the telco served at the end of Q2 06.
Despite the promise of FiOS, and AT&T’s struggling efforts to offer video over its network through its fiber-to-the-node upgrades, cable’s voice service customer count was over three times greater than the phone companies’ video customer count at the end of Q3 06, a disparity that underscores cable’s advantages in the bundled service era. (For more analysis, check out today’s IP Media Monitor — free registration.)
| Telephony Subscriber Counts - Post Adelphia Distributions | |||||
| 3Q05 | 4Q05 | 1Q06 | 2Q06 | 3Q06 | |
| Brighthouse Networks* | 0.203 | 0.204 | 0.245 | 0.327 | 0.369 |
| Comcast** | 1.201 | 1.280 | 1.422 | 1.706 | 2.088 |
| Cox* | 1.607 | 1.697 | 1.807 | 1.892 | 1.950 |
| Cablevision*** | 0.609 | 0.739 | 0.873 | 0.994 | 1.107 |
| Charter**** | 0.105 | 0.136 | 0.191 | 0.258 | 0.340 |
| Insight | 0.081 | 0.090 | 0.100 | 0.107 | 0.113 |
| Mediacom | 0.002 | 0.022 | 0.046 | 0.066 | 0.083 |
| Time Warner***** | 0.996 | 1.138 | 1.386 | 1.598 | 1.771 |
| Total | 4.805 | 5.306 | 6.070 | 6.949 | 7.820 |
| Quarterly Adds. | 0.829 | 0.501 | 0.764 | 0.879 | 0.871 |
| Total Telephony Homes Passed | 49.252 | 64.287 | 74.577 | 83.912 | 89.072 |
| Subs. % of Telephony HP | 8.4% | 8.3% | 8.1% | 8.3% | 8.8% |
| *EMDI estimates. Note Cox offers a mixed of circuit-switched and VoIP service. | |||||
| **At end of Q3 06, Comcast passed 30.8 million homes with VoIP service and counted 1.38 million VoIP or digital voice customers. The remaining homes passed and subscribers reflected legacy circuit-switched. | |||||
| ***Includes sequentially decreasing, and increasingly trivial, amounts of legacy circuit-switched customers. | |||||
| ****EMDI estimates for Q1 06. | |||||
| *****EMDI, PaliCapital estimates for Q3 05 to Q2 06 subscriber counts. EMDI estimates for telephony homes passed. | |||||
| Source: Company reports and Emerging Media Dynamics analysis. © 2006. | |||||
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:52 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Remember Lycos? The huge Internet portal company that was purchased for $12.5 billion by Terra in 2000, then became Terra Lycos, only to be resold to Korea’s Daum Communications Corp. for $95 million in 2004?
The once-hot company is looking to get its mojo back with a new broadband channel aimed at teens. But this is no ordinary video channel. Called Lycos Cinema, the site blends social networking with videos and video sharing and enables users to simultaneously watch the same video while chatting about it — kind of like multi-player video gaming only with videos.
Lycos also will allow users to watch full-length motion pictures, although admittedly most are grade-Z films such as “Big Bry’s Western Style BBQ,” “Bleeding Iowa,” and “Embalming Love.” Lycos has licensed 1,000 movie titles for the service and is negotiations to license 3,000 more.
One section of the site lists movies that are currently “playing” and how much time is left in the film so that users can jump in and watch along with the other viewers. Up to 10 viewers can watch schedule a movie in advance and watch it simultaneously, and Lycos is planning to add voice chat to the service.
The Boston Globe’s Hiawatha Bray likens the Lycos channel to the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000 program,” where scripted, silliouetted “people” shouted back at the big screen during films.
An interesting idea that may actually attract some segment of the teen market if Lycos pays proper attention to viral marketing. The low quality of the films is a plus — who wants to make ongoing snarky comments to buddies during good films?
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:51 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
