Myspace

MySpace's mobile streaming video play

Pete Wylie — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:21:46 -0500

MySpace announced it is entering the mobile streaming video market, streaming user-generated videos and some professional video directly to video-enabled phones. MySpace, which claims 10 million unique users per month visit its mobile offering, will be the first social network to incorporate the feature.

"Video is a natural next step for us in mobile," said John Faith, vice president of mobile for MySpace, in a prepared statement. "MySpace will continue to grow our video library as we increase delivery channels in order to keep pace with our users' accelerating desire for video consumption."

News Corp. obviously eyes the mobile market as one primed for growth and the foray into the nascent space by MySpace could be a precursor to more mobile offerings across its many media holdings.

MySpace will not stream ads with the videos to begin with, as it struggles -- like so many other sites incorporating video (YouTube) -- to monetize and advertise around user-generated content. This is the latest in several recent plays by MySpace to use its video assets to the fullest, including placing ads over pirated content through a deal with MTV and a partnership with fellow News Corp. venture Hulu.

Ripcode, a video transcoding company out of Dallas, Texas, will use its Real-Time Stream Transcoding application to deliver the videos for MySpace. Specific phone types the service will support were not named, but MySpace will use RT-SP streaming, ruling out availability on iPhones.

For more:
- see the release here

SPOTLIGHT: MTV chooses Inlet for streaming video

Pete Wylie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:50:29 -0500

MTV Networks announced it will use Inlet Technologies to encode and deliver high quality video from live events. MTV will use Inlet's Spinnaker 7000 live streaming appliance to deliver online events, including internet-only special content. Inlet's technology streamed the MTV 2008 VMAs, and the music television network was very pleased with the results of that test run, according to a company statement.

The Spinnaker 7000 supports all major video formats, making it ideal to reach a large, diverse audience, according to Inlet President Neil Selvin.

"People don't want to view a postage stamp sized video anymore," Selvin said. "Inlet is know for delivering big picture, high quality video in Flash, H.264, Windows Media, really any platform the customer is using. We're able to provide that quality by our look-ahead capabilities and other baked-in tech we've designed to provide superior streaming video quality."

Selvin applauded MTV's approach to online video, noting that the company understood how to create unique experiences with live streaming that were not simply repackages of broadcast TV content.

For more:
- see the joint MTV-Inlet release here

Hulu, MySpace join forces

Pete Wylie — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:05:06 -0500

Hulu and MySpace announced their latest online video partnership, as movies and TV shows available on Hulu will now be available in MySpaceTV. MySpace users can now embed Hulu videos on their homepages as well. Embedding the "Primetime plugin" on Myspace will enable users to view all of Hulu's content without leaving the MySpace page.

The deal isn't really that surprising when you consider the wave of partnerships made by online video aggregators, or, even more so, the fact that News Corp. owns MySpace and is a backer of Hulu. MySpace also has deals with Warner Brothers and Sony to distribute content through the Primetime plugin.

MySpace estimated the video partnership will garner the site more than 150 million more page views a month, leading to more opportunity for monetization of traffic and content for both companies.

For more:
- see the PC Magazine coverage here

MTV & MySpace place ads on pirated content

Pete Wylie — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:35:28 -0500

MySpace and MTV Networks announced a unique solution to online video piracy Monday that the companies say will allow monetization of pirated videos uploaded to MySpace. German firm Auditude will power a solution to analyze MySpace video uploads for unauthorized MTV Networks clips. If the platform finds a video that matches the MTV metadata in the Auditude database, an overlay ad will be placed along with the video.

So instead of fighting to remove copyrighted content posted to sites like MySpace without permission, the agreement will attempt simply to monetize the video. Clips of popular MTV Networks properties like "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" now will run with ads when posted illegally.

"Up until now, if you uploaded a clip, you couldn't do it in a legitimate way. It either was blocked or taken down," said Jeff Berman, president of marketing and sales at MySpace, in a release. "This allows us to go from a world of no to a world of yes."

The program reportedly can recognize clips that are only a few seconds long, and place advertising with the content posted to MySpace user pages. The MySpace MTV arrangement is similar to a YouTube program that gives the content owner the option of placing revenue-generating advertising with their clip or just removing it from the site.

"This is a step to let consumers upload videos and let us make money on it," said Mika Salmi, president Global Digital Media, MTV Networks. Both MTV and MySpace are confident that the technology will be the solution to the legal battles between copyright owners and online video sites.

For more:
- see the efluxmedia story here

Related articles
MySpaceTV launches user-gen video uploads
Viacom Suit against Veoh dismissed

Fierce 15 Online Video Movers and Shakers: Qik

Pete Wylie — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:12:57 -0400

Qik
Founded: 2007
Location: Redwood City, Calif.
Investors: Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowotz, Marc Benioff, George Garrick, Arjun Gupta
www.qik.com

Qik is all over the place, at least when it comes to press coverage. Qik is used by a wide array of users, called Qikkers, including both professional and citizen journalists. Celeb-blogger Robert Scoble championed the live-video-with-your-cell service at an early date and the service has been adopted by members of Congress, used to cover the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and captured the lighting of the Olympic torch, sessions from the World Economic Forum and the pope's travels abroad.

