Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Qik joins Brightcove Alliance Bringing Mobile UGC Publishing to the Masses

In a move that extends the capabilities and reach of two leading online video and mobile platforms, Brightcove and Qik have announced a new partnership that brings Qik, the popular live mobile broadcasting platform, into the fold of the Brightcove Alliance, a global ecosystem of more than 160 technology, distribution and solution providers who have intergrated with Brightcove's global online video platform. What that means is that Qik users who have a Brightcove account can now distribute their pre-recorded mobile video content within the Brightcove player and existing Brightcove customers can now have mobile video as a new source of UGC content.

In a guest post on the Brightcove blog, Qik Co-founder Bhaskar Roy said, "We're excited to announce our new partnership with Brightcove, the world's number one online video platform. Brightcove's on-demand platform lets its customers publish and distribute video across websites, social networks and video portals. Brightcove also provides monetization options for customers through integration with advertising servers and networks. With today's partnership announcement, Qik's mobile video capabilities can now be easily integrated into Brightcove's online video publishing and distribution workflow."

"Brightcove, meanwhile, can now offer its customers the ability to upload videos from more than 130 mobile phones, including models from AT&T, BlackBerry, Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, and Verizon," noted Bill Greenwood on Streamingmedia.com, "Currently, live mobile videos cannot be streamed through Brightcove, but that ability is expected to be added shortly, according to Roy."



This capability could open the floodgates for a new workflow for citizen journalism, as Andy Plesser pointed out, "This could be in important development in so called "citizen journalism," allowing users to upload directly from mobile devices to newspapers sites including The New York Times and the Washington Post, both which are powered by Brightcove."


To celebrate the launch of their partnership, a special offer of three months of free Qik integration with Brightcove is available to Brightcove customers (existing or new) when signing up for an annual account by July 15th. This is a savings of $450 per user, with the monthly license per user priced at $150. Send an email to brightcove@qik.com for the trial.

Mobile video continues to rise and both Qik and Brightcove continue to expand into new markets and devices. Bill Greenwood added that, "Brightcove is also reaching out to Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users with the Brightcove iPhone Video Site package. Those interested in the offer can contact Brightcove Professional Services, which will create a site optimized for the iPhone and iPod Touch that contains either a user’s full Brightcove video library or only selected playlists."

Qik has supported live streaming on jailbroken iPhones since last year. Currently though no live streaming app is available through the iPhone App Store and that's not likely to change for some time due as David Chartier pointed out last year that, Qik iPhone client may violate AT&T's terms of service.

Still, the video capabilities of the new iPhone 3GS with a million devices sold in first week and an early alpha of Qik on now available on Android, Pete Wylie says we're seeing the mobile video explosion is gearing up. With the forecast that 90% of the traffic on the web will be online video by 2013 it's clear that there will be a lot more integration of mobile video, online video platforms and content delivery.

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