And the funding deals just keep on coming. Yesterday, Blip.tv and EyeWonder both announced they had received a round of financing.

Blip.tv, best known for sharing advertising revenue 50/50 with content creators, announced yesterday that they have closed a second round, amount not disclosed, led by Ambient Sound Investments (ASI), the venture capital fund established by the four founding engineers of Skype. Blip.tv plans to use the money to develop and offer new advertising options and extend their content distribution network to reach users on multiple devices.

Also yesterday, EyeWonder announced they had received a round of funding from BIA Digital Partners, a private investment firm focusing on mid-to-later stage companies. The amount was not disclosed. EyeWonder plans to use the money to expand in the U.S and abroad.

Limelight Networks is scheduled to price their shares on or about this Thursday and could be trading as early as this Friday. While their prospectus says shares should price between $10-$12, my guess is that they could be priced higher than that simply based on how hot the content delivery market is.

Personally, I think anytime a company in our space goes public it’s good for the entire industry as it brings added exposure to the world of online video. It also allows us to see the real numbers behind the business; although in Limelight’s case, they are one of the few who have been showing their numbers for awhile even before they were raising money.

Based on their S-1 filing of 78.3 million shares out, at $11 a share that’s a market cap of $861 million, minus cash of $127 million plus debt of $20.6 million, that gives them an enterprise value of about $750 million. And that’s with it pricing at $11 a share. So if it prices higher, and
goes up at all upon trading, they will be over the billion dollar mark. That would be a multiple of about 15x revenue.

UPDATE: On many news websites, articles are quoting Jim Cramer as having said on his TV show that MTV and Akamai are suing Limelight Networks. Limelight Networks is NOT being sued by MTV. As their prospectus clearly states, Akamai and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) are in litigation with Limelight, not MTV.

Last month, the largest content delivery network in the China region, ChinaCache, announced it had raised a Series B round of $31.5 million. I’m surprised not to have seen this talked about on a lot of websites considering ChinaCache is considered to be the premier company in their region with little, if no competition.

I don’t know much about ChinaCache as a company but they say they have nodes in 50 major cities across China and did $10 million in revenue for 2006. They also have Yahoo! and Nokia as partners for their CDN service. This is a company to watch. It’s only a matter of time before they see some serious revenue growth in a region that is growing as fast, it not faster, then the U.S. market. I’m surprised that no U.S. based CDN has done any type of integration with them, or if they have, aren’t promoting it heavily. Anyone else have more info on ChinaCache?

If you are going to be in the LA area on June 13th, the LA Content Networking Forum will be a great opportunity to meet folks and learn about the
State-of-the-Internet in the LA area (i.e. Content Delivery,
Networking, Connectivity, Metro, Co-location and Peering).

There will be food, drinks, music and a Q&A session following a panel discussion from executives at Level 3, Equinix, Peak Web Consulting and Panther Express.

For all the details, click on the flyer and make sure to register in advance for the event. Space is limited so if you haven’t already, be sure to RSVP.

Why is it that every time a new means of distributing video content comes out, analysts always immediately predict that it will eat into the current way of doing things? From an article on Yahoo!, "Apple will cannibalize a good chunk of the U.S. $26-billion DVD player market in the next several years, according to Deutsche Bank. One of the primary drivers of this change will be the availability of YouTube content on Apple TV."

Seriously, this is just getting ridiculous. If you want to have the opinion that online video will eat into DVD sales, that’s one thing. But to say the reason Apple TV will do so is because of the availability of user-generated content, well now you’re not even comparing Apples to Apples. (no pun intended)

You can’t compare content on YouTube with professionally produced content on DVDs. And you certainly can’t compare downloading content to your computer and having to transfer it to a device connected to your TV with that of having a portable DVD disc with content. Even online video has not eaten into DVD sales and  online video on multiple devices has way more market share than Apple TV ever will. These analysts are just getting carried away.

Turner Networks currently has an open position for a Technical Director, Video Product Development and Delivery in Atlanta.The Director leads a team of 4-6 software engineers who are responsible
for the development, integration, and ongoing management of video
products for Web and broadband businesses. The teams primary activities
include: Developing video players and supporting frameworks for
advertising and content delivery; Leading overall technical
implementation of consumer-facing video players and applications
through the complete development and product lifecycle; and Working
closely with Turners Web/broadband properties.

For more details, contact John Dailey who is leading the search.

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.

I got a lot of comments from my recent blog post entitled "List Of P2P Delivery Networks" and the comments only reinforce that delivery networks, especially those who don’t want to be thought of as traditional CDNs, are not making clear to customers what exactly they offer. Like customers, I don’t get it either.

Stevan Arychuk from HP commented that, "BitGravity isn’t a P2P network at all; they are a CDN service (with a twist), but don’t do any P2P delivery." Ok, maybe not, but then what is the twist? Good luck finding out. Their website says their technology is  "the next generation of content distribution" with no info at all on how they deliver content. And I’m not picking on BitGravity, all of the networks that call themselves "next generation" really don’t say what they do.

Move Networks does not use the term P2P on their website, but are classified as a P2P provider by everyone I talk to. Are they really? Only they can say. Their website says their delivery technology is based on "Quantum Streaming" but then don’t define anywhere on their website that I can find how it works.

Grid Networks gives more info than some of the others but then confuses me even more by saying they have a hybrid approach that overcomes the challenges faced by P2P and traditional CDN networks. So if I understand this right, they are saying they are not a hybrid of both but rather of something completely different than the two.

Swarmcast calls their technology "grid-delivery" so I think that is P2P based but the first sentence on their technology page uses the term streaming and then says how their technology allows you to "always achieving the maximum possible download speed." So is it streaming or is it download, or is it both?

Itiva calls their technology "Quantum transport" and says it works "by taking every advantage of proxy and node contribution". Their website says that their Quantum transport technology "is similar to that of a controlled peer to peer model." So then it’s not P2P?

Also, each one of the value propositions of the P2P (or non-P2P providers) has the exact same message on their websites which makes it hard to distinguish providers offerings:

– Move Networks: Highest Quality, Scalability, Low Cost, Reliable
– BitGravity: Performance, Reliability, Service, Price
– Grid Networks: Highest Quality, Performance, Scalable, Cost
– Swarmcast: High Quality, Reliable, Faster, Low Cost
– Itiva: High Quality, Low cost

Is anyone as confused as I am here? Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s great that there are new companies in the space who are looking to improve the user-experience for video based on a different way of delivering content, but if I can’t understand it, how are customers expected to? It’s not your technology that you are selling but rather the value you can show in the technology, translated in terms that are valuable to the customer.

Delivery networks needs to do a better job of education the market and customers on exactly what you do and don’t support. How do you deliver content? What forms do you deliver it in? What formats can you deliver? Can you support live or just on-demand? These are the types of questions customers are asking.

Vendors,you need to help customers cut through the confusion. Make it simple. Deliver a clear message. Give them the information they need to make informed and educated decisions. Because if it stays this confusing in the market, it will not be adopted in the volume you want.