» Project Venice: The Next Big Name in Online Video?Telecommunications Industry News

Telecom News Editorials Reports Glossary

Project Venice: The Next Big Name in Online Video?

7:25 am on October 6, 2006 | Category: Business, Web Services

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, who brought us Kazaa and Skype, are getting ready to launch their latest internet service, according to a recent article in BusinessWeek.

TeleClick reported back in July that the Skype founders were planning to launch their own internet video offering, and it appears that the service could enter public beta testing as early as next month.

The new video site, which is code named â€œProject Venice,â€ will accept video content and advertising submissions from professional media companies and distribute this content over a secure P2P file sharing network.

Veniceâ€™s ability to succeed in the highly competitive internet video market has been questioned, however, by a number of bloggers and internet analysts.

“They don’t have the same advantage here as they had on the completely fragmented VoIP market, where Skype could stick out (despite established companies like Net2Phone),” reads an article from the Abiro Mobile News. “Many very powerful media companies are already offering or working on offering Internet-based video broadcast services.”

Blogger Om Malik, meanwhile, notes that the Skype creatorsâ€™ new project might not be well received by shareholders of eBay, the company which bought Skype last year. “They spent $2.6 billion (and change) on Skype, and the two main guys are busy doing other projects.”

It seems that this new venture could be the trickiest yet for Friis and Zennstrom, as they prepare to face off against internet video giants like Microsoft, Google, and YouTube. Yet they seem content to stake their reputation and careers on this ambitious new project.

Only time will tell whether this daring new venture will pay off for two of the internetâ€™s star entrepreneurs

Telecommunications Industry News