Posts for 'Kyte'

This morning KIT Digital announced 3 acquisitions, of social/video platform KickApps, online video platform Kyte and French OVP Kewego. The aggregate consideration is $77.2 million, as follows, according to the press release:

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Online video platform Kyte is expanding its support for mobile devices, announcing this morning Kyte Mobile Producer for BlackBerry. The feature allows owners of certain BlackBerry devices to upload and distribute videos from their handsets to multiple destinations. Supported models include the Bold, Curve 8900 and Storm. The Torch, the latest BlackBerry introduced, which is positioned to compete with the iPhone and Android devices, is not yet supported.

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More online video platform product news today, as Kyte is unveiling its Console 2.0 product. Last week, COO Gannon Hall gave me a rundown of the new features, which include enhanced work flows, playlist creation, channel and player management and show scheduling among others.

It's no news that OVPs are in an intense feature war, and it is increasingly important for each player to find points of differentiation. Three things that Kyte has focused on to separate itself from the pack are support for user generated content, mobile devices and social/video sharing. Gannon sees the UGC functionality as particularly important as Kyte is seeing customer demand growing for user engagement opportunities. Two customer examples he cited were ESPN's "Talk of the Terrace" live studio show in the U.K., which actively solicits user contributions (pictures, video and text), and McGraw-Hill's "Professor for a Day" initiative, which encourages students to upload a short video of themselves delivering a lecture on a subject of their choosing.

In these and other UGC examples, it's critical to be able to quickly moderate submissions and approve them for publishing. In the case of ESPN, Gannon noted that they had a multi-step approval process through compliance and copyright officers, which Kyte enabled. The proliferation of video capturing devices like smartphones and personal video cameras, plus the intense desire by brands to engage their audience, suggests that UGC support will become a more important OVP feature. As far as I'm aware, the only other OVP that has really emphasized UGC moderation is VMIX, a situation that is likely to change.

Mobile is another area where Kyte is trying to differentiate itself. Though its app frameworks for iPhone and Blackberry, and soon Nokia and Android, customers are able to quickly build apps for these mobile devices and then, using Kyte's Mobile Producer feature, can manage and publish video to their channels. Gannon said that for example, Fox News now routinely has field reporters capturing video with iPhones and then uploading it for audience viewing. Kyte was also involved in quickly turning around an iPhone app for last Friday's "Hope for Haiti" digital telethon.

I continue to believe that the world is getting more and more complicated for content producers. That's a theme that I've heard repeatedly at the NATPE conference in Las Vegas, where I am now. In the old days content people focused on producing great content, and then others worried about distribution and audience development. What's changing in the digital era is that content producers need to be just as focused on distribution in order to generate an ROI. In this respect OVPs are playing a more important role, providing the work flow, distribution and engagement functionality. Making all of this ever easier and more effective will continue to be a primary success factor for OVPs.

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I continue to be impressed with how the mobile video market is gaining traction. It seems like rarely a day goes by now where there isn't an announcement by a technology vendor, content provider or service provider related to mobile video. Though it's still well behind online video's adoption, all of the pieces continue to fall into place for mobile video's continued growth.

From a consumer usage standpoint, the iPhone has of course been the key driver. Whenever I'm with an iPhone owner, I'm struck by how deeply they've integrated video into their mobile experience. It's not just that they've downloaded TV shows and movies to watch on planes and so forth, but rather how natural it is for them to start playing a video and then pass their phone around so others can watch also. The iPhone has turbocharged the whole concept of shared, out-of-home video experiences.

And though the iPhone's 30 million estimated units sold represents a huge footprint of new mobile video users (in turn generating a large ecosystem of app developers), from a device standpoint, new entrants are poised to grow the market even further. Devices powered by the Android mobile operating system are continuing to come to market, with the most recent, high-profile example being Motorola's Droid, offered by Verizon Wireless. Verizon is putting a huge marketing push behind the Droid, contributing to a growing sense of awareness by consumers of the appeal of smartphones and their video capabilities in particular. Not surprisingly given its Google parentage, YouTube has also weighed in on the benefits of Android in allowing easier uploading at higher video quality.

In addition the iPhone and Android, among business users, Blackberry continues to dominate and internationally, Nokia has the largest smartphone position. This all suggests there will be vigorous competition among these 4 platforms, leading to lots consumer-facing promotion and rapid innovation. In a recent AdAge piece, IDC estimated that 6% of U.S. cell phone users, or 18 million people, will watch video on their cell phones this year, rising to 27 million in 2013.

