Archive for the 'Podcast Distribution' Category

Wizzard Software, the parent company of Liberated Syndication and several podcast hosting services, announced today that revenues for the fourth quarter of 2007 were $1,540,992, a 108% increase over revenues of $739,551 in the fourth quarter of 2006.

For the full year of 2007, the Company recorded revenues of $5,163,491, a 75% increase of $2,195,967 from revenues of $2,943,578 in 2006. Wizzard posted a gross profit of $1,562,703, a 47% increase versus a gross profit of $1,064,115 in the full year 2006.

The company noted several podcasting-related accomplishments in its announcement:

• Acquisition of Podcast Company Liberated Syndication (Libsyn) 3/19/07
• Completed Raise of $7,500,000 for its Podcasting Business 7/9/07
• Adds Nielsen//NetRatings’ Site Census to Advertising System 9/12/07
• Announces Largest Ever Industry Ad Campaign 11/14/07
• Ends Year with Approximately 10,000 Podcast Publishers 12/31/07
• 1 Billion Download Requests in 2007 12/31/07

In 2007, Wizzard Media surpassed download request forecasts with one billion podcast download requests achieved, surpassing the 450 million download requests for 2006.

“Podcasting is becoming a necessary audience expansion tool for content publishers and brand advertisers seeking cost effective, high return outlets to capture the migration of audiences from traditional media outlets to the internet,” says Chris Spencer, Wizzard CEO. “We are seeing an increase in advertiser understanding of the high quality, subscription and episodic benefits of podcasting versus other internet video offerings. We believe that our ambitious undertaking of targeting similar audiences through interesting, engaging podcast micro-communities is a very compelling advertising opportunity and we expect advertising revenues to grow substantially in 2008.”

Akamai Technologies, which provides technology for the distribution of digital media like podcasts, announced that a jury returned a verdict today in its lawsuit against Limelight Networks. The judgement found that Limelight was infringing on Akamai’s content delivery patent. As a result, the jury awarded Akamai a staggering $45,526,946 in damages, plus interest.

The verdict, which came at the end of a three-week trial in Boston, stemmed from a 2006 lawsuit filed by Akamai. The jury found that Limelight infringed all four of the claims that Akamai had asserted in its Internet content delivery patent, issued in the name of Akamai founders Tom Leighton and the late Daniel Lewin (no relation to the PodcastingNews Lewins).

The jury rejected Limelight’s defense that Akamai’s patent was invalid.

“Today’s ruling recognizes the strength of Akamai’s patent portfolio and is a tangible reflection of our resolve to vigorously defend the Company’s intellectual property,” said Melanie Haratunian, senior vice president and general counsel of Akamai.

Akamai intends to ask the Court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting Limelight from continuing to sell infringing services. It is unclear whether Limelight could continue operations if it does in fact have to pay the $45 million damage award.

Representatives of Limelight said separately they were “disappointed” with the ruling and “strongly believe” it did not infringe the patent.

Podcasting network representatives were quick to comment (via Twitter) on their own companies’ strengths and immunity to any prospective service outages which might be caused if Limelight were to cease operations.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately in the world of new media about the future of podcasting - people wondering what the current state of podcasting is and where it’s going.

eMarketer forecasts that the audience for podcast consumption will double in the next two years, but even that relatively rosy forecast is disappointing to some.

We recently talked to Chris Spencer, CEO of podcasting hosting mega-network Wizzard Media, to get his perspective on podcasting and its future.

In the last year, Wizzard has acquired podcast hosting services Switchpod, Libsyn, and Blast Podcast. Wizzard made headlines in January when it announced that it had delivered over one billion podcast downloads in 2007. Earlier this week, Wizzard announced that it was now trading on the American Stock Exchange (”AMEX”) under the ticker symbol “WZE.”

In our interview, Chris shared his thoughts on what a billion podcast downloads per year means, what he expects that number to be in 2008, and his predictions on what will happen with podcast advertising.

Elisabeth McLaury Lewin: Tell me about this whole billion downloads number. What does that mean for you in particular, and for downloadable media industry in general?

Chris Spencer: It’s a big number, isn’t it?

For us in particular, it means our servers are running well. Let’s face it: some people wonder whether this accomplishment gets credited to Wizzard, or to our content creators. We feel strongly that it’s 95% our content creators - they create the quality content, and they go out and market their show, and grow their audience. We get 5% credit for being proficient and productive enough to offer a stable inexpensive hosting solution, and that takes a lot of work.

