On Tuesday, Barry Diller introduced a new company and service called Aereo that will offer consumers in the NYC area the ability to get live broadcast TV stations via the Internet, with DVR in the cloud, for a subscription fee of $12 a month. Unfortunately for Barry's IAC/InterActiveCorp, who invested $20.5M in the company, this is going to be another example of an executive bringing a product to the market, simply because of their ego. Aereo has no shot at succeeding let alone disrupting the current cable and satellite market like they imply.

Consumers are not asking for this service, aren't demanding it and certainly aren't willing to pay for it. Aside from the fact that the service gets no cable channels, will only be available in NYC to those who have a NYC based billing address and IP and might face legal issues, the biggest problem is that it won't work as well as Aereo implies. While the company lists the Roku as one of the devices it will support, when I inquired for more details, a representative said Aereo will work with a Roku provided you link it to a browser based iOS device such as an iPad and use it to control it. So now I need two devices to make it work on one?

Aereo will only work on devices that have a HTML5 compatible browser, not via apps, so getting this via an Xbox 360 or PS3 is out of the question. While the company has claimed it will offer "HD quality", so far, they have not defined what they classify as HD, what bitrate it will be encoded in, who is delivering the video or what kind of streaming technology, like adaptive bitrate, might be used. So while Aereo is trying to make the service sound really easy to use, they have yet to provide any real technical details which will determine how good the video really looks and how well it will be delivered.

Of course anyone can already get the channels that Aereo is offering by simply getting a TV antenna for over-the-air broadcasts, so they will have a hard time selling the same thing for $12 a month. Some might argue that the real value is that Aereo offers a DVR service in the cloud, but since all of the content being offered is from the major broadcast networks, it's not exactly hard to find their shows on the web after they air. Others might argue that the real value with Aereo is that you can watch live TV on mobile devices, but you'd blow through your wireless cap pretty fast if you watched enough TV via a 3G or 4G connection. And so far, consumers in the U.S. have not shown any real interest in wanting to watch live TV on mobile devices, outside of some very specific content.

Another big problem for Aereo that no one has mentioned is the amount of money they would need to spend to market and support their service. The cable and satellite companies have huge marketing budgets for TV, radio, print and web and Aereo won't be able to reach the same audience without raising a lot more money. New customer acquisition costs would be very high and support costs will also put a burden on the company. What happens when users call up complaining that they can't get the content due to them not realizing it's a problem with their device or their connection? Aereo is going to have to spend a lot of time helping customers with tech issues that the cable and satellite companies don't have. For the most part, cable TV always works and Internet based streaming services don't have the same level of reliability or simplicity that cable TV has and are more expensive to support.

There are more than 100M consumers in the U.S. that pay for TV via cable and satellite and Aereo has implied that a big market to them would be about 300,000 subscribers. That's not even one half of one percent of the total number of cable/satellite TV subscribers in America. Yet they think their service will somehow disrupt the cable TV market or make cable companies change their practices? They aren't being realistic.

Whether the technology works or not is irrelevant as this is not a service consumers want, are demanding or will be willing to pay for, in any real quantity. This thing is dead before it even gets off the ground.

The 2012 Streaming Media East show (May 15-16 in NYC) will feature a special broadband-enabled device pavilion, allowing thousands of attendees to get hands-on with more than 50 of today’s leading streaming devices and Over-The-Top video content platforms. It is the only show where you can try out all of these devices and platforms in action, compare them side-by-side and get your questions answered – all for free.

Simply register for an exhibits only pass and come test out any combination of gaming consoles, stand-alone streaming boxes, smart TVs, connected Blu-ray players and tablets that you want. Additional devices and platforms will be added leading up to the show. Confirmed devices/platforms include:

• OTT PLATFORMS: Netflix, Hulu Plus, HBO GO, iTunes, VUDU, Xbox LIVE, Amazon Prime Streaming, DISH/Blockbuster, Sony PlayStation Network, Google TV, MLB.TV, NHL, EPIX, UFC, ESPN, YouTube, OnLive.

• DEVICES: Apple TV, Boxee Box (with Live TV dongle), Xbox 360 (with Kinect), Nintendo Wii, Roku XDS, Seagate GoFlex TV, Sony PS3, Sony SMP-N200, TiVo Premiere, ViewSonic NexTV, Vizio Stream Player, WD TV Live, WD TV Live Hub.

• TABLETS: Amazon Kindle Fire, Apple iPad, ASUS Transformer Prime, B&N Nook Tablet, BlackBerry PlayBook, Dell Streak, HP TouchPad, HTC Flyer, Motorola Xoom 2, Motorola Xyboard, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Sony Tablet S, Vizio Tablet.

