At a press conference in Tokyo earlier today, Brightcove announced the general availability of a fully-localized online video platform for Japan. With today's announcement, Brightcove extends its existing localized player architecture to inlude the full suite of back-end online video platform services, including content management, player design and publishing, delivery, product documentation and customer support.

In Japan, Brightcove is based in Tokyo with a local staff that includes senior leadership, sales, marketing, engineering and customer support teams. In under a year's time, Brightcove has achieved incredible momentum in the market with customers including Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), Asahi Breweries Group, Sony Music Network Japan, Shueisha Publishing and Orange Page net. Additionally, Brightcove was chosen by Web TV distribution giant, PRESENTCAST, for gorin.jp, the exclusive online video portal in Japan for coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games.

Building on this momentum, Brightcove will accelerate platform adoption in the country with the introduction of a new 30-day free trial program for Japan that provides access to the localized, full-featured Pro edition of the Brightcove online video platform. The free trial program, as well as localized tutorials and documentations, can be accessed through Brightcove’s Japanese website www.brightcove.co.jp and the Brightcove 3 Studio http://studio3.brightcove.co.jp/login.

Brightcove established its majority-owned subsidiary, Brightcove KK, in Japan in 2008 with $4.9 million in new investment from Brightcove Inc. and four market-leading Japanese strategic partners: Dentsu, Inc., J-Stream, Inc., transcosmos, Inc. (transcosmos), and Cyber Communications, Inc. (CCI).

Full press release.

UPDATE: Beet.TV's Any Plesser caught up with Brightcove SVP of Marketing, Jeff Whatcott, to discuss Brightcove's international expansion and entry into the Japanese market. Click here for the video.

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We are very excited to announce a new deal with News Corp.'s Fox International Channels enabling its many media brands to use the Brightcove platform for online video initiatives. The first major new initiative to launch under the deal is Mundo Fox, a VOD portal opeated by Fox Latin American Channels that features more than 800 hours of ad-supported clips and full-length show, including 24, Family Guy, Burn Notice, My Name is earl and The Simpsons. The video is available dubbed or subtitled in Spanish or Portuguese. Since launching last month, Mundo Fox has generated 1.5 million unique visitors and 2.5 million page views.

With Brightcove Fox Latin American Channels is able to deliver up to HD-quality full episodes and clips of some of the most highly sought after programming on the Web from network brands including Fox, FX, Fox Life, Fox Sports, Fox News, National Geographic Channel, National Geographic Music, Universal Channel, Hallmark Channel, Utilísima, SPEED Channel, Baby TV Channel, .Fox Networks, BienSimple, Fox Toma 1 and Fox Telecolombia.

The deal announced today with Fox International Channels expands on exisiting online video platform deals between Brightcove and other News Corporation properties, including Fox Entertainment Group, British Sky Broadcasting, and News International.

Full press release.

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Today, Brightcove has announced a raft of major new customer wins in Japan including Tokyo Broadcasting System, Sony Music Network, Asahi Breweries Group, Shueisha Publishing, and Orange Page. We are thrilled to see wide-spread adoption of the Brightcove online video platform among such well-known and highly-respected brands in Japan.

Brightcove established operations in Japan last year with a majority-owned subsidiary backed by market-leading partners including Dentsu, J-Stream, CCI and transcosmos. In a little under a year's time, Brightcove KK has established itself as a leader in the region with major customer wins such as Presentcast, the Web video venture owned and operated by Japan's leading commercial television broadcasters.

Growth in Japan mirrors a similar trend we're seeing across North America and Europe where television broadcasters, traditional print publishers, and brand marketers are accelerating the development of online video properties to reach new audiences and, in the case of media businesses, tap new advertising revenue streams. In fact, Brightcove now has customers in 27 countries spanning nearly every sector of industry and society.

For more information, click here for the full press release. You can also visit Beet.TV to see an interview with our SVP of Marketing, Jeff Whatcott about the announcement today. 

-- Josh Hawkins

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Today, Simon & Schuster announced plans to open a new in-house digital media studio to ramp production of original online video content, including interviews and features about book authors and special projects, like the Stephen King Web series, "N." Over the coming months, the new studio will produce interviews with Arianna Huffington, Blair Underwood, and Philippa Gregory. Simon & Schuster expects to produce over 600 multimedia presentations annually. We are thrilled Brightcove has been chosen as the online video platform for this exciting and innovative initiative from one of the world's largest and most well-respected publishers. 

--Josh Hawkins

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Today, Brightcove has announced a wide-ranging partnership with OMS, Germany's online sales and marketing network for regional newspapers, which will enable OMS to use the Brightcove platform to develop an online video network for its member newspapers (full press release). The new network will feature premium content licensed and distributed by OMS, as well as local video published by the regional newspapers through Brightcove. OMS will sell advertising against the combined video inventory and provide a new ongoing revenue stream to participating newspapers. The online video network will launch later this year with seven regional newspapers and expand to include over 60 newspapers through the OMS initiative. The map below highlights the OMS member publications.

Commenting on the news, Kim Kriegers of OMS, said: "The deal announced today with Brightcove has given OMS the ability to rapidly launch an expansive video distribution network across multiple websites and manage a complex set of advertising programs." Kim's colleague, Managing Director, George Hesse added: "At the same time, OMS is giving member newspapers access to the most comprehensive and scalable platform in the world which they will be able to use to add premium video content to their websites from the network and publish regional news coverage produced by their local newsrooms. Our objectives are to collectively capitalize on the revenue growth in the online advertising categories of videos."

