I’ve done research on my own and most of the white-labels charge thousands of dollars a month to get up and running. I’ve recently reached out to Twistage and Fliqz for pricing and support information. (Fliqz makes things easy by saying up front how much they charge.)

If you could do a comparison article, it would really help cut through all the on-line clutter.

Thank youuu!!

Full disclosure – I am a Co-Founder and Creative Director at 1Dawg, LLC

I ran a user-generated video site in late 2006/early 2007. In that time we scaled to 6 Million unique connections in just under five months. The hosting requirements were outrageously expensive for the bootstrapped start-up we were at that time. During the early part of 2007 there was a lot of speculation regarding monetization possibilities for video startups. Google was being dominated by the press with regards to how YouTube was “a bad investment”, video advertising networks didn’t exist yet, and with the recent 1B lawsuit Viacom had slapped on Google; most of the Venture guys crawled into their corners terrified of the DMCA.

I decided to start white-labeling for one reason: I knew my technology was viable, but I needed other people to risk the investment dollars.
When I say “white-label”, I think of a completely branded solution customized to my client’s discretion. The uniqueness in my technology is the fact that we transcode from every known video file format, can customize conversion based on bitrate/resolution and focus on the mobile device market. We believe that 3rd screen is where it’s at. The exact reason why 75% of the users that visited my UGC site were downloading content for iPods, Cell Phones, Zunes, etc. We were also the first user-generated video site to send video on-demand to mobile phones.

I run a boutique firm. We don’t advertise much and we haven’t gotten much press. We have been bootstrapped from the beginning and have a very happy client base. Most of my client’s are based off of referrals. My ideal customer is a startup that would like us to take over their entire IT department. We handle everything from U.I. design to viral marketing. We aren’t just a video distribution platform. We are a full service website design and software development company that just happens to possess a proprietary video transcoding solution. We shave off the 8-12 months of development time and get clients to market in a very short while. Our clients tell us what they want on their sites: social features, video marketplaces, crazy ad systems, etc. We look at every client separately and deliver a stable solution that we guarantee will scale. Our solution isn’t right for everyone, but we have proven to be reliable for a number of companies and we love what we do.

The whole idea behind utilizing white-label solutions is to speed up market timing, yet keep the home-grown image. If anyone is interested in chatting about the online video space, I am happy to answer questions. My direct e-mail is: zhurst (at) gmail

If you are interested in watching a short screen cast of the technology in action, please follow this link:

http://www.1dawgscreencast.com

Hundreds of professional media companies rely on thePlatform to manage billions of videos every year. thePlatform’s system manages the entire logistics process behind the publication of broadband video from the content owner to the consumer.

Media companies and video sites rely on thePlatform’s services to manage their media, generate revenue from their content, syndicate media to outlets and create unique broadband video players.

Some customers include BBC, CNBC, CBS’s College Sports TV, Comcast, Corus Entertainment, Gannett, Helio, HIT Entertainment, PBS KIDS Sprout, Sony BMG, The Hearst Corporation, Verizon Wireless, Vongo, and numerous other undisclosed media companies.

thePlatform also has the largest collection of pre-integrated partner technologies and an open approach for assisting media companies with their online and mobile video initiatives. Partners involved in thePlatform’s Framework (partner program) include:

Advertising & Monetization
• Adap.TV
• BlackArrow
• CSG Systems
• DoubleClick
• Lightningcast
• Panache
• PayPal
• ScanScout
• SpotXchange

Content Delivery
• Akamai
• BitGravity
• Cisco Systems
• Edgecast Networks
• GridNetworks
• Highwinds
• Internap
• Limelight Networks
• MediaMelon
• OnStream Media

Playback Experience
• Apple Corp.
• Adobe Systems
• Microsoft Corp.
• Move Networks

Transcoding
• Digital Rapids
• On2
• Rhozet
• RipCode
• Telestream

Content Syndication
• AT&T
• Clearspring
• Comcast.net
• GoTV
• iTunes Podcasts
• MobiTV
• MSN Video
• Sprint
• Verizon Wireless
• Yahoo
• YouTube

Professional Services
• Ascertane
• Cypress Consulting
• Genex
• Online Video Service
• Schematic

Digital Asset Management
• ClearStory Systems
• North Plains Systems

Content Protection
• Microsoft Corp.
• Widevine Technologies

Technology companies interested in participating in thePlatform Framework and utilizing its application programming interface (API) should check us out at http://www.thePlatform.com.

In a nutshell, I’d say that our key differentiators are:
- Our platform is open-source, and therefore widely supported and inexpensive
- Our technology is geared towards high degrees of collaboration and interaction allowing sites to significantly increase user engagement
- Our platform is easy to install – adding interactive video to a site takes minutes not days or weeks using the extensions to popular web platforms and reference implementations in PHP and Ruby.

Check out http://www.kaltura.com to learn more.

Other services I’ve used are Brightcove, Vimeo, blip.tv, and YouTube. As a consumer choice I love Vimeo, and use it for all my personal projects. Brightcove’s API is cumbersome, and they seem behind the curve from a technology standpoint, but they have my favorite ad-serving options. blip.tv is good, but not the best for a CMS backend, in my experience.

Magnify’s view is the video is a ‘spark plug’ that creates community engagement, discussion, and participation. So a player is just that – part of a solution.

The good news is this isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ problem, so there’s room for a number of solutions.

We’re very excited about the 32,000 sites that are using Magnify.net to solve a suite of 4 problems.

1. Video Discovery. Not all sites want to make video, or count on visitors to upload, so being able to find and automatically aggregate and update a dynamic video collection is pretty cool.

2. Video Hosting. Sure, your visitors want to upload – and you want to make sure you own (and control) those videos. After all submitted content should be special in your community. Magnify Upload is rock solid and free.

3. Content Management (CMS). This means page layout, rss integration, search, curation, peer review, meta-data management, trouble reports, DMCA compliance, widget integration, webcam uploads and more.

4. Ad Serving. Once you’ve found video, uploaded video, created video pages, and provided traffic – then you need an ad server that can turn those pages into revenue for you – using your ad network relationships.

Oh, and then there’s member management. Profiles, Reputation System, Opt-In friend lists, Member email blasts, and management of community standards (including approval of comments and reviews if you wish).

Offering a suite of community-centric video services is a great place for us to be. Fast moving, fun, but not really “white label” more like a ‘software as a service’ platform – with a free as our base product.

Looking for more feature and ways to build on Magnify.net? Stay tuned :)

Steve Rosenbaum
CEO
Magnify.net

While this is a nice little service, the real quality is a company that can come and service all of your video hosting, framework and ALL social networking capabilities in one CMS. Reality Digital’s Opus platform is unbeatable. They’re releasing Opus2 soon which will stand out in this emerging market with tons of new features that will further solidify their stance on top of the market in the big boy arena.

Clients: Viacom, Adobe, Hearst, Fox, Comedy Central, MLB, Travel Channel, MTV, VH1