But it comes down to the podcast producers. It’s a big accomplishment for the podcasters we host. It’s a big enough milestone for them and for us, and we publicized it so much.

In reality, what we’re trying to do is raise awareness for podcasting, specifically with the advertisers and the sponsors. It’s a number that’s going to attract a lot of the bigger brands that didn’t realize how big the potential here is. If there’s going to be big audience for podcasts, then that’s going to draw advertisers. That’s why we publicize it, not just for us, but for the whole industry.

Let’s look at the whole podcast industry: Right now, the industry is too small to worry if it’s us, or PodShow, or Podomatic. Right now it’s all about getting the advertisers and sponsors to know more about and be more interested in podcasting. Period.

I could talk about this for hours: it comes down to trying to demonstrate that this is a viable alternative to reach target audiences. More importantly, it is a product that people are consuming, and they’re loving it. (more…)

Podcast hosting network Wizzard Media announced this morning that its common shares are set to begin trading today on the American Stock Exchange (”AMEX”) under the ticker symbol “WZE.” Previously, the company traded as “WIZD” on the Over-the-Counter Bulletin Board.

Wizzard is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit, and was in the headlines last month for its disclosure that it had served up one billion podcast downloads in 2007. Additionally, Wizzard recently completed a major podcast advertising campaign for the U.S. Navy, across 28 of the podcast shows it hosts on its network.

Wordpress creator Matt Mullenweg has announced that WordPress.com, a free blog hosting service, has updated the amount of space it allocates to each user to 3 gigabytes:

Much of the work we do at Automattic is behind the scenes, infrastructure you’ll (hopefully) never notice or see, but we’re always thinking about how the improvements we make to the foundation of the site will allow us to build more interesting things on top of it.

Today, one of those developments comes to fruition — everyone’s free upload space has been increased 60x from 50mb to 3,000mb. To get the same amount of space at our nearest competitor, Typepad, you’d pay at least $300 a year. Blogger only gives you 1GB. We’re doing the same thing for free.

Most typical bloggers will never need anywhere 3 gigabytes of space - so there’s really only one way to read this move: Mullenweg wants you to be a podcaster on Wordpress.com.

Here’s his rationale for the change:

Our hope is that much in the same way Gmail transformed the way people think about email, we’ll give people the freedom to blog rich media without having to worry about how many kilobytes are left in their upload space.

This is an interesting move by Mullenweg. It will challenge other podcast hosts to deliver more. It will grow the number of Wordpress.com users making rich media files available as podcasts, whether or not the users consider themselves podcasters.

Unfortunately, Mullenweg’s “freedom to blog rich media” doesn’t currently include video:

You still need a space upgrade to upload certain file types, like movies, and we’re also increasing the limits of the paid upgrades, so if you bought a 1GB upgrade before it now adds 5GB for no additional charge.

The amount of money spent in the US online advertising market will double, to $50.3 billion in revenue, by 2011, according to research from the Yankee Group.

The internet accounts for approximately 20% of overall media consumption in the US, but advertisers currently invest only 7.5% of their budget online. There is tremendous potential for marketplace growth as advertisers bridge this gap. By 2011, nearly 25% of all media consumption will be online, drawing 15% of the advertising dollars.

Online advertising will grow rapidly in the coming year. The factors driving this continued growth are:

• Increased online audiences
• The development of new types of advertising
• The creation of new publisher business models that help sell interactive advertising

“With internet connectivity nearly ubiquitous, online advertising growth is inevitable,” said report author Daniel Taylor, senior analyst at Yankee Group. “And yet the internet is still a relatively new digital medium. Steady growth in online advertising will require publishers to invest extensively in new media and advertising product development.”

Today’s big podcasting news is that Wizzard Media announced their download totals for 2007, an amazing one billion podcast files downloaded. To put that large number into some context, we talked with Rob Walch, Wizzard’s Vice President of Podcaster Relations (and creator/host of the popular Podcast411).

First off, congratulations - this is pretty stunning news. What do you think this billion-download figure means, for Wizzard Media in particular, and for the wider downloadable media industry in general?

To my knowledge we are the first ones to hit a billion in a calendar year in the Podcasting space (wearing my 411 hat). I am sure there will be others — if not in 2008 then certainly in 2009.

