Rupert Murdoch’s long tail play

neville

Financial Times: Rupert Murdoch has put two more internet companies on News Corporation’s list of desired acquisitions: Blinkx and IGN Entertainment. […] Talks to buy video search engine Blinkx are under way. IGN, a video gaming company considering an initial public offering or a sale, is also under consideration and could be valued at up to $800m, people briefed on its plans said.

Rupert Murdoch’s long tail is looking very interesting! Blinkx’ focus on video (and audio: podcasts) search could make them very big indeed in a burgeoning market where searching for and finding the content you want is crying out for someone to provide consumers with the means to do that easily.

Blinkx say they are already “tracking, listening to and watching over 15,000 podcasts and video blogs.” If Forrester Research is right, videocasting will be the next big thing – and it will be hot.

IGN has numerous web properties embracing video games, file sharing, entertainment and movies. All broadband-intensive, and as we can see almost everywhere, broadband penetration is increasing rapidly, both in the US and in Europe.

Earlier this year, Murdoch identified the internet as a priority and said his group could spend up to $2 billion on acquisitions, the FT reported.

Watch the space.

Financial Times | Murdoch sights more internet targets

3 thoughts on “Rupert Murdoch’s long tail play”

  1. Audio is bandwidth-hungry enough, video even more so. My business partner recently put up a video and promptly got taken down by our service provider. It might sound obvious to those in the know or those with IT departments, but the first step is to find out what your service provider’s limits are before starting down the podcast or vlogging path.

  2. You’re right, David, this is the picture today. It will change.
    My ISP here (XS4ALL.nl) recently started offering subscribers the ability to do podcasting. Sounds simple enough – you do your show and get the MP3 file available for distribution via RSS. The difference, though, is that your MP3 file is hosted on the ISP’s servers so the ISP takes all the bandwidth load, not you the subscriber.
    It’s an experiment and it would be interesting to see what would happen if someone’s show became really popular and consumed masses of bandwidth.
    XS4ALL also introduced a service last month they call Personal Livestream for streaming video. Here’s how they describe it:
    “Anyone with a DSL connection from XS4ALL can use Personal Livestream free of charge. A particular feature of this service is that an unlimited number of XS4ALL subscribers with DSL can view and listen, but there is only a one-off effect on your bandwidth consumption. The same applies to the five streams which you can set up additionally outside the XS4ALL domain. That means you can continue to use your DSL connection for other purposes.”
    You’re going to see more of this type of thing from service providers. Adds into the mix with developments such as Murdoch’s long tail move.

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