I recently had the opportunity to participate on a panel at the Business Video Expo (BVE) in Miami Beach. The topic, Video in the Cloud: Leveraging Hosted Solutions for Enhanced Communications, allowed me to share some best practices for online video strategies with an audience that was clearly eager to amplify their own initiatives.

Earlier today we announced that Matrix, the digital company of Telecom Italia, has chosen Brightcove Video Cloud to support its online video initiatives for the consumer news and entertainment website, Virgilio.it. Virgilio is one of the largest consumer sites in Italy with 15 million Web users per month, providing email, media sharing, news and location-based services to Italian-speaking users around the world.

Video: Following a new initiative, reporters throughout the newsroom, powered by the launch of a new video system (Brightcove Video Cloud), offered readers more story-related videos than ever, leading the way to our highest-trafficked month ever, with 514,650 streams.

We recently published another new customer case study with International Data Group (IDG), the world's largest technology media, research and event management company. Approximately 200 magazines and newspapers and 460 websites are in the IDG family, including popular technology websites like cio.com, computerworld.com and pcworld.com. 

Today, Brightcove and TubeMogul released the Online Video & the Media Industry Quarterly Research Report for the first and second quarters of 2011. The report examines online video discovery, usage, and engagement data from a sample of thousands of websites covering newspapers, magazines, online media, broadcasters, and brands. In addition to the quarterly data, this report takes a special look at engagement on mobile devices. 

Brightcove  Video Cloud is used by a wide variety of organizations, so it's always fun to see how these businesses are leveraging online video in even the most niche markets. Vital Choice, a seafood company that sells sustainable wild fish and organic foods, is one such company. The online store offers healthy wild seafood and other types of organic fare, but the ultimate goal is about more than simply distributing these foods. It's about illustrating the benefits of consuming wild and organic sustainable food on a large scale - and what better way to illustrate that than through video! 

I've always been deeply interested in the ways different technologies and interfaces dictate and influence user behaviors, so I was excited to see Virginia Heffernan's latest New York Times op-ed addressing medium specificity and its role in the success of online videos.

Here at Brightcove, we are passionate about a lot of things, but one of the most exciting aspects of the work we do is getting to see all of the great content that our publishers create. We are in the business of helping our clients publish and distribute their digital media content efficiently, but sometimes it’s important to take a step back from the day-to-day work and simply appreciate all of the diverse types of content that our customers are making available to the public. 

We are pleased to announce that Teach For America, an amazing non-profit organization that is focused on building the movement to eliminate education inequity by enlisting our nation's most promising future leaders, has partnered with Brightcove to bolster their online video offerings.

Video is becoming a core part of AOL's content strategy and business model going forward. AOL Video covers everything from music videos, to news clips, movie trailers, viral videos, and full-length TV shows.

Do you love online video? Do you want to share your knowledge with others?

Then consider becoming a guest blogger for the Brightcove Blog. We value the knowledge and experience of the entire Brightcove ecosystem, from our valued customers to our technology and solution partners. If you have an idea that you feel would be beneficial to our shared audience, we welcome the opportunity to consider it as a post for the Brightcove Blog!

We are happy to announce today that The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the nation's largest animal protection organization, has teamed with Brightcove to launch new online and mobile video offerings. Brightcove enables the HSUS to deliver an integrated, high quality video experience for its website, www.humanesociety.org, as well as to mobile and HTML5-compatible mobile devices.

Who doesn't love a good top 10 list? We do, especially when we are in it! Yesterday Fast Company published an article highlighting the "10 Most Innovative Companies in Video" that listed Brightcove at number 7 behind a variety of other video powerhouses - YouTube, Twitter, Netflix, FX, Funny or Die and UStream. Rounding out the top 10 are Blip.TV, Xtranormal and GetGlue.

We are very excited about the recent launch of Military.com's new and improved online Video Center, powered by Brightcove and featuring a newly enhanced user-interface, user-friendly functionality, improved categorization of content, and more.

ComScore's 2010 US Digital Year in Review report contains some interesting insights into the rapid growth in the US online video market.

