VentureHacks.com just did an article that compares Hollywood to the Silicon Valley Start Up industry. Pretty Insightful, their theory....
Business plans are scripts, entrepreneurs are writers, engineers are talent, VCs are studios, angels are independent financiers, recruiters are casting agents, lawyers are lawyers, advisors are agents, points are options, TechCrunch {SlashDot Dang it!} is Variety, and so on.
I've tried, I really have, to embrace the Zen garden Juu-Juu of CSS, can you make a simple blog page work in CSS? sure! Can you make an massive website with many different templates and variable width data-areas work in CSS? Yea, if you're a complete lunatic. but you have to get there with hack over hack over hack over hack. Here is the deep dark secret of CSS, it's not designed for layout. It's fantastic for styling, but try doing a Box-model or Float layout and you quickly realizing you're asking CSS to do things it wasn't intended to do, and it simply does not break gracefully the way a simple table layout does (You know floats were originally intended for pictures, not layout areas). So while I respect the purity of a CSS for style, HTML for content concept, in practice CSS is just as much of a kludge as Table design. I've saved hours of time and reached wider audiences of compatibility by going for a hybrid design, but this breaks the "standards".
IMO, standards should follow simple elegant solutions, a hundred lines of CSS browser compatibility code and float hacks is far from an elegant solution. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give designers a proper layout language!!
First, I can give you unlimited bandwidth on a Dial up line but you're not going to stream video over it, so any ISP that is giving you "unlimited" probably isn't set up to host your video.;-)
Second on YouTube and Google I agree there is something to be said for "out sourcing" your video to a company like Google Video or YouTube, but if you don't mind I would like to throw my little Start-Up (Vidiac.com) into the ring since we've been doing free video hosting longer than either of those two without all the Web 2.0 Hype. Of course the difference with us is we give you a video hosting portal you can run on your website (Like video.YOURDOMAIN.com), so with us you can start your own "Flickr of Video" either free (ad supported) or pay-per stream. Sorry about the self promotion there.
Regarding your Dilemma Here is my input on the question at hand based on my own experience (I'm streaming just over a million streams a day to 2.5 Million Unique visitors a month). First, as always, start with the needs of the users.
1.) Are they sophisticated? How would they react to a Torrent? From my experience, if someone has a torrent client installed then they're fine with it, but if they don't you have a large "fear factor" to overcome convincing a user to install a program to watch your video.
2.) Do they want to click and Watch, (stream), or do they want to download? If you produce content like a video podcast, then I highly recommend giving your users a download option over streaming. If you run a portal-site, like Big-Boys.com that aggregates content then you're better off streaming as you want to be viewed as more than an FTP site.
3.) How big is your Audience? This is probably the single biggest factor for capacity planning. If they all hit your site at once you need a ton of bandwidth.
4.) Is this a scheduled broadcast (like a weekly show), or is this content that will be downloaded over time? Scheduled events can cause massive spikes. 10,000 users all at once is harder on a server than a Million users spread out over a month.
5.) What video quality will your users tolerate? What Software can they use to view it? Windows Media? Quicktime? Flash? Size? Bit Rate? If your users are watching these videos on an iPod they'll accept a lower quality than if they're viewing it on their Plasma HDTV.
Based on the above you can get a firm handle on your 1.) Delivery Method (Direct Download, stream, Torrent) 2.) Video Size (Format, Quality, etc) 3.) Pipe Size (How much do you need to stream at once) 3.) Bandwidth Utilization profile (spikes and valley vs. flat)
Compare the above to your current solution. If your users are buffering, is it because...
Your upload pipe is saturated? Upgrade to a larger pipe (100Mbps is about the minimum if you have more than 10 people hitting your video at the same time)
Is your Disk I/O saturated? SATA and IDE are fine for most sites, but if you have 50 viewers requesting 30 different videos you need some strong I/O. we were burning through SATA drives on a weekly basis before switching to a SCSI SAN.
Does your ISP have proper Network access to get to your end users? Consider pulling in a pipe from an appropriate network. (AT&T strongly peers with Cox cable for instance, MCI has fantastic AOL connectivity).
Anyhow, I hate to answer a question with more questions, but there are so many ways to deliver video, there is no one silver bullet solution. You just have to do what works for your users and company. From experience though capacity planning for an online video application takes a lot of work, but once you wrap your head around the bandwidth issue, it gets easy. Good Luck!
