Technobuffalo have released an amazing article that showcases the leading online video streaming services and compares them for the US market.
As you can see from the above table Netflix in my opinion is still a long way ahead of its competitors. Netflix has a strong library and a better HD service, which must be worth paying a little more than Amazon Prime. It seems as though Hulu is quite limited because its a partnership between to NBC, Fox and ABC. Thus, competitors might be more willing to join other services instead of adding their catalogue to this service.
However, what we are forgeting here is that Amazon recently acquired LoveFilm, which has a very strong presence in Europe. Thus, Amazon Prime will only be getting stronger and stronger.
Next week, the president of the United States Barak Obama will be addressing the nation in the annual ‘State of the Union’ speech. Many people will watch it live on TV, others from the White House’s website – some, from the official iPhone app.
The White House have just announced their official app which has been released onto the App Store. There have been other similar apps on the app store (mainly just fancy skins of the White House website) but this one is free and much, much better.
There is a feed to the White House blog, videos, newsroom topics and photos as well as quick updates about national situations and policies. However, the best feature is the video streaming (or ‘Live Content’ as it’s labelled in the app). This enables you to watch news conferences, events and speeches at the White House. So next week, make sure to watch the presidents speech from you cool new, free, White House iPhone app which can be downloaded here.
Crunchyroll was born in 2006, hosting a mix of user submitted and site provided anime clips, many of which were uploaded without rights holders permission, although infringing videos were usually removed by site admin. Despite this somewhat bumpy start, Crunchyroll quickly gained a vast userbase, climbing into Alexa’s top 200 within 2 years of its conception, and got funded at the beginning of last year (March) by Venrock (a California based venture capital firm) to the tune of about $4 million USD.
A stricter approach to copyright infringement and the weight of their user base and a newly cut, seven figure cheque behind them meant that they were able to secure content licensing deals with Japanese providers, bringing exclusive and simulcast content over from Japan to their largely American audience. They now stream and broadcast only content to which they have legitimate license, and operate a membership program to get access to content earlier than it’s normally available for streaming, and to watch high-def versions of videos.
I think this is a great example of a site managing to turn popular appeal into a solid business model in the icanhascheezburger.com mould. Take a pretty unique type of content, build a user base, and exploit that user base hard and fast, while trimming away any hint of illegality. Skating the Web 2.0 copyright infringment maelstrom for a while might be dangerous, but once you’ve got the traffic, then you’ve got bargaining power, and if you can get some financial backing, or really get on top of your advertising proposition then the rewards can be huge.