• CONNECTED TV PLATFORMS: From Sony (BRAVIA Internet Video), Vizio (V.I.A.), LG (NetCast), Panasonic (Viera Connect), Philips (NetTV), Samsung Smart TV, Sharp (Aquos Net+), Toshiba (NetTV). 

• CONNECTED BLU-RAY PLAYERS: From Samsung, Philips, Sony, Vizio, LG, Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba, Magnavox and Sylvania

Attendees will also have the chance to win many of these devices and other giveaways during the two-days of the show so register online and come get free access to the largest collection of OTT devices and platforms all in one room.

Boston based Yottaa (pronounced "Yo-ta") has announced a new dynamic site acceleration service aimed at the small and medium sized business (SMB) market. For those who have never heard of the company before, Yotta was founded in 2009 and for the last year, has primarily been offering a website performance monitoring service. The company raised $4M in a Series A round and now employees 40 people.

Unlike many of the larger CDNs who target enterprise customers with their DSA offering, Yottaa is going after small and medium sized customers who can't afford a larger vendor like Akamai. Yottaa says they have more than 75,000 websites that use their website performance monitoring service, with the typical paying customer spending about $500 a month. The company says 36% of their customers are small e-commerce websites and 40% of their revenue comes from outside the U.S.

Yottaa's new dynamic site acceleration platform is deployed across 20 data centers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia and the company is adding a location in Sao Paulo later this year. The company offers a pay-as-you-go model and doesn't require long-term contracts. Below is a slide that outlines the features of their new DSA service.

Yottaa sells their services direct to customers but most of their business comes from partnerships with hosting companies and cloud providers who act as re-sellers. While Yottaa's revenue was a "few million" dollars last year, the company expects they can more than double revenue this year as they see continued demand for their new DSA service.

The CDN space sure is getting crowded and we're going to see even more companies entering the market with dynamic site acceleration services later this year.

Over the past two months, Akamai's been on a buying spree and it sounds like it may not be over. After agreeing to buy Cotendo for $268M and acquiring Blaze for what is rumored to be a $12-$15M evaluation, multiple industry sources say Akamai is in negotiations to buy Chicago based and privately held BrightTag. If true, this would be a very smart acquisition for Akamai and something their ad and commerce customers would love.

BrightTag is one of a handful of vendors that offer a cloud-based tag management platform. These solutions provide a connectivity layer between first-party data and the marketing and analytics services supporting a website. As BrightTag explains on their blog, today's marketers are overwhelmed by the complexity of data collection and coordinating how their data is used across multiple services for re-targeting, ad networks, search, analytics, product recommendation, content optimization, widgets, etc.

Tag management platforms facilitate direct connections between a marketer’s website and its chosen marketing partners using a cloud-based approach that eliminates the need to put third party tags directly on a client site. This helps customers improve the performance and reliability of their websites while increasing their ability to leverage data in marketing efforts. In BrightTag's case, clients can monitor in real-time all the data they have chosen to share, know where that data is going and who is using it.

BrightTag has raised $8M to date from New World Ventures, TomorrowVentures, EPIC Ventures and I2A Fund. The company competes with other tag management platform vendors in the industry including BlueKai, Demdex, Tagman, Tealium and Ensighten amongst others. BrightTag customers include Orbitz, Gap, jetBlue, Westin Hotels, Old Navy, Crate & Barrel, 1800 Flowers, TransUnion, Sheraton Hotels and Banana Republic.

With a significant lack of centralization and standardization when it comes to the data gathered on a website and all of the ad and commerce companies Akamai already counts as customers, it is only a matter of time before Akamai is going to be forced to offer a tag based management platform. I'm not an expert when it comes to the tag management space, but sources say BrightTag has one of the best platforms in the market and it sounds like it would be a natural fit in Akamai's product portfolio.

NBC completely failed in their execution of streaming Sunday's Super Bowl on the web, yet they want us to believe that it was an engaging and successful webcast. Do they think we're stupid? Instead of coming clean and saying they had technical issues, especially with the quality of the video and re-buffering, the company is trying to blame these issues on the "last mile" networks and are pointing the finger at someone else. NBC should know better than this and should be ashamed of themselves.

Tim Siglin has a great article at StreamingMedia.com that re-caps all of the problems with the webcast, so I don't need to repeat a lot of what he said, go read his article. What I will add to Tim's piece is that NBC does not get that the success of any webcast is judged by the message you deliver, the experience you provide, and how you engage the user – not simply how many streams you deliver. Would you rather reach a lot of people with a poor experience or fewer people with a good experience that keeps them engaged longer?

