Streaming Media on the Web
Build it and they wonít come.
Why do you want to stream video, when youíve already got a web site thatís doing just fine?
To answer this, letís look at the World Wrestling Federation
PPT Slide
WWF.com exceeded half a billion hits in December of 1998, and was number six of all sports sites on the Internet.
Not only is their web site going good, their TV show is number one on basic cable with 5.8 million households on a Monday night
When theyíve got TV, and theyíve got a killer web site, why would they stream?
Streaming content is engaging content...
WWF took an existing service 1-900
Revenue in the millions of $$$
Converted it to free Streaming Content
WWF.com News
WWF.com handles high traffic (greater than 5,000,000 hits per day per server)
Ö and high peak-load (up to 3,600,000 hits per hour per server during sustained peaks)
WWF.com handles over half a billion hits a month
Reaching over 1.2 million unique households a month
As of December 1998, WWF.com was ranked sixth of all sports sites on the Internet
WWF.com is configured with 100 megabit Ethernet cards, allowing up to 200 megabits in full duplex mode.
Each of these servers is connected to its own dedicated port on a gigabit switch stack, with redundant 100 megabit links from the switch stack to the Internet backbone
With multiple servers handling a single collection of content, and with multiple bonded or fiber backbone connections, this arrangement allows bandwidth burstable to the gigabit range
But Why Stream Media?
The average user spends just 60 seconds on any page in your web site
...and leaves your site after looking at just 9 pages
Become a destination spot for the user, a place they will want to come back more often to look for the latest video content. More importantly, they stay longer
The most recent Internet trend is towards web site ìstickinessî (a measure of how likely your visitors are to stay in your site) Offering video content drives stickiness off the scale!
Users can scroll past a banner, but when they click to watch a stream, theyíre usually a captive audience.
Ask yourself this...
Should you offer free content, and get your money back through increased traffic and advertising dollars?
Would it be better to offer paid content as a pay-per-view, and recoup your costs from the users directly?
Should your content be sponsored by individual ads, targeted to each user, inserted at the beginning of their stream, or should the sponsor cover a section of your website where you post media links?
Stream it and theyíll stay.
For More Information Tim@4K-Associates.com http://www.4K-Associates.com/