Last Tuesday, MSNBC.com webcast the Clinton and Obama debate and suffered some major technical problems. Lots of users all over the country had problems like I did with the video constantly buffering making it impossible to watch the MSNBC webcast at all. Fortunately, other news sites had no problems with their webcast feed and with a little help from other frustrated viewers, the links that did work quickly got passed around.

For days I have been asking MSNBC what went wrong but they wouldn’t say. A few days after the event,  MSNBC.com e-mailed me an official statement they posted on their website stating:

"On Tuesday, Feb. 26, msnbc.com’s live simulcast of the Democratic
debate on MSNBC was hindered by technical difficulties. Many users
experienced buffering and stuttering as they attempted to watch the
debate. Msnbc.com has years of success at streaming high volumes of
live video, and we apologize for letting some of you down on Tuesday."

For me, simply saying they had "technical difficulties" is not sufficient. Webcasting has been around over twelve years now, and for something as important at a debate like this one, which could only be viewed on one TV station, MSNBC, with many like myself don’t get if they have FiOS TV, not having a successful webcast is unacceptable. It’s was only a week before the MSNBC.com webcast that CNN webcast a debate with no technical issues at all. I didn’t see a single complaint by any users on the web about the CNN webcast.

While MSNBC.com states it has "years of success at streaming high volumes of live video…." I think many like me would disagree. Once again, MSNBC.com had no difficulty in delivering me a video add before the webcast stream that didn’t work. This vicious cycle has been going on for some time with MSNBC.com and many like me have been complaining about it for quite a while.

It was nine year’s ago that the infamous Victoria Secret webcast failure took place. This time around the topic of the MSNBC.com webcast had some real importance, broadband adoption wasn’t a problem and the video streaming platforms weren’t new. Yet nine year’s later, we’re still talking about a large event having a high failure rate. Is the Internet really ready for large scale TV like webcasts? It may be, but clearly MSNBC.com isn’t.

A quick round-up of some of the latest hiring’s in the online video industry:

• Brian Lehon, formerly VP of Sales at TalkPoint is now a sales director at Level 3 within
  their Content Markets Division

• Scott Baker, formerly of Boston.com is now a Strategic Account Manager at Brightcove

• Barak Bar-Cohen has been named the President and COO of Narrowstep. Barak previously served as Narrowstep’s GM of European Operations

• Ross Angert, formerly the Creative Director, Global Interactive Media for World Wrestling Entertainment has left the company

• Charlie Mitchell, formerly of StreamSign Media is now the Senior Executive of Sales for Origin Digital

• Erik Perkins, CFO of Origin Digital will now also serve as the President of the company

• Jimmy Jellinek, former Editor-in-Chief for Maxium is now the VP of Entertainment and Programming for Heavy.com

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or are a
company that has a job opening, let me know. In many cases I will
highlight it here on the blog – free of charge.

Why there is a lot of speculation on exactly what may happen to Limelight in terms of a potential acquisition, my bet is on AT&T or Level 3, there is also the possibility that Limelight may team up with other CDNs to fight Akamai’s 703 patent if they are not acquired.

At the core of the 703 patent is the idea that Akamai has essentially patented all forms of delivering content on the web. Based on the ruling today, the court is basically saying that any content publisher that has a website with ANY embedded object (not just video) that is not delivered under the control of the content producer is infringing on the 703 patent. There was some very specific working about this in the ruling today and I will publish the exact wording shortly when I have the transcript.

Don’t be surprised if Limelight rallies other CDNs to the patent fight under the belief that the 703 patent is too broad and is essentially patenting all content delivery on the Internet.

I expect Limelight Networks will appeal today’s ruling and by so doing, will get a stay on the injunction ruling until the appeal can at least be heard. So for the mean time, it will be business as usual for Limelight and they won’t be forced to shut down.

That being said, discussions are underway about Limelight being acquired by a larger player in the space who would then fight Akamai in court over the ruling. Limelight does not have a lot of resources to fight such a ruling nor an extensive patent portfolio so they are limited in what they can do.

While rumors have been circulating about Limelight being acquired by Microsoft, I am predicting it would be AT&T or Level 3. Talks are intensifying about the acquisition and I put the chance at over 50%.

