On Tuesday, Veoh Networks announced it had finally officially launched its video sharing service, after a year of beta testing. Veoh is backed by Time Warner and The Tornante Company, an investment firm run by Michael Eisner, formerly from Disney.
Seems like Veoh is trying to go the legit route, but it isn’t without controversy.

In 2006, Veoh made lots of video bloggers angry because they crawled their web sites, downloaded their videos, transcoded them and hosted them on Veoh’s sites without anyone’s permission.

Veoh said that its video sharing service offers producers the option of either pay-per-view, pay-to-own, or subscription-based business lines.

Bonus: Read this story about the top 10 video sharing sites for more on Veoh and others.

Another Bonus: Here’s Veoh’s official blog.

[veoh] [video]

Popularity: 10% [?]

It seems that BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file-sharing service, is trying to go legitimate.

On Wednesday, BitTorrent announced that it had signed deals to distribute movies and TV shows from Fox, Paramount, Lionsgate, Palm Pictures and MTV Networks. It already has similar deals with Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Egami Media, Hart Sharp, Koch Entertainment and The Orchard. They’re not all top tier studios, but it’s a start.

It’s getting harder and harder for Hollywood to ignore file sharing and digital distribution. There’s MySpace, iTunes and YouTube already but online video doesn’t sell as well as online music.

Currently, no pricing has been released yet, but it should prove interesting to see how pay file-sharing does compared to free illegal file-sharing. Will users pay for content that’s easy to find and better quality? Or will they prefer to hunt around a long time and search for TV shows and movies of dubious quality? And more importantly, will Hollywood release premium, first run content or just crappy content that no one will pay for?

One way to encourage pay for play BitTorrent is providing exclusive content. Palm Pictures, for example, said that it will even distribute full-length movies on BitTorrent before their theatrical and DVD release dates. Not a bad deal.

In other BitTorrent news, it just finished its second round of financing for $25 million from Accel Partners and Doll Capital Management. Bram Cohen, CEO and creator of BitTorrent, is also stepping down.

Update: Bram said in a recent interview that rumors of his departure were false. So far, it seems to be the case, since he hasn’t left the company. Stay tuned.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Hollywood and traditional media have never really understood online video. They were scared off by what was happening in online music. And they watched the explosion and self-destruction of content providers like DEN and Pop.com.

But with the popularity of YouTube, it’s obvious that the times are changing. User generated content is popular (again) thanks to the ubiquity of broadband and the ease of creating and distributing content. Every teenager in America understands this. Hollywood, however, still doesn’t get it.

Case in point. In early November 2006, NBC Universal announced that it was “airing” webisodes of a brand new Internet-only show called A Big Life With Sissy Biggers exclusively on MSN. The webisode I watched was on (excuse me while I yawn) table etiquette.

The show is created by NBC Universal Digital Studios, which is making “original and unique programming for a wide range of digital platforms” according to the press release. But this show has all the earmarks of big, bloated TV, and nothing fun or compelling.

Here’s why I think “A Big Life with Sissy Biggers” is a “Big Failure”:

• Sissy Is Not Memorable or Charming. Although the press release says that Biggers has been on TV (Food Network and PBS) she is not very well known and needs to have a bigger personality to survive the Internet. It seems as if someone at NBC Universal owed Biggers a favor and decided to give her an Internet show. Or perhaps the project started out for TV, but had to be bumped to the Internet. Either way, this is not the kind of content that screams “big hit”.
• The Content Is Not Unique or Compelling. Sissy Biggers is lean back viewing, not lean forward. What audience is MSN/NBC Universal going for? How many people do they think will watch this? Is there really a need for this? Does it have to be a “webisode”? Contrary to the press release, there’s nothing original or unique about this show.
• The Webisodes Are Too Long. The episode I watched was 4 minutes and 45 seconds long. Internet users want to see short viral videos, not long-ish videos that aren’t very funny or compelling. Sitting through the entire first show was grueling. My attention shifted after about 30 seconds.
• The Commercials Are Re-Purposed. Before watching Sissy Biggers, I had to sit through a 15-second commercial for Triscuit starring the ever-perky Rachel Ray. This sounds like great targeted advertising, but it’s just plain lazy. Those commercials are currently airing on broadcast TV and there’s nothing cool about them. Why not some original Web commercials?

In sum, Sissy Biggers is not what the Internet wants or needs. It’s not “must-see TV”, it’s must-avoid TV. Hopefully NBC Universal and others can come up with something better than this. This is an embarassment for them.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Here’s a story, that’s not surprising at all. Video on iPods isn’t very popular. According to a survey of 400 iPod owners released by Nielsen Media Research, less than 1% of all content accessed of iTunes and iPod devices is video. The study also noted that of the video iPods users surveyed, just 2.2% of them said they access video.

That means that most people buy their iPods just for music not movies. That also means that users don’t necessarily go to iTunes to buy their TV shows and movies.

I’d guess that most users interested in video use other sources, such as illegal peer to peer services, rip their own DVDs or download them over the Internet, such as YouTube or other services.

That’s no surprise considering that most video content that iTunes sells is long-form. It doesn’t have (free) short clips that are popular with YouTubers.

Interestingly, after just one year of selling movies and TV shows on its iTunes store, approximately 45 million videos have been sold.

Popularity: 13% [?]

According to mobile research company Telephia, 3% of U.S. consumers capture video on their cell phones. That’s 8 million U.S. consumers. Interestingly, Spain is the number one country with 15% of users.

The Motorola RAZR was at the top of the list of mobile handsets, with a 21% share, beating the next top device by nearly four to one.

Popularity: 11% [?]