Television 2.0: Coming to a (Computer) Screen Near You

There's no denying that YouTube is the 800-pound-gorilla of Web TV. According to comScore's July 2007 reports, over 44 million Americans visited the video sharing site -- and they're no longer simply watching low-quality home videos, music videos, and movie and advertising clips. There's a host of new players on the Internet, providing original, high-production value content and innovative technologies to offer consumers more choices for watching TV and more control over how they watch it.

The success of social computing has been a major innovator in this market, with services like Guba and Joost taking the lead. And while both video services enable users to share videos and comment on them much like YouTube, there's also something different about them.

"GUBA differentiates itself from other online video portals ... through its proprietary fingerprinting technology, 'Johnny,' which is the only filtering technology approved by the MPAA," says GUBA's CFO Peter Szatmari. While GUBA has licensing agreements to distribute movies from Sony Pictures and Warner Brothers, for downloadable on-demand viewing, it keeps its users from uploading copyrighted content by deploying its video fingerprinting technology across the site. Another difference in GUBA's business model is that it offers revenue sharing for independent producers, and also pays Website publishers and bloggers for referring users to its site.

Joost on the other hand intends to compete with cable and satellite TV and is therefore totally dependent on its partnerships with major media companies like Viacom, Warner Music, and the National Hockey League. What sets it apart though is its technology and the methods in which it allows its users to interact. Users download an application to their desktop, and instead of streaming video content, like other video services, Joost employs the use of peer-to-peer technology, which basically means that as a user is watching TV they're also streaming to other users.

The P2P TV service also differentiates itself by embracing Web 2.0 practices, allowing users to rate and recommend videos, and to chat and instant message one another. It also offers widgets, such as RSS feeds, for reading news and blogs headlines, and the ability to create a blog post based on what you're currently watching. Joost also recently opened up its API, which will make it possible for other developers to create widgets within the Joost TV viewing interface.

Joost isn't the only Web video outlet using P2P technologies on its backend. There's also Vuze, a video aggregator and distributor of High Definition and DVD quality videos, featuring content from Showtime, BBC, A&E and other networks, as well as user-submitted video. But whereas Joost's technology allows you to watch the stream as its being shared across the network, Vuze has you download a static file to watch after downloading. For many, the download time is worth it, considering the quality of the video. "We deliver an immersive, high definition experience to our viewers and help them find the content they want," says Gilles BianRosa, CEO of Vuze's parent company Azureus.

Miro, a company that believes in free open source TV, has another approach to video altogether. Offered by the nonprofit Participatory Culture Foundation, the service consists of a downloadable player that lets you subscribe to RSS feeds of your favorite Web TV shows similarly to how one subscribes to podcasts through iTunes. "We believe as video moves online it has to stay open. The openness of video is crucial to freedom of speech," says Nicholas Reville, executive director of the PCF.

Then there's Brightcove, an Internet TV solution, empowering content creators and owners -- both independent and corporate -- to distribute their content easily. Brightcove offers a content tool for its customers to upload video and publish it on the Web and then to distribute it to other sources with RSS feeds, links, e-mail sharing, and embeddable players for sites and blogs. The software also allows for inserting advertising in the video stream. Videos from the various producers -- like the celebrity news site TMZ.com, The Wall Street Journal, and even FastCompany.com -- are also available on Brightcove's Website.

Mobile video is also gaining ground. Content services like MobuzzTV appeals to people with mobile devices, like smartphones, Sony PSP, and iPods and iPhones. Its "The Daily Buzz" current events show, available in both English and Spanish, takes a video blog away from your computer and into your hand. "Mobile operators didn't have their ideas clear on how they wanted to distribute content on the mobile platform," says the company's founder Anil de Mello, And because of this, Mobuzz created its content with the mobile phone in mind from the onset. The company's three-minute programs with downloadable episodes are most suitable for people on the go, though the content is still available for viewing and commenting on the Mobuzz Website.