Oprah's Second Webcast Does 200,000 Simultaneous Viewers

This past Monday, Oprah webcast her second class online and peaked at 200,000 simultaneous viewers. While that was down from the 500,000 simultaneous viewers she had for her first class, it's to be expected and is not any indication of failure.

Having done a lot of series of webcasts myself over the years, the first webcast typically gets more traffic, more promotion and has more excitement around it since it is the first one. And with eight more classes to go, Oprah still has a lot more viewers she will be picking up along the way.

One of the interesting metrics of the webcast is that the average user stayed on for almost the full 90 minutes. Most webcasts don't have an average viewing time that long and you see a lot of people dropping in and out of the webcast along the way. Considering the nature of the content Oprah is talking about, I think you have to be pretty into it to begin with, so it didn't surprise me that the average viewing time was so long.

Some in the industry have criticized Oprah for not making it a pay-per-view event or for doing more advertising during the webcast. They are almost seeing it as being a failure since Oprah didn't monetize it the way they think she should have and some even went on to say how she didn't leverage the traffic properly. I think they are all missing the point.

For starters, Oprah did have three sponsors for the event; Chevy, Post-It and Skype. I saw commercials run just before the webcast started for Chevy and Post-It and those ads are still running where you to go to watch the archives. But the biggest point I think people are missing is that Oprah does not need to make it a pay-per-view event. Not every piece of video on the web needs to be monetized or charged for. As an industry, we need to stop being in the mindset that if we don't somehow charge for every piece of content or show enough ads with the content that it is a failure. Many companies use webcasting and on-demand video all the time as marketing and promotional platforms and are quite happy with the results.

These webcasts give Oprah a way to reach an audience outside of the one hour a day she is on TV. In many cases, she is reaching a different audience in parts of the world who can't get her show on TV. It enables Oprah to further expand her reach, get more awareness and increase her brand. She's taken her content and made it available on demand and portable via iTunes. She is using many different platforms to reach the widest possible audience on many devices. She's doing what any smart content owner would do who already has a huge audience they can tap into and easily grow.

I expect once all of her webcasts are over you are going to see her talk about just how well this platform worked for her, how many total views she got from the content and she will make a commitment to do more events on a regular basis. I think Oprah will very quickly become one of the biggest advocates of webcasting on the Internet and will become a regular webcaster.

P2P Company Pando Networks Raises $8 Million

New York based Pando Networks, a P2P content delivery network has raised $8 million dollars in new money from existing investors. Reports that Pando is looking to raise $20 million are incorrect. Combined with the previous funding, Pando has raised $20 million dollars to date but it not looking to raise $20 million in new funding.

Pando Networks plans to use the money to build out its sales and marketing force. Back in November I profiled Pando Networks win of the NBC Direct contract with should be going live in the next few weeks.

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CDN Highwinds Raises $55 Million, Targeting Resellers

This morning, Highwinds announced it had raised $55 million from General Catalyst Partners and Alta Communications. Highwinds plans to use the capital to do additional build out of their network named "RollingThunder" which includes a CDN offering.

While most CDNs are all going after the same customers, Highwinds is taking a different approach by going after those who want to resell content delivery services to their own clients. To date, most CDNs either don't have a reseller program at all or their tool sets don't support resellers properly. Resellers need products that allow for sub accounts, reporting based on multiple directories, self provisioning and many times custom branding. To date, most CDNs don't deal with resellers well, don't have the proper customer support for resellers or don't have the tools to allow for a lot of the specifics resellers need.

For me, the real question is whether or not there are enough resellers out there to really scale a business past $30-$40 million a year in revenue. I know some are going to point to Akamai's 2007 revenue of $636.4 million and say that about 20% of it came from resellers and hence the market is there, but we don't know how much of that nearly 20% in reseller revenue came directly from Akamai's content delivery services.

With Panther Express and Velocix (CacheLogic) having announced their funding a few weeks ago and now Highwinds, that pretty much leaves only Pando Networks, BitGravity and Voxel.net as the remaining CDNs from the list of 30 who have not raised money in the past 12-18 months or are public companies.

Webcasting's Big Day: MySpace Going On Now, Oprah Later Tonight

I can't remember a previous time when two webcasts of such large scale took place on the same day. I'm watching the Operation MySpace webcast now and the video looks great. I have the high stream going at 1.5 Mbps 1.3 Mbps and am not getting any distortion. Full screen looks pretty good but has some pixelation on a 15" monitor, which is to be expected. KulaByte is encoding the stream at low, medium and high bitrates and Akamai is delivering the video, being played back with Flash 9. Will be interesting to hear what the simultaneous stream count is for this when it is over, what the average bitrate was and how many could get the HD stream.