And conversly how many exploits are there for Microsoft Personal Web Server?
The Difference isn't the number of users, it's the number of people actively looking for exploits. I could write a crappy piece of code with 100% market share, but if no one is trying to break it, it'll probably be pretty darn "secure"
Not sure why Apple (or is it this article?) is saying there isn't a lot of "Video pod-casts" out there. I have about ~50 different people regularly uploading video shows to my free video hosting server. It ranges from the proffesional to the....er....uhm....home movie.
People have been making home movie shows since the portable video camera were made in what, the 1960's? Just because you trademark a term doesn't make it "new". The only thing really new here is offering a centralized easy to use interface to search RSS feeds of existing vCast and IPTV content. (which I do think is very cool).
Maybe this was misreported, but IMOHO the bigger news story here is having an Agregator of the existing IPTV content, and that I think is good stuff.
-Adam
Darren,
I work for a "IPTV" broadcast company, and we are about to debut a "technology" channel. If you'd like to syndicate your content feel free to contact us. We also provide free web hosting for video creators such as yourself.
Guess I better add to the conversation to keep this from being SPAM huh?;-)
There are a lot of good sites out there making great video shows, as someone in the industry I think the real challenge is reaching your audience. RSS is designed for this, but you only reach the techno-elite. RSS is a very low level technology, just like XML, HTML etc are. The real power of bringing together syndication, content, and audiences will be seen by the future wave of applications that leverage these under-riding technologies. Exciting times we live in!
"...I changed email addresses four times in the last three years and it was not that hard. Now I use Gmail which, unlike all the other services I used has a free forwarding service. So you can switch to whatever other service you like, and Google (unlike Yahoo! or Hotmail) won't impede you to do this. So could you please explain why would it be hard for anybody to switch from Gmail?..."
Changing an address in general is a hassel and you're right, Google does make it easier with their forwarding service. That said I find I have to change my email address when SPAM gets bad, and Google will just as easily forward SPAM as the real stuff.
I think you're missing the point though. 5 years ago it was easy move from using one web-utility to another. Nowadays it's easier to change computers than to change one's "online identity" by moving from web application to web application. It's hassel to move photos, set up new web sites with new hosts, repoint domains, remember new user names and passwords, move account information, etc etc etc. The point was made above that Microsoft has the user more "locked in" than web applications do. I've changed computer 4 times in the last year with minimal difficulty. As a matter of fact with web applications being as they are now, I can pretty much use anyone's computer to work because all my tools are "in the cloud" now.
What does this have to do with my concern as an etrepenuer with Google? Web-Based Applications are a still a source of start ups, they're still a huge employer, and Google has a huge advantage that not even Amazon and eBay can match. Google can leverage it's addvertising revenue and search to provide applications at minimal infrastrucutre costs and at significantly lower margins. what if Google decided to launch it's own eBay? They wouldn't have to charge transaction fees, heck they'd probably make more money on the advertising in the pages anyways. eBay isn't an Ad-Network, so their cost to get ads would be higher and wouldn't be able to compete.
I'm not saying this is wrong, but I am saying this is why Companies (and Start-ups) are becoming very scared about Google. Look at the responses here and folks just see "Google pays more money!". That may be, but it's only relevant if you work for Google. What if you work for a web-application company that sits in Google's cross hairs? I've worked for too many companies that have had to lay off workers to feel too confident when I see articles like the Parent posted.
I had hoped that my post wouldn't come across as a complaint. Competition is a good thing, it creates inovation.
That said, my competition to date have been other start ups that face the same challenges that we face. Who is going to fix the server at 3:00 AM, fixed developmnet resources, do we code widget A or widget B? Where are we going to find funds in the budget to retain an acountant? a lawyer? How are we going to afford our hositng bill this month? etc etc
That's just life of a start-up. That said, never before have Web-Entrepenuers been so threatened by a large company. I'm not saying that it isn't fair that Google expands into new lines, but I am saying that they can offer good products for free, with unlimited infrastructure to leverage along with endless talent. That's almost impossible to compete with.
How do you guard against that? You really can't because you have no idea where the "Benign Giant" is going to step next. It doesn't really matter anymore if your Web Application is a "hot or Not" website or you're eBay, Google is showing a desire to corner this type of service delivery and this is something that has really only happened in the last 2 years.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be aware of the competition or anticipate new disruptive entries, but I am supporting this article that says Google's business practice is making life more difficult for start ups. That's neither Right/Wrong or Fair/Unfair but it is a new barrier to entry for self-funded companies such as mine.
