Clearing up the very common misconceptions about "Online Video" companies

One of the key focuses of this blog is deciphering and providing the "truth" behind what other blogs write as it relates to the online video industry. TechCrunch ran an article this weekend celebrating Brightcove and giving a general update on their platform; however they went into no details on what Brightcove actually is. This is important because TechCrunch also mentions Move Networks and Ooyala at the end of the article as competitors. Of course, there is no analysis or commentary what-so-ever that explains how these companies compete, allow me to help:

• Brightcove makes a workflow & CMS product that uses Flash progressive download and streaming (FMS) video. The experience is driven by a set of templates (which are primarily Brightcove defined). There - that's it. It's funny that each time an article about Brightcove runs many developers are quick to point out that the functionality would be rather easy to mimick...
• Ooyala, much like Brightcove, makes a workflow & CMS product that uses Flash progressive download and streaming (FMS) video. I give Ooyala a nod for focusing on one of the most important issues in the online video space: monetization. It is my asseration that Ooyala will position themselves against their competitors by rapidly creating and vetting new online business models (ad formats, etc). This view is strengthed by the fact that the core founders previously worked at the king of such business models, Google.
  
• Move Networks does not use Adobe and instead requires a client side plugin for delivery of their video. The ideaology behind Move Networks is that the plugin allows for client control of the experience; thereby ensuring high quality. Move Networks also focuses on data collection and I am certain their plugin returns an order of magnitude more data than a traditional Flash based player. Interestingly, Move Networks announced the hiring of Tom Morgan from BlackArrow earlier this year... so some type of advertising based products (?) seem to be on their roadmap as well.

So there you have it, a quick summary of where each company stands competitively. I'll be curious to see if Ooyala and Brightcove ever embrace Move Networks and/or Microsoft Silverlight as alternate delivery platforms... what is to keep Adobe from entering their market and releasing a full player SDK/toolkit?

It's interesting that the "YouTube" problem of monetization is really driving growth in this industry... hopefully with the 3 companies ahead focused on such issues we will see rapid innovation and additional growth.