Do you watch mobile video on your phone? If you’re like most mobile phone users, the fast answer is “Probably not.”

While there are more than 3 billion active mobile phones in the world today, 2007 found only 4% of mobile users subscribing to mobile video services. It’s not for lack of content — there are 15 billion Web videos on the Internet. So why aren’t people watching mobile videos?

To date, users haven’t found the mobile video experience compelling enough. The list of adoption barriers include:

- Price

- Image quality

- Rich content

- Long download times

- Device support

- The user experience (search and discovery)

- Consumers’ lack of awareness of the feature

And frankly, it hasn’t been easy for content owners and carriers to deploy mobile video. Typically, publishing video has required very manual formatting and delivery processes that require costly administration steps and storage.

The Pandora’s Box for mobile video first cracked open in 2008. Key milestone events inspired the evolution of the mobile video market - events like the release of the iPhone, NBC’s broadcast of the Beijing Olympics, the 2008 Presidential election, and the increasing availability of innovative, video-enabled devices.

The iPhone: First Viable Multimedia Smartphone

Never has a technology product launch generated as much buzz as Apple’s iPhone. With the iPhone’s release in 2007 and the iPhone 3G release in 2008, large screen, mobile Web devices suddenly became easy and fun. Awareness of the mobile Internet and its potential skyrocketed.

Specific to mobile video, the iPhone included a native Youtube video streaming application which greatly increased awareness of the iPhone’s mobile video feature. By end of 2008, Apple will have shipped over 10 million iPhones and 30% of iPhone users will have watched mobile video on their devices. Among the iPhone’s many “killer apps,” mobile video is one of them.

Of course, not everyone has an iPhone. In fact, it is estimated that the iPhone is approaching 2% market share with Nokia still the dominant player at 50% market share in mobile handsets worldwide. But, the iPhone generated enough awareness of mobile video to stimulate growth across the wireless industry. And, the ease of discovering and watching mobile video on the iPhone is a great benchmark for other device manufacturers, application providers, and carriers to emulate.

The Olympics on Your Phone

NBC has always been aggressive in deploying a widespread digital media strategy. It was no surprise that they invested heavily in providing extensive video coverage on the Internet, as well as to dedicated mobile video channels. Compensating for the time zone difference with the US and China, users were able to log on to the Web at various times throughout the day and see any number of live or video-on-demand sporting events. In all, the array of content that NBC broadcast was mind boggling. In fact, the American narrative evolved into many looking forward to the end of the Olympics so they could finally get some sleep.

NBC faced quite a challenge in getting the broadest reach possible out of mobile video. Their first priority was to work closely with their carrier partners, specifically ATT, their top partner. The first thing NBC did was create an Olympics channel on premium mobile TV platforms like MediaFLO and MobiTV. Of course, these premium mobile TV services were only available on a select number of handsets, and only a small percentage of premium paying users had access to them.

NBC’s goal was to make their content available to as many users as possible, so it was not enough to only be able to reach the premium mobile TV subscribers. So, NBC also published a public WAP site (mobile.nbcolympics.com) where video content could be accessed from any video-enabled mobile device with a data plan. This free WAP site turned out to be surprisingly popular, despite limited video streaming quality and selection.

Despite limited promotion of mobile video services, NBC was pleased to see over a million views of their mobile video content in the first two days of the Olympics alone. Thanks to superstar performances by the likes of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt, the Olympics were a huge broadcast success for NBC, especially on the burgeoning “third screen.”

Obama v. McCain: Who Wins on Mobile?

Mobile marketing has been a big part of Obama’s Presidential campaign, with nearly 3 millions users receiving a text message announcing Obama’s choice of Joe Biden for his VP running mate. The Democratic and Republican conventions were watched by nearly two thirds of American households, and live mobile streams of the events were widely watched via various mobile video channels, although specific viewership numbers have not been published. These political conventions were the most watched in history, with the first political events widely broadcast via mobile, marking another historic milestone in mobile video.

“When you consider youth and the urban skew, it makes sense that Democrats would be slightly ahead of Republicans in terms of mobile media use today,” said Nic Covey, director of Nielsen mobile research. “While I’m not sure either party is fundamentally more equipped to leverage mobile’s capabilities, Democrats have an edge in that their base is more inclined to the medium today,” Mr. Covey said.