OMS joins a growing list of Brightcove customers in Germany, which also includes one of largest magazine publishers in Europe, Gruner +Jahr, which we announced earlier this year. 

-- Josh Hawkins

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We are very happy to announce that UK terrestrial broadcaster, Five, has chosen to use the Brightcove platform for its ad-supported online video initiatives (full press release). Five is launching with new video websites for popular news, sports and entertainment programming. Under the terms of the deal, Five's website producers will use the Brightcove platform to manage video, create customized players, manage distribution, and integrate the new video initiatives with their advertising operations.

Commenting on the deal, Five's Digital Controller, Paul Thornton-Jones said, "Five is moving aggressively to provide greater online access to popular television programming and answer the demand from a fast-growing audience across our website properties. With Brightcove, Five has been able to rapidly bring to market an enormous volume of online video content, while spawning new revenue streams through online video advertising."

Today's announcement marks an important milestone for Brightcove. Our online video platform is now used by the four biggest commercial broadcasters in the UK, including British Sky Broadcasting, ITV, Channel 4, and now Five.   

-- Josh Hawkins

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We are very excited to announce that the British Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street, has chosen the Brightcove platform for its official online video destination on the Web, Number10TV. New website offerings will include exclusive video of the Prime Minister speeches, press conferences, media appearances, and news archives.

The 10 Downing Street initiative reflects a broader trend among government agencies, political campaigns and non-profit organizations using online video to boost the flow of information between citizens and government. These Brightcove customers include Barack Obama for President, AFL-CIO, among others. We are thrilled to see the broad, horizontal adoption of the Brightcove platform across non-traditional media publishers and we look forward to showcasing other exciting examples of this trend over the coming months.

Click here to read the full press release about the 10 Downing Street online video initiative. You can also see an interview with Jeremy Allaire about the announcement at Beet.TV.   

-- Josh Hawkins

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We are very happy to announce several exciting developments that promise to accelerate Brightcove's expansion in Japan.

Brightcove today announced the appointment of technology industry veteran and entrepreneur, Hisashige "Qz" Hashimoto, as general manager for Brightcove KK, our Japanese subsidiary. Mr. Hashimoto will drive overall customer acquisition efforts targeted at Japanese media companies and marketers. Mr. Hashimoto joins Brightcove after two years as president and chief executive officer of Paygent, a mobile escrow service he launched in 2006 and grew to 2,000 customers before leaving in 2008. Prior to Paygent, Mr. Hashimoto worked in several senior management positions for Macromedia KK including Platform Product Marketing and Channel Marketing. Before Macromedia, Mr. Hashimoto spent 14 years with Mitsui & Co., Ltd.

Brightcove also announced today that Brightcove KK has signed its first customer, PRESENTCAST, a Web TV distribution venture backed by Nippon Television, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Fuji Television Network, TV Asahi, TV Tokyo, and Dentsu, among others. PRESENTCAST has selected the Brightcove online video platform for gorin.jp, the exclusive online video portal in Japan for coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. gorin.jp is backed by all of Japan's commercial television broadcasters.

Finally, Brightcove officially closed financing for Brightcove's majority-owned subsidiary in Japan (Brightcove KK) on July 18th with $4.9 million investment from Brightcove, Dentsu, Inc., J-Stream, transcosmos, Inc. (transcosmos), and Cyber Communications, Inc. (CCI).   

Here's a link to the full press release with more information about today's announcement. 

-- Josh Hawkins

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Today we announced the beta of our new online video platform, Brightcove 3. This is a big milestone for us. For the last 10 months we’ve been quietly working on a complete overhaul of the Brightcove service. We’ve changed everything from how we publish video to how producers use the service to how customers can generate revenue.

This beta is focused on three themes: contextual publishing, long-form content, and accelerating the productivity producers with new tools. Right now the beta program is only open to a select group of our premium customers, but it will be expanding over the course of the summer. The full commercial release will come in the fall.

Our SVP of Marketing, Adam Berrey, recently launched a blog and in today's post he provides a deeper dive into some of the underling themes and strategies we're enabling with Brightcove 3. 

We are very excited about today’s release and look forward to unveiling the full suite of new product innovations with the commercial release later this year. Please feel free to visit the beta website to sign up to receive updates about the beta program.

--Josh Hawkins

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We are very excited to announce the formation of Brightcove KK, a majority-owned subsidiary in Japan. The announcement marks a major milestone for Brightcove as we continue our efforts to build a global, independent company that provides leading software platforms for video on the Internet.

Brightcove KK launches with $4.9 million in new investment from Brightcove and strategic partners that will be critical to the successful expansion of our business in Japan. These partners include:

• Dentsu, Inc., the largest advertising company in Japan with a market share of approximately 30 percent Groupwide.
• J-Stream, Japan's largest content delivery network specializing in streaming media for content providers and business corporations.
• transcosmos, an existing Brightcove investor and major digital media conglomerate in Japan that owns a wide range of media properties, businesses and technology services.
• CCI, Japan's largest interactive advertising company that currently has over 30 percent of the country's digital brand marketing, a popular advertising serving technology, and online advertising network.

Japan represents enormous market opportunity for Brightcove. Household broadband penetration has just surpassed 50 percent and the country's media market is second only to the United States (larger than the top three European countries combined). It's a great privilege to have as partners the leading digital media and advertising companies in Japan. The combination of Brightcove's technology and partner capabilities place Brightcove KK in a unique position to help media companies and marketers unlock value in this fast-paced market and accelerate business growth.

Brightcove KK Press Release

-- Josh Hawkins

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