BitTorrent gets Huskified!

This is awesome. BitTorrent has gone live with Husky. Check it out!!

CBS SPORTS and Husky sitting in a tree...

K-i-s-s-i-n-g! That's right, Husky is now live on CBS Sports. You may recall we did a deal about a month ago - well now it's live! Props to the CBS and Husky teams who worked diligently to get this thing up. CBS is using the Husky Platform, as opposed to the Husky Network. What's the difference? The difference is CBS sells, tracks and serves all of the Husky ads on CBS Sports. This gives their team the ability to control their own inventory and gives their sales people a totally new unique (not to mention kick arse) video ad product to sell to their advertisers.

It really looks great on the site. Check it out by watching The Burly Sports Show (an original Heavy production, btw).

Why the online video industry is like a dysfunctional super-hero with issues.

When will online video be the behemoth business everyone always crows about? Everyone seems to be down You Tube’s throat for not pulling their weight at Google. The television networks make a pitiful 1% of what they rake in for their broadcast outlets with the same videos. And the so-called “me-too” video-sites are VC money machines of the burning kind.

And yet, the video market grows every quarter. There are now more people watching video online than on cable television. What the hell is going on? How can this not be a business that prints money?

To be fair, the market is not exactly a desert. Over one billion ad dollars will be spent around online video this year, and the number may be even higher as most of the analysts don’t take into account all of the other ads that junk up the web page gutters around an embedded video on “non-video” sites.

But let’s be honest – everyone thought the online video marketplace would be doing far better than it is today. And by better, I mean making money. The path to profitability was paved with the promise of capturing all that broadcast ad money - $70 billion in the USA alone. All one need do is build a better video mousetrap and the dollars would be siphoned. A redistribution of wealth was in clear sight. A windfall of cash would be funneled from broadcast TV in the same migration patterns seen in the flight from print into the web. But this is clearly not happening. At least not on the timetable many had hoped for.

So, what’s going on? Why haven’t those TV dollars moved in droves?

Online video is not TV. Sorry to state the obvious, but it bears repeating because people’s business expectations for online video is that it will eventually steal the broadcast and cable ad pie. But here’s the thing, online video is a different medium than television. It’s an evolved animal that we try to force fit a television ad model into. It’s like discovering Wolverine from X-Men and wondering why he can’t fly like Superman. They’re different. They both have their strengths, but one isn’t using them because he’s trying to figure out why he can’t fly.

On the consumer side, Wolverine knows who he is. He understands his strengths and is rewarded with a large active audience, but on the business side he’s trying to appear more like superman to advertisers, but all they see is a hairy beast in a red cape. They ask him if he can fly. He says no, but he’s working on it. This is where Wolverine makes a crucial mistake. He spends his time and energy trying to fit-in. He doesn’t realize that it’s futile. He will never be Superman. It’s not possible because he’s mother-F’in Wolverine – and the game he’s playing is the one Superman invented. Until he owns up to that and plays to his own strengths, Wolverine will never realize his full potential.

While Wolverine tries to work through his issues, Superman will grow some facial hair and get knuckle-blade implants as a hedge. He’ll insert himself into the void by trying to mimic Wolverine while leveraging his own strengths with advertisers. Superman’s plan may have some merit. It will work as long as Wolverine feeds from the same trough of advertisers as Superman. This is the key insight Wolverine must address. Otherwise he’ll be left with preening his ridiculous cape promising to do more than Superman for less money and gradually die from exhaustion.

Okay, enough Wolverine.

Let’s move on to how the online video industry is like a mullet. Business on the homepage - party in the back.

Just kidding – sort of. More to come…

husky and broadbandsports.com live!

BroadbandSports is an awesome sports video site with a ton of extreme sports lunacy. We're stoked to see them up and live with Husky! Go and check them out!

Vidshadow.tv now live with Husky!

Vidshadow, a new and great looking video site, is now running live with Husky! They're also live with a new feature that is being baked into Husky as we speak. Vidshadow wanted the ability to auto-launch their videos from any of their video pages. This eliminates the need for the user to have to click again to launch a video. For example, say you're on the vidshadow homepage and you see a video you'd like to watch. You click on the video and Husky will take you to that specific video page AND launch the video wrapped in Husky. Pretty cool. It will be a feature for everyone soon. We'll keep you posted.

Thanks to Vidshadow for making this suggestion and helping to implement. Their coders dove in and made some magic - and now it'll be a new feature.

MAN vs BANNER AD.

This is one of the best "funny because it's true" videos I have seen in a LONG time. The video title says it all, "MAN vs BANNER AD". Found via Joe Jaffe's excellent blog, Jaffe Juice. Thanks, Joe!

Did you know?

Here's a neat tip.

If any of you are interested in using Heavy video content on your site and you'd rather display a nice image with description text than a video embed - you can. It's a pretty simple hack.

In short, instead of using the "embed" video code and adding class="husky", you use the rss image and text for that video, along with the actual video source from the embed and put it into an "href=". Add the class="husky" in the "href". And you're done.

You can obviously design and template it any way you want - the basics for what you need are there.

I've put together my own example below. Click on the image to launch the video:

The Burly Sports Show

Burly Sports: Nick Goes Nuts! Tempers flare on the Burly Sports when news anchor Nick Stevens realizes the teleprompter doesn't work, but he manages to wrap it smoothly despite technical difficulties.

CORUS RADIO IN CANADA LIVE WITH HUSKY!!

Corus Radio is the biggest network of radio stations in Canada. They have an awesome audience. Corus is embedding Heavy.com's video content across their male skewing radio-station web sites and wrapping them with Husky ads.

This brings up an interesting and perhaps unknown point: If you want any, or all of Heavy's video content for your site/blog, let us know - it's super simple to set up. If it has value for you, it's all yours for free. For anyone who doesn't already know, Husky was spun out of Heavy. Husky was the video ad technology across the entire Heavy Network. We got a lot of calls from publishers asking if they could use the technology, so we decided to spin it all out as a separate company.

I digress - GO AND CHECK OUT THE CORUS RADIO SITES!

Q107

The Edge

Streets Music Arts Culture & Knowledge LIVE!

Streets Music Arts Culture & Knowledge Tube, better known as Smacktube.com is now live with Husky. If you like hip hop, you'll really enjoy this site. Go watch some of their video!

Fanpop live with Husky

Fanpop is an awesome pop-culture site that implemented Husky across their site. It was a quick implementation. Three hours after receiving code, they were up and rolling - check them out - and watch some video!