Innovation of Devices and Networks

Since the release of the iPhone, many handset manufacturers have launched so called “iPhone-killers” that aspire to match the sexiness and usability of the iPhone. This new generation of smartphones have large screens, video-streaming capabilities, and high speed 3G and WiFi connectivity. They are, essentially, powerful multimedia devices.

Many currently popular smartphones like BlackBerry and Windows Mobile have crippled multimedia capabilities. In many cases, these devices do not support video streaming, have file download limitations, or have small screens, not appropriate for video viewing. RIM has deployed video streaming capability in its latest generation of smartphones, but there are still millions of older smartphones out in the market a whole generation behind.

Examples of next-generation, media-centric devices include the Sprint Instinct, the T-Mobile Android G1, and the impending BlackBerry Storm. These devices all include WiFi, video streaming codecs (like RTSP video streaming), and large touch screens that don’t display a keyboard while streaming a video in full-screen mode. Certainly, the increasing influx of large screen, highly connected, multimedia friendly devices will help drive adoption of video streaming features.

Leveraging the Power of Youth

Let’s consider the power of the youth segment for a moment. On the desktop, they shied away from email and made Instant Messaging popular. On mobile, they are 12-key savvy and never really adopted wireless email. Will they care about the mobile browser? Not likely. They will demand Internet content, yes, like video content and social networking sites for messaging and picture sharing, but not in the context of the browser.

Mobile video has been particularly popular among youth. For example, MTV has been quick to identify the importance of mobile in reaching its relatively young, media-hungry customer base. Specifically, MTV has been pushing out election coverage.

“We’ve had extraordinary interest in this election from our audience, with more than 80 percent telling us that they’re following it closely,” said Ian Rowe, senior vice president of public affairs and strategic partnerships for MTV, New York. “We want to reach young people wherever they are, especially in the last few weeks of the election, so we launched this made-for-mobile show. “This will be very powerful, especially given the large amount of young people who have a mobile phone,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re reaching our audience on whatever media platform they’re consuming content.”

As data plan prices drop and feature rich “free” phones become more media savvy, the ’tweens and the under-30 crowd will more fully engage in the mobile Internet.

The Elephant in the Room

When it comes to mobile video adoption barriers, the elephant in the room is the wireless carrier. Carriers are always looking for ways to monetize their networks and content. And, naturally, they see premium video services as another way to differentiate their offering and increase ARPU. Unfortunately, creating a walled garden of video content for premium-paying users will stifle adoption and limit the amount of content and viral effects needed to spread the popularity of mobile video. According to many user studies, price has been the primary objection to mobile video.

Public WAP sites that stream free video are starting to gain popularity. Users can visit free sites like mywaves.com or download applications that enable free video search and streaming. These sites and applications support themselves with advertising models such as pre-roll video ads or WAP site or application display ads.

So far, users have been open to being exposed to a reasonable amount of advertising in exchange for access to compelling, free content. The users must pay, of course, for a data plan to access these mobile videos. Much like the Internet from a desktop computer, the only cost for free services is the broadband access. Carriers are slowly dropping prices for data plans in order to drive widespread adoption of the mobile Internet. But, for now, data plans are priced too high to attract the majority of users.

Much like we saw on the Internet, once the price of access drops enough to entice the mass market, a wide variety of content will become available and users will be exposed to a more compelling offering. At that point, mobile video will become as ubiquitous and rich as it is from the desktop.

Beyond price and content, the video viewing experience must be as good as users are accustomed to on the desktop, even on slower data networks. To achieve a smooth video playback with no stuttering or buffering, content owners and carriers will need to deploy a robust mobile video formatting and streaming platform. Video delivery tools have matured significantly in the last year, and content owners and carriers can expect to support the majority of devices in the market.

In the end, the greatest tipping point for mushrooming mobile video users will be a technology providing faster startup and a smooth, clear video viewing experience that exceeds user expectations and brings them back for more.

Dave Sloan is marketing director of Avot Media. Avot Media is the innovator behind tipMotion, the high performance video transcoding and near-real-time streaming appliance enabling video delivery to Web-enabled mobile devices.