So I should be content to just "go work for Google" then huh? I've done my time at large companies and now I jsut want to eek out my "little coffee shop onthe web". I'm not looking to make the next Amazon or eBay. But Guess What? Neither was MySpace, neither was Skype or many other "small companies" that are now being gobbled up or competed against by a company like Google.
Remeber the Anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft giving away their browser? Microsoft used it's office product revenues to fund millions in research for it's Internet product lines (as any good company should). Then used it's installed base to push out the competition. (Good or bad business aside, the Justice department said "no no").
Now who is in that position today? Google is, their cost to deploy a web application is $0 because of their hosting infrastrcuture (subsidized by other sources). Conversly to a competeing start up, that's a huge cost to endure (often hundreds of thousands of dollars a month).
Google is launching so many new Web Applications, it doesn't matter how inovative your new web-application is, you have to keep an eye on Google now, not Microsoft, because they're the ones most likely to pop into your market now and dominate it.
That's entirely untrue, Google didn't have the first Search Engine, they took an idea and made it better. Google didn't have the first webmail engine they took an idea and made it better.
Web Entrepenuers do the same thing and some are succesful at doing just that. MySpace is a rethink of Geocities, and it was wildly succesful.
But now Google is in a position that it is now buying up inovation with the purchase of KeyHole, Klikr, and now maybe even Skype.
The key to creating new product is to rethink an existing one. Something totally new has no market. Inline Skates were similar to the Skate, yet different enough to be inovative. Flikr was just like any other photo sharing service but just different enough to be better and more succesful.
The real fear among people like myself is "howsuccesful can I be at my company before Google takes notice and makes a competting product". Funny how that used to be Microsoft's role, but Microsoft isn't out to dominate the Web-Application business, Google is.
The issue here in my opinion, is that Google is leveraging it's advertising revenue model and it's vast economies of scale in hosting costs to corner the web application market. This is the play that Microsoft should fear and I think that has allready been adressed.
The problem is that their efforts do stiffle web entrepenuers who are trying to break into new areas such as hosted groupeware for email, file, photo and video sharing etc. (I know this from personal experience). Keep in mind that not all web application developers are looking for a "good Salary" from a benign giant like Google. Some of us actually want to be masters of our fate and make a living on our own. But now the real fear is "Will Google invade my market and make a free version of my Widget?"
That's becoming more real every day. I can't buy bandwidth at the same cost as Google, and I can't leverage massive Advertising revenues to give away my products for free either.
"Do no evil" doesn't mean "don't crush small start-ups".
FWIW I'm one the co-founders of http://vidiac.com/ Mentioned above by "lukewarmfusion", and yes we do offer a similar service, though we specialize in offering free video hosting branded under your website, and then let web site owners decide what sort of video content they want their portal to specialize in.
I'll answer what questions I can that I've seen posted here.
1.) Does advertising pay the bills? Yes, but it's very low margin unlike picture hosting and the like. There are many ways to make a living on this, from syndicating the best content to providing pay-per view for high end content. Our goal though will be to be able and pay back the content creators for their submissions "leveling the playing field" and allowing indie artist to make a living creating quality content.
2.) Why Flash player? We're using Windows Media and are preparing to launch a Flash option. We're finding that the 20% of the population Windows Media doesn't reach is covered by Flash. There are no elegant solutions out there. I've seen some good Javaplayers like on2, but the problem becomes that sites like MySpace and Xanga limit their user's ability to post Java making embedding videos difficult. Our solution will be to offer both and let users pick what works for them. Real and Quicktime have their own pros and cons as well, but right now the most ubiquitous player is Flash7. With 15,000 videos submitted to our system since February though it's expensive to diversify into more than two formats (transcode time and storage)
Right now we stand on an interesting convergence of cheap video editing software, inexpensive video recorders, cheap hard drive space and bandwidth that is starting to become affordable. I think you will see many new Video hosting portals cropping up in the comming year. Our Software is an "ASP-hosted" software solution that lets you create your own portal for your web site, and not to brag on ourselves too much, it's been a huge success. We're now streaming 370K videos a day to 50K people across 30 sites using our solution.