And later tonight, Oprah will be doing another class on Oprah.com and says that all previous technical issues have been worked out and that they expect an even larger audience than the 500,000 simultaneous they had last time. The Oprah site says that so far they have over 800,000 people pre-registered. Limelight Networks will be delivering that webcast and it will require Move Networks client.

Update 4:41PM EST: For the past 10 minutes, the My Space video is really stuttering and the audio is a few seconds behind the video. The video has dropped to about 12 frames per second from the 30+ I was getting before. Moving down from the high to the medium stream is not solving the quality issues. Lots of stuttering and the low stream is doing 8.2 frames per second for me.

Update: Akamai has informed me they will not be giving out traffic stats from the MySpace webcast. For more technical details surrounding the encoding of the event you can read this article on StreamingMedia.com

Entriq Acquires Dayport, Rumored To Be Around $45 Million

Entriq, a provider of digital rights management based solutions announced today that it has acquired video workflow company DayPort. While terms of the deal were not disclosed, various sources say Entriq valued DayPort at around $45 million, which seems about right.

This is one of those deals where the synergy between the two companies seems dead on. Entriq provides content owners with the ability to add digital rights management and commerce solutions for video and DayPort provides much of the content workflow including transcoding, publishing and syndication. By combining both company's platforms, Entriq says they will enable customers to "publish, approve, control, syndicate, monetize and analyze their digital media business reaching mobile, broadband, streaming, podcasting and IPTV environments."

More deals like this should be coming in the industry. Right now, there are a lot of small players in the space, in many product verticals, who would benefit from combing products and services and operations to better compete in the market.

Content Owners Struggling To Compare One CDN To Another

I've blogged before about how most CDNs don't give out data points in the market or to customers for them to try and fairly compare one CDN to another. It's impossible to measure performance, capacity and many other aspects of a content delivery service offering from one provider to another. I got an e-mail this morning from a content owner who summed up what I hear all the time from customers:

"How do you think we should proceed looking for a new CDN and how do we get any data that will help us determine who we choose? All the CDN sales reps are blaming the other one in terms of network size, service quality, etc. and we can’t see the difference between many CDNs. Do you have research in terms of how much bandwidth, capacity, scalability, performance, etc?"

I know many of the CDNs hate these questions and say it is not fair for them to have to answer them since their capacity constantly changes and they are all making upgrades to their network footprint all the time. But why can't CDNs give some sort of metrics on capacity per format in each region of the world? Look how many CDNs say they are global when they truly aren't. Many CDNs that are in the Adobe partner program and listed on the Adobe site as supporting live Flash video don't support live. And how is it that every CDN, large and small, global and regional, has gotten an A+ ranking from Keynote on their network quality?

I am not the only one who notices this stuff. If any content delivery network thinks I am pointing out things customers don't already know, I'm not. I hear these kinds of points from customers all the time. And with more CDNs in the industry and more competition it is harder than ever for content owners to try and figure out who really does what in the space and what any one company's limitations are.

While I would propose some suggestions to the CDNs of the type of data they should talk about to fix this, it's pointless as it would then clearly show the differences between the networks. And too many of the CDNs want to be compared to all the CDNs as being on the same level playing field when in fact, they know that many times they aren't. I don't think there is anything wrong with not being as big as someone else or having as much capacity as someone else. Why would you want to tell a customer you are global, sign them up, and then have them find out the hard way that you really aren't? Why start off the relationship on the wrong foot? This happens much_too_often with customers.

CDNs should highlight what they do well, what their core strength is and what type of customers they should and more importantly should not be going after. If MLB.com were to put out an RFP tomorrow for all of their video delivery needs, I bet nearly every CDN would want to bid on that business, even though those of us in the industry know there are realistically probably only 2-3 CDNs today that could handle that level of traffic all at once.

The CDN facet of this industry has to get smarter and providers have to start evolving much faster in terms of the message they are delivering to customers. The service is already starting to be seen by many as a commodity. Now is the time to make it clear to the market and content owners what your real strength is. Looking at almost all of the CDNs websites, it is nearly impossible to find out what verticals they specialize in, what format(s) they support, what regions of the world they have delivery in (network maps don't count), what type of reporting they have, (put up a demo account on your home page), what your message is to the market, (speed, reliability and global reach don't cut it anymore), who your customers are, (case studies please) what your products are in detail (where are your product sheets?!) and for those that say they help content owners "monetize" their content, show examples of exactly what that means.

