Last week, someone put out a note on Wall Street suggesting that the whole Pokemon Go craze would be positive for CDN provider Akamai. But in reality, Pokemon Go is built on Google App Engine’s platform as a service, which provides the game with a mobile backend. Google’s Cloud platform is powering Pokemon Go, not Akamai. Niantic Labs, which made the Pokemon Go game with backing from Google and Nintendo, stores and indexes Pokemon Go’s data from the game using Google Cloud Datastore’s NoSQL database. Pokemon Go also uses the game engine product Unity to help create the online game world and also uses Google Analytics.

The confusion for some probably stems from the fact that Akamai put out a press release in April, announcing Nintendo as a customer. I think it is possible that Akamai might see a small bump in traffic from other Nintendo related content thanks to Pokemon Go, but it’s not going to materially affect their revenue. It’s also interesting to note that Sandvine has put out some numbers on the usage and the traffic from Pokemon is quite small, averaging just 8MB used per hour.

Some have also suggested that the wireless carriers are seeing a ton of traffic because of Pokemon Go, but that’s not the case. Last week, Verizon Wireless said that Pokemon Go makes up less than 1% of its overall network data traffic. I checked with someone from T-Mobile, who didn’t want to be quoted, but said they also were seeing less than 1% of total traffic from Pokemon Go usage. No doubt about it, Pokemon Go is having a big impact on a lot of consumers right now, but it’s not having a material impact on CDNs or mobile operators.

With all the options in the market for getting your streaming media fix, trying to keep track of which box supports 4K, has support for HDR or which content services are available can be confusing. So I’ve just recently updated our streaming media devices chart which will make it easier to compare specs on each box. The latest version of the chart can always be found at www.streamingmediadevices.com and in the lower right hand corner is the date the chart was last updated. [Latest update: August 30, 2016]

Thanks to Amazon, Roku, Microsoft, TiVo, Sony and NVIDIA for fact checking and confirming all the specs you see on the chart. But if you find an error, or have any questions on which box to pick, email me anytime mail@danrayburn.com

I’m doing a quick 5 question survey on mobile video trends, interested to hear people’s comments, results will be shared with everyone.

The next meetup will be Tuesday July 26th at www.barcadenewyork.com – 148 West 24th Street between 6th/7th. Start time is 6pm. Come play classic video games, drink beer and network. This venue should also allow us more room so it’s not as crowded as it was for the last meetup. Thanks to our sponsors JNK Securities, Hola CDN, Elemental Technologies, and Imagen for agreeing to pick up some of the bar tab.

Thanks to the nearly 200 people who made it to the June meetup and a special thanks to www.PacTV.com and www.Kaltura.com for sponsoring and picking up some of the bar tab.

I’ll keep organizing these every month except for August. All you need to do is bring a business card to get in.

If you would like to sponsor a meetup, by covering some of the bar tab, please let me know.

The general call for speakers is open for the Streaming Media West show, taking place Nov. 1-2 in Huntington Beach CA, and in particular, I’m working now on who the “how to” presenters will be and what topics they will focus on. How to presentations are usually done by a single presenter, are technical in nature, and shows the audience how to do something in a 45-60 minute slot. In the past we have had how to sessions on things like building a player; encoding tips and tricks; building a channel for streaming devices; encoding live video; etc.

I’m looking to add more in-depth, technical presentations to the conference program this year and am currently accepting all suggestions, ideas and submissions – from everyone. If there is a technical topic you think you can present, that is instructional in nature, and isn’t a pitch for a product/service, now is the time to contact me. Send me an email with your ideas ASAP.

As a board member of The Streaming Video Alliance (SVA), an industry forum composed of leading companies from the online video ecosystem, I’m excited to announce that we have hired Jason Thibeault as our first Executive Director. Jason joins the Streaming Video Alliance from Limelight Networks, where he held a number of marketing leadership roles.

