MatthewVB

First of all, disclosure: I’ve worked for companies who’ve done business with both Brightcove and their competitors. There. You’re welcome FTC.

Let’s dive, for five minutes or less, into online TV. Tons of players who came to the table: Joost, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and let’s just throw in AOL Video for kicks. (I know there are a few more, but let’s face it, there aren’t.) Yup, you’ve heard of all those above…and how they died a slow and painful death (or are currently doing so). Brightcove (today’s focus), is no different.

Brightcove aims to be the YouTube of commercial video, the Hulu for things businesses want to show off, the College Humor of not-funny things. (clip links were selected for their quality.) Brightcove has a chance, don’t misunderstand my lack of support for them. They have some heavy hitters as clients, including the US Army.

What’s the future: a CDN network (that just happens to play videos on a site for the heck of it but no one will go there but they’ll put them up anyhow). This is how they need to monetize and promote themselves. They have an infrastructure that can support thousands of simultaneous hits on a video while giving the people behind it the stats and analytics to drive corporate minds into crazy goodness.

If I were at Brightcove – I’d upgrade the homepage and show off some of the features — maybe a video? (he says suggestively as if it would make perfect sense for a video platform site.) They are doing the classic push to get people on a free trial and show the cost – but the real money is going to come through the corporate accounts and large contracts. Jeremy Allaire (still CEO btw) should take some time to refocus on what the core of his business is. Now, I don’t have access to financial reports, but I have to imagine the heavy corporate hitters are the ones bankrolling the operations while the mom & pops hitting up the site for a monthly fee are just spending money for Brightcove.

That’s my take. There are way too many people out there playing the online video game for a small fish to do something spectacular unless it’s niche. Go niche, go corporate, or go home.