EveryZing is changing its name to RAMP, and positioning itself around "Content Optimization." Ordinarily a name change signals a change in strategic or product direction, but in this case, as CEO Tom Wilde explained to me last week, the re-naming is neither. The change to RAMP unifies the company name with its platform name (plus descriptive extensions), and completes the evolution of the company as a consumer destination originally named PodZinger.

RAMP has continued to build out its platform since then, unveiling its "chromeless" MetaPlayer in Oct '08 that creates "virtual clips" so users can navigate to just the scene they're looking for, while content providers can maintain their existing business rules. Then earlier this year RAMP released "MediaCloud," which moved the metadata extraction process into the cloud, giving content providers the ability to manage the metadata themselves and deeply integrate it into their workflow and larger content publishing activities.

As metadata has become recognized as the currency underpinning content discovery and monetization, RAMP has added large customers, such as NBCU (also its lead investor), FOX, Meredith Publishing and others. RAMP's capabilities to handle all media types (video, audio, text and images) has become increasingly important as content providers realize that mixing and matching different assets is now required to provide audiences with the best experience. For the most advanced publishers, the days of siloing off video or audio are in the past.

In its new white paper, RAMP articulates well the fundamental shifts happening in the media business: the move away from "containers" (e.g. a magazine, album or newspaper) into content "objects" that users find, share and self-organize online; the trend toward syndication, where brand success is more about proliferating content everywhere on the web than attracting users to a specific destination site; the opportunity for content providers to enhance their monetization through dynamic contextual targeting rather than by simply selling eyeballs. Addressing these and other elements effectively is what RAMP calls content optimization.

Many of the themes RAMP espouses align with what I've been describing for a while now as the "Syndicated Video Economy." I only see these themes accelerating in importance as the supply of video escalates, devices proliferate and social media grows. With its flexible, SaaS platform that integrates well into other 3rd party content management and publishing platforms, I expect RAMP will continue to succeed as content providers become more sophisticated about how to operate online.

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