WSJ Features "Magnify" content
Outside The Box / Peter Grant

Peter Grant in the January 10th edition of the Wall Street Journal took a long look at the content creation engines at work outside the cable box.

"The Growing Appeal of video on demand and Internet-based video content may be sending shudders though the television industry...that possibility is getting an increasing amount of attention these days from most video-content companies, including start-ups...and giants like Viacom and Time Warner."

Grant goes on to talk specifics - focusing on just a handful of companies who are breaking new ground in the content space. Among them, Brightcove, Akimbo, Revver, Magnify Media, and Veoh.

"Companies looking to put videos on the Web are finding help from start-up companies that are developing tools for this purpose. Steve Rosenbaum, who developed programing for MTV featuring viewer submitted videos in the late 1990's has taken that genre another step with his new company Magnify Media LLc. the New York based company has developed technology that enables web sites to receive and post user-generated content."

"What everyone is basically saying now is that we're going to live in a multi-platform environment," says Mr. Rosenbaum of Magnify Media. "And in a multi-platform environment, the person who has the most content and can serve to the different places wins."

"Smaller content companies are also exploring the user of video on the Web, even those who's main business isn't TV related. Rodale Inc has been looking at ways to use video to enhance the Web sites and promotions of it's magazines like Bicycling and runners World. (a project developed by Magnify Media) this year, Bicycling provided camcorders to readers who won bicycling in its Biketown contest so that they could make short films of how their prizes affected their lives. The results we be on Bicycling Web site in early 2006."