On Monday May 11th, we'll be teaming up with the NY Video Meetup group to once again host their monthly event at the Hilton Hotel in midtown, the night before the Streaming Media East show opens. About 500 attendees are coming out to see, discuss and vote on four exciting web video startups. This will be a packed event so please visit the NY Video Meetup website for all the details and make sure to RSVP.

Agenda:
6:30-7:00PM Networking
7:00-8:00PM New Product Demos & Q&A
8:00-9:00PM Job Exchange & Networking (cash bar downstairs)

May Startup Presenters:
1. Volomedia – Jeff Karnes, VP Marketing & Products
2. Clearspring – Alex Calic, VP Network Development
3. Aniboom – Uri Shinar, Founder & CEO
4. SesameVault – Cameron Brain, Founder & CEO
5. Magma (Stealth) – Andrew Baron, Founder & CEO of Rocketboom will unveil his new startup

All attendees will also have the opportunity to win some free all-access conference passes to the Streaming Media East show.

I've learned that a ruling has just come down in the Akamai and Limelight patent lawsuit with the judge overturning the jury verdict that was awarded in Akamai's favor. For now, Limelight will not have to pay any damages and I expect that Akamai will probably appeal the decision. More details to come, expect to see a ruling online on Saturday. I will post the link to the ruling as soon as I get it.

Updated Saturday: As expected, Akamai has said they will appeal the decision.

Updated Sunday: Limelight's official release on the ruling.

Updated Monday: Here is a copy of the ruling.

AT&T is looking to immediately fill 22 openings in their Digital Media Services group, supporting their Content Delivery and Content Management businesses. Open positions include one sales director position and multiple engineer and overlay sales reps positions.

Job locations are in LA, SF, Seattle, Dallas, Northern VA, NYC, Boston,
Atlanta (SE only) and Chicago. Possible other locations include Denver
and St. Louis. If you are interested in more details, contact John Watson at AT&T directly.

If your online video related company has any job openings, let me know. In most cases I will highlight them here on the blog – free of charge.

I have just a few speaking spots left at the Content Delivery Summit in NYC on Monday May 11th, the day before the Streaming Media East show kicks off. Below are the session details and I am looking for CUSTOMERS (content owners) of content delivery networks to fill these last few spots. If interested, please contact me ASAP as I will be closing all of these out by Friday. Vendors are welcome to suggest any of their customers as well.

• CDN Technology Impacts: HTTP, HD, Multi-Bitrate, and Live Broadcasting
  With all the new and existing CDN technology in the market, which new features and functionality should you take advantage of? What's the value of multi-bitrate delivery, and what impact can it have on your content business? Will new services like HTTP-based Smooth Streaming reduce your bandwidth costs and enable live events to scale to larger audiences? What exactly constitutes HD video, and what's the total cost of ownership for deployment? These and other questions will be answered as we break down when these technologies should be used and what real impact they can have on your online video business.

• Monetization And Video Advertising: Waiting for the Tipping Point
  For all the buzz about online video advertising, most content owners have yet to be able to turn their online video from cost center to profit center. Still, strong signals suggest that video monetization is around the corner, provided content owners don't pull back in today's tight economy. When will we reach that tipping point, and what direct cost and revenue impact will it have on the CDNs?

• The Future of CDNs
  This wrap-up session will be an open discussion highlighting some of the growing trends in the CDN market and examining how the business of content delivery will change over the coming years. Does cloud computing have any real impact? Will all video delivery eventually become commoditized? Will enough applications be built in the ecosystem to support rapid monetization? Come debate where the market is going, where the real opportunities are and what the disruptors will be, good and bad, for the CDN industry moving forward.

A reminder that readers of my blog can register for the CDN Summit for only $395 at this special link, which is $200 off the regular ticket price.

At next months Streaming Media East show, we have over 30 sessions and 110 speakers talking and presenting on a wide range of topics. One of the sessions, moderated by Peter Kafka at All Things Digital, is entitled "Bridging TV And Broadband And Cutting The Cable" and contains speakers from Sling Media, TiVo, ESPN360 and boxee discussing what has become one of the most debated topics of late. Readers of my blog can register for the show using the special promo discount code of DRF1 which gets you a full two-day conference pass for only $695.

