A quick round-up of some of the latest hirings in the online video industry:

• Stephen Condon, formerly the VP of Marketing at Entriq, has taken on a new job as the VP, Worldwide Marketing, focusing on the media & entertainment vertical for VeriSign.

• David Rice, formerly VP of Sales and Marketing for Limelight Networks a few years back, is now the West Coast VP of Media and Entertainment Sales at Move Networks.

• Scott Cunningham, formerly the Multimedia Technologies Manager at USATODAY, has taken on a new job as the Sr. Director of Product Management for ManiaTV!

• Doug Mow, formerly the VP of Marketing over at NaviSite has taken a new job as SVP, Product Management and Marketing at Exigen Services.

• Jennifer Betka, formerly the VP of Interactive at SIRIUS Satellite Radio, is now the SVP of Marketing at Veoh Networks.

• John Petrocelli, formerly of Entriq, has taken a job as VP, Internet TV Sales and Business Development at Widevine Technologies.

• Andrea Shannon, formerly from Adobe, is now a Business Development Manager at Microsoft in the Silverlight group.

• Scott Monson, formerly VP of Business Development for Orb Networks, is now the GM of Business Development and Sales for Digital Fountain’s CDN business unit.

• Marc Hernandez, formerly Director of West Coast Sales at Eyeblaster, is now VP of Advertising Sales at Revver.

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.

[email me if you want my latest list] I get asked all the time what sites and blogs I read daily, so with that in mind, below is a list of all the RSS feeds in my Google Reader. This is by no means a complete list and while there are other sites out there, this list is tailored for my specific business and technology interests.

Many of the large news sites are not listed here as they don’t focus on topics pertaining to online video and when they do, my Google News Alerts picks those articles up for me. I also tend to not to list blogs where someone only posts once a month or where they are also posting their vacation photos, news about their favorite sports team, and lots of other things not pertaining to online video.

If there are ones missing from this list that I should know about, please add them in the comments section. Below are the feeds for each site but you will notice that in some cases, I am taking specific subject based feeds and not feeds for all the content on the site. (You can also Download a copy of all my RSS feeds exported from Google Reader into an OPML file.)

It would be great if other bloggers out there published their list as well as many time, the blog rolls on sites don’t contain all the sites one reads. I ask a lot of others in the industry what they read and too many times, bloggers in particular don’t want to say, as if they want to keep their list a secret so they are the only ones who have the news. Think bigger picture guys, help the industry move forward and help to educate as many as possible.

– Beet.TV
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BeetTV

– Bits
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/rss2.xml

– Blog Maverick
http://www.blogmaverick.com/rss.xml

– Business 2.0 Disruptors (video subject)
http://rss.cnn.com/rss/disruptors

– CinemaTech
http://feeds.feedburner.com/cinematech

– Contentinople
feed://www.contentinople.com/rss_simple.asp

– CrunchNotes
http://feeds.feedburner.com/crunchnotes

– Data Center Knowledge
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DataCenterKnowledge

– David Eckoff
http://www.davideckoff.com/atom.xml

– Digital Media Bulletin
http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalMediaBulletin

– Digital Media Wire – Video
http://www.dmwmedia.com/taxonomy/term/617/all/feed

– Digital Media- the haves and have-nots
http://digitalvista.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

– eMarketer Articles
http://feeds.emarketer.com/Articles.xml?src=rss_top_right_newsltr

– FierceIPTV
feed://www.fierceiptv.com/feed   

– Gartner Media Blog
http://blog.gartner.com/blog/xml-rss2.php?blogid=5

– GigaOM » Featured
http://feeds.feedburner.com/gigaom/featured

– HighContrast
http://simeons.wordpress.com/feed/

– Inside Online Video
http://www.insideonlinevideo.com/?feed=rss2

– Internet Communications
http://communicationtransformation.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

– Internet Content/Community – Seeking Alpha
http://internet.seekingalpha.com/by/type/internet-content/feed

– Internet Infrastructure – Seeking Alpha
http://internet.seekingalpha.com/by/type/internet-infrastructure/feed