Like any new communication format, it will go through it's trials and tribulations in the coming year, and I'm sure we'll see a lot of garbage, but I think we'll also see a lot of good come out of it. My Favorite example of that is Anthony Carlone who is Video-Blogging xBox games. He's very young, and right now his reviews are rough, but who's to say that he won't turn into his own "G4-television" channel in the future? http://xboxcountry.freevideoblog.com/
Anyhow I'm just happy that I'm playing some part of this, and every day I find it neat to see how our software is being used.
For all the Slash-Love Google gets here, I think it's important to point out that a company whose sole revenue model is advertising is advocating more control of system resources through the browser. I think Google's business model is too often overlooked here.
In 1999 I bought a top of the line "Bad-MaMaJama" system with all the hot specs. Loaded it up with all the top of the line development software of the era from 3D Studio Max R3 ($3,500 back then) to Visual Studio.
Then in 2000 I moved out of the development world into the realm of management, sales, etc. So My old Work horse is a dinosaur now, and I still do some development on the side for fun. But seriously why do I need to upgrade from PhotoShop 7 to PhotoShop CS? They both push pixels with equal ease. The Tools for the casual user are not so much better today than they were 6 years ago to force an upgrade (how much has the hammer evolved in 6 years?).
All facts considered my 6 year old system is blazingly fast so long as I run Circa 1999 Software.... that is until I load up Office 2003, or even (gasp) Firefox. It amazes me that a Circa 2005 Browser like Firefox can bring my system to it's knees whereas a Crica 1999 Enterprise aplication like 3D Studio Max rips along without breaking a sweat. Oh well, time to upgrade so I can keep up with the browser wars....oh sorry, that was such a 1999 statement to make;-)
Oh, I get it, Music, Video, art and literature are all objects, I can take these objects and "remix" them into a new program.... Wonder if I can use Rational Rose and Visio for my next music "sample".
It's all fun and games until the RIAA/MPAA crash your little party and remind you who owns what.
...my experience says...
on
P2P and TV
·
· Score: 1
I launched my video hosting website http://videos.streetfire.net/ for hosting car videos and sister site http://video.freevideoblog.com/ for everything else, 4 months ago. In those 4 months we have swelled to 300K videos streamed a day proving one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt...... That American Infomerical-TV sucks and that kids with DV cameras can create more entertaining content than than TV production studios looking for the next ad sponsored show. (i.e. Pontiac Solstice "Aprentice" or "Batman Begins" NASCAR 400).....of course the bitter irony is that in order to support this service we use banner ads, so maybe we're no better afterall.....ahh sweet irony. making hypocrits of us all
In the next few years I think we're going to see some serious changes to the Television big-media business model. Much in the way Napster was distruptive to the music industry, Bit Torrent and the like will be disruptive to TV entertainment in how shows are piloted, selected and funded
You didn't work for AT&T/WebFactory did you? That's when I worked for him in 1998. And totally agree with the whole patent thing. He tried to lay personal patent claim to the work I was doing on a Call-Flows project. I find it really funny that he we a mid level manager at AT&T through the 1990s, goes to Excite, kills the company, then comes back to AT&T as the head technology honcho.
I *WAS* the AT&T Security Sales overlay for Globals and have personally worked for Hussien the AT&T CIO. While I think this is a good move for AT&T to increase brand awareness for their security product offering, I think the SlashDot crowd will be left with an empty feeling as AT&T's security suite focuses almost exclusively on Network based attacks with little to no coverage for application based attacks, spoofs or social engineering. AT&T *does* have some inovative products in their space, but a fairly narrow focus on the total security picture. Because of this, I can only think the "TV-show" will be similarly focused.
I agree with you. There is a difference between being an "ad-Whore" and subsidizing your business. That said We make about $0.25 CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) for Google Ads, and $0.75 CPM for traditional animated 468x60 banners. IF we were to "go to the darkside" and go with pop-ups, we've allready been offered (and turned down) $8.00 CPM. It's a matter of economics to a web publisher like ourselves. That said I'm very obsessed with the brand image, and do not want to ruin people's experience so I am willing to take 1/16th less money for a more succesfull less annoying site.
