When Wall street has big articles two days in a row on how Online Video is becoming popular and is posing a major threat to traditional media companies, including TV and Cable companies, you know that things are getting hot in that space. There was an article on Feb 21 on Front Page ‘Online Video Goes Mainstream, Sparking and Industry Land Grab’, and on Feb 22 it had an article in Personal Technology section ‘Choices Expand for watching TV over PC’.
Is this really growing that fast? I have been hearing this for some time, but finally it appears that the time has really come. When you start seeing video advertisements before you see any clip, you know that monetization models are making progress.
It is interesting to see how finally all media companies are getting serious about it. Is that the result of Google and Yahoo creating a threat for them or is it that they are really enlightened? One thing that I don’t understand is why do many people give success of iPod as a reason for media companies jumping into videos. I see fundamental differences in iPod model and the online video model. The most important being the fact that iPod is a very narrow distribution mechanism that is of great appeal due to mobile hardware, while online video is a broad distribution mechanism that is not linked to any specific hardware. This is a very key difference. Maybe I am missing an important point and that’s the reason that I consider them different.