Rick-rolling Away
Ugh. April Fools day in the Blogosphere. Arrington’s suing Facebook, Zuckerberg’s doing SNL, YouTube Rickrolled their front page while Blip.tv announced support for the rick-roll ad format. And someone in my office named “April F” just sent an e-mail about free pizza in the kitchen, (the humanity!)
Google employees alone appear to have spent weeks worth of twenty percent time on pranks across the company’s numerous properties. OK Virgle’s not bad (”Earth has issues, and it’s time humanity got started on a Plan B”)…
But we’re only halfway through the day and I’m ready to return comedy to the pros. Here, watch the Onion for a while, isn’t that better?
Above: The Onion: Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 08 Election
Above: The Onion: Army Holds Annual Bring Your Daughter To War Day
Corey Adds:And more bubbling in the blogosphere, don’t miss Sean X. Cummings & Adam Broitman’s expose on Sprockets, and why they are the next big thing you need to know about (today).
April 1st, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I find it incredible the Online Video Watch blog has not covered the news surrounding Roo Media. Yesterday the CEO announced a rebranding and a new corporate client.
The new company name will be KIT Digital Inc and the name will change April 7.
No mention of the deals involving Viewdle and KIT Capital or the Kamera LOI.
I understand you are a bit biased concerning Roo but this is relevant Online Video Watch type stuff.
Regards,
Mike
April 1st, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Just an FYI, we were at the IAB Network & Exchanges event. Some days are just harder to get to all the news than others.
Also, if they’d send us a press release (in case you do their PR), instead of us having to read about it elsewhere, we’d certainly get to it sooner.
As a shareholder, I’m happy to see the stock go up. But as far as news goes, ok, they are changing their name to reflect their holding company. The other deals I’m still waiting to see how they pan out. They’ve announced plenty of partnerships / deals / and publishing partners before, and they’ve failed to help the company.
And their “exclusive” deal with Viewdle? Exclusive for who? Roo promises not to use any other facial recognition technology? That is hardly “news.” How many facial recognition technologies would you try to incorporate at any one time? They have a long road ahead of them to integrate the technology into their platform before they start seeing any real benefit. I hope it works for them, because their “exclusive” deal will prevent them from using a different (or better) technology if one emerges in 6 months or a year.
What I found the most amusing, though, was the quote reminding people that the financials were for the quarter before Kaleil got there. Not sure why they’d throw that in there considering the data was moving in the right direction.
But I will agree that it was something that we should have mentioned. But in case you do handle their PR, please send announcements to news@onlinevideowatch.com.
April 1st, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Not their PR guy, LOL.
Maybe frustrated the online video news bloggers as a whole have pretty much ignored the latest moves made by the new management.
I follow the top three “Online Video” news oriented blogs and they just are not following the online video enterprise solution providers.
I get lots of info on little video start-ups with their newfound venture funding on general tech news blogs like Techcrunch, Mashable but little about the “veteran” players.
Silicon Alley seems to cover Roo best, and they present info more even handed than anyone else.
Perhaps they have an eye on the share price as the blog is investment oriented to a large extent.
As for Viewdle– One of us read that release wrong.
“Through this alliance, ROO will offer the Viewdle product as a white-label solution to its global network of corporate customers as a value-added service. The agreement provides for ROO’s exclusive use of this technology vis-a-vis its direct competitors in the business-to-business IPTV platform marketplace. Viewdle will integrate its video search capability into the ROO player to offer a seamless user experience as either a stand-alone product or integrated with a broader ROO solution.”
I read this as the same arrangement they share with Pando. Roo gets exclusive USE of Pando’s P2P software as it pertains to Roo’s competitors.
Brightcove may not incorporate the search software in their player.
Right?
As an investor in Viewdle KIT’s Tuzman would want that exclusivity.
There is a story developing here that I am interested in. I will continue to look in on your blog for updates on Brightcove, KIT Digital and the other players in their space.
Thanks for the response.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:16 am
Couple of quick points….
First, thanks for the feedback. We always appreciate it. And I’m thrilled that you put us in your top 3.
Regarding Roo. Its not that they aren’t newsworthy to us. But I personally feel like there’s been a bit too much “crying wolf” going on. Hire execs, fire execs, raise funds, hemorhrage money, fixing company, layoff 20% of staff. I also personally felt like I was picking on them quite a bit and decided to back off for a while.
On the Silicon Alley Insider point, I’ll be frank. We’re not in their league. They are full time bloggers. Ben and I both do this on the side. Working at CSTV, I don’t think Ben has slept since March Madness began. And as a teaser, we’re working on a major product release and announcement and had a very heavy event schedule.
As for the Viewdle thing, I’m pretty sure we both read it right. I think my sarcasm was lost. Damn email/blogs/comments/non-personal communication. That said, I believe that Roo has agreed to only use Viewdle for facial recognition on their platform. On the Pando front, I’m not overly familiar with how their P2P platform works, but Roo already bough a P2P player a year ago (Wurld Media), so to me it is “lets try this again.”
On the whole, though, I’d like to see some more “there” there. They make lots of announcements (which they don’t send to us), but we’ve seen very little action in the market. Also, I’m an online advertising guy. I’m not too interested in the internal enterprise usage aspect of their business, unless they start serving pre-roll before their corporate training videos.
Please email me directly at corey@onlinevideowatch.com. I have a few other topics I’d like to pick your brain about off-comments.
Thanks!
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 am
Wait…we’re not in the top 3?