Slashdot Mirror
I've tried, I really have, to embrace the Zen garden Juu-Juu of CSS, can you make a simple blog page work in CSS? sure! Can you make an massive website with many different templates and variable width data-areas work in CSS? Yea, if you're a complete lunatic. but you have to get there with hack over hack over hack over hack. Here is the deep dark secret of CSS, it's not designed for layout. It's fantastic for styling, but try doing a Box-model or Float layout and you quickly realizing you're asking CSS to do things it wasn't intended to do, and it simply does not break gracefully the way a simple table layout does (You know floats were originally intended for pictures, not layout areas). So while I respect the purity of a CSS for style, HTML for content concept, in practice CSS is just as much of a kludge as Table design. I've saved hours of time and reached wider audiences of compatibility by going for a hybrid design, but this breaks the "standards".
IMO, standards should follow simple elegant solutions, a hundred lines of CSS browser compatibility code and float hacks is far from an elegant solution. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give designers a proper layout language!!
First, I can give you unlimited bandwidth on a Dial up line but you're not going to stream video over it, so any ISP that is giving you "unlimited" probably isn't set up to host your video. ;-)
Second on YouTube and Google
I agree there is something to be said for "out sourcing" your video to a company like Google Video or YouTube, but if you don't mind I would like to throw my little Start-Up (Vidiac.com) into the ring since we've been doing free video hosting longer than either of those two without all the Web 2.0 Hype. Of course the difference with us is we give you a video hosting portal you can run on your website (Like video.YOURDOMAIN.com), so with us you can start your own "Flickr of Video" either free (ad supported) or pay-per stream. Sorry about the self promotion there.
Regarding your Dilemma
Here is my input on the question at hand based on my own experience (I'm streaming just over a million streams a day to 2.5 Million Unique visitors a month). First, as always, start with the needs of the users.
1.) Are they sophisticated? How would they react to a Torrent? From my experience, if someone has a torrent client installed then they're fine with it, but if they don't you have a large "fear factor" to overcome convincing a user to install a program to watch your video.
2.) Do they want to click and Watch, (stream), or do they want to download? If you produce content like a video podcast, then I highly recommend giving your users a download option over streaming. If you run a portal-site, like Big-Boys.com that aggregates content then you're better off streaming as you want to be viewed as more than an FTP site.
3.) How big is your Audience? This is probably the single biggest factor for capacity planning. If they all hit your site at once you need a ton of bandwidth.
4.) Is this a scheduled broadcast (like a weekly show), or is this content that will be downloaded over time? Scheduled events can cause massive spikes. 10,000 users all at once is harder on a server than a Million users spread out over a month.
5.) What video quality will your users tolerate? What Software can they use to view it? Windows Media? Quicktime? Flash? Size? Bit Rate? If your users are watching these videos on an iPod they'll accept a lower quality than if they're viewing it on their Plasma HDTV.
Based on the above you can get a firm handle on your
1.) Delivery Method (Direct Download, stream, Torrent)
2.) Video Size (Format, Quality, etc)
3.) Pipe Size (How much do you need to stream at once)
3.) Bandwidth Utilization profile (spikes and valley vs. flat)
Compare the above to your current solution. If your users are buffering, is it because...
Your upload pipe is saturated? Upgrade to a larger pipe (100Mbps is about the minimum if you have more than 10 people hitting your video at the same time)
Is your Disk I/O saturated? SATA and IDE are fine for most sites, but if you have 50 viewers requesting 30 different videos you need some strong I/O. we were burning through SATA drives on a weekly basis before switching to a SCSI SAN.
Does your ISP have proper Network access to get to your end users? Consider pulling in a pipe from an appropriate network. (AT&T strongly peers with Cox cable for instance, MCI has fantastic AOL connectivity).
Anyhow, I hate to answer a question with more questions, but there are so many ways to deliver video, there is no one silver bullet solution. You just have to do what works for your users and company. From experience though capacity planning for an online video application takes a lot of work, but once you wrap your head around the bandwidth issue, it gets easy. Good Luck!
-Adam
Firefox less secure than IE? Man that's the last thing I expected to see posted on SlashDot.
5 2&tid=217
The next thing you'll hear them saying Google is evil. oops, wait a sec..
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/24/15262
-Adam
And conversly how many exploits are there for Microsoft Personal Web Server?
The Difference isn't the number of users, it's the number of people actively looking for exploits. I could write a crappy piece of code with 100% market share, but if no one is trying to break it, it'll probably be pretty darn "secure"
-Adam
Not sure why Apple (or is it this article?) is saying there isn't a lot of "Video pod-casts" out there. I have about ~50 different people regularly uploading video shows to my free video hosting server. It ranges from the proffesional to the ....er....uhm....home movie.
