BloGiza

The online year that was

As today is the last day of 2007, it’s a little hard to resist looking back at the past year and trying to sum it up. So, I won’t resist. Unlike last year, 2007 is hard to summarize with one handy tag such as “the year of online video” or “the year of social networks”. There was a lot of activity in a number of different areas, the rise of a major player in the social networking space, and the rise of a new form of communication.

So, herewith a few highlights IMHO of the online industry in 2007

Story of the year: The consolidation of the advertising industry
Y’all thought I was going to say Facebook, right? Now, while the rise of Facebook is certainly the most hyped story of the year, my vote for the most significant development  (not to mention the biggest source of M&A activity) is the rapid consolidation of the online advertising space.

During the last 12 months, Google bought out Doubleclick for $3B. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft acquired aQuantive for a staggering $6B. AOL bought out targeted ad firm Tacoda, as well as Quigo which. Yahoo acquired Blue Lithium, as well as a majority stake in Right Media. WPP bought 24/7 Real Media. And the list actually goes on.

The M&A hyperactivity in this sector is an indication of the fact that online advertising has reached a certain stage of maturity. Beyond that, the consolidation is likely to have long-term ramifications, especially in regards to the rise of Google as the behemoth of the information age as well as the development of new business models online. And that’s what makes this, at least for me, the biggest development of the year.

Phenomenon of the year: Facebook
Obviously, I couldn’t not mention Facebook which gained momentum extremely rapidly this year and became the go-to social network for those of us who aren’t musicians, 14-year-olds, or skeevy perverts. Facebook only opened itself up to the world outside the university sphere towards the end of 2006. I joined up early this year. Before long, almost every high tech-ist I knew (and many I didn’t) was on it. Lately, the sphere has expanded further and everyone, their parents, and their parents’ friends are connected. Clearly we’re on to something.

Of course, it will be interesting to see whether Facebook will be an ongoing concern for most people or just a passing fad. I like it for business purposes, as a tool for microblogging, and as the communications platform of choice for a number of my friends. On the other hand, I have a hard time answering those who complain that there’s nothing to do there. We shall see.

New technology: Microblogging
The rise of Twitter and its clones provided us with probably the only real new media form we’ve had in a few years, viz. microblogging. At first, the concept seemed a bit stupid. After all, why would I want to blog in tiny, one- or two-sentence bursts? But then you start getting into it and discover that Twittering (or updating your Facebook status, which I tend to do more) is a nice complement to blogging for those times when you have something small and/or clever to say but which doesn’t warrant an entire post. Plus, it’s the first Internet app that makes perfect sense for the mobile. It’ll be interesting to see who snaps up Twitter and for how much.

Interesting development in local tech: The renaissance of the Israeli internet scene
Three or four years ago, it seemed that the Internet industry in Israel was close to dead. During the days of the ’99-’00 bubble, the high tech scene was awash in Internet startups looking to be the next ICQ. Then the bubble burst and most of the companies went under. Worse, the VC industry was burned on the subject and it subsequently became almost impossible to get a new Internet startup funded.

As recently as two years ago I regularly had colleagues in the VC world lecturing me that Israel was incapable of producing Internet companies and, besides, these types of investments weren’t suited for VC anyway. What a difference a few years and a YouTube (and a Facebook) later make.

Once again, we are seeing dozens of new Internet companies each month. What’s more, there is a real feeling of an Internet scene here, helped along in no small part by Facebook, the work of groups like the Co.ils and the Geek Garage, and of course Jeff Pulver’s social activities. Let’s hope this continues to develop and mature.

Case of possible overhype: Online video
I’ll catch some crap from friends about this, but the online video space has become somewhat overhyped in the last year. Actually, that’s kind of unfair. What has happened is that in the post-YouTube age, online video has become ubiquitous. This has led to a lot of noise and a sense of, “Ok, what do we do now?”

Towards the end of last year, it looked like the field of mid-tail, independently produced video content (e.g. Ask a Ninja, Rocketboom, Ze Frank) would be the next big thing. As of now, that has failed to happen. There haven’t been any real breakthroughs this year. Even projects as big and as hyped as Joost have yet to take off as a mass-market application.

I still have big hopes for this sector, but it may have to wait until sometime in mid-2008.