Content providers have taken notice of these dynamics and have been aggressively creating video-rich mobile apps, initially for the iPhone, but now also for Android, Nokia and Blackberry smartphones. In a recent conversation I had with Ujjal Kohli, CEO of Rhythm NewMedia, which specializes in "mobilizing and monetizing" broadcast and cable networks' TV shows, he explained how clients continue to bulk up their teams devoted solely to mobile video initiatives. An example of this is Warner Bros, which is among a number of film studios now pursuing mobile initiatives. In addition to building mobile video apps, Rhythm is also creating a mobile video ad network, like Transpera (which I last covered here). As mobile video usage surges, advertising will grow right alongside it. Mobile advertising in general received major validation earlier this week as Google acquired mobile video ad display network AdMob for $750 million.

With all this mobile video activity, technology providers are increasingly their attention to serving their content customers. Just yesterday, Kyte, a video platform company that focused early on mobile, announced that it has launched "application frameworks" for Android and Nokia, following on previous frameworks for iPhone and Blackberry. As Gannon Hall, Kyte's COO told me, its content customers have pushed Kyte for other platforms. Now with native support for all four platforms, Kyte's customers can quickly and cost-effectively adapt existing apps, incorporating full social and monetization functions. While Gannon believes Kyte has taken the lead among OVPs in offering mobile capabilities beyond just APIs, he envisions others ramping up as well. Some evidence of this is today's partnership announcement by VMIX and Qik, to integrate mobile live streaming into VMIX's platform. More will surely follow.

There are plenty of other examples of how the ecosystem supporting mobile video is being built out, such as Clearwire announcing this week $1.5 billion in additional capital raised for its 4G WiMax network, Verizon leading a group of venture investors in a $1.3 billion "LTE" 4G opportunity fund, Adobe releasing Flash Player 10.1 targeted for mobile devices, AT&T accelerating deployment of "HSPA 7.2" technology in 6 cities to boost 3G speeds and Akamai launching its "Akamai HD" network, which among other things supports HD video streaming to the iPhone. These and many other examples form the foundation for ever more robust mobile video experiences in the future.

One of my predictions for 2009 was that after many fits and starts, mobile video finally seemed poised to take off. Nearly 11 months into the year, I think we're seeing ample evidence of this happening. I expect only continued growth going forward.

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Have you noticed that live streaming video is getting more and more popular? Lately, sports in particular have been leading the charge, with live streams of PGA golf, US Open tennis, NFL football, Major League Baseball games and British soccer, among others. But sports are hardly the only area where live video streaming is taking off.

Two key catalysts for this part of the live streaming market have been mobile access (with the iPhone and other smartphones' video capture and playback driving the market) and social media/video sharing (with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others providing instant outlets). A lot of this activity is Flash-based. As both mobile and social trends gain ground, we can expect even more activity in this segment.

Aside from sports, live streaming is also gaining traction for high-profile events, with some companies moving to support this end of the market. For example, today Kyte, which positions itself as a full mobile and online video platform, is introducing "Kyte Live Pro," an add-on that allows HD live streaming from multiple sources and encoding using Adobe Flash Media Live Encoder.

I chatted with Gannon Hall, Kyte's COO yesterday, who explained that while "authentic" content - mainly short live clips - remain popular, Kyte's customers have also been asking for the ability to live stream longer-form events in HD. For example, TV Guide is using Kyte Live Pro this Sunday night to stream the Emmys red carpet pre-show online. Gannon expects other video platform companies, recognizing the opportunity, will start to offer live HD streaming as well. Swarmcast is one company I'm aware of that has made a name for itself broadcasting high-profile live events over the years. Microsoft is also putting a big push behind live, with its Smooth Streaming product.

Moving even further up-market, there's also a huge amount of live video streaming happening among enterprises, educational institutions and government agencies. These entities have much tighter requirements, often needing an on-premise, behind-the-firewall configuration for capture, broadcast and viewing, multi-location secure distribution, transcoding into various formats, integration with other network and other IT components, and mission-critical reliability.

The leader in this part of the market is a company called VBrick (according to research compiled by Frost & Sullivan), whose executives I've spoken to a couple of times recently. VBrick has over 6,000 customers in 56 countries, including 50 Fortune 500 companies, 100 Federal agencies and 900 schools, among others. The range of VBrick uses includes executive broadcasts, training and education, digital signage and surveillance and monitoring, to name a few.

VBrick deploys a hardware appliance that does video capture and transcoding into multiple formats, high-quality distribution over varied networks (LAN, WAN, Internet) and secure viewing at desktops or conference rooms. VBrick also offers "VBoss," which is a SaaS alternative for less frequent/more budget-minded users.

To date, most online video has been consumed on-demand. But this appears to be changing fast. With nearly infinite use cases and technology providers addressing all potential market segments, live video streaming appears poised for lots of growth ahead.

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