The SVA has made some great progress over the past 18 months and now has 42 member companies involved, but the lack of an Executive Director was really keeping us from finalizing a lot of deliverables and executing on some of our plans. With Jason now dedicated to the new role, the SVA is poised to bring greater collaboration into an industry that has been fraught with extremely fast growth and little guidance.

Jason’s ultimate objectives in his new role are three fold. First, Jason will help the SVA produce materials (best practices, functional requirements, guidelines, standards, etc.) that will benefit the industry. Second, he plans to grow the SVA into a true cross-sectional representation of the industry, by engaging with everyone, from the biggest names in streaming to up-and-coming startups, and getting them all involved in the discussions that are driving development of the SVA’s products. Finally, Jason will act as an evangelist, working with analysts, press, conference organizers, and other industry forums to tell the SVA story. At the end of the day, Jason’s goal it to have people see the SVA as the lightning rod for the online video industry and that can only be accomplished through tangible output, growth, and awareness.

The association is hard at work on multiple working groups including QoE, Ad Insertion and Audience Measurement, Client Dev Framework, Encryption/Privacy, Geo Caching, Accessibility and Scaling amongst others. One of Jason’s first tasks will be to documenting for the industry all of the working groups the SVA has going, which new ones will be added, and how companies can get involved. If you have any questions on joining the alliance, please reach out to me at any time or contact Jason directly at jt@streamingvideoalliance.org

In addition to Jason’s new role, the SVA also announced the appointment of two new board members, Yves Boudreau, who is in the CTO group for TV and media technology strategy at Ericsson and Keith Zubchevich, Chief Strategy Officer at Conviva.

I’m often asked by companies how I pick and choose what news I write about on the blog, which topics I am most interested in covering and how they can get more exposure within my editorial. That’s a great question to ask and while I have detailed this in a blog post before, it’s been a few years, so it’s a good time for me to answer the question again.

For starters, unlike many media folks and analysts who are annoyed by pitches, I’m not. You can contact me at any time via email or phone (917-523-4562) as I reply to every pitch I get. The topic you are pitching may not be a fit for what I cover, or I may not have enough expertise to write about it, but I will always reply. I know many others in the industry feel “annoyed” by all the pitches, or press releases they are sent, but I’m not. Any real analyst understands that is part of the job and they should welcome the pitches.

When it comes to covering news and stories, the sad fact is that I simply don’t have enough time in the day/week to cover all the news I want to. Unlike those whose only job is blogging, my blog is just one of the many full-time jobs I have. I still have to plan shows for StreamingMedia.com, do work as an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, answer all the inbound calls and email from content owners and vendors looking for help, make introductions to others, speak to other members of the media for their stories as work with VCs and those on Wall Street. So much news I see, or stories I want to write about, I simply never have the time to get to. I’m also not interested in doing a “me too” story. If you can read about it on another blog or news site, and I don’t have a different/unique angle to bring to it, simply re-hashing what others have said isn’t valuable. So I’m also always trying to cover topics that aren’t as mainstream, or things others may not have provided any business insight into.

So just because I didn’t cover your news, that doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Case in point, I thought the news by Brightcove in April about their new OTT offering was very interesting, especially since they listed the cost for the service, which most never do. I planned to do a blog post about it, and yet two months later, it’s still on my to do list. Another one would be a story I need to do on IBM and just how big of a player they are going to be in this space, and I haven’t gotten to that one yet either. I also need to get posts up about Fastly, Netflix’s spend with AWS, Ooyala, CDN Pricing, NPAW, and highlights from a report on HEVC. There are many more like this, great stories that want to write, but I simply can get to all of them. I only have so many hours in the day/week that I can dedicate to writing. So if I don’t do a story about your news, don’t take it personal.

But what makes it easier for me to get a post online, it to send me some background in an email. I need more than just a press release, that’s a good start, but think of all the questions I am going to ask you about, that the press release does not answer. That’s the info I am looking for. Questions, comments, want to bounce ideas off me for stories, contact me anytime.