Predictions for 2008
You’ve got to be kidding me. Only fools make predictions in this online age where what you write will forever haunt you. Still, I’ll make some safe and predictable ones for the upcoming 12 months:

• There will be a number of huge-size Internet exits that will have people scratching their heads
• The whole notion of privacy will continue to erode as Google finds out more and more about you
• Mobile internet will remain where it has for the last three or four years, i.e. tantalizingly around the corner as the Next Big Thing
• Some technology or company that you’re not thinking about will be the big story of 2008

So, for all my celebrating friends and colleagues out there, I want to extend best wishes for the new year and hope that 2008 brings health, happiness and success to us all.

Giza's Ofek Program

I've been having quite a lot of face time with entrepreneurs at various networking events recently. While talking to people in the biz, a number of questions about Giza seem to pop up repeatedly. One is "you guys do Internet?" and the other is "you guys do seed investing?"

The fact that people are surprised that the answer to both questions is "yes" means that we're not getting our message out strongly enough.

Which brings me to the Ofek Program.

Giza has a special program which we call Ofek devoted to very early stage investments. Giza makes relatively small investments (generally up to $500K in the form of a convertible loan) in startups at the seed or even pre-seed stage. The initial investment is usually milestone-based and is intended to bring the company to a significant stage of development.

Assuming that the milestone goals have been met and the company still seems like a good investment, Giza will then look to lead the first institutional round.

We generally look at companies in the Internet/New Media/Gaming space as the best candidates for Ofek investments, given that their initial funding needs tend to be lower than those in other sectors of high tech. In the last 18 months, Giza has made 6 such investments. Two of these Ofek projects -- YaData and Koolanoo have already graduated to the status of portfolio companies.

With Ofek investments, we try to move as quickly as possible in order to make the decision-making process as simple as possible. In short, Ofek is our way of acting like Angel investors.

So spread the word: Giza does pre-seed and seed investing, and Giza does Internet investments. We'll be delighted to hear your ideas.

Joost!

Holy crap! Joost has just announced that it has raised a whopping $45M in its first institutional round. Investors include Sequoia and Index, as well as CBS, Viacom, and a Chinese billionaire.

Also, they are going into open beta very soon.

My thoughts:

1. If I hadn't mentioned it before, holy crap!
2. This answers my question of how CBS plans to compete with the NBC-News Corp Internet venture.
3. It will be really interesting to see how these projects deal with scaling effectively once millions of users tune in. P2P works more or less fine when it comes to transmitting audio (i.e. Skype); let's see how the architecture handles video.
4. I'm so jealous that Sequoia always gets in on these projects

Behold the future of television, folks. You can tell your kids you were there in the early days.

The revolution will be televised

Gil over at De Gardener has posted videos of a talk that Jeff Pulver gave about two weeks ago at the last Garage Geeks event.  Pulver talked about his vision for the future of television. And that future resides on the Internet.

Much of Jeff's speech revolves around the idea of using RSS as a delivery platform. Which isn't too surprising, since he is currently very involved with Network2, a new Internet venture that seeks to aggregate all the independently produced episodic content on the Web and create a kind of uber-television network for it.

In the last couple of months I've been immersed in the New Media world. It seems that after years and years of hype about TV and the Internet coming together, it's starting to happen. Joost is the highest-profile example, but there are literally dozens of companies working on becoming the NBC (or Fox, or Comedy Central, or whatever) of the Internet.

As I see it now, no one group will emerge as the 800-lb gorilla of the space. There is too much content out there and -- at least in the realm of top-tier content -- a lot of gorillas already competing with each other. What I think we will see are a number of different classes of television broadcast online:

• The Big Kahunas -- These guys will be serving up professionally produced, premium content to the widest available audience. This includes not only episodes of Lost and Desperate Housewives, but also the latest Shakira videos, as well as re-runs of Happy Days. As mentioned, Joost looks like it will be a major player in this category as doubtlessly will the still-unnamed NBC-NewsCorp project
• The Middle-of-the-Tail Guys -- Here you will find episodes of independently produced shows like Ask a Ninja, Chad Vader and Jeff's favorite, Feed Me Bubbe. Not to mention thousands of other examples of people doing their own series. The content will likely be shorter-form and not quite as slickly produced, but my feeling is it will manage to find an enthusiastic audience. Network2 is looking to dominate this category.
• One-offs and amateurs -- The traditional realm of YouTube, Metacafe, and their ilk. You want videos of cats playing the piano? This is the place for you.

Of course, these categories are far from fixed and rigid. I expect we will see a lot of overlap between the players, not to mention various other broadcast models such as live vlogging. However it plays out, it's going to start playing out soon. And as soon as it does, the ad dollars are going to start rolling in that direction.

