Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

GigaOm.com had an exclusive this morning on how Joost, the P2P video distribution service, is going to kill its desktop client - the official announcement from Joost has to be made. Joost is abandoning its downloadable software is favor of launching a  “browser-only” player, a similar path being taken by Veoh and Jaman.

The Joost desktop client was launched last year to much fanfare and buzz…however user-adoption, content and technical issues seemed to doom the client from the start. The soon to launch browser based service will rely on the same Joost P2P technology but will work through a embedded plug-in.  The utilization of a plug-in will allow for higher quality video and a faster experience when compared to other video search engines.

Personally I was a huge fan of the desktop client and the possibilities in brought in terms of expanding into the multi-screen / device space,  but I became disappointed in the lack of content and soon it became just another icon on my desktop.  Basically Joost, and other companies that offered the desktop client, were ahead of their time. The general online public was and is not ready to consume mass video content in this manner.  Right now the growth, and attention, are on web-based video destinations like Hulu, Fancast, TheWB and numerous others. The growth of people coming online to consume professionally produced long-form is only starting to be realized. As more and more people come to rely on their computer for watching this type of video content, pushing them to a desktop client - which offers more control, functionality and technical flexibility - is the next logical step for video (2-3 years away). The desktop client can then extend to set-top boxes and create a truly a seamless online-to-computer-to-television experience.

Meanwhile TechCrunch has a sneak peek at Joost’s new browser based  P2P video service. It looks awesome from what I can tell, I especially like the “social” integration. However, no matter how cool the service, when it comes to video it is all about content, content content.

The new TheWB.com relaunched today with the goal of being yet another online video destination. So what is my immediate reaction? It is no Hulu and the user-interface gives me a headache. The good news is that TheWB.com will combine full episodes of established content like Friends, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars with original web programing. That level of content, especially when talking about a cult show like Friends, will drive significant traffic to the website. However, I feel when looking around the website, that they are confused at what they really want to be. The user-experience is a jumbled mess and seems to purposely go against the clean / ease of Hulu.

I would love to give a more in-depth review of the website, including their video search and embeddable player functionality - both areas Hulu excels in. However, they aren’t rolling out all features just yet and the site seems to be crawling at a snails pace at the moment. I will do a follow-up post once they fix their site issues and all of their planned functionality are up and running.

Since Hulu launched in private beta not so long ago I always felt their video search engine product was a step above everyone else’s. Hulu’s video player and user experience was one of the best within the online video space, which is crowded with amateurish efforts. Yesterday Hulu took another step towards creating a true global video content destination by focusing on content discovery within their embeddable player…and they almost hit it out of the park.

As you can see from the screenshots below the Hulu embeddable player now has a search box in the upper right hand corner. I am a huge fan of content discovery and was very happy to see this. The search box within the embeddable player allows a user to search for a video and have the search results come up in the player - when clicked, the video will play within the same embed. If within the search results the video is not on Hulu, when clicked it will take you to the website that contains the video. 

However, here is the opportunity they missed out on. When you are done watching the video why does the search box go away (see screenshot)? Yes, as YouTube does, they offer related video’s but why not offer the same search functionality you get when you are watching the video? Doesn’t it make more sense to have a search box once a user is done watching one video so they can discover more? Would love to understand the reasoning behind this decision.

However, I still believe that Hulu’s embeddable player is better then most offerings when it comes to content discovery. YouTube lacks the search box and just offers the standard recommended / related videos at the end of the clip. For me having a search box within the embed makes much more sense since people are primarily embedding quick clips - adding search would allowed them to quickly find related (or unrelated videos).

While I am on the topic of embeddable video players, CBS launched this week their new player which has the embed functionality. Check out the live example of their embeddable player at the bottom of this post. IT IS HUGE. I would love to know what the CBS Digital team was thinking when they made it. Who wants to embed a video that size? Would it even fit within most blog templates or even within MySpace? A better option would have been to offer various sizes of the embed - let the user decide.

On top of the embed size CBS, like Hulu, monetizes the video through advertisements. CBS runs ads spots at various time points within the video (Hulu has a pre-roll). I am all for monetization but back to my previous point who is going to embed this into their website? The purpose of giving fans / users the embeddable option should be to drive brand awareness  and / or to drive traffic back to the main site. Why do YouTube videos go viral (besides the content)? Because they are easy to embed and get right to what people want to watch - which then drives people back to YouTube.com for further content discovery. On top of all of that, once a video plays CBS’s video embed has no additional content discovery, not even the standard recommendations - I am assuming this will be fixed in the near future as this is a first release.

For your viewing pleasure, below are live examples of YouTube’s, Hulu’s and CBS’s embeddable players. Outside of the pure UI of the video wrapper which one would you want to embed into your website / blog?

The head honchos at Brightcove, a leading Internet TV service / platform, put together a very interesting article the other day discussing the current and future state of Internet TV. A must read for anyone involved in the creation, distribution and optimization of rich media / online videos. Read the full article, but below are some key points I found to be the most interesting in regards to 2008 trends:

• Branded destinations will compete with the major aggregator by offering consumers a more focused experience.
• Content owners will step up their efforts to to develop distribution strategies that enable wide distribution of their content - with advertising attached.
• Audience monetization will hit prime-time via targeting.
• Three words: Higher-Quality Video