Brightcove

PaidContent.org writes about Jeremy Allaire's new venture - an IP video startup called Brightcove formed to encourage democratization of video production and distribution.

The Cambridge-based company wants a hand in all facets of IP video or Internet TV -- creation, delivery and monetization.

think of it as RealNetworks done right with a consumer video service, a backend service, and other allied services needed for everyone from small publishers, like bloggers, to small-to-mid sized media companies and online VOD startups, develop and distribute video easily and cost-effectively. In essence, an open-publishing model.

Allaire explains: "The online service will operate with a consumer-facing service that provides access to programming and content published in the service, and will also provide a very rich service to publishers and rights-holders interested in a direct-to-consumer distribution path for video products. The service will also provide tools to website operators generally, who are interested in economically participating in the online video revolution."

Om Malik adds: "Instead of developing a hardware platform, the company will base everything it does on open standards, and will essentially be a software platform that will run on any kind of device - Microsoft Media Centers to TiVo to connected DVD players. In other words, [Allaire] is gunning for a market that is the super nova of consumer-acquired devices."

Blogging 2.0

Fred Wilson writes:

I see four fundamental improvements that differentiate Blogging 1.0 from Blogging 2.0.

The first is the notion of the post as the central piece of content. About.com had some of this in its DNA, but Geocities and Tripod did not. Posts drive freshness, frequency, and syndication and make Blogging 2.0 much more exciting than Bloggin 1.0 was.

The second is related to the first. Permalinks have changed the game fundamentally. Linking to content was not really possible until permalinks came along. Now each piece of content is a persistent object that has a unique identifier. This is a huge deal and this concept did not exist in Blogging 1.0.

The third is RSS. Blogging 1.0 was a web experience. Blogging 2.0 is a everywhere experience. Content was a solid in Blogging 1.0 and its a fluid in Blogging 2.0.

The fourth is CPC and contextual ad networks. In Blogging 1.0, the only way to monetize the business was with banners. And brand advertisers were not thrilled with paying high CPMs to advertise on "amateur content". With the arrival of CPC and contextual ad networks, this is no longer the case. Wherever advertisers can get clicks, they'll place their ads. The result is a huge increase in the potential revenues.

Newrules Enterprise

Silicon Valley Watcher writes:

The first rule of the newrules enterprise is that it is new, brand spanking new.

The second rule is it is staffed by a small group of executives that know the most efficient business processes for what the venture will produce.

The third rule is to stick as much open source/industry platform software and hardware onto the business processes as you can, creating a highly automated highly-efficient business venture with virtually free IT.

The fourth rule is to use as much web services IT as possible.

The fifth rule is you do not use venture capital--you and four others throw your credit cards into a bowl and work free for six-months to create the nucleus of the venture. It’s an atomic ventures world. It’s the $40k startup. When IT, and other infrastructure costs are so cheap and available to everyone then knowledge capital becomes the competitive differentiator—who is on your team.

The sixth rule is don’t put anybody on the payroll unless you absolutely have to.

The seventh rule is the venture does not go public, it stays private. It will have private investors/owners and those investors would be paid in dividends. By staying private newrules enterprises are a blackbox corporation. Competitors cannot peek inside because it is private and thus cannot benchmark their business model against it.

The eighth rule of the newrules enterprise is that there will be a lot of intellectual property that is not patented but is kept secret.

The ninth rule is don’t put anybody on the payroll unless you absolutely have to.

The tenth rule, and the most important, is that the newrules enterprise uses blogging techniques and technologies to market research/help produce and sell products and services that near-perfectly match the needs of their customer communities.

Clicks and Conversions

Seth Godin writes about web advertising on sites like Google:

It's not just the click, of course. It's the conversion.

Which means that there's room for middlemen who will optimize clicks AND conversion for advertisers willing to pay.

And that's where the future lies, I think. Something that's a cross between what Fred's talking about with www.cj.com. A whole cottage industry of people who figure out how to turn adwords into clicks into conversions.

Turning this over to outsiders is a little like using a rep firm to be your salesforce. You can do it, but to really win, you've got to do it yourself.

If it were me, I'd start a few competing groups within my organization and challenge them to "buy" customers as cheaply as possible. Cheapest group wins. If you get good at doing it in house, go ahead and start taking on clients!

