I don't know if VOD is right for the web yet. 2006 will most definitely be the year that a ton of companies jump on that bandwagon (not to mention bridging out to the mobile market, or even a mix of the two). Right now, I like my video either on my desktop like Youtube or on my computer (which you can stream with Slingbox). If VOD is the next killer app though, you're right that Youtube's model works well.

I'm not at all a fan of the google video store model (google video search is a different story). the youtube experience is easily the best but i'm not sure of the business model. myspace & flickr work because it is all user-generated original content. As Jay noted on hiphopmusic today, youtube has had to pull all of the prince content on the site today because of a cease & desist letter. All the content on youtube is uploaded by users but most of it isn't owned by the user.

There are huge rights questions in that regard.

iTunes won't have a stranglehold on the video market but their model is perfect. video on your computer, on your ipod, on your tv with a media adapter - all for a cheap price - and they are pushing their content providers to give them the appointment tv type content that can sell.

What will probably happen, though, is content providers developing their own delivery service so that they can set the price and not have to share the wealth.

I totally get what you're saying Jason. Totally. There's all sorts of issues with user sharing - as the problems napster had, as ourmedia will have, and what you're also sharing about youtube. But I still feel strongly that discovery and community experiences built into online media stores make them work better for the users. I could be wrong. (* scratching head and considering netflix*) It's just going to be interesting to see how things play out in this field over the next several months, especially considering that AOL has partnered with Telepictures to offer tmz.com, a 24/7 on-demand entertainment news network on the Web.

I'm just seeing more and more examples of television and film services coming to the web, sure there was always atom films, ifilm, and heavy.com, but I'm also seeing more and more models built off of what Viacom has done for cable. Online, there's sites like maniatv and for mobile there's the rising popularity of gotvnetworks programming.

the interesting thing about ifilm (which now has a vh1 show - but only using viral video content, rights free or not in question or cheap enough to buy) and Heavy (which just got a nice round of VC) and maniatv (which, I'm sure, is still living off of it's initial VC) and TMZ, etc. is that they are all content creators or moving into the content creation/purchasing space vs. being solely aggregates of user uploads.

I do think community tools can only enhance the experience (hence iTunes adding iMix and user reviews and their suggestions beta) but I think the rights management issues are going to be dealt with first.

I don't think it'll get as ugly as the RIAA situation (meaning I don't think anybody is going to be trying to sue users to recoup or that their will be calls to shut down sites like youtube) but all the free flowing encoding of obviously commercial properties is going to get squashed now that there is a business model in place for selling video online.

nbc ain't going to be tying to lose the easy money they make from VOD via iTunes and neither is anybody else no matter what service they end up working with.

jason, it's interesting but i was thinking about this post and your initial comment as i watched tv last night and saw co-marketing for iTunes video in affect during law & order. i suppose the truth is since apple does already have the music model down, being a video distribution channel is going to be easy.

as for those who are making original content for the web, there are a lot of factors that come into play. for one it's much cheaper to get into the web game than it is the cable game - but i also believe that part of these companies business models is that other sites syndicate their content and also that they end up with multi-platform extensions at some point.

Hello, I was reading those lines and I keep asking myself what is the social thing in that. It looks more like consumer thing than real cutting edge media flood. The media is still delivered from a central point and don't even allow to share with each other only if it's bandwidth. And at last it doesn't stimulate productions that have problems to show public and meet the success they might expect. Maybe is just that I don't get the whole thing. Actually, As i know you've been a social worker, i was asking myself about what happen to the experiment of enterprise zones. There was one in Baltimore I thin and the other one I'll tell you. Thanks