MediaFile

African Web video service Iroko raises more funds, targets cable TV

Iroko Partners, an online distributor of African movies and music, has raised another $2 million in its latest round of funding from a Swedish venture capital group as it seeks to take the service to cable and satellite TV partners in the U.S. and Europe. The Lagos, Nigeria-based company raised the funds from Sweden’s Kinnevik, an early investor in Groupon Inc. Iroko previously raised $8 million from U.S.-based hedge fund Tiger Global in April as investors in emerging markets seek to tap into one of the fastest growing movie businesses in the world.

Kinnevik investments head, Henrik Persson, said his firm, which has invested in African telecoms, sees tremendous opportunity in African media and online services. “It has very low penetration and we see a really strong growth trend. He added: “A part of our investment philosophy is that we think that the perceived risk is higher than the real risk in this market..what people see as a lack of opportunity is a lack of supply.”

Iroko has focused on forming partnerships with most of Nigeria’s leading filmmakers for distribution on its own platform as well as with major partners like Google Inc’s YouTube. Though the majority of Iroko’s operations are based in Lagos, it also has set up offices in London and New York. Founder Jason Njoku said the majority of the company’s revenues come from users across the African Diaspora in the United States, Britain and Canada and other countries outside the continent. The Nigerian movie industry is now widely acknowledged as the third largest after Hollywood and India’s Bollywood in terms of the number of movies produced. While so-called Nollywood movies are typically distributed within Nigeria and around the world on DVD or Video-CD discs, Njoku spotted a gap in the market to digitize the movies for online distribution. Most of the Web viewers have been in developed countries with fast-enough Internet traffic speeds to enable video streaming. The company’s revenues are predominantly generated through advertising around the movies. But in July it launched a monthly subscription with the promise of earlier windows for fans to catch new films without advertising. Since launching two weeks ago the subscription service Iroko TV has signed up just under 5,000 paying subscribers according to Njoku. It already had 560,000 registered users since the Iroko TV service launched in January. “Our users have such an intense relationship with the content, they spend hours watching.” Njoku said the new funding will focus primarily on helping expand operations outside Nigeria. He said the next stage for the company is to find ways of licensing its partners’ content to cable, satellite TV companies and international airlines. “The Internet is one of the most poorly monetized platforms for content,” said Njoku. “Since we’re platform-agnostic it would be mad for us not to try and form relationships with TV.” Iroko sees itself as a global business with pan-African roots so it is also looking to license more movies and other content from around Africa from countries like Ghana and Kenya among others.

Iroko Partners, an online distributor of African movies and music, has raised another $2 million in its latest round of funding from a Swedish venture capital group as it seeks to take the service to cable and satellite TV partners in the U.S. and Europe Join Discussion

Video streaming, file sharing — bad for network security, good for security business

Palo Alto Networks, the network security company, that modernized the firewall with its web application inspection took a look at what people do at work by analyzing Internet traffic in over 2,000 organizations.

Seems a lot of people watch videos.

In fact, Palo Alto’s semi-annual application usage and risk report says the bandwidth used by streaming video more than tripled to 13 percent from 4 percent in December 2011.

And that’s before the Euro 2012 Soccer Championship, the 2012 Olympics and the U.S. elections.

Apart from productivity issues and more money spent — a third of every dollar — on enterprise bandwidth for streaming video or filesharing — it opens the door for security breaches.

What has been dubbed ‘likejacking’ is essentially when a piece of malware gets downloaded as a user clicks to watch a video link forwarded by a friend.

“The risk of video as bait is more significant than ever before because of the elevated level of trust that social networking has established,” the report showed.

Palo Alto Networks, the network security company, that modernized the firewall with its web application inspection took a look at what people do at work by analyzing Internet traffic in over 2,000 organizations.Seems a lot of people watch videos. Join Discussion

Tech wrap: New RIM CEO says no drastic change needed

RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins, who joined RIM in 2007 and previously served as a chief operating officer, said during a conference call that he would hone the current strategy rather than abandon it. “I don’t think that there is some drastic change needed. We are evolving … but this is not a seismic change,” Heins said. RIM’s U.S.-traded shares tumbled as investors wondered whether Heins could reverse the BlackBerry maker’s decline, closing the day down 8.5 percent.