Joost Update

I've been playing around with the beta of Joost (nee The Venice Project) for a couple of months now. Or should I say playing around as time permits and otherwise smugly enjoying being an early adopter.

At any rate, it seems that the general public will soon have a chance to experience it for themselves. The company has announced that it will be moving to open beta at the end of the month. In addition, Joost has signed some major advertisers and will be adding some new premium content from Sony and Turner.

My thoughts at the moment:

• Everyone expects Joost will be a huge success. In fact, it's almost taken as a given. Which, if you take a step back and look at the situation objectively seems a little bit odd. After all, we're talking about a paradigm shift in the world of televised media which brings with it tremendous risks both technological and business. But I guess after Kazaa and Skype, Zennstrom & co have enough magic pixie dust to allay all fears.
  
• There is some decent content on Joost right now, but the majority of their programming doesn't speak to me. There's a lot of music content, some independent films, and some documentaries. Perhaps I'm older than the target demographic and that's why I don't connect.
  
• IMHO Joost will need to get a lot more popular mainstream entertainment before it can really take off. There's a lot of good independent content out there, but I don't need a dedicated application to access it. (I would go to Network2 or other competitors). The newly announced deal (which includes programming from CNN and Adult Swim, as well as old episodes of "Charlie's Angels") is a step in the right direction.
  
• Having said that, it will be interesting to see what kind of premium content they manage to get. Will it end up being a repository for old TV from the '70s and '80s? Would that be a bad thing if it happened?
  
• Joost also needs to work on its UI before it becomes ready for prime time. After three months I still find it awkward to get things done, including fairly simple operations like finding the list of all available channels and exiting the application. And if I have a problem with it, I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to my mother-in-law if she tried to use it.

At the Com.Vention

The Marker kicked off its second annual Internet Com.vention (a.k.a. "Vardi-gras") today. As it was last year, the convention was the local Internet event of the year, a decent mix of Israeli entrepreneurs, investors, and local and international figures from the Internet world.

So what was the story this year?

• Many, many entrepreneurs. At last year's conference, it seemed that the ratio between investors and startups was, if not exactly even, then not extremely lopsided. This year, the entrepreneurs definitely outnumbered the money people. There were easily several hundred internet entrepreneurs -- many of whom we have seen at Giza over the last few months -- which is the clearest sign of how the Internet has exploded here recently.
  
• The morning panel on "hot trends in 2007" turned up basically what you would expect: video, semantic web, convergence, and user-generated content.
  
  Two interesting comments: Dr. Nicolas Bussard made an interesting point about how changes in Web design make it easier for people in developing nations to build sites and start accessing the net. And Mike Marquez of CBS Interactive spoke of what he called the "open content ecosystem," which is the interplay of all the technologies -- from mobile video to trend analysis to vertical search -- that will allow people to consume content wherever/whenever they want.
  
• The most piquant panel was the afternoon discussion devoted to the question of "So, is it a bubble?". Here, the panelists -- Angels and VCs, including Giza's Eyal Niv -- were split. Some say it is, some say it isn't. Everyone agrees that valuations are climbing, and that the influx of money into the sector increases the danger of companies getting venture funding who really shouldn't be. (Thus siphoning off the talent and time of people who might be otherwise engaged in better companies).
  
  At any rate, the panelists basically agreed to disagree. We may be in bubble land, but at least it seems that everyone is a bit more reasonable than they were seven or eigh years ago.
  

Snackertainment!

This month's Wired magazine has a large spread on what they are calling "snack culture". What is snack culture, you ask? It's the idea that a lot of the entertainment we now consume comes in small, metaphorically bite-sized, pieces.

You can see this all over the place. YouTube videos have become an entertainment form in their own right. "Webisodes" and "Cellisodes" (two- or five-minute episodes of popular TV shows specially produced for the Internet or mobile) have been increasing in frequency. And ITunes has contributed greatly to the demise of the long-playing record in favor of the single.

Wired also adds to this list of snacks things like ringtones, widgets (why take the whole program when you can just add a few features to your desktop?), and even the lowly blog -- snack reading at its finest.

Why is all this happening? You might argue that peoples' attention spans are getting shorter. Or else we now have the gadgets to allow us to kill five or ten minutes while waiting at the doctor's office.