Updated: Limelight has just announced they will appeal the ruling.

A few hours ago, a ruling came down in the Akamai and Limelight Networks patent suit awarding Akamai $45.5 million dollars finding that Limelight Networks infringed on Akamai’s patents. Akamai is also asking the court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting Limelight from continuing to sell CDN their services.

While the damage claims are not that big of a deal in terms of the size of settlement Limelight would have to pay, the real question is what Limelight does next. There are a few potential things that could happen which are all going to be based on whether or not the court issues an injunction in Akamai’s favor. If Akamai gets the injunction, Limelight options will be limited as they won’t have a lot of time to stay an injunction.

Limelight might be able to find a work around on its network to avoid the infringing patent and could always potentially come to some kind of licensing terms with Akamai, but my guess is that they already have a work around on their network to avoid the infringement. They have known about the suit for a long time and hopefully, have prepared different plans to put into action once the ruling came out.

Yesterday, Microsoft officially announced the launch of Windows Media Services 2008. While I expect we will see a lot more announcements and news around this and other products at next week’s MIX event, here are just some of the highlights from Microsoft of the new Windows Media Services:

• Reliability: Improves on the 99.999% reliability of Windows Server 2003

• Native 64-bit OS Support: 2x the industry-leading scalability of WMS 9.0 thanks to native 64-bit operating system support

• Scalable Live Streaming: deliver large-scale live events to a global audience

• Fast Streaming: Fast Start and the newer Advanced Fast Start for WMS significantly reduce streaming buffering times to deliver near-television-like experiences when playing back content or switching between sources. For on-demand content, Advanced Fast Start also enables quick seeking within a WMS stream, allowing users to "seek" forward or backward instantly.

• New Cache/Proxy Server plug-in: this plug-in allows a Windows Media server in a branch office or other remote location to easily split a single broadcast stream from the home office into multiple streams for local end users, reducing WAN traffic.

There are a bunch of other features as well that simplify management, cut costs and enable monetization, which you can read about here.

In addition, many features of Windows Media Services that were previously available only on Windows Server Enterprise and Datacenter are now available on Windows Server Standard, and all Standard features are now also available on Windows Web Server 2008. This makes Windows Media Services 2008 available to a broader set of users at a lower cost. 

With the launch of Windows Server 2008, Windows Media Services 2008 is now available for the Windows Web Server 2008, which has a suggested retail price of $469.

In the past year or two, many new summits, conferences and events have sprung up to talk about online video or some specific facet of online video like video advertising, video search etc… and I am asked all the time by people for a list of shows.

With that in mind, here is a list of many events that have an online video focus to them of some kind. I did not list events like NAB, CES, IBC etc… as those shows are not focused on online video specifically and I didn’t list shows that only talk to terrestrial video with no online component. Also, I did not list any event that has a website that has no info on it or an event that is over a year old and I only listed events in the U.S., Canada and Europe. Many of the links go to 2007 show websites as some have not yet announced 2008 dates.

This list is far from finished. Please add events you think are missing in the comments section and I will continue to keep the list updated.

• AlwaysOn OnHollywood
• AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC
• Broadcast LIVE and Video Forum (Europe)
• ClickZ Online Video Advertising
• Digital Hollywood (Many Locations)
• Digital Media Summit
• Driving Digital Content (Europe)
• EconSM Conference
• Entertainment Technology Alliance (Europe)
• FT Digital Media & Broadcasting Conference (Europe)
• Future TV Show
• Future TV Show Europe (Europe)
• Government Video Technology Expo
• IP Media Expo
• IPTV World Forum (Europe)
• Media Content World Summit (Europe)
• mesh (Canada)
• Mobile TV & Video Summit
• Mobile TV World Summit (Europe)
• NewTeeVee Live
• nextMEDIA (Canada)
• OMMA Global Hollywood
• OMMA Video LA
• OMMA Video NY
• Online Publishers Association (Europe)
• Streaming Media East
• Streaming Media Europe
• Streaming Media West
• The Deal’s Convergence 2.0
• The Engagement Debate
• TV of Tomorrow Show
• TV Over Net (Europe)
• Video Search Summit

If I forgot your event, it wasn’t personal, just too many to keep track of, hence the need for a list. Please add it to the comments section.