Facebook is seeing more of its users upload and watch videos on its social network, as it increasingly becomes a hub for online video viewing. The social network says its users upload more than 20 million videos and watch more than 2 billion videos per month. Read more »
Redbox will soon get into the Blu-ray rental market, according to company president Mitch Lowe. Speaking at an industry trade show, he said Redbox would use its existing footprint to rent higher-value Blu-ray discs at a premium to its $1 a night DVD rentals. Read more »
Today on the Net: as traffic at Facebook has grown, so too has the number of unique visitors viewing video on the site; Vevo passes Hulu for unique users in April; and Metacafe raises $5 million in debt to help fund its expansion into new verticals. Read more »
Critics were up in arms last week when AT&T announced new usage-based wireless data plans that replace its existing unlimited data plan, essentially capping data usage on its wireless network. But just how much video can a person watch under the new plans? Read more »
Tremor Media has struck a deal to begin offering Innovid‘s interactive pre-roll ads across its video ad network. The strategic partnership, terms of which weren’t disclosed, will result in a co-branded, co-marketed form of pre-roll ads available to more than 1,700 video publishers that use Tremor’s […] Read more »
Driven by ubiquitous broadband, increasingly smart devices and free, easy-to-use video chat services, the number of video calls consumers make could increase nearly ten-fold over the next five years, leading to mobile video chat revenues reaching $3.4 billion by 2015, according to research from GigaOM Pro. Read more »
Instead of producing web video on its own, Next New Networks now seeks to be an incubator of talent, striking rev share agreements with independent creators who can leverage its studio, brand and marketing muscle to increase audience awareness. Read more »
Vimeo is formally accepting submissions for its first annual festival and awards program, seeking to identify the most innovative videos on the web. With a panel of celebrity judges and a $25,000 first prize, the online video site hopes to drum up interest in the program. Read more »
Google first introduced its WebM Project a few weeks ago at its I/O developers conference, launching the royalty free, open source video format with support from Firefox and Opera web browsers. But notably missing from the list of supporting applications was Google’s own Chrome browser. Read more »
Today on the Net: Satellite providers Dish Network and DirecTV go head-to-head with competing “free HD for life” offers, Apple unleashes an HTML5 showcase to show off what you can do without Adobe Flash, and BSkyB pays £160 million for Virgin Media’s content arm, VMtv. Read more »
Watch out Livestream, Ustream, and Justin.tv: YouTube could launch live streaming. Doing so would enable YouTube users (or some trusted partners) to create live events on their own, one of the more sought-after feature requests for the online video sharing site. Read more »
The number of people turning to web video continues to increase, with 69 percent of US Internet users watching videos online, according to Pew’s “State of Online Video” report. But much of that growth is coming from Internet users that are young, educated and well-off. Read more »
Today on the Net: Nielsen eyes a $1.75 billion IPO; despite big box office hits like Avatar, 3-D proponents Jeffrey Katzenberg and James Cameron foresee slow adoption of home 3-D TV and FLO TV hasn’t been nearly as successful as Qualcomm had hoped, the CEO says. Read more »
MeFeedia is making an offer to publishers that want to track videos delivered via HTML5: let us handle your analytics for free. With the rollout of its new analytics suite for HTML5 video, MeFeedia customers can now track engagement metrics across a number of mobile devices. Read more »
More people may be watching online video than ever, but Comcast doesn’t see Google TV as a competitive threat, according to COO Steve Burke. Instead, the exec said today that Comcast’s real competition comes from satellite TV providers and telco companies entering the pay TV market. Read more »
Today on the Net: comScore’s April numbers show YouTube dominating, Hulu flat and Vevo taking a big leap; NBC chief Jeff Zucker will get a $30-$40 million exit deal after the Comcast deal closes and Steve Jobs says Google and Adobe are picking fights with Apple. Read more »
Transpera has raised a $9 million round of financing to advance its mobile video ad network. Operating a video ad platform that is device-agnostic, Transpera can serve ads across multiple mobile devices, including the Apple iPhone and iPad, Google Android devices and Blackberry smartphones. Read more »
Hulu’s long-awaited subscription service might be rolled out as a video service on Xbox Live, which, if true, would be the first time Hulu actually agreed to allow its TV and film content to be made available on the television, rather than just through PCs. Read more »
Sonic Solutions has agreed to purchase DivX to help accelerate its rollout of over-the-top video services. By bringing DivX into the fold, Sonic will have access to a wider range of consumer electronic devices that can play back DivX-formatted video files, while enhancing its DRM protection. Read more »
Today on the Net: FLO TV hopes to use the World Cup to garner more subscribers to its mobile video service, YouTube Leanback could get a big boost from being a part of Google TV, and ESPN expects big things from 3-D. Read more »
