I met Hilmi Ozguc when he was at Lotus and, later, Narrative Communications, one of the early Web marketing technology companies. Now he is back with Maven Networks, a DVD-quality video system currently targeted at online marketing companies. Interesting stuff, which Jeremy Allaire has been backing for some time.
It's very slick stuff, just a Narrative pushed the boundaries of earlier marketing. Narrative was acquired by @Home for $89 million in 1998. The new Russell Crowe flick from 20th Century Fox will be one of the first to use Maven's technology for online promotions. Jeremy has some useful notes about why he and General Catalyst Partners invested in Maven Networks.
The question is whether the stark difference between the jaggy quality of video on the Net with marketing surrounding or punctuating it at a much higher quality resolution will underscore exactly how crappy video on the Net is today. The technology is designed for marketing and repurposing network video and, based on the positioning, can be applied in a variety of markets to create advertorial content that, I believe, will attempt to play the part of real content on corporate-controlled networks. At some point, people tire of marketing and we need to move both original creative and editorial video technologies forward while making advances in marketing tools. I would expect that in the short term we'll see Maven introduce more tools for creators of content that lowers the production threshold, which would open the Net to a wider range of original content.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at September 23, 2003 09:37 AM | TrackBack