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As we noted earlier, the 2008 Paralympic Summer Games in Beijing held their official opener on Saturday. The next week and a half will bring roughly 4,000 athletes from 150 countries into one athletic village, challenging one another for hundreds of medals gold, silver and bronze in nearly two dozen sports. With that in mind, if you’re keen on taking in the views and the news as they come from the Chinese capital, here are a few places to stay abreast and in tune.

While the NBCOlympics.com isn’t playing host to events scheduled through the 17th of the month, when the Paralympic games officially wrap up, the NBC Universal Sports website is, according to Alan Schwarz of The New York Times’ Rings blog, slated to present 50 hours of live coverage, as well as on-demand footage. In order to watch live coverage, viewers in the US will be required to schedule their days to an early morning routine, seeing as how many events will take place as early as 5 AM ET.

So far, two videos are presented in the Universal Sports archive: one for the opening ceremony held Saturday; the other a highlight reel of the ceremony plus coverage of a portion of Day 1 events. As for software compatibility, video is not presented in Silverlight, nor Flash, but in Windows Media format. Mac users can view coverage through a browser plugin called Flip4Mac. Personal experience shows this option to stutter and flicker at points, but it is a mostly decent delivery.

Another way to watch the Paralympic games up close is through ParalympicSportTV. This is done through Narrowstep, and while video detail isn’t particularly outstanding, the channel is tagged with the IPC (International Paralympic Committee) label, an association which might be of interest to some. If you have trouble viewing content at the main ParalympicSportTV page, an archive has also been established on YouTube. Nearly three dozen clips have been added to the collection so far.

Want extra reading material to go with the IPC’s coverage? The committee president, Sir Philip Craven, has gone ahead and created a blog, to which he has posted daily items for a short time. The broader Paralympic.org website is home to a good amount of news and resource information, too.

Across the Atlantic, the BBC offers a page within its Sport section devoted to Paralympic happenings. Of course, there’s ample focus on competitors from Team Great Britain, but according to BBC News, live streams are being offered “for six hours a day through the red button.” Quite thorough, I think. That is in addition to evening showings on BBC2 and via the BBC’s iPlayer service.

Lastly, being an American, I think it behooves me to briefly mention the U.S. Paralympics Team website, which is just chock-full of material to pore over. It last links to news stories, video clips, photo galleries, event results, and even a link to Universal Sports’s Paralympic coverage. Plus, if what you see gets you interested enough to take part in paralympic game play yourself, you can head over to its event page to see if something is happening in your area in the near future.

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Usain Bolt bolted his way into the Olympics winning gold medals in the events he competed in. Apparently he’s like the fastest man on earth. And now thanks to Puma (his sponsor), you can attempt to beat him at his own game. Puma has created a casual game that lets you challenge Bolt in a race. You race using your fingers, he races using his feet. I was able to beat him because I am a master of the arrow keys. You see I played Track ‘n Field all the time growing up so I was prepared for this world record holder. Play the game on Puma’s site.

The only thing Puma did wrong is not allowing the game to be embedded outside of the Puma Web site. This would have easily spread the game, Bolt and Puma further than keeping the game locked up on the site will. The game is a smart move for Puma and Bolt. Now that the Olympic Games are over, Bolt will slowly fade out of the spotlight. The game can keep him top-of-mind for casual game players and Puma Shoppers.

This game should see millions of plays a day if it gets the kind of traffic similar games I produced did. It’s a quick play and is addicting to hit the leaderboard. Can you beat my time above? Leave a comment with your best score.

More CN Coverage:
– Docstoc
– Scribd
– Twitter

The closing ceremony for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing has already been underway for some hours now, but if you’d like to follow it all through some good ol’ liveblogging action, we’ve scrounged up several choice picks. For an American audience, relegated to watching happenings time-delayed by nearly half a day, these will surely come in handy.

NBC has no hold over the news media’s reportage of the celebration, as it does with broadcasts of the ceremony in the US prior to its own showing later today, so feel free to  venture over to The New York Times, The Washington Post, or USA Today to get a text-based grip on the big finale happening in China.

The New York Times and USA Today appear to deliver the best reviews of the closer. They’re easiest to follow, while WaPo’s delivery is less substantive. WaPo’s commentary is nice an casual, though, so if you’re looking for a bit of humor to go with the liveblog process, there you have it. No imagery to go along with the jokes, however.