Whatever the cause, we are clearly seeing some sort of cultural paradigm shift here. And being VCs, we soon ask ourselves, "How do we get in on this thing?" Sadly, YouTube has already been spoken for. But we are seeing other signs of activity in this space. Most recently (and locally) we can point to Evergreen's investment in Aniboom, the "YouTube of Animation". I presume we'll see some more in the future.

Viacom vs. Goobe

Now we're in for a fight. Last week, Viacom -- the media conglomerate that owns, among other things, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central -- demanded that YouTube pull more than 100,000 clips which Viacom says infringe their copyrights.

This is an interesting development, since Viacom had previously been in negotiation with Google to come up with an agreement to kosherize the material in question. This latest move might mean that Viacom is fed up with perceived foot-dragging on Google's part, or it could be a negotiating tactic.

At any rate, according to the DMCA Safe Harbor regulations, YouTube now has less than 10 days to take the clips down. Which means I don't have much time left to enjoy those Stephen Colbert clips and Steely Dan videos that I like. Sigh.

In the broader scheme of things, this points to the complication of bringing the world of video to the Internet in a clear and legal way. In theory, it seems like it would be easy for Google to sign deals with the media companies. But it's also clear that Viacom et al are still trying to preserve what they can from their old business models, so the theory only holds so far.

I'll be interested to see how this flap plays out and what implications it has for Joost and other companies trying to merge TV and the Web

(BTW, an interesting debate on the subject can be found in the comments section here)

Venice Project gets a New Name

From today no longer should one say "The Venice Project". Rather, the new service has been given the new and official name Joost.

(Personally, I liked the old name better. But that's neither here nor there.)

Joost has been getting a second round of coverage in the techie media this week, including Wired's rather good profile of the service and its founders, Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström. The gist of the article is that Joost is good for TV because it provides two elements that are key for making the transition from broadcast TV to TV over the Net: a reliable and efficient P2P delivery platform, and full security/copyright protection.

I've been playing around with it a bit this week and hope to have a more in-depth posting on the service soon. Initial reaction: As far as an Internet-TV service, it's almost there. The UI is not where it needs to be, and the content is a little music video-heavy for my personal taste. I would hope that Janus and Niklas manage to resolve both quibbles before Joost is ready for prime time.

And, for everyone who has been asking, I don't really have any invites to give out at the moment. Sorry.

You Know You Want It

So, he finally did it. At Macworld last night, Steve Jobs announced Apple's next "insanely great thing": the droolworthy little gadget you see above, a.k.a. the iPhone. Jobs & Co. have combined the iPod with a phone and a slightly scaled back wireless connected computer running Mac OSX (perfect for email and light Web surfing). Oh, and the thing comes with a 2MPP camera. All in a slim, attractively designed little package.

(If you want to get an idea of the size  of the iPhone compared to other devices, Jason Kottke put together a cardboard mockup which can be seen here. If you want to see how the iPod stacks up against other popular handheld devices, go here.)

A couple of caveats:

• The device won't be available until June
• It will only be available through Cingular in the US
• The damn thing's expensive - $499 for the 4GB model, $599 for the 8GB model (although this is still less than the price of buying an iPod and handheld device separately)

Will this be a category killer? Still too early to tell, but based on past experience it looks like the iPhone will soon become this year's "must have" device.

Jobs had some other interesting news during his keynote speech. (Speech can be seen here and is actually worth sitting through). He also announced the launch of the Apple TV, a standalone media device that connects to your TV and allows you to store, stream, and view digital media.

And also, the company is changing it's name. From this day forward it will be known as "Apple, inc." rather than Apple Computer. This last point is significant, since it illuminates Jobs's long-term vision. Ever since Apple re-invented itself earlier this decade it has become increasingly clear that the company has moved beyond computers. First it was music players, now cellphones and TV streamers.

In short, it seems that Jobs wants to conquer the world of consumer electronics as a whole with upscale, nicely designed, very chic products. Will it work?

Well, on the cellphone and TV front he will face strong competition both from the phone manufacturers on the one front and from Microsoft (who have a lead of sorts with Windows Media Center) on the other. iTunes's current position as the unchallenged leader in download music sales will probably also be challenged by other competitors as the record labels look to other sellers (with other DRM schemes) who will offer variable pricing.

Still, there's no doubt that Jobs has a sack full of magical pixie dust that he sprinkles over everything Apple releases, so I would never count him out as a serious contender.

I got an Invitation to Beta Test the Venice Project!

I can see the rest of my free time this week disappearing as we speak.

