Jeff Richards' Demand Insights

I am often asked about how quickly we believe "average users" will start to consume long-form video content (movies, etc.) online. One data point I often cite is the pace of adoption we're seeing in the UK with our customer Channel4, which reports that more than 1 million people are using the Channel4 VOD service, and more than 20 million programs have been downloaded. Last week, I got another interesting data point.

My family spent the better part of last week moving from Northern Virginia back to the Bay Area. While doing so, I spent the better part of Friday utilizing the TMobile hotspot at the local Starbucks in Pleasanton, CA. While I was firing off emails and listening in on conference calls, a group of 10 women sat down nearby. It appeared to be a book club of some sort, and the average age was probably 45. About 90 minutes into their meeting, the conversation turned to discussion of movies, and went something like this:

W1: "I just signed up to get my movies online. You don't have to wait for the DVD to come in the mail, you don't have to go to the store, etc. It's great."

W2: "How's the quality?"

W1: "Great. Same as watching a DVD."

W3: "How do you watch the video - on your DVR?"

W1: "No. I bought a simple connector cord. Our plasma has an input right on the front of the tv that says 'PC.' Connected it up and now we watch movies off our PC."

W4: "How much does it cost?"

W1: "I don't know. I think it's 10 bucks a month but I haven't really looked."

Posted by Jeff Richards at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week at NAB we launched our new showcase site, VeriSign.tv. If you have been at the show and walked through the Content Pavilion, it's been hard to miss, and now you can view it on the web. We launched the site to showcase our market-leading capabilites across all "three screens" - broadband, mobile and television - with content from our partner Lionsgate Entertainment.

The site enables visitors to download a DVD-quality movie trailer and send a ringtone or wallpaper to his/her mobile phone. It's all about creating a connected experience for the consumer - anytime, anywhere, on any device. For an example of a site with VeriSign-enabled mobile content capabilities, visit CBSMobile.com.

You'll see us launching several major sites with three screen functionality this year on behalf of Media & Entertainment customers - look for announcements in the next few months...

Posted by Jeff Richards at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Posted by Jeff Richards at 01:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Posted by Jeff Richards at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A little over a year ago, VeriSign acquired Kontiki - the market leader in legitimate, secure peer to peer technology for rich media content. As you can imagine, we looked at every legitimate P2P technology platform on the market before we made the move.

We've since taken the Kontiki platform and embedded it in our global network to provide complete broadband and mobile content delivery worldwide. The VeriSign/Kontiki platform - now known as VeriSign's Intelligent CDN - combined with our mobile assets picked up through M-Qube, 3United and Lightsurf, now has more than 30 million P2P clients in the market (all secure, legitimate and DRM-enabled, mind you), handles more than 6 billion text messages per month (including the interactive voting for American Idol, Deal or No Deal and 7 of the other top 10 shows on tv) and continues to power the market's leading long-form content sites - BBC, Sky, AOL and Channel 4.

Yesterday's acquisition of Red Swoosh by Akamai was tremendous validation of the strategy we embarked on a year ago. And of course, we believe Red Swoosh has good technology, but it's no Kontiki :) For more on this, see Dan Rayburn's StreamingMedia.com post.

It's also ironic that the acquisition was announced the same week Forbes put Akamai on the cover, with a quote from CEO Sagan inside that continues the company's historically negative view of P2P technology.

As another blogger said this morning - "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"

Posted by Jeff Richards at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you are interested in learning more about peer to peer technology - in depth - one of our team members found an excellent thesis paper by Raul Jimenez Contreras written while at the Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm. Very detailed and provides a thorough history of the major P2P platforms from the last several years - KaZaA, Bittorent, Kontiki, etc.

Posted by Jeff Richards at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I read Ben Mezrich's book Bringing Down the House a few years ago and loved it. If you haven't read it, it's a great read about a group of kids at MIT who take a team approach to counting cards and winning millions in Vegas - and it's supposedly based on a true story.

Unfortunately, if you've read House, I'm not sure why you'd read Busting Vegas. It's entertaining, but it's basically the same story with a few shifts in the plot. I read the entire book on a flight to London. Not a bad way to spend a flight, but I wouldn't put this at the top of my reading list.

Posted by Jeff Richards at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)