BitGravity’s Philosophy: Take It Easy

Wu went on to explain, using the example of the Olympics.

"Silverlight is sort of an active system in that you can see multiple images at the same time," Wu said, referring to the Microsoft technology behind the NBCOlympics.com website. "But you have to download a client, which I wouldn't have done except that I'm a former water polo player and really wanted to see what wasn’t being shown on TV. That’s not the type of active that I mean, though. I’m thinking about a time when I can choose the camera angle, not just the event."

Wu also predicts that, once live streams make up a significant portion of the web’s traffic, brands will come more into play, both fragmenting and aggregating the audience.

"The web tends to be a lower-cost infrastructure for live events," said Wu, "and that means the emergence of independent brands as well as a an aggregating of these brands into programmatic channels. If there were a water polo channel, I'd watch that throughout the Olympics; instead, I TiVo’d four hours worth of the Olympics and then skimmed through to find the water polo games."

Wu mentioned that BitGravity hosts the "Tom Green Show" and is approaching athletes who have their own brands with new tools to help drive awareness for these types of micro brands.

"The net enables fragmentation," said Wu, "but that fragmentation is developing in to a new form of programming where the net isn't cannibalizing TV. Today it's largely experimental, but as advertising and licensing rights mature, we'll see a more definitive augmenting.

As someone who’s only been in the space for a few years, Wu feels that those who want to move to web-only delivery are a bit overzealous in their expectations.

"We're still waiting for the inflection points," said Wu. "Some sites have great powers of their own brand—the SuperBowl, Olympics, and American Idol—but advertisers are still testing the waters. Just like in the e-commerce era, a lot of content creation and CDN companies are ‘under water’ and not generating significant revenues. They're hanging in there and I expect a fair number of them to survive."

Wu says that BitGravity’s organic growth has taken time, but that the approach to the market as a communications company rather than a CDN is a better presentation to most carriers. He used Tata Communications as an example of a carrier they’re working with.

While mostly unknown in the U.S., Tata has over 300 sales people and a very aggressive reach beyond its native India.

"We sat down with carriers early on, and found that we were able to approach them from a communications company perspective," said Wu. "Tata is one of those companies and they’re becoming a major channel for our sales efforts since carriers know they need to have a CDN strategy to flourish in an era where web video is fast becoming the primary data type on the net."