Kaltura’s Blog

Earlier this week my article in StreamingMedia about the Promise of Open Source Video was published, and it’s now getting great feedback on CNET.

As we enter 2009 three things about online video become clear: (1) with over 17 Billion videos watched in December 2008 in the U.S. alone (according to comScore) and steady month-over-month growth, video is here to stay; (2) video exhibits classic long-tail distribution—while YouTube remains the dominant player, video is rapidly moving from destination sites to the rest of the web, with millions of sites streaming video as the new mode of communication; and (3) the conversation at all levels is shifting from the technological aspects to the value aspects: not how to build a player or convert between formats but, rather, how to foster audience engagement and monetize on these billions of streams.

These observations are underwritten by the trends that became apparent in the past several years, namely, the rapid reduction in the cost of delivery and the abundance of companies in this ecosystem. For anyone who is part of the video universe, the key question that remains open is what drives value in this brave new world. How can publishers, advertisers, and technology enablers make money in a world in which delivery (CDN) is commoditized, display opportunities are abundant (driving CPMs for video advertising down), and audiences expect to get everything for free? The short answer, I believe, is to focus on innovation—of formats, user experience, content, or delivery.

And here is where open source video enters the picture: It is a development methodology and distribution strategy that allows each company in the ecosystem to focus on what it does best, instead of replicating the efforts of others. Open source video, introduced to the market by companies such as Kaltura, is being adopted at every level of the ecosystem by industry leaders such as Akamai, Mozilla, and Wikipedia. Its premise is simple: Video is too important of a medium to be controlled by a single player. By espousing the principles of openness at all levels, including formats, technology, and content, and by collaborating in the development process, video can enjoy the force-multipliers that we have seen in other areas of open source software. The result is a better user experience, a reduction in the total cost of ownership, and a focus on innovative value-driven results.

To understand these last claims, let us unpack the essential elements in the video solution stack. Those are divided into several inter-related areas of functionality

Read more…

Don’t forget to register and submit papers for the Open Video Conference, where 600-700 open source video advocates will come together for the first time in New York City on June 19-20th 2009.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 at 3:16 pm and is filed under Kaltura. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.