People have been making home movie shows since the portable video camera were made in what, the 1960's? Just because you trademark a term doesn't make it "new". The only thing really new here is offering a centralized easy to use interface to search RSS feeds of existing vCast and IPTV content. (which I do think is very cool).
Maybe this was misreported, but IMOHO the bigger news story here is having an Agregator of the existing IPTV content, and that I think is good stuff.
-Adam
Darren,
;-)
I work for a "IPTV" broadcast company, and we are about to debut a "technology" channel. If you'd like to syndicate your content feel free to contact us. We also provide free web hosting for video creators such as yourself.
Guess I better add to the conversation to keep this from being SPAM huh?
There are a lot of good sites out there making great video shows, as someone in the industry I think the real challenge is reaching your audience. RSS is designed for this, but you only reach the techno-elite. RSS is a very low level technology, just like XML, HTML etc are. The real power of bringing together syndication, content, and audiences will be seen by the future wave of applications that leverage these under-riding technologies. Exciting times we live in!
-Adam
"...I changed email addresses four times in the last three years and it was not that hard. Now I use Gmail which, unlike all the other services I used has a free forwarding service. So you can switch to whatever other service you like, and Google (unlike Yahoo! or Hotmail) won't impede you to do this. So could you please explain why would it be hard for anybody to switch from Gmail?..."
Changing an address in general is a hassel and you're right, Google does make it easier with their forwarding service. That said I find I have to change my email address when SPAM gets bad, and Google will just as easily forward SPAM as the real stuff.
I think you're missing the point though. 5 years ago it was easy move from using one web-utility to another. Nowadays it's easier to change computers than to change one's "online identity" by moving from web application to web application. It's hassel to move photos, set up new web sites with new hosts, repoint domains, remember new user names and passwords, move account information, etc etc etc. The point was made above that Microsoft has the user more "locked in" than web applications do. I've changed computer 4 times in the last year with minimal difficulty. As a matter of fact with web applications being as they are now, I can pretty much use anyone's computer to work because all my tools are "in the cloud" now.
What does this have to do with my concern as an etrepenuer with Google? Web-Based Applications are a still a source of start ups, they're still a huge employer, and Google has a huge advantage that not even Amazon and eBay can match. Google can leverage it's addvertising revenue and search to provide applications at minimal infrastrucutre costs and at significantly lower margins. what if Google decided to launch it's own eBay? They wouldn't have to charge transaction fees, heck they'd probably make more money on the advertising in the pages anyways. eBay isn't an Ad-Network, so their cost to get ads would be higher and wouldn't be able to compete.
I'm not saying this is wrong, but I am saying this is why Companies (and Start-ups) are becoming very scared about Google. Look at the responses here and folks just see "Google pays more money!". That may be, but it's only relevant if you work for Google. What if you work for a web-application company that sits in Google's cross hairs? I've worked for too many companies that have had to lay off workers to feel too confident when I see articles like the Parent posted.
I had hoped that my post wouldn't come across as a complaint. Competition is a good thing, it creates inovation.
That said, my competition to date have been other start ups that face the same challenges that we face. Who is going to fix the server at 3:00 AM, fixed developmnet resources, do we code widget A or widget B? Where are we going to find funds in the budget to retain an acountant? a lawyer? How are we going to afford our hositng bill this month? etc etc
That's just life of a start-up. That said, never before have Web-Entrepenuers been so threatened by a large company. I'm not saying that it isn't fair that Google expands into new lines, but I am saying that they can offer good products for free, with unlimited infrastructure to leverage along with endless talent. That's almost impossible to compete with.
How do you guard against that? You really can't because you have no idea where the "Benign Giant" is going to step next. It doesn't really matter anymore if your Web Application is a "hot or Not" website or you're eBay, Google is showing a desire to corner this type of service delivery and this is something that has really only happened in the last 2 years.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be aware of the competition or anticipate new disruptive entries, but I am supporting this article that says Google's business practice is making life more difficult for start ups. That's neither Right/Wrong or Fair/Unfair but it is a new barrier to entry for self-funded companies such as mine.
I have to disagree with that. It's *very Difficult* to change your email address, even if it is webmail based.
7 306667/qid=1124904440/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-684299 2-6804751?v=glance&s=books
How about moving from one photo sharing service to another? That's *really* hard too, now you have to re-upload your library.
What if a new "eBay" type service comes out that is better than eBay, can users switch? Not if they want to keep their ratings.
