As 2010 comes to a close and it was not like any other year that I can remember. I think everyone felt the crunch from the crazy and busy year 2010 was, and for me, it was the busiest year ever. So much, that it affected my blogging schedule by publishing 100 less posts than the previous two years as well as fewer posts on my other website Online Video Publishing [dot] com. But this past year, rather than focusing on the day to day to news – which I could never keep up with anyway – my focus was on producing more videos since 2010, after all, was the breakout year for online video.I want to thank everyone who has helped contribute to this blog, through your emails, press releases, technology briefings, telephone and video interviews. There really are too many to thank, so I thank you all. I know everyone's time is so valuable and I appreciate the ongoing outreach to me. While I wasn't able to write about everything that was shared with me, I did learn so much about the many companies that help shape the industry. Most of all, I thank the many of you who have taken the time to read, subscribe, Retweet my blog posts, share your comments, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Friendfeed and Facebook.
With this post and the one that follows, I recount the news I covered on this blog in 2010 and conversations I had along the way.
As every year, 2010 brought early predictions from around the web in online video, social media and technology. Many talked about how online video will continue to grow, how online video services and delivery would become more commoditized and models for paid content emerge, how standards will evolve, how television will shift online, how mobile will explode, how we'll see emerging models for online advertising, analytics, monetization and convergence of content across all three screens and new generation portable devices. The market matured over the last year and we actually did see the majority those predictions come true. I shared my prediction that "in 2010, the focus will be on high quality content, storytelling, and business models that will continue to emerge to foster that growth."
Like last January, Skype made big news at CES with its debut of Skype TV, by partnering with TV makers to bring its popular video chat software to the living room. OTT video was also hot topic all year, and I had the opportunity to speak with Boxee CEO, Avner Ronen, about the Boxee Beta and Boxee Box debut at CES 2010. I didn't make it to CES this past year, but Nalts' was on hand with his coverage on new gadgets.
January also brought news of the second annual Streamy Awards would take place again in April, and the return of pioneering web show EPIC FU! Another pioneer Steve Garfield released a new Book, 'Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building your Business', which presents a series of plans and tools businesses can follow to successfully communicate with and market to their customers on the social web.
Streaming media guru Jan Ozer and Flash expert Lisa Larson-Kelly are teaming up to present a one-day intensive workshop on "Streaming Production & Flash Delivery” Workshop in NYC, March 23rd and Ooyala hosted a video SEO best practices webinar, "Reel” Video SEO Strategies & Best Practices Webinar that featured my good friend Mark Robertson, Founder and Publisher of ReelSEO, Dr. Pete Kocks, President of Truveo and AOL Video, and Sean Knapp, Co-Founder and CTO of Ooyala.
I continued my series of CEO Conversations featuring a 4-part interview Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura's open video architect, who talked about how Kaltura's value proposition is "truly disruptive", Kaltura and the open source video movement and Kaltura's business model.
Within the web television community, the 2nd annual Streamy Awards announced the 2009 nominees and within the online video platform market, Streaming Media held a Roundtable webinar with Delve Networks, Kaltura, Kyte and Ooyala. I also revisited my ongoing Death by Powerpoint meme in an effort to help presenter not suck with Duarte Design's Five Rules for Making Presentations that Don't Suck.
In other online video industry news, Seawell announced $7 Million in Series A funding, for "Next Generation" H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC), social video platform Kyte released Kyte LivePro Unwired, Live Mobile Broadcasting Backpack, in a sign of the times NAB 2010 featured a special track Destination Broadband, The Online Video Experience, to test your video marketing skills EyeView released its annual Video Marketing Quiz, and consolidation heated up with KIT digital's acquisition of Multicast Media for Approx. $18 Million.
Amidst the format wars waged in the press, on the web and mobile devices – open video, and the HTML5 video standard, continued to gain traction in the market. HTML5 development also heated up with Kaltura and partners bringing video to Wikipedia, launch New Web Sites to Promote HTML5 Open Video Standard.
The content delivery market was also changing as I learned from Roy Peterkovsky in a 2-part interview about how Skytide Sees Big Changes Within the CDN Market, Releases Insight 2.0 Reporting & Analytics Solution for CDN Providers and Resellers and Skytide Shares Insight for Online Video Publishers, Identify the “Sweet Spot" and What is "Good Enough".
Then, in April, after months of format wars – with HTML5 and H.264 video emerging as a standard for online video – the industry felt its biggest disruption to date with The iPad Cometh, and the online video industry geared up for the launch. In a surprise move, Google bought itself an OVP with the acquisition of Episodic for an Undisclosed Sum. I interviewed Noam Lovinsky for Reel SEO months earlier and he commented on how the industry was just 15 years old, and video monetization and delivery on the web and mobile devices had just begun to mature.
Editor's note: 2011 just a few minutes away, and I have to ring in the New Year. So that's all for for blogging in 2010! Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow. Happy New Years to all!