The founder of file-sharing website Megaupload was ordered to be held in custody by a New Zealand court, as he denied charges of Internet piracy and money laundering and said authorities were trying to portray the blackest picture of him. U.S. authorities want to extradite Kim Dotcom, a German national also known as Kim Schmitz, on charges he masterminded a scheme that made more than $175 million in a few short years by copying and distributing music, movies and other copyrighted content without authorization. Megaupload’s lawyer has said the company simply offered online storage.

The Supreme Court ruled that police cannot put a GPS device on a suspect’s car to track his movements without a warrant. The high court ruled that placement of a device on a vehicle and using it to monitor the vehicle’s movements was covered by U.S. constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures of evidence. “A majority of the court acknowledged that advancing technology, like cellphone tracking, gives the government unprecedented ability to collect, store, and analyze an enormous amount of information about our private lives,” Steven Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union said.

YouTube is streaming 4 billion online videos every day, a 25 percent increase in the past eight months, according to the company. Roughly 60 hours of video is now uploaded to YouTube every minute, compared with the 48 hours of video uploaded per minute in May, Google said. The jump in video views comes as Google pushes YouTube beyond the personal computer, with versions of the site that work on smartphones and televisions, and as the company steps up efforts to offer more professional-grade content on the site.

The number of Americans owning a tablet computer or e-reader nearly doubled over the holiday period as Kindles, Nooks and iPads proved to be popular gifts, a new study found. In early January, 19 percent of Americans surveyed by Pew owned an e-reader, up from 10 percent in December, with identical results for tablets, according to a report released by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

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Hear RIM’s new CEO. Then speak your mind.

For many BlackBerry users and smartphone industry pundits, this Youtube video was their first close-up look at new Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins.

RIM, which announced Heins’ elevation and the resignations of co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis on Sunday night, no doubt posted the clip in hopes of introducing the world to their new frontman, and getting their message out there.

Judging by the torrent of biting comments that followed, being “on track” might not have been the best message to relay. Many investors and consumers have been calling for a new strategy to stem the BlackBerry’s market share slide.

“This is a bad joke on a Sunday night. Quote from the video “if we continue doing well what we are doing” Is he out of his mind?” offers RSPRATAS.

Others also took umbrage at Heins’ upbeat comments.

“I feel bad for this guy…I don’t think anyone at RIM told him the research has stopped…” quipped zachgosteady.

Several investment analysts admitted to knowing little about the former Siemens CTO and four-year RIM veteran, preferring to reserve their judgement until a Monday morning conference call. But Youtube’s denizens were not so circumspect.

For many BlackBerry users and smartphone industry pundits, this Youtube video was their first close-up look at new Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins. Join Discussion

Tech wrap: Nokia throne in Samsung’s sights

Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung told reporters in Las Vegas the company overtook Nokia in handset revenue terms in its latest reported quarter and was confident of topping the Finnish group in shipments this year. Samsung’s bullish forecast is in line with some analysts, including Royal Bank of Scotland, but on average analysts have expected Nokia to keep its lead on the market. According to the latest polls by Reuters, Nokia was expected to sell 418 million phones in 2011, versus Samsung’s 320 million, the gap narrowing this year to 388 million versus 359 million.

Google made changes to its search engine, combining content posted by users of Google’s social network Google+ and pic sharing site Picassa with regular search results. Links shared by a Google+ user’s connections are given more weight and will show up in Web search results with a person icon beside them, VentureBeat’s Jolie ‘Odell writes. The changes increase Google+’s prominence online, which is lagging behind Facebook in total number of users.

Sony’s videogaming business, led by its just-launched handheld “Vita”, will prove pivotal in returning the company to profitability, Kazuo Hirai, the executive pegged to succeed Howard Stringer as president, said.

YouTube is looking to increase viewership on its online video service by making the service available on an array of connected devices and by adding new content, according Robert Kyncl, vice president in charge of content partnerships. Kyncl spent 2011 forging new partnerships with content providers to expand YouTube’s offerings. YouTube has also reorganized its website to offer consumers video “channels” to cater to personal interests with an aim to making the site more appealing. Kyncl said that from about 500 content provider proposals YouTube received last year, YouTube had signed on about 100 partners, with whom it shares advertising revenue.

