Online and mobile video publishing service Kyte.TV, a darling of the European venture scene, has added still more funding to its substantial war chest and is taking a radically different approach to content.
The high hopes vendors like Kyte have had for User Generated video are crashing on the rocks of underwhelming consumer response and the market is shifting to a more traditional commercial media model. Will consumers come around in the future? Kyte says yes, I'm not so sure.
Simply put, large numbers of non-professional users have not started producing video content outside of YouTube and other vendors are now shifting towards publishers looking to make money. For the immediate time at least, user generated video will probably remain centralized by in-house services from major social networks (YouTube, MySpace, Facebook) because that's where the audiences and ease of use are. The forthcoming YouTube Live will continue this trend.
More high-end feature sets and publishing experiences will be in demand almost exclusively by big media companies and a small group of aspiring professional video broadcasters. One of the premium features Kyte is announcing today is premium Facebook applications, something also offered by competitor SplashCast. Kyte has worked out an interesting solution to updating Facebook app splash pages, but that's just one of many problems publishers face on Facebook. Meanwhile it's advertising that is going to make big media partnerships pay off for companies like Kyte and the places where the viewers are, MySpace and to some degree Facebook, still drastically limit the visibility of 3rd party delivered ads.
It's a tough place for small video services to be in, but there's enough money flying around that someone will have to figure it out someday. Everyone else will then follow but white label video publishing ala Kyte Premium will become commoditized once that happens.
Today's funding announcement includes new investments from Disney's Venture Arm SteamBoatVC and Nordic telecom giant TeliaSonera. These two put in a relatively modest $6 million more on top of previous money from other investors. The total Kyte funding now stands at $23.5 million. The company's planned expansion internationally will probably burn through that pretty quickly, making a rapid solution to the advertising question an imperative. User generated content is not nearly as easy to monetize as big brand content, something Kyte confirmed to me today was their experience as well.
The new Kyte video player is substantially less ugly than the old one and publishers now have the option to publish through premium branded players and stand-alone Facebook video applications. Kyte is also rolling out e-commerce capabilities in the premium players.
Video industry watchers will also want to know about live streaming. Kyte now says it will include live broadcast streaming from both mobile phones and webcams by the end of this month. The functionality is in private beta now but will be limited to the same Nokia phones that Qik is available on now.
Kyte offers good technology, but users interested in it shouldn't expect to receive substantial support and innovation in your favor. User generated video is just not taking of for small players the way it was expected to. Today's announcement extends the trend we discussed earlier this week, video is becoming more international and more commercial than was believed to be the case initially.
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Nice analysis, Marshall.
For every 5 content producers, there are 95 content consumers. The entrenched UGC video services, like YouTube, have those 5 content producers locked up. No matter how compelling the differentiation of services like Kyte or SplashCast, it is still very difficult to chip away at YouTube's lock on a relatively small market of consumer producers.
For media companies and brands, engaging that difficult to reach teen and young adult demo is very, very compelling. At SplashCast, we see this everyday and have been blown away by the interest from consumer / lifestyle brands and large media companies.
SplashCast made the shift in positioning from UGC to "social marketing applications" a while back, as you well know, and we've gotten a lot of business being a first mover. Kyte is just now making the shift, and I expect they will also get a bit of traction.
This is a big opportunity; it is a land grab. I expect Kyte will be a regular competitor with us on a number of deals moving forward. We welcome them.
Cheers,
Posted by: Mike Berkley | March 7, 2008 11:40 AMMike
Marshall,
Thanks for taking the time to post about Kyte. You ask a thought-provoking question about consumers' interest in user generated video, but I don’t think you got to the heart of the matter.
Over the past months, Kyte has seen tremendous user interest – primarily driven by premium content from artists like 50 Cent ( www.thisis50.com ) and Prodigy ( www.hnic2.com ). One of my favorite examples is Grammy nominee Raheem DeVaughn - he is sharing his life live on his channel: www.theloveexperience.com
I highly recommend you watch a few of Raheem's shows and you will get a good sense of how he is connecting with his fanbase. I know first hand it has been an amazing experience for him and for his fans.
Kyte’s strategy is to build on this demand and obvious sweet spot in the industry. We have already artists from all four major record labels using Kyte as well as indie bands. Receiving funding from a premier group of content and distribution partners will accelerate our ability to execute this strategy.
We look forward to giving you a demo of the Kyte platform sometime soon.
In the mean time, a good starting point to get an idea of Kyte’s platform capabilities and benefits is this video: www.kyte.com/demo
Best,
Posted by: Daniel Graf | March 7, 2008 6:19 PMDaniel
I don't have answers here on this,maybe just an observation or two. Kyte confuses me... I have not been to the site since before christmas but then a lot of the content was not interesting and not really video either! On You Tube and Vimeo I do find interesting content, Vimeo also has contact and friend lists just like Flickr. I also tried Seesmic. It did not work for me, at least not yet. This sort of service needs IMVHO phones with video and cheap data transfer for starters. I also think that the 'conversations' these services need to be relevant will probably happen in a crossover world between internet and mainstream media (I'm thinking TV). If news services could find a way of publishing reactions taken from users via their phones (UGC live reporting), new years eve events, after events like baseball or American football games... that is the future, at least if it were to catch on. I think we are years away from that! Mobile Internet keeps nearly taking off, but outside the geek crowd it has not and will not this year either. The greatest enemy of mobile Internet is the telco (IMHO), but the Wimax, HSDPA and LPE? infrastructure necessary is not there yet either. I hate to say this but I think mobile internet is in the 14kps epoch still. All of this is simply thinking out loud OK!
Posted by: Don Crowley | March 8, 2008 12:35 PMHi All,
Interesting discussion going on here.
Posted by: Andreas | March 8, 2008 4:59 PM@ Don: Did you read the 2nd comment to this post? It's written by the CEO of Kyte.
This is what I understand now:
Kyte seems not to be a destination. After checking Alexa, they are way behind...
However, when I see the stats of 50 cent's channel (that embedded on his community), I am impressed by the numbers of views he has on his channel.
@Andreas Good point, but that is a change. In July last year Daniel gave an interview on intruders.tv showing something very different. Robert Scoble used Kyte.tv for a while as well. What kyte want to do know is different. I hate to say this but I see them going the way of brightcove (no where).
I love the idea of video from a cellphone on location. But the world is not ready for this stuff just yet. This is earlier that early adoption. I had a post last november about other possibilities as well. It includes a terrible quality video from my 2 year old cell phone about using video to do concert reviews/ restaurant reviews on sites like trusted places.
Posted by: DC Crowley | March 9, 2008 9:01 AM- Intruders.tv interview
- My awesomely crappy video
Thx DC for your reply and the link to the interview.
I agree, the mobile offering covering the LIVE streaming capability is something for innovators and geeks that can afford fancy phones. However, their LIVE webcam feature is ready for the market. And, I am convinced, the cell phone is going nuts in the future...
btw, don, scoble is an interesting example: most of the time, he used kyte's technology embedded on his blog, he rarely linked to the kyte-website.
andy
Posted by: Andreas | March 9, 2008 10:03 PMWhen Google started, it became popular among computer-inclined people, it was an alternative way to find information to Yahoo/Lycos/Hotbot - a better alternative. Most Internet software when it's done right and outperforms what's currently out there, will be first recognized by people who have above-average interest in computers. Who sit at the computer day and night, they are the first ones to discover new technology.
Had there been a search engine that is better than Google, people would switch. People who work at Google know this, and they do everything possible in their power to make sure that doesn't happen (by improving their service).
Posted by: gregsometimes | March 10, 2008 11:04 AM