Bridging TV And Broadband And Cutting The Cable
Streaming sites like hulu, CBS, ABC, and others have proven that savvy audiences are turning to their computers for entertainment, and in a way that's profitable. How are traditional and cutting-edge companies capitalizing on this trend? In addition to providing the content, how are they taking advantage of this "connected" platform as they deliver content? And finally, how will this affect cable companies that are losing subscribers to this new content source?

• Moderator: Peter Kafka, Senior Editor, All Things Digital
• Michael Rosen, EVP, Chief Revenue Officer, Babelgum
• John Gilmore, President, CEO, Sling Media
• Avner Ronen, CEO, Founder, boxee
• Damon Phillips, VP, ESPN360.com

If you have a question you want me to ask one of the companies, put it in the comments section below.

This morning Move Networks announced that it would acquire UK based Inuk networks, a provider of IPTV based technology. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, I've been told it was an all stock deal and was basically a fire sale as Inuk was out of operating capital. PaidContent UK has a detailed overview of Inuk's previous funding and money woes.

While it's too early for me to access what this means for Move Networks from an IPTV product offering perspective as I have not yet heard their strategy or seen the Inuk technology in action, this deal will only add to the confusion in the market of what exactly Move Networks core focus is.

Right now, Move Networks is in quite a state of transition, trying to figure out exactly who they want to be in the market and what their core offering is going to look like. I really wonder if they have any of that figured out yet and I hope they start to focus, iron out their offering, outline their product road map and then convey all of this to the market. Right now, no one has any idea what exactly Move's focus is, what their value proposition is to the market and what their core strength is. They are now involved in trying to offer so many different solutions that I think they have diluted their brand. 

With Move's board of directors still calling the shots while they look for a new CEO, no message is being delivered. Move's board clearly thinks they have a plan in place and they may, but without conveying any of that to the market and to customers, their strategy can only go so far. I don't remember the last time I saw a company in our industry manage the communication in the market so poorly after so many changes took place. I place blame on this with the board, who is literally running the day to day operations of the company, something a board is not setup to do.

With new executive appointments already confirmed and being announced shortly, hopefully they can fix all of these problems. But until the board finds and appoints a new CEO, the vision for this company is coming from a board of directors instead of one person being in charge. That's simply a bad strategy and one I hope they are quick to fix.

If you're interested in getting a good sense on the size of the online video advertising market, you'd probably just look at one of the many analyst reports that give numbers on the growth in the industry. The problem is that looking at these reports gives you such a wide range of data, that it's nearly impossible to find two analysts who agree on similar numbers. I did a quick look up of some of the recent reports and found the following:

• In Dec of 08', Forrester Research said that the global online video advertising market will reach $7.2B by 2012. (source)

• In June of 08', eMarketer said the global online video advertising
  market would be $7.8B by 2012, $3B of which would come from the U.S.
  alone. (source) Then in August of 08', eMarketer cut that predicition down to $1B from the U.S. by 2012.

• In May of 08', IDC said that online video advertising will reach $3.8B by 2012. (source) But in April of 09', said the same market size will be $600M by 2012. (source)

• In June of 08', the Kelsey Group said that revenue just from local online video advertising alone would be $1.5B by 2012. (source)

• In Feb of 07', Borrell Associates predicts that the local online video advertising market will be $5B in 2012. (source)

• In Sept of 08', LiveRail said the online video advertising makret would be $1.3B in 2010. (source)

• In Aug of 08', Lehman brothers said the online video advertising market would reach $2.4B by 2012. (source)

• In Feb of 08', Parks Associates said the online video advertising market will be $6.6B in 2012. (source)

Clearly, no one seems to agree on the size of the market and the numbers have huge ranges. Compounding this problem is the fact that many of these reports don't outline exactly what they consider to be online video advertising revenue. Is it just ads played in the video, or also ads around the video?

I don't know what the size of the online video advertising market is and I've never tried to figure it out. But it's pretty hard for a niche industry like online video advertising to try and show everyone the growth taking place when the numbers being projected have a difference in the billions.

What I'd really like to know is what figure do the online video advertising vendors use in their slide deck when they are telling their investors the size of the market and the expected growth.