Based on a consumer survey, ABC may be looking to roll out a premium online subscription service that would give users access to more content than is currently available on ABC.com and Hulu. But who wins and who loses if it were to do so? Read more »
In the same way that Apple’s iPad gained consumer acceptance where other tablet devices failed, Google TV may finally be coming to market at a time when the user mindset — and the supporting online services — might actually be ready for such a product. Read more »
Employers in the UK and in Latin America can expect their workers to miss significant amounts of man hours over the month-long 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament, unless those employees can find ways to watch the games at work. Read more »
Sunday Sky takes existing web assets, such as photos and product descriptions, and transforms those assets into a limitless number of web videos. Because the video is created dynamically by relying on product information, the videos are always up-to-date with the latest information from the website. Read more »
Is Comcast’s plan to become more of a media player by merging its cable networks with NBC Universal a distraction to its core cable business? Does adding NBC actually return less value to investors? And can lack of vision actually be a good thing? Read more »
Today on the Net: Time Warner and NBC Universal say they won’t retool their video libraries for the iPad, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee is calling for NBC to divest its stake in Hulu, and ActiveVideo takes Verizon to court for patent infringement Read more »
Intel could add Google’s WebM to the list of video formats that have hardware acceleration built into its processors for consumer electronics devices. But that support won’t come in time for the first generation of Google TV products to leverage it. Read more »
Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Epix and Nickelodeon are just a few of the video publishers that have created Flash-enabled websites that are optimized for viewing on Google Android devices, according to an Adobe Mobile Showcase page that has since been taken down. Read more »
Netflix expects its DVD-by-mail business to peak in 2013, at which point its Watch Instantly streaming service will drive growth in the company. That’s the gist of a slideshow posted on the company’s jobs site detailing its plans and the competitive outlook for its streaming business. Read more »
Today on the Net: Fox Mobile launches a Hulu lookalike for mobile devices with 25 content partners, Rogers formally launches its On Demand Online TV Everywhere service with 1,500 hours of content and Mediacom taps Clearleap to manage VOD and ads in its local markets Read more »
In a case that is increasingly starting to look like a battle between Silicon Valley and Hollywood, eBay, Facebook, IAC and Yahoo an amicus brief in support of YouTube in its case against Viacom, arguing that a decision in favor of Viacom could stifle web innovation. Read more »
The BBC will be one of the first content providers in the UK to have video available on the Apple iPad, with an iPad-ready version of its iPlayer site ready for viewing on the device when it becomes available to users in the country. Read more »
It’s not easy being TiVo these days. The company reported first quarter earnings yesterday, which included a widening loss and a continued decline in its subscriber numbers, despite the fact that it released the latest version of its DVR, the TiVo Premiere, during the quarter. Read more »
Google exec Nikesh Arora says video on the web will drive a huge shift in advertising dollars over the next five years, but that the industry still has a long way to go to figure out how best to monetize those video on the web. Read more »
Today on the Net: the BBC iPlayer gets an upgrade to hook it into more social networks, RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser gets a new gig as a part-time venture partner with Accel, and Verizon doubles the number of VOD titles that are available to FiOS customers Read more »
Kylo, the web video browser software from Hillcrest Labs, was blocked from accessing Hulu just hours after it launched back in March. Now the software been updated with a new workaround that will allow users to watch Hulu videos. But how long will the hack work? Read more »
Live Matrix, founded by Sanjay Reddy and Nova Spivack, aims to index all the web’s events, including not just live video and audio webcasts, but also gaming events, auctions, events taking place in virtual worlds, tournaments, contests and product and content launches on other websites. Read more »
Consumer electronics manufacturers, take note: If you want to roll out Google TV on the next version of your connected TV or Blu-ray player, you’re going to need some serious horsepower just to get up and running. Will Google’s hardware specs lead to a sticker shock? Read more »
Today on the Net: the BBC seeks to block third parties from building iPlayer applications, Sony will offer HBO shows for sale on the PS3 gaming console, and Rovi makes a play to get on the Google TV platform. Read more »
Not content to simply ride on Google TV’s coattails, Best Buy announced this morning that it is working with TiVo to integrate the DVR maker’s software into its Insignia brand TVs, allowing the big box retailer to push broadband video services of its own. Read more »