– IPTV EVANGELIST: Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/IPTVEvangelist

– IPTV News at IPTV Watch
http://www.iptv-watch.co.uk/

– IT Broadcast and Digital Cinema
http://fullres.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

– [itvt] Bloggit
http://blog.itvt.com/my_weblog/atom.xml

– Jeff Clavier’s Software Only
http://feeds.feedburner.com/softtechvc

– John Katsaros
feed://feeds.feedburner.com/JohnKatsaros

– last100
http://feeds.feedburner.com/last100

– LostRemote.com
http://feeds.feedburner.com/LostRemote

– Media Stocks on Seeking Alpha
http://feeds.feedburner.com/mediastockblog

– Media Words
http://www.aleuromedia.com/blog/atom.xml

– NewTeeVee
http://newteevee.com/feed/

– NYT > Technology
http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Technology.xml

– Olson’s Observations
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWannabeVC

– Online Video Watch
http://www.onlinevideowatch.com/feed/

– Open Gardens
http://feeds.feedburner.com/OpenGardens

– P2P Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/p2pblog

– paidContent.org
http://feeds.paidcontent.org/pcorg/

– Pando Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/PandoBlog

– Parks Associates
http://parksassociates.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

– Publishing 2.0
http://feeds.publishing2.com/publishing20

– ScribeMedia (media feed)
http://www.scribemedia.org/category/media/feed/

– ScribeMedia (web 2.0 feed)
http://www.scribemedia.org/category/web-20/feed/

– Silicon Alley Insider
http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider

– Technology Evangelist
http://feeds.feedburner.com/technologyevangelist/bkxI

– The Business Of Online Video
https://www.streamingmediablog.com/the_business_of_online_vi/atom.xml

– The Digital TV Weblog
http://www.digitaltv-weblog.com/index.rss

– The GigaOm Show (Large QuickTime feed)
http://revision3.com/gigaom/feed/quicktime-large

– The Next Net
http://feeds.business2.com/blogs/business2

– The Universal Desktop
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?feed=rss2

– Tim Reha
http://www.timreha.com/feed/

– Tremor Media Blog
http://blog.tremormedia.com/?feed=rss2

– TVover.net
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Tvovernet

– VentureBeat
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Siliconbeat

– VeriSign: Jeff Richards’ Demand Insights
http://blogs.verisign.com/demandinsights/atom.xml

– Verizon – PolicyBlog
http://policyblog.verizon.com/PolicyBlog/rss/policyblog.aspx

– Video Insider
http://blogs.mediapost.com/video_insider/?feed=rss2

– Video On The Web
http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/kenmc1/video

– Web TV Wire
http://feeds.feedburner.com/WebTvWire

– WebVideoUniverse
http://www.webvideouniverse.com/icom_includes/feeds/special/wvu-15.xml

– Wired TechBiz
http://feeds.wired.com/wired/techbiz

I was reading an article on Reuters this week entitled "Wikia details plans for search rival to Google" where Jimmy Wales says he is putting together the building blocks for a service that will rival Google. The article quotes him as saying "If we can get good quality search results, I think it will
really change the balance of power from the search companies
back to the publishers."

I guess that could be the case, but has anyone seen the streaming media page on Wikipedia? If that page is any indication of the kind of search results Wikipedia provides, then Google has nothing to worry about. Yes, of course I am biased when it comes to the streaming media page as I think it should represent our industry well and should be informative. But it isn't. The page list only three links under it's "references" section, all of which date back to 2000 or 2001 and to an authors site who is an expert on cryptology, not video or streaming media.

I tried once to edit the page and was told I couldn't due to some sort of permissions issue. I don't work with Wikipedia and never use it and quite frankly, don't know all the politics around who can and can't post. So I'm asking for help for those of you in the industry, who have experience with Wikipedia and can update the page with info that is actually useful, relevant and timely. You don't even have to include a link to StreamingMedia.com if you don't want. I'd be happy with the page just getting updated for all of us. I'll thank anyone in advance who can help fix this.

