CBS and Yahoo! Hook Up for Syndication
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008Better from the horse’s mouth than from mine. Besides, I gotta get over to Digital Hollywood.
Better from the horse’s mouth than from mine. Besides, I gotta get over to Digital Hollywood.
On the heels of announcing a $46 million series C funding round, Move Networks has released some of their plans. The company has opened offices in New York, Ann Arbor, San Mateo and Los Angeles and will open offices in Latin America, Europe, and Asia later this year.
Additionally, the company hired Paul Ptaschne to lead the company’s Latin American sales force and hired BlackArrow founder Tom Morgan as Chief Strategy Officer, strengthening the company’s already close ties with their ad management partner.
An international presence would give Move a major competitive advantage when dealing with traditional content companies and the complexities of international distribution rights.
The internet should at least in theory simplify international online content distribution. So far however, broadcasters have been very careful not to encroach on existing agreements with international syndication partners. Hulu is a prime example.
But once there is a framework for syndicating content internationally, so that it can be monetized in cooperation with U.S. networks’ international distribution partners, that will change the global content syndication game.
Not that YouTube and Hulu didn’t already want you sending their content everywhere, but it doesn’t heart to make it simpler. Both sites recently rolled out features that automate syndication of content to social networking and bookmarking sites, streamlining the process of sharing with friends.
Hulu offers sharing links for eight sites and has enabled support for viewing clips within RSS feeds. YouTube has taken their community portion a step further, displaying related commentary such as video responses and blog trackbacks directly below videos and personalizing sharing preferences based on usage “so if you Digg more often than you Facebook, Digg will show up instead.”
Not that any of this news is particularly groundbreaking, but it will doubtless lead to more widespread distribution of those sites content. Expect to start seeing more Hulu and YouTube videos in your Facebook news feed in the weeks to come.