Episodic Acquired by Google, and What it Means for YouTube

April 2, 2010
Filed Under: in Analysis, Featured Articles, News, Online Video, Social Media
Author: Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins

From the blog post:

We are thrilled to announce that Episodic has been acquired by Google. The entire Episodic team is extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our customers and the evolution of online video.

The Episodic team will join Google and continue its work to bring a great video experience to the Web, mobile phones and IPTV devices. There will be no interruption in service for existing Episodic customers.

From our earliest discussions with Google, it was clear that the teams shared this belief and together we obviously see huge potential in online video. Our product visions were also complimentary and together we will continue to produce innovative video technology for our customers and their viewers.

Speaking of our fabulous customers, we want to thank you all for your support and your willingness to experiment and sit on the bleeding edge with our team. We can’t wait to show you all what’s coming.

This is particularly interesting news for me – I’ve been a user of the service since it’s inception (I think my first show on the system was the sixth one created – just after Mashable Conversations and just before Boing Boing’s show). I’ve since used my account there to launch dozens of short series and shows, and I’m always impressed with how full featured the system has been.

The “shared vision” Episodic is talking about, speaking from experience, is their willingness to listen to their early adopters and their accessibility.  Up until very recently (right around when he started talking to Google, I’d imagine), I had the ear of Episodic co-founder Noam just about any time I wanted to pick up the phone and dial him up.

I spoke briefly with people familiar with the matter to get a sense of whether or not this was a personnel acquisition or a technology acquisition.  I didn’t come away with a definite answer, but I got the sense that it could be both.  Matias, the other co-founder of Episodic is a veteran of Google as well as of Powerset (part of the technology behind Bing), so there’s going to be an obvious overlap in familiarity with the culture as well as many of the people now at Google.

Beyond that, though, what made this an interesting question for me to hunt down the answer to is that there isn’t a ton of technology to fold into the YouTube platform that isn’t already out there.  Racking my brain, here’s what I can find that isn’t yet available to the public on the YouTube platform:

Easy syndication to other platforms.

With Episodic, you can click a button, and it uses TubeMogul to syndicate your videos out to every other platform in existence.  I don’t see YouTube wanting this feature, but it would certainly put them in a different class of tool if they offered it.

Advanced Analytics.

You can drill down with Episodic to minute by minute analysis on engagement, click throughs, fast forwards and all sorts of mess.  It’s really evolved into a powerful system over the last couple years, and one that’s invaluable for determining not only what works or doesn’t creatively, but show construction (Does the ad do better in the first or second slot?  Should I have a 15 second or 10 second intro song?).

An Ad Platform.

The one thing I’m surprised we haven’t seen at this stage of YouTube’s existence is a producer facing ad platform.  If you were to ask for one that’s simple and gets the job done, Episodic has it.

A Public Facing Live Streaming Solution.

This is the one component I haven’t seen to Episodic’s platform, but they’ve been offering a live-streaming solution for professional users for many months now.  If it is anything like the VOD component, it’s a turnkey solution.  This is something that, if it was scalable, would be a game changing announcement from YouTube with regard to the rest of the livestreaming world (with Justin.TV, UStream as well as with professional players like BitGravity and the rest).

This is an Announcement to Watch

I’m not saying that simply because I’m close to some of the players involved – if the tech is the target in this acquisition and any of this gets incorporated into the larger ecosystem of the YouTube world, we could see some real innovation in online video again.