ComScore found that an average of 179 million Americans were watching some form of video online each month, which is roughly 60% of the US population. 

SXSW is just a week away, so now's the time to crawl the schedule to get ready. The conference is getting bigger every year, which makes it a challenge to choose between the fantastic sessions that compete for the same time slot. So here are a few video-centric gems that might interest video folks like yourselves.

We are excited to announce today that Astral Radio, Canada's largest commercial radio broadcaster, has chosen the Brightcove platform to deliver high quality video experiences for its 83 radio station properties.

Today Brightcove and TubeMogul released the Online Video & the Media Industry Quarterly Research Report for the fourth quarter of 2010.

ComScore's 2010 Digital Year in Review presents some interesting stats on the state of online video advertising. The report suggests that by the end of the year, 16% of videos watched (in terms of titles) were advertisements, compared to only 12% just six months prior.

We are very excited today to be part of an announcement from NET-A-PORTER, the world's premier online luxury fashion retailer, about the launch of NET-A-PORTER TV, a digital TV station housed on NET-A-PORTER.COM that allows visitors to shop for their favorite designers as they browse video content unique to the site.

Today we announced our continued momentum and expansion in EMEA with the addition of Robert Raiola to our executive team in the region, as well as major new customer wins with L'Express and Le Figaro Group in France. Raiola joins Brightcove as senior marketing director for EMEA, and will be responsible for driving our marketing strategy as we continue to deepen our investment in the region.

This morning we announced the launch of a new government sector initiative, which includes a partnership with trusted government IT solutions provider, Carahsoft Technology Corp., and the appointment of government technology veteran, Chris Hill, to director of public sector sales. The new initiative will expand on Brightcove's momentum in the public sector, as the company already counts several major organizations, including the U.S. Department of State and U.S.

We are very excited to announce the first wave of online video innovators who have signed to participate in Brightcove PLAY 2011, our first ever global customer conference. Brightcove PLAY 2011 will take place on May 23 - 25 at the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center in Boston.

We are very excited to be the lead sponsor for the upcoming Beet TV Online Video Journalism Summit, "Exploring the digital transformation of video news reporting and distribution," which is being held on Tuesday, February 1st from 9:00 - 11:30 am ET.

ComScore's Dan Piech presented the State of Online Video in 2010 at the OMMA Video conference, and draws from industry insights to provide a picture of today's online video consumer. 

As is the case every January, all eyes are on Park City, Utah as the 2011 Sundance Film Festival officially kicks off tomorrow, January 20th. And once again, Brightcove has been named the official online video provider for the Festival and today announced that Sundance Institute is also using Brightcove to support its new live and on-demand video initiatives.

As part of our special webinar series, we're asking our follower what their big plans are for online video in 2011. Participate in the conversation by using the hashtag #videojumpstart2011 on Twitter.

The webinar series starts this Thursday with Get Inspired: 20 amazing ways marketers are winning with Online Video. Register today!

This isn't brand new, but I continue to be inspired by this gem of a TED Talk given by Chris Anderson that explores how online video has introduced a new platform for niche innovation to spread ideas around the world.

Today Brightcove and TubeMogul released the Online Video & the Media Industry Quarterly Research Report for the third quarter of 2010. The report examines online video discovery, usage, and engagement data from a sample of nearly 2,000 news and entertainment websites.

In Q3, we also included a special feature focusing on the peak days of the week and times of day broken out by each of the media industries we cover. 

Notable findings include:

Discovery

• Facebook now refers more video streams than Yahoo! for the aggregate media sample. This marks the first time the social platform has surpassed the search engine and content portal. Facebook accounted for 9.6% of all referrals, making it second only to Google.
   

On Saturday, TechCrunch posted an article written by our CEO, Jeremy Allaire, on "Online Video In 2011: Connected TVs, Social Recommendations, And Standards Wars." In the article, Jeremy shares his thoughts on where online video is headed in the next year, noting that "2011 promises to be yet another year of transformation in the online video landscape."