The "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/088
Actualyl talks about this and said the Web, moreso than the "real world" inclines itself to monopolization. (too many reasons to get into here).
So I should be content to just "go work for Google" then huh? I've done my time at large companies and now I jsut want to eek out my "little coffee shop onthe web". I'm not looking to make the next Amazon or eBay. But Guess What? Neither was MySpace, neither was Skype or many other "small companies" that are now being gobbled up or competed against by a company like Google. Remeber the Anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft giving away their browser? Microsoft used it's office product revenues to fund millions in research for it's Internet product lines (as any good company should). Then used it's installed base to push out the competition. (Good or bad business aside, the Justice department said "no no"). Now who is in that position today? Google is, their cost to deploy a web application is $0 because of their hosting infrastrcuture (subsidized by other sources). Conversly to a competeing start up, that's a huge cost to endure (often hundreds of thousands of dollars a month). Google is launching so many new Web Applications, it doesn't matter how inovative your new web-application is, you have to keep an eye on Google now, not Microsoft, because they're the ones most likely to pop into your market now and dominate it.
That's entirely untrue, Google didn't have the first Search Engine, they took an idea and made it better. Google didn't have the first webmail engine they took an idea and made it better.
Web Entrepenuers do the same thing and some are succesful at doing just that. MySpace is a rethink of Geocities, and it was wildly succesful.
But now Google is in a position that it is now buying up inovation with the purchase of KeyHole, Klikr, and now maybe even Skype.
The key to creating new product is to rethink an existing one. Something totally new has no market. Inline Skates were similar to the Skate, yet different enough to be inovative. Flikr was just like any other photo sharing service but just different enough to be better and more succesful.
The real fear among people like myself is "howsuccesful can I be at my company before Google takes notice and makes a competting product". Funny how that used to be Microsoft's role, but Microsoft isn't out to dominate the Web-Application business, Google is.
The issue here in my opinion, is that Google is leveraging it's advertising revenue model and it's vast economies of scale in hosting costs to corner the web application market. This is the play that Microsoft should fear and I think that has allready been adressed.
The problem is that their efforts do stiffle web entrepenuers who are trying to break into new areas such as hosted groupeware for email, file, photo and video sharing etc. (I know this from personal experience). Keep in mind that not all web application developers are looking for a "good Salary" from a benign giant like Google. Some of us actually want to be masters of our fate and make a living on our own. But now the real fear is "Will Google invade my market and make a free version of my Widget?"
That's becoming more real every day. I can't buy bandwidth at the same cost as Google, and I can't leverage massive Advertising revenues to give away my products for free either.
"Do no evil" doesn't mean "don't crush small start-ups".
-Adam
FWIW I'm one the co-founders of http://vidiac.com/ Mentioned above by "lukewarmfusion", and yes we do offer a similar service, though we specialize in offering free video hosting branded under your website, and then let web site owners decide what sort of video content they want their portal to specialize in.
I'll answer what questions I can that I've seen posted here.
1.) Does advertising pay the bills? Yes, but it's very low margin unlike picture hosting and the like. There are many ways to make a living on this, from syndicating the best content to providing pay-per view for high end content. Our goal though will be to be able and pay back the content creators for their submissions "leveling the playing field" and allowing indie artist to make a living creating quality content.
2.) Why Flash player? We're using Windows Media and are preparing to launch a Flash option. We're finding that the 20% of the population Windows Media doesn't reach is covered by Flash. There are no elegant solutions out there. I've seen some good Javaplayers like on2, but the problem becomes that sites like MySpace and Xanga limit their user's ability to post Java making embedding videos difficult. Our solution will be to offer both and let users pick what works for them. Real and Quicktime have their own pros and cons as well, but right now the most ubiquitous player is Flash7. With 15,000 videos submitted to our system since February though it's expensive to diversify into more than two formats (transcode time and storage)
Right now we stand on an interesting convergence of cheap video editing software, inexpensive video recorders, cheap hard drive space and bandwidth that is starting to become affordable. I think you will see many new Video hosting portals cropping up in the comming year. Our Software is an "ASP-hosted" software solution that lets you create your own portal for your web site, and not to brag on ourselves too much, it's been a huge success. We're now streaming 370K videos a day to 50K people across 30 sites using our solution.
