Thanks to Rod Bacon over at Media Publisher for giving me the heads up about eBay making an announcement last week about their planned use for expanding user-generated video functionality on their website. In conjunction with an announcement by Onstream Media, eBay sellers now have the ability to easily place their own embedded videos in any listing on every category of eBay. Options include a "Show and Tell" feature which is a talking image gallery for use on all eBay listings and an "About Me" video feature which enables sellers to create a short, :30 to :60 second spot about themselves which eBay hopes will further establish trust and credibility. In addition, eBay is also running some user-generated video submission contests tying into the Transformers movie premiere in July.

I always felt sites like eBay, Monster.com, Amazon.com and others are behind the curve when it comes to video. Why can’t I see a video of an item on eBay instead of just a picture? Why can’t I see a video resume on Monster.com instead of reading a word document? (Only Monster’s India website has the option, announced two days ago) And why doesn’t Amazon.com allow companies to upload videos of the product they are selling, so we can see how it actually works before we buy it.

As much as we talk about video having mass-market adoption, some of the biggest sites on the web, that generate the most revenue, hardly use video at all.

About a week ago, Break.com launched a new video player with some interesting capabilities that I have not seen on many other sites. These user controlled capabilities include TV-style picture controls that let you change brightness and colors of the video, a click and drag option to make the video window any size you want, electronic picture guide within the player and some other additional functionality. You can see a demo of the new player here.

While additional player functionality and customizable options are always cool to have, my real question for Break.com was how this would translate into additional revenue for the company. As anyone who knows me has heard me say over and over again, "technology means nothing unless it moves your business forward". The answers I got back from Break.com on how this would help their business makes sense, but I think in some part, many sites are focusing too much time on their player and its controls instead of the content being shown in the player itself.

For Break.com they said the new player functionality is important as they are using it to hopefully help drive more consumption. When someone e-mails a link to a video, Break.com is hoping that the enhanced player will keep the user at the site and turn that visit into multiple video views, which for them equals more advertising dollars. Allowing the user to browser other videos while continuing to watch the
current channel, hence the electronic picture guide option, also is a very important tactic for them and is what drove the creation of their guide.

Break.com also feels that to retain users, they need to have a differeniation in the market for their player. They say as the technology of web video delivery becomes increasingly
commoditized, the barriers to entry have gotten lower. In light of
that, creating a differentiated, hard-to-duplicate suite of features
that users want becomes important to them. In their research, the one thing users
value most is control over the playback experience… every facet of
it, hence the TV-style controls with resizing, slow-motion, brightness,
etc… Break.com also said that being focused on the 18-35 male demo has distinguished them to date, and they feel that in order to defend and grow within that demo requires a
differentiated and superior playback experience. Some of Break.com’s members would agree and some wouldn’t. Based on the feedback to the new Break.com player, it looks pretty even with half of the comments saying they like the new player and the other half saying the older player was just fine. A few commented that the volume and assortment of video content should be the focus, not the player.

Break.com is like most sites when it comes to the functionality of their player, constantly trying to improve on the user experience and give that user as much control as possible. However, I think users are more focused on the type and quality of the content rather than the player. We have seen before that consumers are looking for specific video content and are searching for content based on interest, not based on which site has the best player. I think the content has to drive the technology, not the other way around. Having a lot of control over the video playback is nice, but I’d rather go to a site that has the content I want and has fewer player controls.

For me, I just want a player that has volume and pause options. Even full-screen is a waste as far as I am concerned unless the video is encoded at 500Kbps or more, otherwise it’s just too pixelated. Yes, TV style controls may be nice, but I don’t think I’ve ever changed the contrast on my TV at home, let alone via videos on the web.

FRIDAY: As of about 11:30am, Limelight’s
shares have started trading and opened at $23. That values them at well over a billion dollars. Also, Limelight Networks has launched a new version of their website.

THURSDAY: As I expected, Limelight Networks has priced its shares
higher than the original estimate in their prospectus. Thursday night,
Limelight announced that its initial public offering of 16,000,000
shares of common stock has been priced at $15.00 per share. Shares of
Limelight Networks’ common stock will begin trading on June 8, 2007 on
the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol LLNW. This gives them an
enterprise value over over a billion.

Note: I don’t own any shares of Limelight Networks.

Last week at the D5 conference, RealNetworks introduced a new RealPlayer that allows users to download videos from any website that aren’t protected by DRM. The player allows many formats of videos to be downloaded including Flash, Windows Media and QuickTime. A premium version of the player for $29.95 allows users to burn that content to a DVD. Now aside from the obvious idea that content owners may revolt at the idea of people being able to save their content whether they want them to or not, I just don’t see the value to RealNetworks in a new player. Why offer it?

RealNetworks has been out of the video format space for some time. They are a major player in the music and audio space with their Rhapsody offering but not for anything that pertains to video. So how does having a new video player help any other aspect of their business? I listened to an audio interview with Rob Glaser at PaidContent.org on this subject and still I don’t see the value. Rafat asked Rob directly what the business model was for this new player but didn’t get an answer that really gave any specific details.

Clearly Real wants consumers to download the player and then hopefully
buy the premium version so they can burn content to DVDs. But isn’t this
the exact same model we saw with the free RealPlayer and the RealPlayer
Plus version years ago? Is it really the right time in the market to be trying to up-sell consumers on the functionality of a media player?

And I think the bigger question is, do we really need more players in the industry? Isn’t it already hard enough for consumers? How many more players and plugins are we going to try and force viewers to have to download? Windows Media Player, Silverlight Plugin, Flash Plugin, Adobe Media Player (later in the year), QuickTime Player, RealPlayer, DivX, BitTorrent etc…. and potentially other plugins depending on what site you are viewing video from. I think it is too many already, without the new player from Real.

RealNetworks Please Note: QuickTime is spelled as one word, capital Q and capital T. It is wrong in your press release.

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?