Got your attention?  I hope so, because for such a hot technology, there’s a surprising level of misunderstanding and general fuzziness out there around the precise meaning of the term ‘streaming‘ - even among some new media types Who Should Know Better.  Here, then, is a brief clarification (in an effort to keep the eyes-glazing-over syndrome to a minimum, I’ll keep it as short as possible):
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Speculating here about Disney’s recent (quasi-) presence on YouTube, we concluded that:

• YouTube was expanding beyond its core business of UGC (user-generated content) hosting into premium licensed content - and is willing to be just an aggregator to do it.
• Disney was finally ‘dipping its toe into video stream syndication via YouTube before placing its bet on hulu.

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Time are tough - maybe you’ve heard, it’s been in all the papers.  Oh wait, there aren’t any more papers - but we’re going to guess that one way or the other, you’ve had more than your share of macro-economic doom and gloom over the past few months anyway.  So we’re starting a new series of posts - think of them as occasional signs of (internet video-related) corporate hope amidst all the (over-leveraged under-regulated financial services) corporate rubble…

• The BBC, having seen a 152% increase in UK usage of their successful iPlayer streaming application over the past 12 months, has just increased their online budget for the next three years by almost 25%.
• The stock of mail-order DVD rental leader (and online pioneer) Netflix is up over 30% over the past 6 months.
• CBS has announced 2.8 million first-day unique users of its Silverlight-powered NCAA Men’s Tournament (March Madness) streams - at 56% increase over last year’s first day numbers.
• Pure Digital Technologies, the privately-funded startup responsible for the easy-to-use “Flip” personal internet video camcorder, is purchased by Cisco for $590 mil.

Hang in there - more good news to come…