The U.S. government embarked on a rare criminal trial against a publicly traded company, AU Optronics, indicted in 2010  for fixing prices of liquid crystal display panels.  The conspiracy illegally cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars, a U.S. prosecutor said in court on Tuesday. Several other companies, including LG, have already pleaded guilty in the LCD probe, while Samsung cut an early deal to avoid prosecution.

Telecom startup LightSquared is mounting a last-ditch effort to win U.S. regulatory approval for a new wireless network after being outmaneuvered by the GPS industry, which has spun doomsday scenarios of interference problems that could cause planes to fall out of the sky and threaten national security, Jasmin Melvin writes. It is a long shot, analysts say, for LightSquared to overcome the scare tactics effectively sold to lawmakers by the GPS industry. The company is staring down an end-of-the-month deadline for the government to give the green light, before partners start bolting and as its cash position gets more dire, Melvin adds.

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Samsung takes the Sony media route with ex-AOL, ex-YouTube hire

Samsung, the South Korean consumer electronics giant, has spent most of the last two decades eating the lunch of rival Japanese electronics giant, Sony.  While Sony has had struggled with all types of existential debates and attacks at home and abroad including, the global hacker attack of its online network, Samsung has gone from strength to strength in setting the electronics agenda with its cutting edge  TVs, phones and tablets.

A lot of Samsung’s success could be put down to be its focus on the basics: making great mass market products and not getting distracted with creating or distributing content. By contrast, Sony not only owns the world’s second largest music company and a major Hollywood studio but also a video games business.

The problem is that Sony has never been able to figure out how to make all those things work in conjunction with its position as one of the world’s largest device makers. Most recently it has launched new online music and video services that it no doubt hopes will help sell more devices. It’s very early to tell if that will strategy will work.

Samsung is now going to try its hand at developing a media platform for content on its devices with the appointment of David Eun as executive vice president. Eun left AOL recently after one of its many restructurings. While there, he was president of AOL Media and Studios. Before that he was the guy charged with doing content deals at Google’s YouTube and before that he was at Time Warner and NBC.

As Samsung says:

He will play a key role in developing a global media strategy and driving new business opportunities to take advantage of Samsung`s growing number of digital televisions and displays, mobile phones, tablets and other connected devices.

 

Samsung is going to try its hand at developing a media platform for content on its devices with the appointment of David Eun as executive vice president. Join Discussion

YouTube’s new look: Web surfing meets channel surfing

(Corrects earlier version to clarify YouTube has hundreds of thousands, not millions, of channels)

YouTube wants to be more like the boob tube.

The world’s No.1 video website unveiled an overhaul of its site on Thursday that will put the hundreds of thousands of online video “channels” front and center.

For many, YouTube is a place to go looking for a specific video. With the redesign, YouTube hopes users will make a habit of visiting the site just to see what’s playing on their favorite channels.

“We’re trying to take the best of what we see in TV and the best of online and bring it together,” said Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube VP of product development, during a briefing with reporters at the company’s San Bruno, California headquarters.

The notion of channels on YouTube is not new. Amateur and professional video producers already create their own specialized channels – devoted to topics ranging from soccer to Lego animation – through which they organize the various clips they offer on YouTube.

With its redesign, YouTube wants to make it easier for websurfers to browse through those channels, and to create a personalized homepage displaying their favorites (this requires that users create a Google account, and log- in when they visit YouTube).

YouTube wants to be more like the boob tube. The world’s No.1 video website unveiled an overhaul of its site on Thursday that will put the hundreds of millions of online video “channels” front and center. Join Discussion

Disney comes to YouTube and Google TV

When it comes to Hollywood movies and TV shows on the Web, all the focus is on Netflix, Hulu and even BlockBuster’s online ambitions. Yet YouTube, the daddy of the online video space with some 3.5 billion views a day,  has been quietly bulking up its traditional studio content. All this while there’s been a lot written about its $100 million investment to create hundreds of new cable channels of the future.

Since May, YouTube has signed up Sony Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros to offer their movies for rental through YouTube, and on Wednesday it confirmed it has inked a deal to offer initially a “handful” of Disney titles in the U.S. and Canada, with hundreds of titles to be added in the coming weeks.

The Disney movies include titles like the original Alice In Wonderland, the new version of Winnie the Pooh as well as Pixar hits like Cars and Cars 2. The shows will also be available on YouTube through Google TV.