Want images? Visit The New York Times. Quite a nice amount, I think. USA Today hosts one JPEG as I write this.

Across the pond, the BBC has put together some good text for readers. Like WaPo, it is absent of anything shiny and bright to look at, but it otherwise makes for a decent source of information.

The Telegraph packs quite a decent punch, too. And its commentary has that classic Telegraph tinge to it, which makes for fairly entertaining reading.

Collectively, there’s certainly going to be ample overlap in terms of coverage among these various sources, but all told, they make for a rather thorough take of the event. Some of you will naturally prefer video entertainment to finish out the weekend, but this bunch will have to do for now. Surely there’ll be plenty to consume in short order within the folds of YouTube and DailyMotion and whathaveyou.

If you feel it imperative to school us further on the ways in which the closing ceremony can be consumed, either in part or in full, speak your part in the comments. Educate us.

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Compete is out with their latest analysis report — this time it’s regarding the online Olympics coverage across the Web. NBC spent $900 million for exclusive rights for broadcasting the olympics so an easy assumption would be that they lead the online traffic and engagement race for the Beijing Olympics online viewing but Compete says that assumption would be incorrect.

As you can see in the chart below, Compete measured reach (unique visitors) between the top 5 Olympic coverage sites. Yahoo leads with 1.5 million unique visitors while NBC comes in with 1.2 million. NBC leads in engagement (time on site) by 5% over Yahoo. It will be interesting to see how long the traffic and engagement remains high at NBC and the others once the games have concluded.

From a CenterNetworks perspective, the Olympics have provided a good stream of traffic since the opening ceremonies. The traffic has slowed over the past few days but during the first three days we were doing quite well. In fact, in my traffic and ranking analysis, Techcrunch would win the Gold and we would take the Silver. I will note that we have asked the IOC to take a look to make sure that no "faking" (heightening, lip synching, etc.) went on with that valley blog.

The one question I have after reviewing the Compete analysis is whether it includes views and engagement through the Microsoft Silverlight player which is required to watch the Olympics coverage on NBC.

More CN Coverage:
– Docstoc
– Scribd
– Twitter

Need your software tested for functionality, usability, and durability by a global supply chain of assessors? A company by the name of uTest, based in Ashland, Massachusetts, is today announcing the general availability of its network of service specialists for the software developer arena. The network is intended to offer a controlled, pseudo real-world trial of a particular application and present a quality feedback report, complete with bugs discovered and the like.

It calls its worldwide list of specialists the uTester Community, and so far it is has claimed companies such as Xobni, Move Networks, GoAnimate, Synthasite, RepairPal, and others as customers. Perhaps the most outstanding benefit of uTest’s international asset base is its on-demand character, allowing customers the convenience of accessing the powers that be out in the cloud when needed. For Internet companies managing a busy release/upgrade schedule, this can naturally be a major benefit for keeping the process expedient and maintaining a level of consistency in terms of the product they ultimately deliver to users.

Since its start, the network that uTest now manages has grown to become quite far-reaching, consisting of 8,300 people in over 130 countries. The company states rather proudly its recruitment of roughly 10% of the estimated global professional testing pool to its force. It makes note of the availability of a variety of skill sets among its ranks - novice to expert - to ensure that customers with budgets big and small can all exercise the services uTest provides.

Also, costly, long-term contracts aren’t required. Customers can either pay for annual subscriptions to tap the uTest Community, or on demand only when necessary. The company’s pay-for-performance and pay-per-bug mantra, which spans all available payment models, keeps costs directly in line with what uTest is able to pinpoint as vulnerable and needing attention, rather than simply issuing a blanket fee irrespective of the particular job. All in all, a boon to the developer world whose numbers of users increasingly necessitate superb quality assurance, yet who’s budgets may not leave ample room for big spending on a thorough pre-launch review.

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Source:Mashable!

Yahoo announced today that Buzz is now open to the public and anyone who wants to submit stories is free to do so.  Prior to this, only a handful of publishers were allowed to post stories as Yahoo tried to get the kinks out.

