From what I have seen from twitter at such an early stage, which is growing even faster than boxee, Twitter has done everything that they can to allow open connectivity into their platform as well. As we all hate the fail whale, I can understand their limiting. As more clients tax their system inefficiently, I can see more limitations coming into play.

As for the Hulu/Boxee situation, Hulu is held between a rock and a hard spot with their content holders. They love the extra traffic and ad views that they receive, 100k streams from boxee last week alone. It is my opinion that they were not running their IP ad network effectively – by showing PSA’s during two or three week old programming. They will figure that out with better algorithms, weighting, etc.

As for Hulu being stuck between a rock and ahard place: this little sword fight is just a posturing game – no different than YouTube had with the networks in 2006 and 2007. I would have thought that we had this “figured out” after those days. It is 2009, but old media got scared. Own it guys. Don’t run from it.

On a positive note, check out the boxee initiative to have users create the language for the media companies to wake up and smell the digital coffee. http://boxee.pbwiki.com/

No it isn’t. You can see that he’s capable of rendering a competent analysis, but this isn’t it.

I’d be happy to pay for content. I’d be happy to have it wrapped in DRM as long as there was a concept of fair use (if I buy it let me keep it forever. if I rent it enforce the terms I agreed to but let me watch/listen on multiple devices if I want etc)

The problem is … no-one has worked out a viable model that will allow the incumbent riders of the gravy train continue to make money while producing decent content (though the quality of a lot of content the studios deliver is questionable now as everyone heads for low cost RealityTV programming!)

And about Twitter. I could be wrong but it’s a vertical search engine in the making.
The question to me is is Twitter better off when it looks for conversations / status updates / intentions coming from inside Twitter or when it searches for those in other places as well?
When Twitter manages to combine the conversations taking place in some very specific communities would it be a smart idea if Twitter gave those communities a percentage of all profits?
It would be like having adsense on your website but you’re only making money when someone does a search on Twitter and the conversations on your site are being used to monetize that search (or stream).

I realize this is an apples to oranges comparison, but still…

there’s a big difference between the two situations”

Steve, I’ve been quoted for addressing people
who were given a free (complete) class for a month, had success, then found out there was
a version others had paid $900 for and screeched at the publishers;
“you should have given us that one for free you bastards”.

Your typical thinking, like the overzealous friendfeed defenders (I love friendfeed and they’re good dudes, but they wouldn’t have a pulse without twitter’s generosity).

“It is ugly to demand as a socialist, the tools to be a capitalist” -@Ed

i get your point and will plead guilty as charged to finding myself on both sides of this issue

but there’s a big difference between hulu saying outright no to boxee and twitter rate limiting its api

twitter’s been clear about the api thing. it’s a scalability/reliability issue and they are working hard to scale the service and api to the point that they can offer more.

twitter doesn’t charge for its api and has allowed people to build pretty much anything they want on top of twitter.

there’s a big difference between the two situations

Anyway, this was a very well thought and expressed article. I made comments on another site last month about how retarded it is for Hulu’s content partners force them to remove content instead of going long tail. This action isn’t too far removed from that argument. They need to put as much of their content out into as many venues as possible.

‘On-demand’ should be hyphenated. The first sentence uses abbreviated and possessive apostrophes when an ‘is’ in the first case would never require re-reading, etc. I dare you to read the second sentence of the fourth paragraph aloud and not fall to your knees, weeping for some form of punctuation.

I would love to exercise my right to access this data in the way I choose– readable English. Barring that, make it a lot shorter.

also Twitter is a joke – let’s all agree to get past our fascination w/ a crude SMS to web gateway. The telco’s are going to roll them up within the year. And it’s really not that interesting of an application.

And if you ask, no I don’t have a cable/satellite subscription. I don’t need to pay 50 bucks+ a month just to watch 2-3 TV shows.

So again, piracy is still the best alternative.

You can already imagine the meeting of the suits:

“There’s a time for vision and a time for counting beans. We’re in bean counting mode right now. If we piss off any of our PAYING distribution partners or lose even a smidgen of control that can otherwise be monetized, it’s just not worth it.”

That said, I believe the exact opposite; namely, now is the time for long term planning, to deepen your engagement with consumers and create new value chains, so the move by your media partners is truly penny-wise, pound foolish.

A smarter path would be for old media to work with Boxee to gain deeper user/usage insights so they can better understand how new media consumers are digesting and propagating their content.

Alas.

Mark
–
Read: What it Means to be a “Social” Media Center: Boxee, Apple TV and Square Connect (http://bit.ly/qc5hA)

Why would they want a bunch of free word-of-mouth marketers showcasing their content to their friends? I’ll not quote Cory Doctorow here. They can look him up. Maybe pay him for some advice! LOL.

In any case, I am reminded of a Steve Ballmer quote about search, that I think applies even more to relatively simple social network tools that are increasingly inter-connected.

“it’s the easiest thing to switch out”

While both Facebook and Twitter are giants (or growing fast, in Twitter’s case) both have stumbled, and neither is perfect by any stretch.

Each is chasing the post facto (post success) business model Dragon and neither seems to be anywhere near the Princess.