There’s been a lot of announcements in the mobile video space over the past two weeks, and these are some of the more interesting I’ve been reading up on:

• Last Friday, news outlets were reporting that Virgin Mobile was closing its U.K. Mobile TV service. This really comes as no surprise considering the service was based on the DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcast) standard and not the DVB-H standard as well as Virgin Mobile only being able to sell 10,000 handsets capable of getting the content.

• Two weeks ago, The European Union announced
  that it was backing DVB-H as the mobile TV standard  across Europe. The
  EU’s Commissioner is quoted as saying, "We can either take the lead
  globally – as we did for mobile telephony based on the GSM standard
  developed by the European industry – or allow other regions to take the
  lion’s share of the promised mobile TV market. Wait-and-see is not an
  option. The time has come for Europe’s industry and governments to
  switch on to mobile TV." If only it was that easy in the U.S.

• Last week, the Open Mobile Video Coalition, an association looking to accelerate development of mobile digital broadcast TV in the U.S., announced that it had doubled its membership with the addition of nine new broadcast groups. The group has established a time line that calls for parallel development of standards, devices and business models with the goal of a 2009 launch.

• Transpera, a platform that provides online video publishers with an easy way for consumer to create, share and re-purpose video, confirmed last week that it has raised a first-round of venture capital from First Round Capital, IDG Ventures, and Intel Capital.

• Last week, A&E announced that MobiTV has added two new A&E mobile video channels to its lineup bringing A&E’s channel count on MobiTV to nine.

• Telephia Inc., which was acquired by Nielsen last month, released new data last week on the size and adoption of the mobile television and video subscription business. From the release: Mobile television and video subscription revenues grew 198% year-over-year to $146 million in the first quarter of 2007. Approximately 8.4 million wireless customers now subscribe to some form of mobile video, representing nearly 4% of all U.S. mobile subscribers. While those numbers seem high to me, Telephia says that it collects its data from Telephia’s panel of 35,000 mobile subscribers.

• ESPN, MediaFLO and Verizon announced they have teamed up to offer live coverage of the X Games 13 event for V CAST Mobile TV. Eight hours of live footage will be provided during the days of the event along with on-demand content. No one has a phone with a battery that will last for 8 hours, so I know they don’t expect users to tune into it for the duration, but I’d be interested to hear what the average length of time is spent watching it live.

• Last week, AT&T announced a new service named "Video Share" that allows users to share one-way streaming video. While the announcement seemed to get a lot of coverage in the media many don’t highlight the barriers to this AT&T offering. The service only works on their limited 3G network and currently only with four models of Samsung and LG video capable handsets. And there is a monthly video premium consumers need to pay to use this.

• Last week, Harmonic Agreed to Acquire Rhozet, a privately-held company that offers software-based universal transcoding solutions that facilitate the creation of multi-format video for Internet, mobile and broadcast applications for $15.5 million. Harmonic says the acquisition will position them as a leader in Internet and mobile video creation space.

• Based on data released last week, Frost & Sullivan announced that leading U.S. mobile operators have started to embrace mobile advertising and said that mobile advertising is likely to be used to subsidize the cost of content production and lower the cost of service usage. That’s a pretty bold statement. To date, online advertising via the PC has not subsidized many content models let along content models for mobile which are still in their infancy.

In an article on Barron's website this week, which Seeking Alpha has an annotated article summary of by Judy Weil, Mark Vererka says that Internap may be the next Akamai. No offense to Internap, but that's an absurd statement for anyone to make. As you'll see below when it comes purely to revenue, numbers don't lie.

It's amazing the amount of analysts who make blanket statements about vendors in our industry, yet then provide no data to back up their predictions and even contradict themselves with the numbers they use in their articles. For starters, Judy Weil's summary of Mark's article says that "Patent and price battles have seen content-delivery-network giant Akamai and upstart competitor Limelight lose ground." Lose ground to who? How can you make a statement that the number one and number two companies in the space, based on revenue, are losing ground but then don't say who they are losing it to?

