Uncategorized

Veoh has some 100,000 content producers whose videos are watched by 28 million unique monthly visitors, founder Dmitry Shapiro told me in this interview I conducted in Los Angeles last week. He said that key to success of the monetization of online video is an engine that connects video content with related advertising.  He says […]

Pioneering video blogger Amanda Congdon has a new show, producer, studio/backer and her own production facility in Venice, California. Last week in Los Angeles, I caught up with her and her producer Mario Librandi for update on Amanda’s new show "Sometimesdaily" along with some pointers about video bloggging. — Andy Plesser

HOLLYWOOD — YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley is speaking tonight (photo above) at the YouTube kick-off event for its new film program featuring shortform films from filmmakers from around the globe.  He told the audience of Hollywood insiders gathered at the Henry Fonda Theater a few minutes ago: "It is about expanding business opportunities for filmmaker… […]

Kosmix, the new search engine company well-funded by Jeff Bezos, Accel (Facebook), LightSpeed and others, creates popular informational pages around the topics of health and travel. It will soon allow individuals to create search-powered sites of virtually any personal or professional interest. I spoke with co-founder Anand Rajaraman in New York last month.  He told […]

ThePlatform, the Seattle-based video distribution platform for large online video publishers, has been at it for eight years, long before most of us were talking about this business.  Just last month the company announced an agreement with PBS and its member stations to power online video distribution. The company was acquired by Comcast two years […]

The New York Times has just launched the public beta of TimesPeople, a social networking platform for visitors to the site who want to share and recommend content. The new program, which only works on the Firefox browser, can be downloaded here.  In addition to sharing within the Times site, the program allows users to […]

Great to see original content by clever independent online video producers like Hayden Black move up the mainstream.  According to Kara Swisher’s report today, the director/writer of "Goodnight Burbank" is getting his show up on Hulu. Congrats! I’ve pasted Kara’s interview above. — Andy Plesser

Earlier today, Brightcove, the big video distribution platform for publishers, announced a major development.  It is providing a number of enhancements including a high quality Flash stream for long form videos and a means to generate metadata around content, making it more discoverable. It has been in beta with some customers and will be fully […]

LOS ANGELES — Filmaka, the Los Angeles-based studio/incubator/network for aspiring filmmakers around the world, announced a partnership today with WhatOnEarthIsGoingOn? Ltd. to solicit content for its socially relevant online channel. Finalists get a cash award along with visibility on the Filmaka.com site. In Los Angeles last week at the AlwaysOn conference, I interviewed Filmaka president […]

Here at MediaPost online video conference in Manhattan, I caught up with Matt Cutler of Visible Measures, the Boston-based company that analyzes the way the video is consumed.  It has raised $19 million in venture capital. Today, the company announced a new ad effectiveness analysis product to monitor the impact of viral video campaigns, including […]

YuMe, one of the mosts prominent of the emerging new online video ad networks, has inked a deal with Microsoft.  Beginning this summer, MSN will employ the YuMe system to insert advertising around unsold inventory.  According to a spokesperson for YuMe, "YuMe now represents more than 500 million streams each month and reaches more than […]

SplashCast widgets are propagated in social networks for a number of entertainment and media companies.  Michael Berkley, CEO of the Portland-based company told me about how widgets are spread.  He says that an install base of 10,000 users is critical. His company has a deal with SonyBMG for 20 widget channels.  The two companies share […]

StumbleUpon, the video referral site where registered users recommend videos to others, has grown to 5 million registered users who "stumble." or recommend, some 350 million Web pages per month, Garrett Camp, co-founder, told Beet.TV in this interview.    The San Francisco-based was purchased by eBay last year, but operates independently.  The company recently expanded […]

Today, as part of big site redesign, MySpace is unveiling a new video player.  We haven’t seen it yet, but here is what the company is saying about it: "The new player includes scrubber, time-stamp, volume memory, new menu system, greater sharing functionality and more…..The player offers a more flexible advertising platform with multiple Ad […]

LOS ANGELES — Yesterday at the AlwaysOn conference, the Seattle-based, enterprise video search company Pluggd, relaunched with a new name,  Delve, and as a new business.  The company is taking its deep search and tagging system and into a full-blown video publishing company.  They are entering a somewhat mature and heavily funded sector where  it […]

BURBANK — Warner Brothers Television will broadly syndicate original programming on a number of popular video sharing destination and device platforms, the company announced today. Beginning in September, videos on branded channels will be syndicated onto DailyMotion, Veoh, Joost and onto Sling and Tivo. Here’s a statement from Warner Brothers: "The channels will launch in […]

LOS ANGELES – Flixwagon, the Boston/Tel Aviv-based developer of live mobile video streaming technology, is streaming live video on an Apple iPhone, on a demonstration basis.  The application works on an unlocked iPhone for the moment, which means it is not practical for most users.  The company hopes this demonstration will lead to integration into […]

BEVERLY HILLS — Video consumption on MySpace far outpaces Facebook, and all the other social media sites in video streams served and unique users, according to Nielsen Online’s April numbers, Beet.TV has learned.    Video streams on MySpace were 290 million vs. a mere 8 million on Facebook.  Unique users of videos on MySpace were […]

StumbleUpon, the recommendation platform for video consumption, organizes primarily videos from major video sharing sites.  Having videos discovered, or "stumbled," is a powerful way in which videos are propagated. Last week I spoke with StumbleUpon co-founder Garrett Camp. He has set his sites on pulling major media sites into his network.  For big publishers from […]

LOS ANGELES — Jesse Draper, one of the stars of the hit Nickelodeon show Naked Brothers Band, is about to star in weekly series about innovation in Silicon Valley in a show titled Valley Girl.  The show will debut next month.  Google CEO Tim Schmidt and Craig Newmark are among several Valley executives and VC’s […]