Rovio has been calling these efforts “one of the world’s biggest video networks,” and Brightcove’s Executive Chairman Jeremy Allaire, whose company is powering Rovio’s video streaming, told me Tuesday that he sees this as an inflection point for video franchises. But what do the famous birds and their disdain for pigs really mean for the future of television?

These birds are up to something

First of all, Rovio’s move into the world of original video programming is pretty ingenious. The company established an audience with its games, and now offers its ad-supported video series through the very same apps — no additional installs needed. “They clearly are in a really powerful position,” said Allaire.

Essentially, the company is using its games as very effective trojan horses, in turn demonstrating how iPads, Android tablets and mobile phones have become an important piece of of the puzzle when you’re in the entertainment business. It also shows how much they’re starting to change the game for the TV industry.

Netflix started its streaming efforts on PCs, but most of its streaming is nowadays happening on connected devices. Game consoles like Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 are seeing the lion’s share of use, but devices like Apple TV are growing quickly as well. Netflix owes these devices its success. Without ways to get its content on the TV screen, the company would have never been in a position where it could spend $100 million on a show like House of Cards.

Rovio, on the other hand, is primarily a mobile company. Mobile devices are where people are playing Angry Birds, and it will be where they’re going to watch their weekly episodes of Angry Birds Toons. If the show turns out to be a success (and that’s still a big if) it could turn out to be the first big original programming success story for mobile devices.

And that could have an impact on the industry beyond birds and pigs, by signaling the industry that it doesn’t have to rely on traditional distribution mechanisms anymore. “You can establish a new programming franchise over the internet” thanks to mobile and connected devices, argued Allaire in our conversation.

When pigs fly

However, the flip side of this is that Angry Birds Toons also raises the bar for content companies to stand out and actually reach the consumer. It’s hard to compete with 263 million monthly active users. Heck, it’s hard to compete at all in a sea of millions of apps if all you have to offer is yet another show.

“In some sense, the business model hasn’t changed at all,” admitted Allaire. You still need to have highly compelling content, you still need to market that content effectively — and doing both  effectively is likely going to cost you a lot of money. And if you’re in mobile, you’re going to also need a really good app.

Birghtcove learned that lesson the hard way over the last couple of months when it failed to establish its app cloud offering, which was meant to provide publishers with an easy way to deploy HTML5-based apps with a native wrapper across a variety of platforms.

Turns out that publishers actually prefer to have true native apps that take advantage of each platform’s strengths and features, which is why Brightcove discontinued app cloud in February. “If you want a premium video experience, you got to put your best foot forward,” acknowledged Allaire when I quizzed him about its app cloud.

The bottom line is that Rovio may demonstrate new ways to enter the game — but that doesn’t mean that the rules have changed. To find large audiences, you still need to be big yourself or partner with a bigger platform.

That’s good news for Rovio and companies like Netflix and YouTube – but not necessarily for a startup looking to change the future of television.

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The list of honorees follows below, and it’s a list packed with newcomers as well as Silicon Valley veterans. Thanks to all for voting in the nomination process, and now that we’ve narrowed it down to five candidates for each award, don’t forget to vote for which person or company you think is most deserving. Voting begins today (the voting page can be found here, and the rules are here) and closes on January 24th.

As a reminder, the Crunchies, a joint production with our friends at Techcrunch and Venturebeat, will take place on Thursday, January 31, 2013, from 7:30pm to 11:30pm at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco. You can purchase tickets here.