But the bigger news for podcasting is that someone has done it. I believe that hitting that the 1 billion mark is the type of benchmark that big ad agencies will take notice of. Now they’ll understand that podcasting is for real — and that is good for everyone.

So, when we were at the Portable and New Media Expo this fall, some guys were talking gloom and doom — that podcasting was essentially dead. Your news seems to belie that prediction.

There is a lot of misguided talk about podcasting being dead. We just are not seeing it. We continue to see growth in the numbers each month. To us, at least, podcasting keeps growing.

What do you think this bodes for the coming year?

We hope that 2008 will be the year that advertisers stop thinking of podcasting as an experiment, and start thinking of it as a necessity for every campaign.

ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick reports that Wizzard Media, the owners of the Libsyn, Switchpod and Blast Podcast networks, will announce tomorrow that it passed the 1 billion download mark in 2007.

It’s an impressive number, one that’s sure to generate a lot of buzz for both Wizzard and podcasting.

It’s been an interesting ride for Wizzard. Here are some of the company’s podcasting milestones:

• In September of 2006, we reported that Wizzard had acquired podcast hosting service providers Switchpod.com and Blast Podcast.
• In October 2006, Wizzard announced that it was buying Libsyn and that it had secured $1,750,000 investments.
• By the end of 2006, Wizzard declared themselves the largest podcast network in the world.
• In early 2007, Wizzard announced its revenues for 2006. The company recorded record revenues of $2,943,578, thanks in part to (we’re not making this up!) “Rex” - the talking pill bottle.
• In May of 2007, we reported that Wizzard was serving up over 70,000,000 podcast episodes per month.
• By July, they’d nabbed another $7.5 million in equity financing.
• In September 2007, they announced a partnership with Nielsen/NetRatings to offer certified download data. According to Wizzard, certified download numbers will bring “a new level of accountability to podcast ad sales.”
• In November, they announced a massive 20-podcast advertising deal with the US Navy.

1-billion podcast served is an interesting milestone for Wizzard. What’s really interesting, though, is that Wizzard has demonstrated that it can execute on podcasting’s potential.

Flux, a social media startup funded in part by media conglomerage Viacom, has introduced two new services designed to let you leverage the company’s social media platform, Flux Lite and Flux Custom. The services are designed to make it easy for you to set up a media community.

This gives Flux three social media options:

• fShare (Beta) allows visitors to distribute your content to popular web locations like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Blogger, as well as all of the Flux-powered communities.
• Flux Lite is a way to add social tools to your website to engage visitors, increase time spent on your site, and convert visitors to community members with Flux Profiles. It’s easy and requires no technical expertise.
• Flux Custom (Beta) lets you add a full community offering with categories of user-generated content, featured members, discussions, and community pages. For existing sites, you can create a Flux community in a matter of minutes, using widgets and hosted pages that are fully customizable. Flux Custom lets you choose from various integration methods, while taking the social tools you need and leaving the ones you don’t.

Here’s a video demo of how fShare works:

According to Flux, “This release is in response to the demand we are seeing from media companies of all sizes, to create an engaging community and make their content portable. We encourage anyone with an existing media business (or an idea for one) to sign up, grab our tools, and create their own community.”

Partners own all of their data – if you decide to leave the platform, you take that data with you. You control your monetization strategy as well. There are no restrictions on legitimate third-party applications – for instance, you can use Flux’s video player or integrate with popular video players like YouTube and Brightcove, or even use your own.

Update: More at paidContent.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published a comprehensive account of Comcast’s packet-forging activities and has released software and documentation instructing Internet users on how to test for packet forgery or other forms of interference by their own ISPs.Separate tests in October from EFF, the Associated Press, and others showed that Comcast was forging small parcels of digital data, known as packets, in order to interfere with its subscribers’ and other Internet users’ ability to use file-sharing applications, like BitTorrent and Gnutella. Despite having been confronted by this evidence, Comcast continues to issue incomplete and misleading statements about their practices and their impact on its customers.

“Comcast is discriminating among different kinds of Internet traffic based on the protocols being used by its customers,” said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “When confronted, Comcast has been evasive and misleading in its responses, so we decided to start gathering the facts ourselves.”

File-sharing protocols like torrent, though best known for sharing pirated content, are used by some podcasters as a way to distribute very large media files, such as video podcasts, efficiently.

EFF is also developing information and software tools intended to help Internet subscribers test their own broadband connections. (more…)