Here is how the internet works:
From Netvibes I get a feed from Jason Hirschorn, which is in a tab that was emailed to me by a friend. In that feed I see “Future of Internet TV.” I click on that. In there is a Fortune story on the CNN site, powered by WordPress.
The story is about Miro–another entrant into the internet telly fray. Right on the front page it boasts that it is better than Joost. Is this the beginning of a re-creation of cable companies on the internet? Will Joost, Hulu, Miro, Youtube, etc. become the cable providers in the future? And if so, how many channels will there be? If god forbid, I procreate, will I be telling my grand children, “I remember when there were only 500 channels to watch?”
With the unending proliferation of video sites, Youtube is looking like an increasingly terrible decision by Google. I wonder if the seeming failure of Youtube, made them think twice before investing in Facebook. Though, Facebook now has a plan to monetize, so we’ll see what happens.
Miro, on the other hand doesn’t have any such plan:
Miro is a free, open-source software project led by a non-profit organization. It’s a platform that benefits everyone by keeping online video open. Our organization isn’t controlled by venture capitalists or stockholders, which means we always put our users first.
Open video will only have a real impact if it can reach a mass audience. Your ideas and efforts work better than any paid marketing campaign, because it comes from somewhere real.
Before I started school, I used to think, ‘everything should be free.’ I just assumed that there would always be some tinkerer out there who was obsessing over some wonderful idea. That person would create the wonderful thing for me at no cost. Then when it caught on, became big, the person could sell it, then go do something else.
But that isn’t how the world works. And while many want to deny that we are atop the Web 2.0 bubble, I can’t help but think of this Michael Lewis passage from “The New New Thing:
Netscape had nothing to show investors but massive losses. But its fabulous stock market success created a precedent. No longer did you need to show profits; you needed to show rapid growth. Having a past actually counted against a company, for a past was a record and a record was a sign of a company’s limitations. Never mind that you weren’t making money-there’d be time for that later, assuming someone eventually figured out how to make money from the Internet. For the moment you needed to show that you were the company not of the present but of the future. The most appealing companies were those in a state of pure possibility.
The internet television phenomenon seems like something that exists in a state of pure possibility right now.
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