A Quick Course in Internet Video

Jeremy Allaire, CEO and founder of Internet video platform Brightcove, today published this helpful primer on Brightcove’s Web site.  (Thanks to Mike Malone for sending it to me.)

It explains, in a very well-organized and clear way, what this Internet video trend is all about, identifies the players and sorts them into categories, and delineates some trends for the coming year.

The trends, as Allaire sees them, are as follows: Web video portals will continue to work to create branded destinations – think FunnyorDie.com, a relatively new site where viewers already know they can find some of the best comedy shorts on the Web — that appeal to the largest audiences possible in order to attract advertisers. The fact that access to a large audience is the key to attracting advertising dollars is really Media 101. Monetizing that audience access remains a work in progress, and it’s the Internet’s Holy Grail right now. Allaire thinks one way portals will do this is by placing high-quality short-form (and other) videos in proper context to attract loyal and repeat audiences.

 And just one public service: Since I had no idea what he meant by “orthogonal,” as in “social networks like FaceBook, MySpace, Bebo and iGoogle are in many ways orthogonal to the Internet video market,” I looked it up. It either means something very complicated that involves matrices or it means “statistically independent” or “coming at something from a right angle.” I think he’s saying that social networks aren’t Internet TV platforms, per se, but because they are starting to be used that way, it’s a relevant topic for him to address. And I agree, which is why I am also frequently talking about social networks in this space.