And I'll finish by reminding you of my biggest rant on this topic: conversion skills are worth ten times what clickthrough's worth.

RSS for Field Sales

Charlie Wood writes:

To help their mobile sales forces stay productive, most companies have invested in the infrastructure of mobile data delivery—laptops, PDAs, cellphones, and BlackBerrys. But infrastructure is not enough. What remains missing is an application to track the constant stream of information a mobile sales force depends on, including:

* current product information, price lists, presentations, competitive information, positioning papers, and data sheets from sales enablement and product marketing personnel at corporate headquarters
* updates to outstanding customer support issues, critical situation notifications, consulting engagement status reports, and license renewal reminders from internal corporate systems
* breaking news, corporate financial results, and govenmental filings regarding prospects, customers, and competitors from external data sources
* best practices, win-loss reports, anecdotal information, contacts, and "watercooler talk" from peers

Such an application can be found in an Enterprise RSS system that continously aggregates information from a wide varierty of sources (including people, automated systems, and information feeds), provides a management interface to let adminstrators and users specify which information gets routed to whom and how, and pushes that information directly to users' desktops and handheld devices. To enable information sharing among peers, the system should also provide its users the ability to publish their own feeds.

TECH TALK: The Future of Search: Perspectives (Part 3)

Bambi Francisco writes:

Our own content will likely dwarf what's currently being created by large media and the traditional providers of information.

The abundant flow of digital information on the Web is thanks in large part to all of us who are creating it, from the plethora of blogs, e-mail correspondence, instant messages, to the ever-increasing amount of digital music, photos and videos.

As everything becomes digital, the need to organize the information becomes even more urgent. That's why I believe that organizing our digital world is not a minor feature, as some have said about desktop searching. In fact, these features will be far more useful and addicting than we think.

In a digital world, there is no delineation between video, text, audio and voice. It'll be delivered by anyone. What does it matter who's bringing this information to me or giving me the platform to exchange information on?

Joe Wilcox (Microsoft Monitor): Search is one of several mechanisms (fast data connectivity is another) that could catalyst alternative platforms. Search would give tremendous utility to portable devices connected to the Internet or home or corporate networks. With so much computing focus on information and so much information stored somewhere else (meaning not locally), ubiquitous search could unify the utility of many disparate types of devices. For example, in the advancing communications era, a smartphone could offer Internet search, e-mail, instant messaging and even digital content capabilities like taking pictures without the need for a Windows PC… So like Microsoft integrated the browser into Windows to fight off the threat posed by the Web, so the company is looking to tie the utility of search to its operating system. Because any technology utility where no Windows is required threatens Microsoft's core franchise. And I'm betting some very smart people recognize that search is one of several utilities that could catalyst smaller devices into serious alternative platforms.

BBC News writes:

Search is not just about finding your way around the web. It is now about unlocking information hidden in the gigabytes of documents, images and music on hard drives.

For all these advances, search is still a clumsy tool, often failing to come up with exactly what you had in mind.

In order to do a better job, search engines are trying to get to know you better, doing a better job of remembering, cataloguing and managing all the information you come across.

"Personalisation is going to be a big area for the future," said Yahoo's Yonca Brunini.

"Whoever cracks that and gives you the information you want is going to be the winner. We have to understand you to give you better results that are tailored to you."

This is perhaps the Holy Grail of search, understanding what it is you are looking for and providing it quickly.

John Battelle on his blog about what to expect in 2005: Mobile will finally be plugged into the web in a way that makes sense for the average user and a major mobile innovation - the kind that makes us all say - Jeez that was obvious - will occur. At the core of this innovation will be the concept of search. The outlines of such an innovation: it'll be a way for mobile users to gather the unstructured data they leverage every day while talking on the phone and make it useful to their personal web (including email and RSS, in particular). And it will be a business that looks and feels like a Web 2.0 business - leveraging iterative web development practices, open APIs, and innovation in assembly - that makes the leap.

Tomorrow: Advertising and Innovations

Related Entries:  [All]
TECH TALK: The Future of Search: Memex [April 8, 2005]
TECH TALK: The Future of Search: Information Marketplaces [April 7, 2005]
TECH TALK: The Future of Search: The Wider View [April 6, 2005]
TECH TALK: The Future of Search: MyToday [April 5, 2005]
TECH TALK: The Future of Search: RSS to OPML [April 4, 2005]