NBC was quick to say how many streams they got, but didn't say how many simultaneous streams they did. Most webcasts are measured by simultaneous streams, so why isn't NBC giving out that number? They called the event a record and they are quoted on news sites as saying things like, the event “exceeded our expectations in every way," and that it was a, "tremendous success". Exceed their expectations? If poor quality video with bad re-buffering is something that "exceed their expectations", I'd hate to see how low they set the bar internally.

If the quality issues were as a result of the last mile like NBC claims, why were users like me able to stream videos from other sites with perfect video quality during the Super Bowl webcast, but not from NBC directly? That's such a cop-out on NBC's part and any viewer who played videos from others sites during the same time could easily see it wasn't a last mile issue. In addition, while NBC isn't saying what bitrates the Super Bowl was encoded for, it looks like the average bitrate was about 2Mbps. So how could I stream clips at twice this quality from other websites during the Super Bowl if there were last mile issues? Of course I couldn't, but I guess NBC thinks we won't notice that.

All NBC had to do was come clean and say they had issues, they screwed up and they have learned for next time. While failure is no good, at least no one could claim that they aren't in touch with reality. Also, I find it very strange that as I write this post, Akamai is doing their quarterly earnings call and has referenced the Super Bowl webcast as an example of a "great experience", when it was actually a very poor experience. Akamai was the CDN provider for the online webcast, so I am not surprised they are also saying the same thing as NBC since that's their customer.

If the webcast was such a "success" and was a good quality experience like both companies suggest, why isn't NBC or Akamai releasing any video quality assurance data from a third party like Conviva? Myself and others can show, by example, all the issues we had with the webcast, so where's NBC's data to show it was a last mile issue? Their data doesn't exist.

In Tim's article he says "it's disingenuous for NBC to blame last mile issues" and I'd say it's even worse than that. Streaming media technology is not new, it's not cutting-edge and we've had companies webcasting live events, with success, for over 15 years. So for NBC to encode such a low quality video to begin with, and then try to blame the last mile networks for video quality and buffering problems, someone should hold these guys accountable. So nice try NBC, but there are plenty of us who are not buying it.

I have been invited to host a dinner for buy side analysts, next Wednesday February 15th in NYC. The event will start at 6pm and the location is midtown. It will be an informal event where I will be presenting some of my latest pricing data and talking about Akamai, Limelight and Level 3's recent earnings as well as answering questions about technologies like front-end optimization and dynamic site acceleration amongst others. It will be interactive, so you'll also have your chance to get your specific questions answered.

If you would like to attend, please contact me and I will put you in touch with the group that is organizing the event. Space is limited and currently, it is only open to buy side analysts.

This morning Akamai announced they have acquired Blaze Software, a cloud based provider of front-end optimization (FEO) services. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but the numbers will come out, maybe even by Akamai during their earnings call today. Either way, I'll update the post once I hear what value was placed on the deal. FEO is going to be a big push from all the CDNs this year and Akamai needed to acquire someone to add a FEO product to their portfolio. This acquisition is probably also to combat Level 3 which has been working closely with FEO provider Streangeloop and has been having success in taking some big deals away from Akamai as of late.

FEO might sound similar to another subject I have written about lately, dynamic site acceleration (DSA), but it's very different. DSA's focus is to bring network resources closer to the user by pre-fetching or caching files. FEO makes the content itself faster. DSA makes page resources download faster. FEO reduces the number of page resources required to download a given page and makes the browser process the page faster. For example, analysis shows that popular sites like CNN, who already use a CDN, can double current performance by implementing FEO.

There are a lot of small FEO vendors in the space and many of them have now been acquired or teamed up with larger CDNs. While some might think that Akamai's recent purchase of Cotendo gave them a FEO product, that's not something Cotendo was doing. Blaze is now owned by Akamai, Limelight acquired AcceloWeb, Strangeloop is working with Level 3 and Riverbed acquired you also have stand-alone FEO services from Aptimize. Here's a slide that helps to break out where all the vendors fit in, but these lines are quickly blurring as many of the larger companies are taking out the smaller ones and adding this kind of functionality to their product suite.

For content owners, it used to be that the answer to most website performance problems was either to add more hardware, use a CDN, or re-engineer their backend application code. But for a number of reasons, investing in backend optimization is now providing diminishing returns. Google's research shows that for many popular sites it's the front-end that accounts for over 90% of a users wait time. Content delivery networks help to address part of this problem by reducing network latency, but even larger performance gains can be achieved through front-end optimization techniques that streamline the Web page HTML code and resources.

If you want to learn more about how front-end optimization works and what role it plays within a CDN, see my blog post from last year entitled: "Why Web Applications And Mobile Browsing Are Making The Frontend A Major Performance Bottleneck".

We will be talking a lot about FEO and seeing demos of these services at the Content Delivery Summit, May 14th in NYC.