The Future of Online Video - 6 months on

I'm at the Telco 2.0 event in Nice for the next 2 days, tomorrow I give a talk on the Future of Online Video (here's the slides from the original talk 6 months ago). At the time, we observed that there were 3 main scenarios:

- Old Order (eg BBC, Hollywood Movie Studios).

- Pirate World (YouTube et al)

- New Order Players (YouTube of course is funded by Google, a New Order player)

In essence, the evolution is from Old order, via a chaotic "Pirate World" to a New Order. All media will undergo this (Print is in the early stages, Music has been through a lot of it, Video/TV/Film is now starting).

Interestingly enough, technology shifts cease to make strategic differences once you look at the “big picture” outcomes above. By and large the technology drives the opportunity, but the prediction of industry evolution resolves itself around the economics and sociopolitical reactions. In this space, the most material factor is the ability to manage – and monetise - the content copyrights.

We estimated this transition phase would be about a 2-3 year period.

What has changed since then?

- As predicted, the content copyright scramble has heated up, the recent Pirate Bay furire being one example. Advertisers are fighting shy of dodgy content so its hard to get significant funding

- Also as predicted, the Old Players have moved rapidly into gaining footholds in the New Order - BBC iPlayer and Hulu being good examples

- The "Risk money" - VC funding etc - has drained out the system more rapidly than we thought, and that has forced many of the pirates to shut up shop or reduce activity. Most Pirate plays were based on UGC and Freeconomic plays, but as too many "Freeconomic" models are based on Other People's Money, and as this dried up, so have they.

- It has become clear that there is not enough advertising to fund all the plays imagined, further exacerbating this.

This has forced Google's hand with YouTube, and we see far more of a drive to "legal" content that advertisers will want to fund.

This means that Pirate World will probably be nastier, more brutal - and shorter - than originally predicted.

Anyway, that's the gist of what I will say at Nice, so you don't have to go there - but it is rather nice