But now that Yahoo Buzz is officially ready for business, It’s an apropos time to discuss whether or not this site will have an impact on Digg, the de facto leader in this space.  And although some would claim that Digg isn’t really a competitor to Buzz because the latter is somewhat controlled by human intervention, I think it absolutely is a competitor and one that could have a major impact on Digg’s value in prospective acquisitions.

Since April, when traffic reached its peak, Digg’s numbers have been slumping.  Granted, they’re not slumping too much and the site is still performing extremely well, but it is down nonetheless.  And although the reason for that could be practically anything, I think Digg slowly lost its appeal when it stopped becoming a tech-savvy haven and tried to expand into areas that its tech-influenced crowd didn’t care about.

Source:Mashable!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past week and a half (and probably even if you have), you’ve undoubtedly heard the name Michael Phelps many, many times. The record setting swimmer from the US not only won an unprecedented eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, but is perhaps (and waaay more importantly) the longest running “trending topic” on Twitter search.

And today the 23-year-old from Baltimore has yet another accomplishment to add to his social media resume: one million Facebook fans! With a little prodding from the social network (the site has been congratulating him and directing US users towards his fan page - see below), Phelps is now second only to Barack Obama in fans, and is quickly approaching 50,000 wall posts too.

Beyond the Fan Page, Phelps actually uses Facebook, and alluded to the sudden surge he was seeing in friend requests in an interview with NBC’s Bob Costas over the weekend. How long will Phelps mania last? According to Google trends (which only updated thru Sunday), news references for the athlete have finally leveled off, but given Phelps is on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week and the Olympic closing ceremonies still await, expect him to swim right past Obama and become the most popular Facebook user of all-time.

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What qualities would you come up with if you were asked to describe an Olympian? Perseverance? Determination? Fearlessness? Quick Wits? Teamwork? You could probably come up with a long list of admirable qualities.

Now how about if you were asked to describe an entrepreneur? Don’t all of those terms apply to the most dedicated of entrepreneurs? Don’t the successful ones share the fearlessness and dedication that Olympians exhibit?

Although a professional cyclist may be different in many ways to the founder of an Internet startup, many of the traits and qualities of a successful cyclist are the same for successful entrepreneurs. So while we celebrate the greatest of all sporting events, let’s learn a few lessons from these amazing individuals. Here are seven lessons you can take from the hard work and struggles of Olympians.

1) Great talent means nothing without great teamwork:

Just ask LeBron James. The 2004 Olympics were a disaster for Team USA Basketball. Despite having the most talented individuals on the court, the United States lost three times and came home with a disappointing bronze. After that, the leadership’s mentality changed to make sure 2008 was different. Coach Mike Krzyzewski didn’t choose individuals, but chose a team. This group has now played together since 2005 and 2006 in preparation for these Olympics and showed their strength in a 101-70 opening rout of China.

Learn from Team USA’s mistakes - getting great talent is never enough if that talent does not mesh and work well together. You must build a team with members that complement each other and are selfless in achieving company goals. If you ignore that team dynamic, you’re probably going to be stuck with something far more disappointing than a bronze medal.

2) Endorsement deals are great, but don’t let them distract you:

In sports, endorsement deals mean commercials, visibility, new products, and a wad of cash. For Internet entrepreneurs, endorsement deals mean venture capitalists, networking, new credibility, and of course a wad of cash. But if you get too engrossed in venture capital, it can become something you regret. If you spend too much time finding a deal instead of working on making your product the best it can be, nobody will want to endorse you in the first place, regardless of whether you’re an athlete or an entrepreneur.

3) Finish:

Finishing isn’t always easy and you can get distracted from the end by distractions. Sometimes it’s just painful and the last thing you want to do, but nobody succeeds without finishing. The greats dig deep to summon the strength needed to finish. Just ask Track and Field Gold Medalist Derek Redmond. Even if you do not come out the winner in the end, you can hold your head up high and know you did what most never do: finish what they start.

4) When you are injured, you need to work even harder to reach your goals:

Yao Ming is the Chinese icon of sports. But the basketball all-star’s role in the 2008 Olympics was put into doubt when he broke his foot in February. China worried about not having Yao during its great Olympic debut. Yao’s response?

If I cannot play in the Olympics for my country this time, it will be the biggest loss in my career to right now.”