An update will follow...

The C Word

Now, the people here at Giza will probably flip when they see the above image. After all, putting up a competitor's logo on the site is not the best thing for branding. And yet, the news coming out of Jerusalem Venture Partners is interesting enough to warrant it. I think.

Earlier today, JVP announced that it was changing its focus completely. The fund is shifting its activity away from traditional Israeli tech investments (enterprise software, communications, semiconductors) towards New Media and content. Now, this doesn't come as a complete surprise to anyone who has been watching JVP for the last year and a half or so. The fund has made a number of investments in the gaming space (most notably Double Fusion) and operates an animation lab.

JVP's move seems to fit in with a trend I've been seeing lately, namely the great Content Comeback. In the last two or three months, we've been seeing dozens of new companies whose value proposition is based mainly or exclusively on content rather than technology. What's more interesting is that we have started to look at some of these companies as serious investment prospects.

In other words, we're back to the doctrine of Content is King

I say surprising because just one year ago the prevailing mantra was "we don't do content." Israelis - the logic went - could not compete with Americans on the basis of content and thus the thinking was we should focus only on technology.

You can look at the change of heart in a number of ways. If you want to be uncharitable, you can claim that VCs are like sheep and that we are now just following the post-You Tube herd. This is probably not completely wrong, but I think it misses the point.

As I've argued before, Israel's Internet scene has matured greatly since the days of Bubble 1.0. To the point where there are a large number of Israeli entrepreneurs who understand the Internet world as well as anyone out there. And this includes content.

I'm not sure that I personally would stake my entire fund on it, but I'll be happy to see JVP prove me wrong.

2006 - The Year of Online Video pt. 2

The Establishment Goes Online

The online video revolution goes a lot further than the YouTube phenomenon. If anything, 2006 may be remembered as the year that the Internet became an official outlet for mainstream, big-studio product. This has come in a variety of different forms:

• Full episodes available online - Over the past 12 months, the major US television networks had a revelation. Rather than fighting all the file-swapping of TV shows they could embrace the new medium. In quick succession, NBC, ABC, and CBS started offering full episodes of their shows on demand. On their official websites no less.
  
  If you think about it, this is a complete revolution in thinking. And yet it makes a lot of sense: instead of the show being broadcast once, you can broadcast it hundreds of thousands of times. You can build your show's brand and add your network's own advertising. In the future, you can also greatly increase the amount of advertising you broadcast by monetizing each of those shows on demand. A win-win all around
  
• Added features - In addition to broadcasting full episodes of the shows, the networks have also started utilizing the Net to provide bonus material for fans. Reality shows like Survivor now feature behind the scenes footage, deleted scenes, and interviews with participants. Even more interesting is the creation of "webisodes" short (2-3 minute) Internet-only video clips like those recently created for the shows The Office and Battlestar Galactica.
  
  These webisodes, which focus on secondary characters, not only help enrich the viewer experience but they also give the viewers something to look at while the shows are on hiatus. I am betting that we will see a lot more activity like this in 2007
  
• YouTube as a marketing channel - I touched on this before, but the networks have realized that it's better to use YouTube than fight it. If you need any more proof of this point, compare NBC a year ago -- when it forced YouTube to take down all clips of "Lazy Sunday" -- with this year when the network utilized YouTube for an uncensored version of the Christmas Present Song.

I think we will see more of all this in the new year.

2006 - The Year of Online Video pt.1

The Year of the YouTube

Show of hands everybody: One year ago, on Dec. 26 2005, how many of you out there had heard of YouTube? How many had actually used it? Considering how ubiquitous the video-sharing site has become it’s amazing to think that 12 months ago the site was only getting a couple of thousand hits a day is now the number 6 destination on the Web.

Not to mention the fact that 24 months ago the company didn’t even exist.

 YouTube is one of the most popular time-wasters on the Web. It is the go-to site when you want to post videos of your cat. It has created a number of home-grown mid-tail celebrities like the Numa Numa guy, Judson "Evolution of Dance" Laipply, Lonelygirl15,  (and of course our own Papadizi). It has become a marketing channel for professional media outlets.

Even before Google bought out YouTube in December, I was ready to proclaim 2006 to be the year of online video. You could feel something building up throughout the year as a medium which had previously been an early adopter technology.

Setting aside the hype surrounding YouTube’s massive exit, online video – and specifically short-form video nuggets – is looking like the 21^st century’s first new media form and one of the most exciting things to happen to the online world since the creation of the online world.