Bells and whistles on top of the basic cell-phone-video to Internet include integration with Twitter, YouTube, Mogulus, MySpace, Orkut and Justin.tv. Word on the street says Qik will soon add iPhone support.

If there's one thing that keeps Qik management up at night, it is the large number of similar cell-to-stream services gunning for the same space, including Flixwagon, Kyte, and Livecast (formerly Comvu).

Next: Next New Networks

Fierce 15 Online Video Movers and Shakers: Hulu

Pete Wylie — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 13:03:20 -0400

Hulu
Founded: March 2007
Investors include NBC Universal and News Corp.
Location: Los Angeles, CA.
www.hulu.com

Hulu hosts thousands of licensed online videos ranging from digital shorts to full TV series seasons and feature films. The site has more than 90 licensing agreements with content providers including MGM, Sony and Warner Bros., in addition to its founding companies. Hulu is completely free of charge to the end-user, bucking the trend of some professional content-heavy, pay as you go sites in favor of an ad-driven model.

Hulu videos can easily be embedded on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, so fans can share the videos with others and bring traffic back to the host site in a viral fashion. The company also recently added a channel feature, grouping specialty content together in hopes of attracting niche advertisers to an attentive audience. While total traffic on the site is nowhere near YouTube levels, the professional content Hulu streams is much more palatable to advertisers and the destination portal has quickly gained market share with key audiences.

Next: Veoh

Recent Articles
International Hulu
Hulu CEO Calls Out YouTube at NAB
Slapping Down YouTube and Hulu
Hulu-abaloo
Old TV Hot Online

MySpaceTV launches user-gen video uploads

Pete Wylie — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:11:12 -0400

MySpace announced a feature on Thursday that allows users to upload webcam videos up to 512 MB in size directly to MySpaceTV. The video application is browser-based, so users will not have to maintain large files on their hard drives.

The videos can be embedded on home pages on the general site, opening up avenues for musicians, actors and other artists, as well as a more rich social networking experience for all users.

Doing a one-up on Facebook, the new feature serves to separate the first-gen social networking site from competitors who have not (yet) added video features.

The new offering could also have ad revenue implications for MySpace. If the feature is a hit, advertisers could overlay on the upload page, as well on viewing pages for the video.

Jason Kirk, vice president of MySpaceTV, said his team had dealt with concerns about load times and copyright infringement before the launch.

"There are always concerns with page load times, but above all we respect the users choice about what they share and where," Kirk wrote in an email response. "Videos will not autoplay unless a user wants that, so users should be able to embed multiple videos without noticing a significant delay in page load times."

Kirk also wrote that the uploaded videos would be monitored for copyright issues in the same manner as the rest of the content on myspace.com.

The online video offering opens interesting possibilities for users to create channels and networks based off their video preferences. But Kirk said MySpaceTV was only exploring the option at this time, waiting to consult lead users and community heads before implementing user-gen channels.

For more:
- see the online video feature in action at Myspacetv.com

UK wants user generated content filtered

Doug Mohney — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:13:02 -0400

The U.K. government wants large web portals to pre-screen user generated content before it goes online, a task that is likely to drive YouTube crazy.

A report from the House of Commons' Culture Media and Sport Committee wants to assign a government minister to oversee Internet safety, as well as other issues like P2P file sharing and targeted ad systems. Concerns come from problems with cyberbullying, violence, and offensive material.

Google's YouTube depends on users to report offensive videos and remove bad ones that have been flagged within an hour, it told the committee. But the committee didn't like Google's claim that it wasn't possible to pre-screen all video content given the volume of video YouTube receives--10 hours of video every minute.

MySpace got kudos from the committee since it had several hundred people screening images and video, taking down offensive material within two hours with a goal to cut the time down to an hour.

The European Union's Ecommerce Directive doesn't require service providers to prescreen content, but that isn't stopping Italian prosecutors from threatening to file criminal charges against four company executives for allowing a video of a disabled child being bullied to get posted on Google's Video service.

For more:
- PC World reports on UK proposal for user content review

Related articles:
Arbor Networks acquires Ellacoya
Telstra UGC site slammed for racy content

MySpaceTV goes international and traditional

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:59:54 -0400

MySpaceTV has struck a deal to distribute its web video shows to media outlets around the globe. Shine Group, Elizabeth Murdoch's production company, will shop web shows around for TV syndication. (Dad Rupert happens owns News Corp., which owns MySpace, The Wall Street Journal, and Fox, among other properties).

Web properties such as "Quarterlife" or "Roommates" could show up on traditional broadcast television or DVDs outside of the U.S. Another option would be to create localized versions of the shows. MySpace will keep U.S. and worldwide Internet rights to the content.

"Quarterlife" was the first Internet series picked up by a TV network, but it was canceled after one episode. However, skeptics shouldn't sell the new effort short yet. There's a lot of, shall we say, old and bad TV content airing around the globe, so a U.S.-flavored web production could see a (financially) successful life as a broadcast property in an overseas market.

Further, it costs a lot of money to make a broadcast TV pilot in the U.S., so web productions could end up as the "farm team" for new broadcast shows.

For more:
- MySpace TV To Try Shopping Web Shows Abroad

Related articles:
Can MySpace become a music mogul?