So, without any further delay, the nominees for the 2012 Crunchies are as follows:

Best Technology Achievement
Baumgartner Jump
Google Glass
Mars Curiosity
SpaceX docks with International Space Station
Tesla Supercharger Network

Best Collaborative Consumption Service
Airbnb
Get It Now/Postmates
Lyft
TaskRabbit
Uber

Best E-Commerce Application
Fab
Hotel Tonight
Karma/Facebook Gifts
Warby Parker
Zulily

Best Mobile Application
Evernote
Google Maps
Grindr
Instagram
Square

Fastest Rising Startup
Exec
Lyft
Pinterest
Snapchat
Stripe

Best Content Discovery Application
Flipboard
Instapaper
Pinterest
Prismatic
Tumblr

Best Design
Facebook Timeline
Medium
Paper by FiftyThree
Square
Svbtle

Best Bootstrapped Startup
FreshBooks
Instapaper
Nimbus
Techmeme
Upverter

Sexiest Enterprise Startup
Asana
Box
Cloudera
Plexxi
Zendesk

Best International Startup
Hailo
Rovio
Soundcloud
Spotify
Xiaomi

Best Education Startup
Codecademy
Coursera
Edmodo
Khan Academy
Udacity

Best Hardware Startup
Lit Motors
Lockitron
Makerbot
Nest
Raspberry Pi

Best Time Sink
Angry Birds Star Wars
Buzzfeed
Letterpress
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Biggest Social Impact
Donors Choose
Indiegogo
Kickstarter
Kiva
Reddit

Angel of the Year
Michael Arrington
Chris Dixon
Paul Graham
David Lee
Chris Sacca

VC of the Year
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Jim Goetz
Michael Moritz
Peter Thiel

Founder of the Year
Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia (Airbnb)
Kevin and Julia Hartz (Eventbrite)
Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla)
Kevin Systrom (Instagram)
Nir Zuk (Palo Alto Networks)

CEO of the Year
Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Marissa Mayer (Yahoo!)
Larry Page (Google)
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Best New Startup of 2012
Coursera
Crowdtilt
Lyft
Snapchat
Waze

Best Overall Startup of 2012
Fab
Github
Instagram
Palantir
Square

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The physics-based game requires players to build contraptions and vehicles for the pigs that get them to their beloved eggs. Once the device is built, the player guides it toward a map of the eggs, with physics taking over. The title is available today on the iPhone (99 cents), iPad ($2.99), Android (free) and Mac ($4.99).

The game is built in the same art style of Angry Birds and should be familiar to fans of the series. But the title is more like Amazing Alex, which also let users set off physics-based chain reactions and create their own over-engineered devices. That title got off to a strong start but has fallen to #112 on the overall iTunes charts and #58 on the game charts, according to App Annie. Meanwhile, the original Angry Birds, three years old now, is #25 overall  in the iTunes App Store.

Bad Piggies will likely do better because of its Angry Birds heritage combined with the Rovio brand. But in playing the game this morning, I feel like it will also fall short of Angry Birds success, ultimately.

Angry Birds was pure simplicity when you first played it, but the payoff was visceral. It was so satisfying seeing the birds hurtling toward the pigs and seeing all their elaborate structures come tumbling down in different combinations. And all the unique birds with various capabilities created new game play that kept the title interesting.

Bad Piggies feels more complicated up front with less destructive joy. That’s by design, since you’re building something. But the whole act of putting something together in pretty much only one logical configuration and then pressing go is nowhere near as fun as just letting a bird rip in a slingshot. The results are less satisfying as well. If you deliver the pig to the map, you’re done. It’s a little fun to see if you make it there, but there’s not much variance in how a successful run goes. And there’s no glee in watching a big fortress come down.

This is not an in-depth review since I only played a dozen 20 levels this morning. But the early game play makes me doubt that Rovio will have a long-term success like Angry Birds. I haven’t played Amazing Alex in a long time and I don’t think I’m going to look forward to going back to Bad Piggies in the way that I did with Angry Birds. I could be wrong and this could turn out to be a huge hit over the long haul. That would be great considering Rovio raised $42 million on the premise it would be a hit maker. But increasingly, I’m seeing why Rovio stuck with Angry Birds so long: it’s a recipe that works.

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For 2011, Rovio pulled in earnings of $67.6 million before taxes, or 64 percent of total revenue last year. This was based on the performance of three games – Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio – which helped Rovio push its total game downloads to 648 million through the end of last year. Overall, Rovio now has 200 million active monthly users spread out over a number of different gaming platforms.