YouTube has been tight-lipped on details of how the movie rental program is evolving. A company spokesman said the online video company was “really pleased” with how it’s going.

See YouTube manager’s blog below:

Welcoming your favorite Disney movies for rent on YouTube Today, the first of hundreds of The Walt Disney Studios movies from Disney, Disney·Pixar and DreamWorks Studios are coming to YouTube. These titles join thousands of full-length feature films from major Hollywood studios that already available to rent at YouTube.com/movies.

Fans of animated movies? We’ve got the beloved animated classic, Alice in Wonderland and the newly envisioned Winnie the Pooh. Love Disney·Pixar? We have hits like Cars and Cars 2 all in one place. Up for a little bit of adventure? We’ll take you from the darkest depths of the oceans with all four of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, including the most recent blockbuster in the franchise Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

So gather the family and friends to watch your favorite Disney movies at YouTube.com/movies. Check back in because even more of the great Disney classics and new releases will be added in weeks to come, including our YouTube Movie Extras with behind-the-scenes clips, interviews, and more.

Minjae Ormes, Movies & TV Marketing Manager, recently watched John Lasseter Talks About His Hawaiian Shirt Collection.

When it comes to Hollywood movies and TV shows on the Web, all the focus is on Netflix, Hulu and even BlockBuster's online ambitions. Yet YouTube, the daddy of the online video space with some 3.5 billion views a day, has been quietly bulking up its traditional studio content. All this while there's been a lot written about its $100 million investment to create hundreds of new cable channels of the future. Join Discussion

YouTube + Google+ = Engagement?

Google hasn’t had much trouble getting people to sign up for its Google+ social networking service. But getting people to come back every day and use the service as obsessively as they do with Facebook has been a trickier proposition.

Sure, Google says that more than 3.4 billion photos have already been uploaded by users on Google+, but as anyone who’s been on the service can plainly see, there just doesn’t seem to be the same frenetic level of user activity as there is on Facebook.

That’s where YouTube comes in.

On Thursday, visitors to Google+ were greeted with a small YouTube logo button, displayed prominently on the top right-hand side of their newsfeed. Click on the YouTube Logo and it slides open to reveal a text box asking “what would you like to play?”

Type the name of a singer or musician– or any topic, from bocce ball to barbeque — and a YouTube video begins to play in a pop-up window, with a playlist of related videos queued up and ready to go.

Users can quickly share videos they like with their friends on Google+, and friends who watch a shared video on Google+ can quickly tap into the related playlist.

In a blog post announcing the feature, Google head of social Vic Gundotra described it as “shipping the Google in Google+.”

Google hasn’t had much trouble getting people to sign up for its Google+ social networking service. But getting people to come back every day and use the service as obsessively as they do with Facebook has been a trickier proposition. Join Discussion

Tech wrap: Apple hits new app download milestone

Apple customers sure like their apps. More than 15 billion applications have been downloaded from the App Store by iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users since its launch in July 2008, according to new figures from the company.

To put that number in context, remember it was just this past January when Apple announced its 10 billionth app download. That means customers have downloaded around 5 billion apps this year alone, compared to the 2-1/2 years it took to reach the 10 billion mark.  Apple can thank its wildly popular iPad for the surge in demand. Of the more than 425,000 apps now available from the App Store, 100, 000 are designed specifically for the tablet computer.

Meanwhile, Apple’s attempt to stop online retailer Amazon.com from using the “App Store” name has failed. Apple filed a trademark lawsuit saying Amazon improperly used the name to solicit developers in the U.S. Amazon responded by saying the term is generic. The U.S. judge who denied Apple’s request argued that while the term wasn’t purely generic, the company failed to prove “a likelihood of confusion” with Amazon’s service.

Amazon finally lived up to its promise that New York Times Kindle subscribers would have free access to NYTimes.com, nearly three months after originally announcing the promotion. Subscribers using the Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-reader aren’t so lucky yet, though. As mocoNews.net notes, the company’s website still tells readers it can expect access “soon” and “in the coming weeks”.

YouTube gave users a peep at a new design for its website on Thursday. TechCrunch praised the video portal’s revamp, codenamed “Cosmic Panda”, calling it slick and dramatic. Test it out for yourself.

 

 

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