El Dumbo.

Heh!?! Akimbo just raised another $8 million from some of its earlier backers (Draper Fischer J., ATT, Kleiner Perkins, et al.).

Being as we said hello to them in many different ways- from the time they were selling a STB @ $125 + a monthly for content, to when they were just aggregating content, I thought we should check 'em out and see what $56 million raised over 5 years can help build.

The short answer is a long one: I am deeply offended by the state of venture capitalists, and their professed due-diligence for a market place, if they think it costs $8 million to build and market this..... (See screenshot below)


This costs $8 million to build and market?! Give me a break, guys. This is a $100,000 exercise, and it restricts you to Internet Explorer users. Not only do you not support Mac and Linux users, but you also don't support PC-Firefox users(which, from what I hear, is a FASTTTT growing and already kinda huge, market).

And it's not just the product...I think the website is an accurate reflection of their mindset. This is no 'widely acknowledged pioneer in Internet VOD'. It's a heavily funded failure. I could probably spend some time proving them wrong on all things mentioned on their "about us" page, but why bother?!

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Why bring this up? I'm not 100% sure. I liked Steve Shannon...he was a good friend to us. It's not Akimbo I have a problem with, either. They're just out there trying to do their thing. That "their thing" sucks is great...more power to us in the competitive landscape.

I do think I have a problem with Draper Fisher Jurvetson though. And with Kleiner Perkins. And I know I *might* be shooting myself in the foot, but heck, I think part of the reason we're blogging on here is to call a hat a hat.

Because if you're funding a $100k product, and a $7.9 million marketing effort, then it's no longer about venture capitalism.
It's about vulture capitalism, all over again.

And we all know where THAT got us last time around.

"The end of exclusivity" & the beginning of hyperactivity

Liz Gannes had an excellent write up on The End of Exclusivity.

Quotable quotes:

"Embeddable video is an underrated innovation. It’s the most successful web “widget” to date and was key to YouTube’s ascendance. And of course, it’s a way for users to participate in content without actually generating it themselves. More importantly, it’s putting an end to the practice of locking up content in distribution deals, even in cases in which the hoity-toity television networks are involved."

"Parsing out content in a single location at a certain time doesn’t make technological or even business sense any more."

"Hulu ratchets this all up a notch by allowing people to embed its content on the open web. Suddenly, everyone’s a self-serve local television affiliate, with the incomparable reach of the Internet. Personally, I’ll take embeddable video over the closed environment of Hulu rival Joost any day."

"Of course, the move away from exclusivity and formal deals is bad news for aggregators, because they don’t get to stand out from the competition by imprisoning the best content within their walls. But hey — more often than not, video search sucks, so there’s still a reason for aggregators to exist. And even the most dedicated creators don’t want to publish to 15 different web sites every time they make a new video."

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Summarizing:

a. Users are keen to participate in publishing, distribution and re-purposing. Want your users to pay attention to you? Help them participate.

b. Don't be a destination. Be a gateway. (need an analogy? Check out http://www.google.com)

c. Everyone is involved. It's a democracy. Act accordingly.

d. Publishers want to maximize exposure, but it's irritatingly hard for them to do so. How do you solve this problem? Refer point b, above: Be a gateway.

Share this.

A new tool for our blog: the "Share This" button at the bottom of each post.
Now, you can easily bookmark a post, or share it with a huge social network on any of the sites we've included.

How does it work? Well, you click on the "Share This" button(look down to the end of this post), select a website you want to share the blog post on, and submit.





Pretty easy.

If you're not big on social networking, you could also just bookmark it using Delicious or Google Bookmarks.

Funky tool, BTW. Took me all of 30 seconds to set up.

Open forum: need killer ideas for a Facebook app...

Folks,

Need some killer ideas here.

We're building out a Facebook app. for WeareIndia.TV as well.
Suggestions on what this app. should look/work like?

Open to all ideas, but the only guidelines are:

1) The app. shouldn't be complicated to use. Au contraire, even Preetam should be able to use it.
2) Nice to have: a social element to it which would let us make fruitful use of each users contacts(besides spamming them with "Send this to 100 friends to view results.")

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> Thoughts in all stages of maturity accepted.
> If you write us a winning product spec., we'll share revenues(from that app) with you.
> All notable ideas get mentioned. Not just on here, but also on our website.

Countdown to launch: 10......

Okay, launch proceedings for WeareIndia.TV is underway.

Launch notes// Count 10.

a. For YOUR information
Initial features will be straightforward. We're going to build this up incrementally.

Focus points:
- video playback
- publisher listings
- video listings
- e-mail, commenting, favorite-ing (for logged-in viewers only0
- search, filter, sort
- IMDB-style linked navigation

b. For OUR information
Bug fixes in progress. Part of our aim-small, miss-small strategy. We will attempt 100% bug-free launches w/ every iteration.

Focus points:
- experimenting with different players. Should we go for plain-Jane simple? Should we go for hot, but complex?
- UI issues...making sure the experience is perfect. Pages should load quickly, nothing too graphic intensive, links should work all around, etc.
- Interactions...making sure the interaction process is smooth. We're going to make sure it's easy and intuitive to interact with the platform. No pop-ups, some Ajax, easy browsing, etc.

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Stay tuned for Launch notes// Count 09.