For Rovio, the numbers could be a run up to an even bigger year in 2013, when it plans to go public in New York or Hong Kong. “This company is preparing itself and getting ready,” Anders Lindeberg, Rovio’s head of investor relations, told Reuters, referring to a public listing.

Angry Birds is another sign of how big apps are becoming, following Instagram’s $1 billion sale to Facebook. But it’s not just downloads, in-app purchases and advertising that are driving revenue. Rovio said merchandising and licensing income accounted for 30 percent of revenue in 2011. That shows that Rovio has been able to leverage its IP into a lot of new business opportunities. Rovio’s marketing boss Peter Vesterbacka has said in the past he believes Rovio can be more than a game maker; an entertainment brand on the order of Disney with more than 1 billion users.

Rovio raised $42 million last year and now has a valuation of $8 to $9 billion. That puts it in the same league as struggling phone maker Nokia. There is still a lot to prove for the Rovio, which is dependent on putting out hit after hit based on the same IP. So far, there hasn’t been any reason to doubt the Angry Birds franchise considering Angry Birds Space zoomed past the 50 million download mark in 35 days. But critics will still question whether the company can keep up the momentum in the years ahead and whether it can build another break out hit that’s not part of the Angry Birds line.

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UPDATE: Reuters is now reporting that Rovio is planning on a version of Windows Phone 7 but the date has not been set. ”We are working towards getting Angry Birds Space to WP7,” Rovio CEO Mikael Hed said. It’s unclear what caused the about-face, though it’s possible that the company simply changed its mind, is conducting some damage control or was persuaded by Microsoft or Nokia, perhaps through financial support. The fact remains that Rovio left Windows Phone out of its Angry Birds Space launch plans and it’s unclear how soon we’ll actually see the app make it to the platform.  (Story continues below)

That’s a big slight for Microsoft and Nokia, who have partnered together and are betting that Windows Phone can become the third main smartphone operating system after Android and iOS. But with Windows Phone shipments still relatively slow, there’s little justification for the expense of porting the phone to the platform, said Versterbacka.

“If you look at activations, Apple’s iOS and Android are clearly bigger than any other platform,” he said. “We want to be on all screens, but we have to consider the cost of supplying the smaller platforms. With Windows Phone it’s a lot of work to technically support it.”

The lack of immediate Angry Birds Space support highlights the challenge Microsoft and Nokia face. They need to get sales going to appeal to app makers. But they need the apps to show off the platform. Both Microsoft and Nokia have paid developers in the past to build apps for them, but that doesn’t sway every developer. The business case needs to be there, even if a financial incentive is thrown in. I have no idea if Microsoft or Nokia offered any financial help to bring over Angry Birds Space but either way, Rovio sees a better use of its resources elsewhere.

I’ve written before about the app advantage enjoyed by Android and iOS. Those two platforms account for a higher percentage of downloads of apps by users compared to their relative marketshare combined. They are known as the platforms for apps and enjoy a big lead in terms of their app library. And that makes it hard for BlackBerry or Windows Phone to close the distance, because developers and consumers continue to want to go where the action is.

Rovio will probably change its mind at some point and support Windows Phone. It likes to be on a lot of platforms. But the boost will be more modest for Windows Phone because it will be late and will just reinforce the image that the top apps appear elsewhere first.

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As an artist who probably makes a substantial income from licensing his music, you might think Neil Young would frown on piracy and file-sharing, but that appears not to be the case, according to an interview he gave at the Dive Into Media conference in Los Angeles. Instead of railing against file-sharers, Young called piracy “the new radio” because it’s “how music gets around.” The musician’s comment puts a lot of the hysteria about copyright infringement into perspective — as we’ve pointed out before, file-sharing and monetization aren’t mutually exclusive, and in many cases a certain amount of so-called “piracy” can actually be good for business, as authors, musicians and even game developers have come to realize.

Comparing piracy to radio is a smart way of looking at the issue: in the early days of the music business, when live performances and record sales were the main revenue generator for artists and publishers, radio itself was seen as a form of piracy (as sheet music was before that). Musicians fulminated about radio stations playing their music for free, and some record labels made their acts sign waivers saying they would not appear on the radio. In the end, of course, radio became a huge revenue driver for music — although it did so in part because record labels and publishers pushed for licensing fees.