From the standpoint of the tech investor, the rise of YouTube and short-form video opens up a number of interesting possibilities. Just a few off the top of my head:

• Better-quality, faster video delivery
• Video on Mobile
• The combination of video and advertising
• New types of video-based Web communities
• New advertising platforms based on Web video
• Perhaps even a high-quality content production studio (who knows?)

More thoughts tomorrow.

NBC Does Video Convergence

Today's New York Times has an article about this week's latest YouTube phenomenon. This one comes courtesy of "Saturday Night Live". Last week's SNL aired a parody music video called "A Special Christmas Box".

The clip features Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg singing a smooth R&B number about making a special Christmas present for their girlfriends.

The premise behind the joke (and the gift in the video) just barely passed NBC's censors, who insisted on that a  certain word -- that appears 16 times in the film -- be bleeped out. In an unprecedented move, the creators of the film asked NBC if they could post the un-censored version of the clip on YouTube. And NBC agreed.

(The uncensored clip can be seen here; I'd put it up directly but we are trying to run a family-friendly blog).

Okay, It's incredibly amusing. But why am I writing about it?

Because it is the latest example of one of the year's most interesting trends: the migration of mainstream content to the Web. The migration pattern is one particular facet of what I call the YouTube effect. Increasingly, major production studios and television networks are harnessing the Web both to provide another broadcasting channel for existing material as well as a way to provide new material that complements shows on the air.

NBC blundered onto this phenomenon last year when another SNL music video, Lazy Sunday, became a sensation after users posted it to YouTube. Originally, NBC had YouTube take the video down. But they soon realized YouTube's potential and have gone so far as to open up their own channel on YouTube where they broadcast clips from NBC shows.

I suspect that we will see a whole lot more of this in the coming year and by the end of 2007 there will be a hell of a lot of overlap between broadcast TV and the Web.

Web entertainment talent gets a vote of confidence

Here's another interesting item on the Web video frontier: United Talent Agency, one of the biggest talent firms in Hollywood, has opened up an online arm in order to scout out potential talent from the Internet world.

The goal this time around, executives say, is not only to recruit the next generation of television and film writers and directors from the relative obscurity of sites like YouTube and Revver. It is also to help the major Web portals that are hungry for original content to find the creative people they need — just as movie studios have long turned to talent agencies when looking for new directors, screenwriters and actors.

“It starts with just helping identify people on both sides of the aisle,” said Brent Weinstein, head of the new division, UTA Online. “The barrier to entry is so low, everybody is now a potential artist. So there’s this great unwashed of talent out there, 99.999 percent of which is probably not good enough to have a traditional film and television career. But on the Internet, a lot of different types of things go. And yet for buyers, this is a wall of people, so how does a brand know which one of them can help it execute?”

This is yet another indication that we are seeing the rise of a new type of entertainment medium. Short-form video or semi-pro video or whatever you want to call it has gotten a real boost in recent months, certainly since the Google-YouTube deal.

It looks like the future of entertainment (or at least some of it) will reside in all the semi-professional stuff that makes buzz on the Web. Now it seems that Hollywood has started to take notice as well.

Short Vids are Here to Stay

Despite all the hoo-ha about Web 2.0, it's becoming increasingly clear that short-form video is the real Internet story of 2006. In the last week we've heard rumors that YouTube is looking for a $1.5B valuation. Not to mention the fact that this year's Web 2.0 conference will feature a showcase of short videos hosted by John Battelle.

We've grown accustomed to thinking about sites like YouTube as the distribution channels of the future, but I (at least) envisioned it as a channel for distributing traditional long-form content such as movies or TV shows. However, it seems that video nuggets have developed into a media form in their own right.

One of the more interesting developments surrounding short-form video content is the recently announced NBBC. NBBC is a joint endeavor between NBC Universal and NBC's affiliates. In brief, the service acts as a marketplace for quality video content. Content creators use the NBBC platform in order to place their content on publisher web sites.

Content creators can use the site to increase the exposure of their videos and to receive ad revenues (the service works on a rev share business model). Publishers have access to new content. And NBC can use the platform both as a new avenue for monetizing its existinc content as well as get a cut of a brand-new revenue stream.

Significantly, the service is open to anybody with video content. NBC does not seek exclusivity nor does it seek to own the content.

Interestingly, this seems like the first example of a major content provider extending its brand to user-generated material. If NBBC manages to take off, you can be sure that other media entities will follow.