Thriving on the web's edge was the topic of the last workshop this morning, with panelists from My Space and Veoh. The bulk of the session was very technical and skewed towards business infrastructure issues but there were some headlines which were interesting from the point of view of usage in video on-demand and how two hugely successful - and recent - start-ups developed and thrived so quickly.
William Wohnoutka from Level 3 hosted the session and started out with some insights on usage:
International internet traffic grew 57% from mid-2006 to mid-2007 and it's expected to double every two years to 2011.
What drives this traffic increase? Compelling content + more choice = massive growth.
This causes all kinds of challenges vis a vis infrastructure spend.
Aber Whitcomb, CTO, My Space:
Went up against Friendster and developed My Space in about a month. Thought they could manage it with about ten guys. Early approach very reactive - break, fix, break fix. Simple architecture and simple org chart.
As My Space grew rapidly, they had to re-architect as they went and be more proactive in their business style. They learned to build things for themselves and keeping the site up and running was more important than cost-savings. And, in doing this, Aber claims they never had to sacrifice performance in favour of cost efficiencies.
As the service has matured, policy and procedure have become more important. There are now around 400 folk in their technology operations alone.
They have spun off other groupings like mobile, international, new products, infrastructure etc
Lessons learned?
Get a product out fast, fix it later and take advice from users.
Looking to the future?
UGC creates a long tail effect which has implications for storage
New formats - especially in video - are things to watch
Dave Burkhardt, VP Operations, Veoh:
Video is - or will be - hosted everywhere. These causes a plethora of choice for consumers and makes for a confused marketplace.
New formats - especially in video - are things to watch
Veoh gone from being in the top 1000 to top 30 most visited websites, with 15% month on month growth.
Advice: bad habits are hard to break so implement processes early on to save headaches later.
Crystal ball-gazing? By 2010, 99% of all internet traffic will be video.
No comments:
Post a Comment