Brightcove Archive

Online video host Brightcove is announcing a new partnership – its first large deal in Germany — with Gruner + Jahr AG & Co KG. Gruner + Jahr AG & Co KG is Europe’s largest magazine publisher and the company will use Brightcove’s "Internet TV" technology to serve ad-supported videos.

"Working with G+J, Europe’s largest magazine publisher, as our first customer in Germany is a significant milestone for us as we begin our expansion in continental Europe," said Jeremy Allaire, chairman and chief executive officer of Brightcove. Brightcove is already signing deals in the U.K. including their deal with Channel 4.

This continues a line of distribution deals stateside for Brightcove including most recently IAC last month. In my use of the Brightcove platform as a consumer, I find the experience to be very smooth.

And to all of you startups out there, remember that there is a market outside San Francisco.

IAC (Nasdaq:IACI) is announcing a partnership today with Brightcove to "giving IAC businesses the opportunity to launch comprehensive high quality Internet video initiatives". The first IAC brands to utilize the new partnership are: Ticketmaster, Citysearch and 23/6.

Now I get why they did this — it’s about distribution. IAC Chairman Barry Diller even notes at this with his comment on the deal, "By making this platform available across IAC we can continue to deepen engagement with our online audiences, expand the reach of our brands, and open powerful new revenue streams through online video advertising across our sites."

But where’s IAC-owned Vimeo in all of this? While I know Vimeo is a community-based video sharing site, couldn’t Barry have created a white-labeled version of the system and monetized it using the IAC advertising network? While I don’t think this means Vimeo is doomed by any means, it sure is interesting that they selected to go outside before thinking about their own properties and how to leverage them for growth.

Channel 4 in the U.K. and Brightcove are announcing a partnership today where Brightcove will serve Channel 4′s promotional video clips. The first Channel 4 site to launch video content with Brightcove is its new online promotional destination "TV Clips," featuring clips from current TV programmes, an archive of the best moments from Channel 4′s 25 years of broadcasting, and a preview of new programming coming to Channel 4.

Brightcove chairman and chief executive officer, Jeremy Allaire, said: "Channel 4 is an industry leader with an incredible depth of innovative and award-winning programming. We are thrilled that Brightcove has been chosen to help expand the reach of Channel 4 content on the Web, driving viewership and fuelling the growth of online communities around some of its most popular shows."

Channel 4 has ongoing plans to launch further broadband video channels with the Brightcove Internet TV platform later this year.

This news comes during the same week as the announcement that BBC, ITV and Channel 4 will launch a combined on-demand video service. And earlier this week, Brightcove closed their Brightcove.tv service.

Beet.TV is reporting that Brightcove has signed Fox to use the Brightcove service for the Fox Entertainment Division. Brightcove is headed by Jeremy Allaire and has funding to the tune of $59.5 million which was announced in January.

Jeremy was the keynote speaker at the MIT Brave New Web in February where his conclusion was, "it's an exceptional time for entrepreneurs, many approaches to starting and growing a company, follow your passion and your customers, online video is at the center of the online revolution right now, and it's still very, very, very early — hundreds of companies will get built and create value."

The videos can be embedded on external sites which will help Fox's online video penetration. I would love to see the ability to create clip reels with my own selected clips. Imagine a 24 review site that can show clip reels instead of just a bunch of screenshots. Legally that is.

I agree with Jeremy that video is in its infancy. One thing I think about a lot is that if we rush it too quickly, it might be for the worst. Let's run the course as needed and in due time video will be where it needs to be.

And watch CN later this week for an important announcement! :)

These are the hottest startups on Killer Startups for the period ending April 18, 2007

Brightcove.com – The best in online video

At first glance, Brightcove might seem like just another YouTube, but it does have some nice additional features. For starters, it's an attractive, well-organized site that makes it easy to find what you're looking for by category, or just browsing. Also it has a weekly e-mail newsletter that brings you users' top picks. It has a good selection of TV clips and user provided videos. read more » (check out our other Brightcove coverage)

iStalkr.com – Social Feed Aggregator

iStalkr allows you to keep track of your friends' social feeds. See what they've recently listened to on Last.fm, or what new pictures they've posted on Flickr, or what their most recent tweet was about. People whose feeds you are keeping track of are the ones you are iStalking and the people who are tracking your feeds are your iStalkrs. It's like Twitter, but with more content from different sites from your favorite people for you to keep track of. read more »

ShareThis.com – The Site Formerly Known as Share2Me Redefines Sharing

ShareThis, formerly known as Share2Me, a bookmarklet for sending media across the web has launched HowYouShare, a promotional site with YouTube poster girl abbegirl enlisted as host. Simply install the bookmarklet, register, import all your contacts from FaceBook, AIM, and MySpace, and share. Whenever you come across something you're dying to share, just hit your ShareThis button. It's simple–register now for free. Start sharing, and save your stuff in your Sharebox to look at it later. read more »

Dealighted.com – Find all the hot deals for any product in one place

Looking to buy something? Find out the best deals that other people have stumbled upon, all on one site: Dealighted.com. The top sale deals are constantly being placed on the site's home page and in its searchable database which receives threads from various deal forums. You can search by tag, by forum, or by the hottest deals going on right now. As a registered member (which is free), you can save deals, make comments, or e-mail deals to friends. read more »

PDFfiller.com – Online Form Filler

Quite simply, PDFfiller allows you to fill out pdf files online without any downloading of software. Having been a part of a company that was searching for a solution to filling out PDF files while online, this is a site that ill prove to be an incredibly useful tool for lots of businesses with online representation. read more »

MediaPost is reporting that Brightcove will announce a partnership this week with video analytics firm, Visible Measures. So this is a callout to all companies doing video sharing…. get analytical. We already know the page view is dead, actually its ultra dead for video sharing.

Clearly stats about how many plays you have are meaningless and dead as well. Where, who, when, how are the questions we need answered. Where was the video played, who watched it, when did they view it and how must be shared with us – especially those of us who are in this for business.

Eric Elia, Brightcove's vice president of programming and design said, "One of the key pieces that's broken in traditional TV is the reporting and analytics."

Brian Shin, CEO of Visible Measures, said the analytics product allows publishers to track not only videos on their own site, but when their videos are embedded and streamed elsewhere.

"What we're trying to do is create an objective set of metrics that apply in terms of audience engagement, video virality, the distribution of video as it's embedded throughout the Web–if it's watched on a blog or on Facebook, we want to be able to track all of these things," he said.

I love analytics and will be watching this closely.

About.com, the site that has more ads than content and has never really provided me with any value, has added about 500+ videos to the site.

From Online Media Daily: The New York Times Co.-owned site also launched a new embedded video player, designed by Brightcove. The new videos follow About's "guide" model, which assigns experts to create content on each individual topic. Previously, videos were produced by professional TV personalities on a one-off basis. "This is a huge step forward for us because we've now brought the video production under the guide model, and that's allowing us to now expand very quickly," said Scott Meyer, About.com's CEO. "You have a much richer advertising environment, with companion banner ads, pre-roll, video overlays," he said.

More ads? They do have a new Web 2.0 style logo! I think their first step to increasing value is to remove the popunders. Every page beeps.