It must be pretty clear by now that we here at Global Nerdy have more than a passing interest in the way content delivery over the network evolves. After all, one of the few bits of evidence that Opencola ever existed is Swarmcast.
Very few people, outside of the veterans of the Great P2P Wars of ought-one (or, VotGP2PWo01), have heard of Swarmcast, but everybody's heard of BitTorrent. As we've noted elsewhere, that's partly because while Swarmcast (and other companies like RedSwoosh and Kontiki Networks) have decided to play an infrastructural role in grid content delivery, BitTorrent's always put their brand in front of the individual user.
Somewhere north of $20MM in VC, and several deals later, BitTorrent.com's pushing that strategy further by becoming an online media store. In an interview with Wired News, BitTorrent's Bram "I'm Still the CEO" Cohen makes the case for BitTorrent The Brand:
WN: Do you think BitTorrent has gained enough mass-market recognition to be a destination for people to find and download online video? Right now, they can get movies from Amazon, Apple or Wal-Mart. Why will they use BitTorrent?
BC: Currently, when people want high-quality video they turn on the TV or get a DVD. The space is wide open in terms of gaining mindshare for an online download site. We're going to excel both in having a comprehensive catalog so people can reliably find something they want and in having a simple, friendly consumer experience.
Let's leave aside for a second the fact that the "simple, friendly consumer experience" Bram describes seems somewhat at odds with the fact that BitTorrent.com will be delivering their wares locked in Windows Media DRM; that should strike fear in the hearts of anyone who's been Played for Sure.
The interesting thing is that BitTorrent.com has opened up a war on two fronts. First, they've got to keep whatever perceived technology lead they have over other companies with pretensions to the content delivery crown. There are a lot of companies, from Akamai, to InterNAP, to RedSwoosh, to Swarmcast, quite busily trying to one up each other with better, faster, and (effectively) cheaper. BitTorrent.com's appeal to the customer is in the experience, and if anyone else does it faster, BitTorrent.com loses. If anyone else does it basically as fast, but cheaper, BitTorrent.com loses.
The second front is the one Wired News discusses in the interview: BitTorrent.com also competes as an online media store, a retail destination. The competition's pretty stiff here, wth Apple, Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart being just a handful of the brands in the mix. Bram must think there's a lot of demand for high-quality video, because he's betting $20MM of other people's money on that fact alone protecting BitTorrent.com from irrelevance.
Zudeo, the commercial incarnation of the Azureus BitTorrent protocol client is, aptly enough, cloning the BitTorrent.com strategy as well: a technology play as well as an online media store brand.
This is one of those classic "Why fight in the war when you can be an arms trader to all sides?" setups. BitTorrent.com's arming itself for conflict, while the others are ready to sell to all the combatants. It'll be interesting to see who's standing when the smoke clears.
Tags: BitTorrent.com, Zudeo, Swarmcast, Kontiki Networks, RedSwoosh, Akamai, Apple, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, BitTorrent, Azureus