The article also says "Internap only recently entered the CDN business with its VitalStream acquisition, and CDN accounts for just 10% of Internap's $192.3 million in revenues." That amounts to roughly $20 million last year for Internap in CDN revenue compared to Akamai's roughly $200 million last year on CDN services and Limelight Networks $60 plus million from CDN services. How do those numbers show Internap becoming the next Akamai? Akamai is doing 10x the CDN revenue Internap is. The fact that the article does not mention that last year, Internap was the number one reseller of CDN services for Akamai also goes to prove that even with the revenue Internap was getting from CDN, it was paying Akamai at the same time. These analysts need to do their homework.

The article does seem to be implying that Internap can become the next Akamai because it says "it (Internap) foresees explosive CDN growth as net users increasingly seek smooth delivery of rich online content." And the other CDNs aren't seeing the same growth as well? That's the best reason you have for saying how Internap can grow it's revenue to be that of Akamai? Akamai as a company did over $400 million in revenue last year, Internap did under $200 million. Big difference.

It also goes on to say that "Internap's edge is its proprietary software that has guaranteed 100% reliable internet-routing services and data center hosting (90% of Internap's business), and now guarantees 100% uninterrupted content delivery. The reliability guaranty premium keeps Internap out of CDN price wars while gaining it market share." For starters, that SLA it is referring to is specific to network and data center services, it does not apply today to the CDN services of Internap. Internap has confirmed that it intends to offer a 100% SLA specific to CDN services but not until it integrates the VitalStream platform and customers into the Internap network, something Internap is still working on. And even with a 100% SLA, how would that keep Internap or any other CDN provider out of price wars? If it is implying that customers will pay more for a 100% SLA, then the article should give details on what the premium is over the going rate that they are willing to pay. But my guess is that the authors have no idea what CDN pricing even costs in the market.

The article then goes on to compare Akamai's revenue and product line with that of Internap. "Akamai shares fell about 25% last week over forecasts of market-share loss and shrinking orders; Limelight is down about the same this month. Barron's says Internap's Tuesday earnings report will forecast higher growth, lifting its $13.42 shares back towards January's $20 price." Last time I checked, Akamai and Limelight Networks were not in the co-lo and network business and not getting 90% of their revenue from those products, like Internap is. So how can you possibly compare Akamai, Limelight Networks and Internap's overall revenue and stock price fairly? You can't. Their core business and revenue generators are from completely different industries and different product lines.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and who am I to try and tell someone they are wrong. But when you make blanket statements like this article does, back it up with no data, and then don't even look at the data that is out there that proves you wrong, you shouldn't be writing about that segment of the market.

I recently got to sit down with management at Internap and
VitalStream to ask about and get an update on their CDN offering and I
hope to get to finish my write up of that for my blog this week.

Note: Since I wrote this post on Sunday night, I see that Yahoo! has
updated the page I was linking to and now better defines who wrote
what. I have edited the text below on Monday morning to reflect the
correct authors names. I'd also like to point out that after reading
the Baron's article by Mark Vererka, it is my opinion that Judy's
summary of Mark's article takes a lot out of context.

I’ve never posted news before about the stock price of any particular company (unless it was a new IPO) simply because to me, the fact that a stock went up or down is not news, it happens everyday. But over the past 24 hours, I have gotten many calls and inquiries from analysts and the media asking me if the fact that Akamai’s stock price has gone done nearly $10 a share in the past two days is a sign that the content delivery market for video is slowing down. The simple answer is no.

The fact that Akamai has lost nearly 20% of their market cap in the past two days is reflective of many factors investors attribute to their earnings, growth projections and other factors that I don’t even pretend to know all about. While I track the CDN companies very closely, I’m not an analyst in the sense that I don’t track companies P&L the way money managers do, nor do I have the interest in doing that.

