Just came across this Associated Press news release, which claims VeriSign will "start distributing family friendly movies from AxiomTV early next year". Can you believe it?

As it turns out, the AP story was slightly misleading. The movie download service will actually be offered by VeriSign customer Axiom.TV. On Jan 8, Axiom will launch "the world's first family friendly and parental controlled Internet TV channel". Its "military-grade web-blocking technology" will protect viewers from porn, violence and vulgarity.

What VeriSign will offer is its Kontiki P2P content delivery service. The company says with P2P, content owners enjoy cost savings of approx 40%.

Since I hadn't heard of Kontiki before, I did a bit of quick research and found that the technology comes from a VeriSign subsidiary. Founded in 2001 by Netscape alums, Kontiki raised $42.6 million throughout the years before its $62 million acquisition by VeriSign in March 2006.

Amazon, eBay, Sony, McAfee, Ernst & Young and the Sundance Festival were all early customers. It currently powers video delivery for Adobe, Nextel, TimeWarner and CNet. What I found most intriguing was this 2002 press release about its grid delivery server software: "Kontiki's customers have created their own grids to deliver business video on demand to their sales force, channel partners, employees and customers."

When I first came across CoralCDN this summer, I thought P2P content delivery was a pretty new idea. Little did I know that the technology - as well as Kontiki's vision of delivering TV-quality video - has been around for ages! Coral's still pretty cool, though. Digg, Fark, Slashdot and a long list of other sites all use its free service.

eWeek and Peter Cashmore at Mashable! report that Demand Media has launched ChannelMe.tv. The site says traditional TV is "sooo 1999"; it's time to "broadcast your own channel online" via (what else??) a .tv domain name!

The ChannelMe website points out that Internet video is exploding. It's the future, and it starts with you and your very own online destination. Demand Media is starting out by helping customers redirect You.tv to their YouTube or MySpace profiles, but the company will roll out site building/video uploading/social networking tools in early 2007.

Forget DirecTV's 250 channels and the Dish Network's 240. ChannelMe will offer zillions to choose from. At a time when the Washington Post says teens are growing weary of social networks, and Gartner predicts blogging will peak in 2007, could broadcasting one's Internet video channel be the next big thing in self expression? It holds more promise than good old HTML websites, don't you think?

Peter's not convinced that a .tv domain name is a prerequisite for building one's channel. (Demand Media charges $19.95/year; GoDaddy charges $24.95.) People have been happily sharing MySpace and YouTube URLs. But his readers point out that users may want to be their own brands, not just a part of larger communities. They may also want to aggregate all of their media under one URL. Besides, they already spend untold sums on other personalization accessories, from ringtones to custom X-box face plates. What's another $20?

Keep an eye on Demand Media. I'm glad these guys are here to bring fresh ideas into the domains market.

After reading this VentureBeat post about BitGravity, a new CDN, I was curious to find out more about the company. CEO Perry Wu promises "no latency" in online video delivery; Revision3 (a "TV network for the web" launched by the founders of Digg) and TomGreen.com are customers, along with some "bigger names in publishing".

I wasn't able to find much additional information. BitGravity's website is vague about its technology infrastructure ("innovative routing, hardware , and file system"; "centralized architecture, constellation system, multiple bandwidth providers") and pricing ("no armies of network people, many standard features that others charge you extra for"). Media coverage is limited to this CNET article, which says the company is already profitable.

On the other hand, I did learn something about CacheFly through MochiMedia co-founder Bob Ippolito's blog. (Bob already considers BitGravity a "tier 1" CDN, BTW.) MochiMedia needed to serve large amounts of small content objects to a global audience. First Bob tried Amazon's S3, but he discovered during a trip to Taipei that its performance was "horrifying" (HTTP request for 20KB file took 1.6 seconds)(download times from Taipei tend to be awful for content hosted at most North American data centers). CacheFly was 3x faster, and Bob was pleased with the company's transparent and affordable pricing.

By the way, during the CDN panel at the Tier 1 hosting summit back in September, execs from Akamai, Limelight, SolidState and Netli affirmed that they see hosting providers as valued partners. Cachefly has a different take. Its demo urges viewers to "Stop Hosting... Start Delivering". BitGravity, too, argues that CDNs help customers save money through "better purchasing power and higher utilization" of their network and the equipment. CNet says these two start-ups are challenging Akamai, but it sounds like they've got much more in mind.

I came across this Park Associates press release via GigaOm. It says US revenues from Internet video will top $7 billion by 2010. (This significantly exceeds Gartner's April 2006 projection that the North American shared hosting market will reach $4.7 billion by 2010.)

Not coincidentally, Cisco announced a new business group last week called Media Solutions. Cisco execs tell CNet that their goal is to get closer to digital content creators. Yankee Group Analyst Zeus Kerravala agrees with Cisco's vision. The more relevant the company can be to content owners, he says, the more success it's likely to have.

Over the past decade, dedicated hosting providers have worked hard to maintain relevance within the shared hosting community through active participation on Web Hosting Talk, reseller programs for domain names, etc. Given Cisco's new initiative, Park Associates' projections, YouTube's enormous (and rather wealthy) audience, MetaCafe's rumored $200 - $300 million Yahoo! deal... might the online video market deserve some attention as well?

Update #1, via GigaOm - Cisco CEO John Chambers calls video a killer app: "Things like YouTube are just the baby steps of the impact video will have on networks." Are you ready?

Update #2, via eMarketer - US Internet video audience will reach 157 million by 2010. How much of their viewing activity will take place on your network?