Like any new communication format, it will go through it's trials and tribulations in the coming year, and I'm sure we'll see a lot of garbage, but I think we'll also see a lot of good come out of it. My Favorite example of that is Anthony Carlone who is Video-Blogging xBox games. He's very young, and right now his reviews are rough, but who's to say that he won't turn into his own "G4-television" channel in the future?
http://xboxcountry.freevideoblog.com/
Anyhow I'm just happy that I'm playing some part of this, and every day I find it neat to see how our software is being used.
Adam Bruce
Vidiac.com
I Give up! I'm going to become a lawyer, unless they've patented that too.
Is it too much to ask to fix PNG!?!?!?!?
If we're not allowed to test holes, it reminds me of that old saying, "Who will guard the guards?"
For all the Slash-Love Google gets here, I think it's important to point out that a company whose sole revenue model is advertising is advocating more control of system resources through the browser. I think Google's business model is too often overlooked here.
In 1999 I bought a top of the line "Bad-MaMaJama" system with all the hot specs. Loaded it up with all the top of the line development software of the era from 3D Studio Max R3 ($3,500 back then) to Visual Studio.
;-)
Then in 2000 I moved out of the development world into the realm of management, sales, etc. So My old Work horse is a dinosaur now, and I still do some development on the side for fun. But seriously why do I need to upgrade from PhotoShop 7 to PhotoShop CS? They both push pixels with equal ease. The Tools for the casual user are not so much better today than they were 6 years ago to force an upgrade (how much has the hammer evolved in 6 years?).
All facts considered my 6 year old system is blazingly fast so long as I run Circa 1999 Software.... that is until I load up Office 2003, or even (gasp) Firefox. It amazes me that a Circa 2005 Browser like Firefox can bring my system to it's knees whereas a Crica 1999 Enterprise aplication like 3D Studio Max rips along without breaking a sweat. Oh well, time to upgrade so I can keep up with the browser wars....oh sorry, that was such a 1999 statement to make
Oh, I get it, Music, Video, art and literature are all objects, I can take these objects and "remix" them into a new program.... Wonder if I can use Rational Rose and Visio for my next music "sample".
It's all fun and games until the RIAA/MPAA crash your little party and remind you who owns what.
I launched my video hosting website http://videos.streetfire.net/ for hosting car videos and sister site http://video.freevideoblog.com/ for everything else, 4 months ago. In those 4 months we have swelled to 300K videos streamed a day proving one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt...... That American Infomerical-TV sucks and that kids with DV cameras can create more entertaining content than than TV production studios looking for the next ad sponsored show. (i.e. Pontiac Solstice "Aprentice" or "Batman Begins" NASCAR 400).....of course the bitter irony is that in order to support this service we use banner ads, so maybe we're no better afterall.....ahh sweet irony. making hypocrits of us all
In the next few years I think we're going to see some serious changes to the Television big-media business model. Much in the way Napster was distruptive to the music industry, Bit Torrent and the like will be disruptive to TV entertainment in how shows are piloted, selected and funded
Just my humble experience
-Adam
You didn't work for AT&T/WebFactory did you? That's when I worked for him in 1998. And totally agree with the whole patent thing. He tried to lay personal patent claim to the work I was doing on a Call-Flows project. I find it really funny that he we a mid level manager at AT&T through the 1990s, goes to Excite, kills the company, then comes back to AT&T as the head technology honcho.
I *WAS* the AT&T Security Sales overlay for Globals and have personally worked for Hussien the AT&T CIO. While I think this is a good move for AT&T to increase brand awareness for their security product offering, I think the SlashDot crowd will be left with an empty feeling as AT&T's security suite focuses almost exclusively on Network based attacks with little to no coverage for application based attacks, spoofs or social engineering. AT&T *does* have some inovative products in their space, but a fairly narrow focus on the total security picture. Because of this, I can only think the "TV-show" will be similarly focused.
-Adam
I agree with you. There is a difference between being an "ad-Whore" and subsidizing your business. That said We make about $0.25 CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) for Google Ads, and $0.75 CPM for traditional animated 468x60 banners. IF we were to "go to the darkside" and go with pop-ups, we've allready been offered (and turned down) $8.00 CPM. It's a matter of economics to a web publisher like ourselves. That said I'm very obsessed with the brand image, and do not want to ruin people's experience so I am willing to take 1/16th less money for a more succesfull less annoying site.
"...Relying solely on ads for a paycheque is idiotic...."
Any yet Google and Yahoo continue to be profitable in their "idiotic" business models. *roll eyes*