Yao Ming then worked his butt off to rehabilitate, to heal, and to prepare. And it paid off: He once again carried the Chinese flag during the opening ceremony and headlined the Chinese national team. In the world of Internet startups, dramatic changes to the market can put you and your company’s future in doubt as well. When you are at the short end of a lawsuit or being hammered by the media, remember what you set out to do in the first place. To make something successful you’re going to have to take those bruises, stand up, and work even harder to succeed. Injuries are temporary - they’ll eventually heal. Throwing in the towel is permanent.

5) Know your competition:

Some people suggest that you ignore the competition and focus only on your own goals and your own work. True, it’s more important to focus on your company and your business than obsess over the competition, but not looking at the big picture is also foolish. Baseball teams know the tendencies of opposing pitches. Tennis players know whether their opponent’s forehand or backhand is weaker and adjust their game accordingly. As an entrepreneur in a very fast-paced market, knowing when new competitors pop up or about what customers think of the current competition can help define a better direction for your company. If Olympians don’t ignore their competition, why should you?

6) Nothing worth accomplishing comes quick and easy:

Michael Phelps is out to break the world record for gold medals won in a single Olympics. 8 medals isn’t a cakewalk – he has 17 races to swim to win those 8 medals. Hours of practice. Hours of cool-down laps after those races. Years of training. Hundreds of workouts. Hell, it takes Michael Phelps 20-30 minutes to get into his state-of-the-art swimsuit. That is dedication. But the reward is eternal.

You don’t need to stay in a pool for half of your life to accomplish your goals. The lesson is still the same - there is no substitute for hard work and dedication when it comes to success. Putting in those extra hours or persevering that much more can make all the difference between your idea’s success and your company’s dissolution.

7) Remember what’s really important:

You’re a human being first and an entrepreneur second. The Olympics are about people, not money or politics. Entrepreneurship is the same. Don’t create or join a startup because of the financial rewards – very few achieve Mark Zuckerberg-level success. Do it because you love it and because you believe your idea can help make people’s lives better.

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Olympics programming is off to an incredible start.  According to the Wall Street Journal, Friday night’s opening ceremony attracted 34.2 million people, while 24.1 million viewers tuned in to see Michael Phelps capture his first gold medal of the games on his way to an Olympic record of eight gold medals.

But the Journal also mentioned that NBColympics.com saw 4.8 million viewers stream 3.1 million videos in a showing that has eclipsed any previous Olympics and has seen an extreme shift in the way most studios think people watch television.

For years, studios were concerned that the Web would ruin ratings and if they embraced it too much, they would undoubtedly see revenue drop as more people would choose to watch television illegally online and fail to watch where the studios could make some money.

But as the Journal points out, 90 percent of all viewers have watched the Olympics on television alone, while 10 percent have watched the games both online and on television, and a mere 0.2 percent have watched them online only.

“The streaming will not diminish the ratings,” Neal Pilson, a sports-media consultant who advised the International Olympic Committee in negotiations for broadcast rights, told the Journal. “It encourages viewers and provides them with information. There will be no dilution or fragmentation of the national audience.”

Realizing that, why has this cult of ignorance become such an integral part of the studios’ decision-making?  The Web isn’t something to be feared, these studios should embrace it as the next frontier in their dominance over the entertainment industry.  And as the Olympics have shown quite well, the Internet won’t make them lose ratings and could actually see some increased revenue if the online versions are monetized properly.

But I digress.  The fact of the matter is that both Hulu and now, the Olympics, have shown that putting programming online is not only a major benefit to all parties involved, but has practically become a necessity.  The real value of placing programming online can go much further than this.  Why not simulcast shows both on TV and online?  By doing so, studios can prove to advertisers that there is really no loss in ratings and they can be reassured that the revenue potential would be greater if they properly monetize the online component.

Some Olympics programming is 12 hours behind the actual time the games are played and all the while, people are more than willing to watch them on TV even though the results are readily available online.  And if the Web isn’t ruining the ratings of that kind of programming, can you imagine what the benefits would be if studios finally embraced simulcasts to the Web?

The idea has been bandied about quite a bit over the past few years, but with the success of the Olympics programming, there leaves little doubt that television will not die out to the Web and the Web won’t lose out to television.  And if the studios believe in that premise and endorse it, we’ll all win.

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