Radio was seen as piracy too, but became a publicity engine

But more than just being a source of fees, radio was also a huge publicity engine for music, and eventually this became so obvious that at one point record labels were giving radio stations and disc jockeys “payola” under the table to promote their music. And now we have come full circle with Neil Young’s comment:

I look at the internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone. [...] Piracy is the new radio. That’s how music gets around.

This idea of piracy as being “how content gets around” doesn’t just apply to music either. In a videotaped comment last year about piracy, British author Neil Gaiman — who I interviewed recently about his opposition to the proposed federal anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA — said that he used to be irate about people pirating his work, but eventually came to realize that he was actually selling more copies of his physical books in those countries where piracy was the highest. Brazilian author Paulo Coelho found the same thing, and actually started uploading his own work to files-sharing sites without telling his publisher.

Some game developers — the digital-era equivalent of songwriters and authors, in many ways — have also come to see piracy as being a necessary evil, and in many cases a positive force. Markus Persson, the Swedish developer of the massively popular game Minecraft, has said that he came to see piracy of his game as a form of marketing. And at a recent music-industry conference in Europe, the CEO of superstar game company Rovio (creator of Angry Birds) said that piracy “may not be a bad thing” because it increases demand for the official version of the company’s products.

If you make it easy to get and pay for, piracy isn’t an issue

Even Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has been known to see the virtues of a little piracy, especially in developing markets like China. The Microsoft founder reportedly said of that market: “As long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.” Gates clearly saw pirating as a kind of loss leader, creating eventual market demand.

We’ve described before how one of the reasons why users engage in copyright infringement is that distributors make it too cumbersome to get the official version of whatever the content is, as venture capitalist Fred Wilson complained in a recent post, admitting that he pirated a livestream of a basketball game. But the example of comedian Louis CK — who allowed anyone to download his comedy special for just $5 with no copyright protection, and made over $1 million in less than a week — shows that there is still room for creators to monetize their content, if they make it as easy as possible.

As Andrew Weissman of Union Square Ventures noted in a recent post, information wants to be free — not necessarily free meaning it costs nothing, but free in the sense of being friction-free to access. And if you don’t make it easy for your music or writing or other content to “get around,” as Neil Young puts it, then piracy will take care of that for you.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Flickr user Paul Sapiano

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Samsung is a behemoth in consumer electronics already: Boo-Keun Yoon, president of Samsung Consumer Electronics, said that 1.7 billion units of Samsung electronics goods were sold last year, or roughly two items every second. However, even if the company remains very focused on unit sales, it is also attempting to lay more groundwork for a future where it will also need (and want) to compete on the services beyond the hardware. That’s an area where people like David Eun, who was recently appointed to oversee global media initiatives, will be expected to contribute some bright ideas. And that was, essentially, where the bulk of its TV announcements fell today:

No more new TVs? Well, just one more. Samsung said that Smart TVs sold from 2012 will be equipped with card slots in the back that will let the TVs get updated with all their latest software updates (note: Samsung is using its own proprietary platform for its connected TVs — not Google’s as it has done with smartphones and tablets). These cards will start to ship from 2013. “Our smart TV will get smarter every year, without you needing to buy a new TV set,” promised Samsung’s president Tim Baxter. With the company silent on pricing today, you can probably expect that these newest, no-need-to-renew devices will be sold at a premium. One unveiled and showcased today: the ES8000.

Gestures. A big nod to Kinect here and what it is doing in the connected, interactive TV space at the moment. Also a possible precuror of what we might see coming from Apple? (NSDQ: AAPL) In Samsung’s version, users will be able to use their voices and movements to navigate and control their sets, starting from its SmartHub UI, where all interactive content resides. Samsung also showed off some of the other features that will come with it, such as Fitness, a personal training service that will tailor special workouts for each user.

