Continue reading HP creates Gabble, the 'private' competitor to YouTube

HP creates Gabble, the 'private' competitor to YouTube originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google's YouTube leads U.S. online video market originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Best Buy challenges YouTube? With pay site??? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) has released a news multimedia player that could give the likes of Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS (NYSE: CBS) and other large media companies fits.

Real has been producing software players for PCs and cell phones for over a decade. But, the new player will allow consumers to take video from all major formats including Flash, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) Quicktime, and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Media and store them on the PC hard-drive. The player will also allow users to rip video from sites like YouTube, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Acccording to TechCrunch: "Every content creator will now be challenged by the real possibility that if their product is DRM free, it's likely to be ripped from the original source site and even burned to CD." And Barron's writes: "Once you capture the video, the software provides an easy way to send links to the content to other people."

So video pirates and video sharing buffs have YouTube in a bottle. Video can be captured on a PC hard-drive and sent to as many other computers as the user would like. Hard to trace. It is not as if a copy of Saturday Night Live is on the front page of YouTube. Instead, its is being hidden and sent out from a PC hidden somewhere among the other tens of millions of PCs around the world.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

New RealPlayer: big content company nightmare originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

NBC vs. Google: Old media meets the YouTube nation? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who founded YouTube, filed plans yesterday to sell 3.2 million shares of Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) , which acquired the video-sharing service in November. You didn't have to be much of a psychic to see this one coming.

The jury is still out on whether Google overpaid for a company that hasn't made a nickel in profit or made the savviest acquisition in the history business. So far, YouTube seems to be worth the considerable headaches it's causing the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.

Fights over copyrighted material will be worked out. Competitors will emerge, but like with Google they will have a tough time. Once someone's media habits are established, they are really hard to change. A competitive video-sharing site will need to be orders of magnitude better than YouTube if it stands a chance.

But thanks to YouTube, every entrepreneur in Silicon Valley thinks their money-losing venture is worth 10 times more than it was before the Google acquisition was announced. The media hasn't helped much either. A much-derided story in BusinessWeek called "Valley Boys" made the case that every company connected to that awful buzzword Web 2.0., such as the article-rating site Digg, was worth big money.

"So far, Digg is breaking even on an estimated $3 million annually in revenues," the story said. "Nonetheless, people in the know say Digg is easily worth $200 million."

That math may sound dubious and sourcing a bit murky , but that same article said that YouTube "could easily fetch $500 million." That prediction made in August was way off. Three months later, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.

YouTube co-founders got more than double what BusinessWeek predicted originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 08 Feb 2007 08:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It was a big year for Web2.0, especially with Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.

But what about 2007? What can we expect?

I had a chance to interview a variety of top players in the space:

Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CTO of blinx:

In 2006, video sharing was the biggest trend with lots of companies -- especially the smaller sites -- growing really fast, which highlights the demand for online video. We also saw a great jump in user-generated content. But, traditional media and entertainment companies are catching up and seeing the Internet as a great distribution channel. In 2007, we expect to see even more content on the Web -- especially high-quality content -- and a greater need for better video search engines that can help Internet users navigate through the clutter. Also, with the Internet making content creation and distribution cheap, we expect to see a lot of experimentation with the length of videos and advertisements.

Continue reading 2007 predictions for Web 2.0

2007 predictions for Web 2.0 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 01 Jan 2007 15:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.