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Jeff Richards is the Vice President of Digital Content Services at
VeriSign. VeriSign Digital Content Services power many of the largest
and most successful broadband and mobile content sites in the world
for partners like AOL, Fox and the BBC.
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Will Price, a friend and fellow fly fisherman, announced today that he's leaving Hummer Winblad to be CEO of WidgetBox, a venture-funded (by Hummer) startup to be the company's new CEO. Will was an operating guy before he was a vc, so this shouldn't shock anyone. It is, however, a pretty cool move and a pretty cool company. And, for those of you who don't know what a widget is (Dad), read Will's letter on why he made the move on TechCrunch. Best of luck, Will!
Tracy Swedlow and the folks at InteractiveTV always put on a terrific event, and I'll be speaking on a panel at this year's TV of Tomorrow show on March 11th @ 11:30 am (San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center). The topic of our panel is "New Developments in Broadband Video: Can the Internet Keep Up?" It is sure to be a lively discussion - my co-panelists are from BitTorrent, Level3, Brightcove, Thompson, Narrowstep and Tandberg.
Chris Anderson's (also wrote The Long Tail) got a great article posted on Wired today called "Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business." Think about it - Google is one of the most profitable companies of our time, is used every day by everyone you know, yet you'll never see a charge on your credit card bill that says "Google."
Head over to Wired and read the article. It'll make you think.
VeriSign/Kontiki and other market leaders (including Verizon, Pando and others) in the P2P technology and ISP worlds are involved in a DCIA (Distributed Computing Industry Association) working group called P4P. With support and commentary from many involved in this group, the DCIA today sent a letter to the FCC with formal content on potential legislation (see my previous posts on Net Neutrality) surrounding network management guidelines for broadband operators. With Marty Lafferty's permission (Marty is the CEO of DCIA), I've pasted a copy of the letter into the extended portion of this blog entry. To read the letter, skip below the jump.
The DCIA P4P perspective is notable because it represents the interests of technology providers, P2P providers, and ISP's. It's stated mission, which appears below, is to work with each of these interest groups to deliver the best ultimate experience for end user consumers.
2/14/08 ADDITION: Click here to go to the letter as posted on the FCC web site
Continue reading "P2P and Network Management: DCIA P4P Comment to FCC" »
As readers of this blog know, I have been saying for some time that Net Neutrality would be one of the hottest topics of 2008. Well, it's officially taken center stage again with a flurry of coverage this week (go to Google News and type in "net neutrality"). Yesterday, representatives of Comcast appeared before the FCC to discuss the company's practices around network management. Today, the Washington Post reports Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is expected to introduce a bill calling for an Internet policy that would prohibit network operators from unreasonably interfering with consumers' right to access and use content over broadband networks (he must not be at the Roger Clemens Circus). This is a corporate blog, and thus my position is officially neutral on this subject (as noted by Will Richmond back in November) - but it is a topic I believe is worth following, even for the average consumer, for two primary reasons:
1) The ongoing dialogue, and any legislation tied to this subject, will have an impact on the ability of carriers, cable providers, Internet and media companies to compete for your dollars and mindshare, especially as it relates to rich media (music, video, movies, etc.).
2) The outcome will have a significant impact on what the Internet looks like in 5-10 years time. As the Internet becomes more important to your daily life, you should care about this. Kind of simple statement, but it's a pretty basic concept.
For more on Net Neutrality, here are a few links (and different perspectives):
Today's confirmation by Yahoo of its planned $160M acquisition of Maven continues what has been a banner 12-18 month period for digital / Internet media companies. Although the day to day battles in the trenches are brutally competitive (talk to anyone who's running a digital media startup), the classic Silicon Valley innovation cycle (entrepreneurs found startups, startups rapidly out-innovate big ones to take advantage of new opportunities, small companies get acquired by big ones, founders repeat process) and the broader macro trends towards digital media distribution via the Internet and mobile devices will continue to drive a huge amount of investment and M&A activity for years to come. In addition to the note on Maven, three relevant data points which provide context to this point:
Parks Associates new forecast for "new media" advertising is $12.2B by 2012
AlwaysOn takes a look back at 2007 financings, sales and M&A activity among the OnMedia 100
Media and Information Investment Bank The Jordan Edmiston Group has a great presentation available on the firm's website which outlines "M&A Outlook and Valuations" in the new media sector
I'm often asked "is market pricing for CDN services going down faster than distribution rates are going up?" It's a good question, and while prices for basic content delivery have been going down, encode rates and volume are going up (significantly). In other words more people are watching more high quality video online. Dan Rayburn has a very good post on his BusinessofVideo.com blog today on this topic, along with the basic math required to answer this question. Click here to go to his post.
Ben Mezrich's book Rigged is a fast, moderately entertaining read from the same author who wrote Bringing Down the House - the story of the MIT Blackjack team (a great read). This is my second attempt to read a Mezrich book and get the same entertainment value I got out of House (the other was Busting Vegas). Unfortunately, neither Rigged nor Busting Vegas were as good as House. In short - read Bringing Down the House again and skip Rigged. For more, see below.
One of the blogs I visit frequently is NewTeeVee. Liz Gannes put up a post on the site last week called "Need to Know Video Stats." If you're tracking the growth of key sites and video online overall, see here post for the latest data from ComScore, etc. To summarize, they are all going up and to the right.
138 million Americans watched 9.5 billion videos online in November '07 (31% of them on Google sites like YouTube).
Given Kontiki's role in digital media, and our role as the download platform for BBC's iPlayer, I'm frequently asked "how's it going?" The short answer: very well. Ashley Highfield, Director Future Media and Technology at the BBC, put up a blog post last week called "iPlayer Launch: First Indications" that provides some insight into the success of the iPlayer since it moved from beta to official launch on Christmas day. To quote Highfield:
"Demand for long-form video content over the web may be much higher than iTunes has witnessed before; It's too early to say, but I think we may be at the start of rewriting the rule book."
For more on this topic, see another good article on iPlayer by the Guardian's Mark Lawson from January 3rd.
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