Samsung Apps. The company has had 20 million TV apps downloaded to date, from among some 25,000 TV apps, with the numbers still growing. The newest addition: those loveable Angry Birds from Rovio. They will come both in the form of games — as well as at least one (possibly more) dedicated channels featuring shorts with the characters. This is also a sign of how Rovio is diversifying and getting as much mileage from those birds as it possibly can. (The Mickey Mouse theory of merchandizing and branding.) This may be Rovio’s first connected TV deal, but it probably won’t be the last. Nor will it be the only content aimed at younger folks: Samsung is also launching a dedicated portal for kids.

Cloud-based content. Samsung will be extending its Media Hub, already on tablets and smartphones, to TVs: it will give users the ability to watch on-demand movies and TV shows seamlessly between different devices. This kind of service has essentially become table stakes in the connected TV world, so no surprises here. However, here’s a thought: while you might assume the Media Hub will only work on Samsung devices, that’s not entirely clear yet, either: the company is keen on releasing APIs — right now to developers wanting to work on its own platform, but potentially I can imagine this also working to make different vendors’ devices more interoperable, too. Other cloud based services included a nice-looking photo-sharing service it calls “Family Story.”

3D services. Another buzzy concept that has yet to really take off. Samsung’s take will be a 3D streaming service, which it will run in partnership with content partners. Today it named NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) Universal as one, which will contribute shows like a 3D version of Battlestar Galactica to the mix.

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A little over a year ago, Rovio laid out plans to hit 100 million downloads in 12 months. They’ve obviously smashed through those goals. And this is all in less than two years after the game was originally launched in December of 2009.

Here are some fun facts about the game and its success:

• It’s been #1 in 79 countries
• Players have already gone through 266 billion levels
• Players have flung 400 billion birds
• Players have collected 44 billion stars
• Players have played collectively 200,000 years in total
• Players were collectively playing 300 million minutes daily

“This is a fantastic landmark achievement for us, and we’re extremely delighted to see such an incredible amount of people enjoying our games,” said Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio. “We remain committed to creating more fun experiences and bringing exceptional quality to Angry Birds Fans everywhere.”

Rovio’s success with Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio has extended to all smartphone platforms and to PC, Mac and the Chrome web browser. The company is about to open its first retail shop in Helsinki and is moving forward with plans to make movies based on its characters.

Here’s a look at the video that Hed used to announce the new milestone for Rovio and Angry Birds.

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A version of the game was also released for the Android Market on October 16. It is also free.

The idea of Cut the Birds is very basic: the player chops birds flying across the screen with a swiping motion before they “hit” the glass, avoiding bombs that look a lot like the birds. The game, at least in the current version, increases in difficulty with more and faster birds. No advertising or any other revenue options are available in the current iteration.

There are many other apps and games that play on and borrow from the fame of Rovio’s original creation, which itself has spawned many of its own official games, and a very large merchandising franchise to boot (the latest: a cookbook).

The difference here is that the birds look like they’ve been lifted directly from the original Rovio game, and the challenge itself from Halfbrick’s original. And you could even argue that the name borrows from the best-selling Cut the Rope, made by a third developer, Chillingo.

As the blog GamePro points out, copying is fairly common in the world of gaming apps. Still, it’s not often that the product of that copying goes straight to the top of the charts.

Solverlabs is a Ukraine-based software developer that has created other games — including at least one other that lifts from Fruit Ninja, the Fruits and Ninja app for BlackBerry App World. That is selling for $0.99. The company also works on enterprise services, listing three different U.S.-based companies among their clients.

Vesterbacka tells paidContent that the app is a “blatant rip-off” but it’s not clear whether Rovio can or will do any more than say that.

We have reached out to both Rovio and Halfbrick, as well as Solverlabs, for further response, but for now, the biggest outcry seems to have come from customers. Even though the game is getting downloaded by the masses, a fair number of of them are also getting fairly loud in their copying accusations, too, via the comments on the App Store page for the app.

It may be that it’s too difficult to try to chase the developer down, but as Om Malik points out, it’s surprising that the games got published in the stores to begin with, and haven’t yet been removed.

We’ll update this post as we learn more.

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