I guess it is difficult to teach old dogs new tricks. Web is not about controling distribution, but about frictionless syndication. This is the key to success in the new media world.
I said this earlier today in another post and then I read that Hulu is blocking out Boxee, a neat little app that lets you watch webvideo on your TV. In this case, Hulu seems to have been forced by the content owners. I understand that they are trying to not to cannibalize their cash cow. But they can’t stop the inevitable. Ultimately they need to figure out a way to monetize web videos played on the TV.
Update: Hulu CEO, Jason Kilar, who I think actually gets new media, says his hands are tied. Here is a blog post from Boxee and from fred, an investor in boxee who is one of my favorite VCs.
US search traffic grew at 28.6% between Jan 2008 and Jan 2009.
The amazing thing for me continues to be that the number of searches on youtube eaqual those on yahoo.
Beyond the core search engines, YouTube generated an estimated 2.92 billion searches in January, up 68 percent from the year before, and slightly up 2.4 percent from December. YouTube represents 24.9 percent of Google’s total searches, and on its own is a s big as Yahoo.
When TV.com used to be a community site, Hulu was happy to have its videos featured on it. But now that TV.com has become a CBS backed destination site competing directly with Hulu, it no longer has access to Hulu’s videos. Clearly battle lines are drawn and the gloves are off.
Hulu, backed by News Corp. (owner of Fox) and NBC, has long been trying to add CBS’s content to its inventory. I guess that may not happen now.
If I were TV.com, I would offer my content in exchange for Hulu’s. Both would be winners along with consumers. I guess it is difficult to teach old dogs new tricks. Web is not about controling distribution, but about frictionless syndication. This is the key to success in the new media world.
Comscore has released the latest report on social networking in India. The main take away is that global brands such as orkut and facebook took more prominence over the local sites such as bharatstudent.com and bigadda.com.
Orkut reigned as the most visited social networking site in December 2008 with more than 12.8 million visitors, an increase of 81 percent from the previous year. Orkut’s audience was three times the size of its nearest competitor in the category. Facebook.com captured the #2 position with 4 million visitors, up 150 percent versus year ago, followed by local social networking site Bharatstudent.com with 3.3 million visitors (up 88 percent) and hi5.com with 2 million visitors (up 182 percent).
There are several companies that try to be the web based TV guide for user uploaded videos. There is a new one called eguiders.com supported by serveral hoolywood heavyweights that got launched today.
Its secret weapon: Among the experts recommending videos are pop-culture luminaries such as 24 executive producer Jon Cassar, Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof and Private Practice executive producer Mark Tinker. “The idea there is a more structured environment where any video that is available there is already vetted and is being presented by someone you trust, I think, is pretty inspired,” Lindelof says.
Snapstream, a developer of DVR technologies that can help companies record and search TV content, announced a more affordable Snapstream mini for consumers.
Snapstream, who brought us BeyondTV and Snapstream Enterprise, has launched a more budget-friendly standalone TV search engine appliance for enterprises. The Snapstream Mini costs $2000 ($6000 less than the original Snapstream Server) and offers most of the capabilities of the more expensive product. One of the main differentiators is memory capacity; the Mini offers a little over 1000 hours of recordable content whereas the server product allows 2300 hours of recordings.
The Snapstream Enterprise products are a cross between a powerful DVR and a search engine. The Snapstream allows enterprises to record thousands of hours of TV (from both satellite and digital cable sources) and search inside the recordings for keywords such as a company or individual’s name. The interface looks and feels like a consumer DVR so it’s pretty easy to use. The product allow multiple users to schedule and search inside recording via a laptop, desktop or through the TV itself. Users can record several shows at once (the Mini allows 2 shows simultaneously, the Server allows up to 10 shows to be recorded at the same time) and have email alerts sent to users when a search item is mentioned. The products also allows users to trim and clip the records, email a clip url and burn recording onto a DVD.
Sometime you see a demo or hear an idea that seems hokay or crazy but catches your fancy because it gives you a glimpse of future possibilities. This happened to me while watching a demo from a japanese company called tonchidot at the techcrunch50 conference. They claimed to develop a technology that lets you tag the realworld using your camera phone. Now that is a great idea, but I was sceptical because they only showed a video. Now they came out with an iphone app that lets you do that using an iphone. This is an interesting compnay to watch.
This may seem like science fiction but we are not that far off. NYT has an interesting article about mobile enhanced navigation of the real world.
I think there are tremendous opportunities in using web and mobile technologies to help healthcare consumers make better decisions. This is an area I am working on in the context of mobile technology.
Medpedia Project, an initiative we wrote about during its private beta launch, has unveiled a public version of its trustworthy, fully transparent technology platform for the worldwide health community. Combining social networking with Web 2.0 health information, Medpedia’s website offers consumers a Wikipedia for health information, a LinkedIn network for health professionals, and a Facebook-like platform where consumers and experts can have a medical dialogue about treatment and conditions.
I don’t think there is an opportunity open for them to be wikipedia for health information. Wikipedia already has tonnes of healthcare information and there is no point trying to clone that but should leverage wikipedia instead. I think this company should focus more on the social aspects to have a better chance of success.