Brightcove: Son of Allaire
If you haven't heard the news, Jeremy Allaire has started up a new company:
"As noted on PaidContent, we're launching Brightcove, a company I started last summer and have been stealth until now. While we're not getting into too much detail about what we're actually doing, we are starting to talk about the themes and ideas behind the company, which one can clearly use to deduce what we might be up to.
The theme of the "democratization of media" is one that goes all the way back to my origin interests in the Internet, and to some of the important ideas that framed and drove ColdFusion, and Allaire's other software franchises. We're onto the next phase of experiences on the Internet, and the much richer and expressive medium of video.
There's a narrated animation on our website that gives a good view into what we see happening and how we hope to help producers and publishers of video take us into the emerging era of Internet Television.
We've also published a company blog that is a rollup of news, announcements, blogsphere references and suggested reading. Keep it in your RSS readers!" [1]
It will be interesting to see what comes of this. The post that Jeremy refers to provides a bit of interesting information:
"Jeremy Allaire, one of the key people behind ColdFusion and a co-founder of Allaire Corp (later sold to Macromedia), is lifting the veil on his mysterious new venture: an IP video startup called Brightcove formed to encourage democratization of video production and distribution. The Cambridge-based company wants a hand in all facets of IP video or Internet TV -- creation, delivery and monetization.
Brightcove already has $5.5 million of first-round venture funding from General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners. The management team includes executives from Allaire, ATG, BSkyB, Comcast, Macromedia and News Corp. The consumer service will be launched in the second half of this year...
Allaire spoke to me at length about the premise for his company, but not about the specifics of the still-under-wraps technology or mechanism. From what I saw, tons of cool stuff with Flash and Windows Media platforms...(He guest blogged for us last year, and wrote at length on IP video). My impression: think of it as RealNetworks done right with a consumer video service, a backend service, and other allied services needed for everyone from small publishers, like bloggers, to small-to-mid sized media companies and online VOD startups, develop and distribute video easily and cost-effectively. In essence, an open-publishing model.
Allaire explains: "The online service will operate with a consumer-facing service that provides access to programming and content published in the service, and will also provide a very rich service to publishers and rights-holders interested in a direct-to-consumer distribution path for video products. The service will also provide tools to website operators generally, who are interested in economically participating in the online video revolution." [2]
[1] http://radio.weblogs.com/0113297/2005/02/27.html#a297
[2] http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2005_02_27.shtml#012486