Back in the day of early Television production and distribution, the contestants in the competition were ABC, NBC and CBS. Over time, these networks not only produced their own content but they distributed content from production houses.
Today, the challengers are players like Joost and Babelgum.
Are they? Well, not yet at least, but people like Kazaa and Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom and FastWeb’s Silvio Scaglia are betting that they can become the leaders in the distribution of video content online.
Joost - initially christened The Venice Project and renamed Joost this year - is the media darling of 2007, much like YouTube was in 2006. People seem to have forgotten that these technologist made their name by creating a system that let consumers rip off music labels, the sister companies of the film studios and TV networks they are now courting. We wish them well, but it’s ironic that business seems to forgive and forget so easily.
By virtue of being bought out by Google, YouTube lost its shine, leaving a void that Joost is too happy to fill.
This IHT article does a good job explaining the nuances in the two competitors’ models:
Joost is going after deals with big-name television companies and producers, while Babelgum is targeting mostly small, independent productions that would have otherwise have trouble getting distributed.
It also notes that this is already a crowded marketplace:
The market for streamed videos on the Internet is already crowded by sites like MySpace, YouTube, Veoh and many others, most of which are mainly outlets for user-generated content.
Indeed, it’s one thing to create a platform for user-generated content and another for professional content. But as the model evolves, one needs to ask: why would professional companies with thousands of content pieces, millions of users and enough money to pour into hosting and serving of rich media bother to partner up with a new middleman?
Do not get us wrong, WatchMojo.com is the kind of company that is well-suited for partnerships with either Joost or Babelgum, but the simple reality is that established media companies might not be really all that interested with partnering up with a new player and building their business. Viacom partnered up with Joost, true, but they did that mainly to give the one finger salute to YouTube, whom with 100M daily streams per day is an established player. To boot, owned by Google and its $10B cash and equivalents, Viacom is looking for a nice bounty; signing with YouTube’s pseudo competitor Joost only strengthens Viacom’s hand.
This leads us to the next point: if history is any lesson, the media companies like Viacom, Time Warner, News Corp. will not even really want to partner with a new player. It’s one thing to partner with an established player (AOL.com, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.), but between competing with a new player in a space or doing something in-house, history suggests they will do it themselves.
Of course, added distribution is always nice, and Joost has enough goodwill (ironic given the fact that at the helm of Kazaa, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom were not allowed to enter the US out of fear of getting arrested…) to ride that into large viewership. YouTube’s already got viewership as it tries desperately to morph out of a user-generated content platform to something more professional. And Scaglia’s Midas touch might make it a winner as well.
All in all, we agree with Mr. Scaglia that it’s early in the broader game:
“To define what the competition is, you have to have a clear idea of the market, and we’re probably at a stage before that,” Scaglia said in a recent interview. “The Venice Project is probably a competitor, but that’s good for us because it’s nice not to be alone when you are going after a new technology.”
Interesting to see how the game plays out, that’s for sure. All those players will need content, that’s for sure.
Check out WatchMojo.com’s 4,000+ video library here.
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