A CDN that delivers bits and who sells content delivery only with no tools or applications, that delivery service is not a monetization service. Pushing bits is not enabling content owners to monetize their content. Giving them tools or providing services to do targeted delivery, advertising, DRM and very granular reporting - those are monetization services. Simply shipping bits is not.

Too many of the CDNs are so focused on only using networking language right now that they are not delivering any real marketing message to customers. Go to the websites of the CDNs and look at the message on their home page. The majority of them, but not all, are not delivering any clear concise message with any real identity.

In my eyes, the content delivery market is going into the next big stage as we will see more growth in the next 2-3 years than we have seen in the past five years. Now is the time for CDN vendors to deliver a very clear and concise message to the industry and to customers of exactly what it is they offer and what the differences are between their company and others.

Oprah Webcast Draws 500,000 Simultaneous Viewers

Last night, Oprah did a special 90 minute webcast live on the Oprah.com website and just released details on the traffic numbers. They had more than 500,000 simultaneous users viewing the stream and peaked at 242Gbps of traffic. The stream was encoded into the Move Networks platform and viewers could have gotten a stream at 150Kbps or as high as 750Kbps all depending on their connection.

The announcement on the Oprah site today which is on behalf of Harpo, Move Networks and Limelight Networks also says that, "Unfortunately, some of our users experienced delays in viewing the webcast." That comes as no surprise there considering the number of people trying to view the webcast, let alone at a high bitrate. But I give the Oprah site credit for setting expectations before the webcast started.

When you went to the site last night, the webcast page said something to the effect that the webcast would have a huge demand and that potentially some people just would not be able to log on to see it. They made that very clear and also said where and when the archives would be made available.

Half a million simultaneous streams at a high bitrate easily puts this at the top of the list when it comes to large webcast numbers. Is it larger than the MSN webcast last year of LiveEarth? No one knows as MSN only said their event had the "Most Simultaneous Viewers of Any Online Concert Ever" but didn't say what that number was.

In all, it really does not matter which was the biggest. The big take away from this webcast is that it shows proof that the Internet is not built to handle TV like distribution and those who think that live TV shows will be broadcast on the Internet with millions and millions of people watching, it's just not going to happen.

Oprah will be doing more of these webcasts over the coming weeks and it will be interesting to compare all the numbers.

CDN Survey Data: Price and Customer Service Ranked Most Important

The StreamingMedia.com survey on CDN pricing is nearing its end and to date we've had 1,041 respondents. We're starting to compile all the raw data for the final report and will be giving away the iPhone this week.

When it comes to the factors that are most important to customers when selecting a CDN vendor, price and customer service came in number one and two. We asked respondents to rank multiple factors on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being most important.

• Price: was given a number five by 55%
• Customer Service: was given a number five by 52.7%
• Geographic Reach of Network: was given a number five by 44.7%
• Flexibility of Contract Terms: was given a number five by 33.4%
• Number of Formats Supported: was given a number five by 28.7%
• Technology and Product Road Map: was given a number five by 28.1%
• Value Added Services: was given a number five by 20.2%

While CDN customers are not buying on price alone, it comes as no surprise that pricing and customer service, followed closely by geographic reach of the network are the most important factors overall.

Exactly 50% of the respondents came from the media, entertainment and broadcast verticals. Enterprise and education made up another 30% and pharma and government made up the remaining 20%.

Akamai's 703 Patent Should Not Affect Microsoft, Does Not Apply To All Content

One point I think many are missing with regards to the 703 patent is that it only applies to part of Limelight's service offering. While the patent is very broad and potentially could mean more than just CDNs are infringing, think ad networks, web hosting companies etc... the patent only has to do with cached content that is delivered to a browser, which is the key point.

Live streaming, software downloads, application acceleration, delivery to a device etc... are not infringing as they are either not cached or not delivered to a browser. So not everything on Limelight's network is in violation of the 703 patent. I don't know what percentage of Limelight's traffic or revenue is outside of the 703 patent but that would be interesting to know.

As for Microsoft, many are thinking that Microsoft may now be worried since they licensed Limelight's technology. But what exactly did they license? Neither company has ever said. And since the 703 patent is very specific in what it covers, is Microsoft really worried that Akamai is going to come after them for licensing Limelight's technology? Of course not. And based on what exactly Microsoft licensed, it is very possible that it has nothing to do with anything pertaining to the Akamai and Limelight suit. It's all speculation at this point until someone says exactly what Microsoft licensed.