The fact that so many analysts, media and industry folks are asking about Akamai’s stock price and the content delivery industry shows us just how much people don’t truly know about what services vendors provide. These days, everyone thinks of Akamai or references Akamai as the streaming company or video delivery company. Yes, they are. But that is just one of many services they provide. While we don’t know the exact percentage of revenue that content delivery for audio and video provides to Akamai’s total revenue, the consensus in the industry is about 40-45% of their total revenue. That would mean last year they did just under or around $200 million for CDN services for audio and video content. And since Akamai did over $400 million last year as a company in total revenue, the other 50+% of their revenue comes from other non CDN products and services like EdgeSuite, Dynamic Site Accelerator, Web Application Accelerator, Electronic Software Delivery and professional services. But when Akamai’s stock drops nearly $10 a share, why is it that no one is asking about those products and services and those industries? Why is it that so many assume that the CDN product line and the video industry is at the root of the problem?

My suggestion, relax. This is not the first time this has happened where a company that provides services in the online video industry has seen a major change in their stock price and it won’t be the last time either. The content delivery market is as healthy as ever and the growth of the consumption of online video for longer time, more frequently, at higher bitrates and on multiple devices shows no signs of slowing down.

But I would also suggest that everyone do their homework and become more educated about what services each vendor provides and what percentage of their business is made up from that service. For instance, not a week goes by where someone doesn’t compares Akamai’s $428.7 million in revenue last year to Limelight Networks $64.3 million in revenue and says Akamai did nearly seven times more revenue than Limelight Networks for content delivery pertaining to audio and video content. That’s wrong. They are comparing revenue from products and services Akamai offers against ones that Limelight Networks does not offer. Learn what products and services both companies offer and then compare just those products and services on an apples to apples basis and not the entire company.

It’s the same on the network side. People always says Akamai has over 25,000 servers for streaming and video delivery. No they don’t. They have over 25,000 servers for all of the types of products and services they offer, but not all 25,000 are setup to deliver every type of content. The servers that deliver Windows Media videos via a streaming protocol are not the same servers that are then delivering a Flash video via streaming. Separate servers are required to deliver content for each streaming platform chosen. What percentage of Akamai’s 25,000 servers are setup to support what formats, protocols and geographic locations, they won’t say. But if you are going to compare any CDNs infrastructure for streaming to another CDN, then you have to compare the infrastructure that is specific to that type of service. Even if you don’t know or the company won’t say, you still can get a good estimate if you do some research.

My point is this, if you are going to compare any vendors in the space one to the other, you have to do it in a fair apples to apples comparison as much as possible, which right now, when it comes to streaming and CDN, is not being done by most analysts and investors.

The BBC announced today their new free Internet TV service today and are heralding the arrival of their "on-demand" iPlayer as "important as the first color broadcasts in the 1960s." They have got to be kidding.

For starters, the service is only available to users running Windows XP, contains programming from only 65% of the total content on TV and is only available to users living in Britain. The BBC says that it’s a priority for them to support other operating
systems at some time, including Mac, Linux and Vista, but don’t give a
time frame as to when. You can’t save the content to your computer and can’t burn copies of the shows and you can only watch the content for a total of seven days. You can stream content on-demand, you can only download it. The iPlayer, which the BBC has been working on since 2003 and was originally called the iMP (Integrated Media Player) is still in beta mode and to date, I have not seen the BBC talk about what kind of market penetration they think they can get with their player when they do a full launch.

The content won’t be HD quality and I can’t find any article or info that details what the quality of the video will be. What is the bitrate and resolution? You’d think the BBC would really be focusing on getting this info out there being they are comparing it to a TV experience. But of the 37 news articles in Google News today, not a single one talks to the quality of the BBC service. The BBC is not the first broadcaster to offer this service in Britain. Channel 4’s ‘On Demand’ video download service has been out  for close to a year already.

Also, you can sign up to use the service, but the BBC is limiting the number of people initially who use as so as not to swamp the service and keep it to a controlled beta. I don’t think there is anything wrong with  doing it that way, but then why promote it and talk about it so heavily when a large percentage of the people who sign up you will be turning away? Sets bad customer expectations.

The BBC has a long way to go before this becomes a real service and by continuing to talk about how important this is and comparing it to the color TV considering the service is only in beta, has not been tested for scalability, can’t support multiple platforms, and can only do downloads, they are setting themselves up for failure in the eyes of customers. You can’t promise the world, call it the start of a new revolution for TV and then not deliver an experience that is not even close to the one you say you are going to replace.