Thinkful, an online education startup co-founded by a Thiel Fellow, has raised $1 million from a group of investors including Peter Thiel’s FF Angel, RRE Ventures and Quotidian Ventures. Read more »
The growing sales of Internet connected televisions and DVD players has helped bolster the demand for online video content. One would think that it would be new content, but that’s not the case. People want to watch movies and other broadcast fare, a study shows. Read more »
A shell company says it owns the right to insert certain types of ads into online videos. Its lawsuit against popular viral site Buzzfeed shows how the problem of “patent trolling” is touching every part of the technology and media industry. Read more »
Affine Systems, which makes software to scan and sort the content in online video, has raised nearly $5 million in a new funding round, according to a regulatory filing. Affine’s software gives advertisers the tools to analyze online video in a way that’s similar to television. Read more »
The impact of digital technology has shattered long-established monopolies and ways of making money in the newspaper publishing industry. Today, publishers must find ways to subsidize content-creation costs directly, and this report examines a few different approaches, from more flexible paywalls to charging users directly for access and mimicking the business models of other industries, such as online gaming. Companies mentioned in this report include Ford, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There’s nothing flashy about broadband services, but that won’t stop many operators from making those services a core focus as time goes on. Due to growing consumer adoption and better profit margins than traditional video services’, high-speed Internet is likely to be the future of the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
When it comes to offering recommendations and personalized services to users sifting through mountains of digital content, online video could learn a few lessons from the music world. We’ve yet to see an offering for online movies and TV that mimics, say, Pandora’s highly personalized service. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
These days, the amount of content available for the average TV junkie is astronomical, and it’s the rare series that doesn’t bundle its episodes with an online presence. And though most television executives at this stage are relatively blunt about the fact that the web elements ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The live-stream video market is entering an upturn in the typical hockey stick growth chart. Tens of millions of desktop viewers use browser-based players to find live-streaming content on an ever-increasing number of web sites and mobile devices. Raw viewership will grow fastest in the consumer segment, where sites like Justin.tv and Qik are focused. Those like Kyte, Livestream, Ustream and BitGravity, meanwhile, primarily offer platforms to commercial content providers seeking a mass audience. And as the market grows, both in terms of viewers and of the number and type of content providers, it will support both those with a diverse, one-stop-shop approach and those who specialize in particular content and audiences. Additional companies mentioned in this report include YouTube/Google, Sony, HTC, Vivu, Facebook and Apple. To see a full list of companies and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
TV apps will soon be “everywhere,” according to attendees of a recent GigaOM Bunker event examining the future of the TV market. But how that market will develop, and which TV platforms will win out, is yet to be ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
On November 9, we gathered more than 50 entrepreneurs, executives and investors at our San Francisco offices to engage in a town hall-style forum. The topic of discussion was to consider what could happen if we had the “app store” revolution on our TV sets. Would ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Several significant events set the tone for the digital media ecosystem during in the second quarter. First among these was the release of the iPad, the impact of which went far beyond device uptake; among other things it does not support Adobe Flash, which has impacted the entire chain of web-based video production from content sites re-encoding video to new tools being developed for HTML5-based advertising.
Another principal event in the quarter was the announcement of Google TV, a software platform built on Android 2.1, Google Chrome and Flash 10.1 that will be incorporated into a variety of companion devices including TV sets, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. The platform offers significant advancements in merging TV and the web experience (although TiVo says it has done just that for years). Sony and Logitech have both announced plans to launch Google TV products in fall 2010.
Also in the second quarter, both YouTube and Hulu refreshed their sites, reflecting the market’s growing maturity. But while YouTube spent the quarter on the defensive in its ongoing legal battle with Viacom over copyright infringement, Hulu was on the offensive, introducing new services and preparing a paid subscription service launch. A paid service would bring new revenue streams to the video site, and would put Hulu in more direction competion with Netflix, which is increasingly shifting toward its streaming video service, away from its former mainstay of DVDs by mail. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
TV programmers are too invested in the economics of bundling to let a la carte access become an effective substitute for bundled service, unless compelled to by ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
2009 is not shaping up to be a golden year for media. But with business models in flux, the timing may just be right for unconventional thinking about the future of entertainment distribution. As providers’ business interests and consumers’ consumption interests come into alignment over the ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
We are approaching a time when you can rent almost any movie through your TV with the push of a button, and companies like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster and your cable operator are all diving in. But what happens when proximity, variety and convenience are moot? ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
