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RealNetworks and Microsoft upped the ante in their war for the streaming-media market last month with back-to-back releases of new downloadable media players. But the two Washington State giants may have overlooked a series of streaming audio interviews with articles about race in America at The New York Times Web site.
Easy to use and fast-loading, the technology for the Times's "clickable" audio clips -- in some cases, entire interviews -- comes from a tiny Los Angeles streaming-media startup called Wildform. And it could shake up the streaming-media world in a big hurry. Wildform can minimize the hassles that Web surfers now endure when trying to use streaming-media players, says Wildform CEO Jonathan Blank. At the same time, its technology has the potential to maximize the opportunities for e-commerce on Web sites because consumers can make purchases on the same Internet page as they watch and shop without interruption, Blank adds.
The company is off to a fast start with a major player like the Times and popular online entertainment media provider Celeb Street already licensing Wildform. "Our market is every site on the Internet," says Blank. But Wildform surely has some big battles ahead.
"SOMETHING BETTER"?
Although analysts have predicted that streaming media on the Internet could create a market of more than $2 billion by 2004, thus far it has failed to deliver consistent profits. Furthermore, the field's two heavyweights, Microsoft and Real, are throwing big marketing and development dollars into building and distributing their competing technologies, RealPlayer and Windows MediaPlayer. "It's hard to displace the large vendor unless you have something better," says Rob Enderle, a vice-president at info tech consultancy Giga Information Group.
According to industry experts, Wildform may be that technology. It definitely has plenty working in its favor. Unlike other streaming formats, Wildform easily passes through corporate security firewalls. That allows Web surfers to stream media at work where broadband connections abound and where much e-commerce actually takes place. The technology is so good, says Celeb Street President J.R. Getches, that he's rebuilding his entire site, which he says gets 3 million visitors each month, around Wildform. "I showed it to our tech people, and they lost their minds," says Getches.
Wildform's software resides on Web servers and is designed to work seamlessly with something called the Flash player. Flash is a small 200-kilobyte piece of software that is already used, Media Metrix estimates, by 90% of Internet users. That's not true of Real or Windows media players, which must be downloaded by each user and launched as a separate application on every use. More important, Flash technology works equally well in each of four major operating systems: Windows, Mac, Unix, or Linux. In contrast, Real and Microsoft have to create different players for each OS.
SEAMLESS LAUNCH.
Until now, Web developers have mostly used Flash, licensed by San Francisco-based Macromedia Corp., for snazzy graphic effects, such as those featured on Nike's home page. But Blank claims -- and several Flash experts agree -- that Wildform appears to be the first to offer the capability to stream media through a Flash player and offer the flexibility of Webcasting live events. That means companies using Wildform could create live video broadcasts on their sites without requiring the launch of a separate application such as Real or Windows players.
On the commerce side, Wildform allows users to access a customizable "shopping cart" in the streaming window and make purchases without interrupting the streaming content. In fact, the cart is literally embedded in the Flash player window. "You can buy a CD while listening to a song, or buy clothing while watching a fashion show," says Blank. "You don't have to click into another screen to execute the transaction." That could reduce the number of abandoned transactions on the Web. According to Forrester Research studies, about two-thirds of Web surfers fail to complete transactions for items they have placed in their online shopping carts.
The tale of Wildform comes from the classic Silicon Valley startup manual. Before starting the company, Blank independently produced several feature and documentary films for his own company, Red Hat Productions. As a high school and Columbia University student, Blank's younger brother handled all the Web chores for Red Hat. When the elder Blank decided to found a digital music site called Tropia.com, his younger brother, R Blank, signed on as the Web design chief. The duo sold Tropia in 1999 and started Wildform last November after R Blank convinced Jonathan that he could create a better way to stream media than the two primary existing formats.
NO SLAM-DUNK.
Within a few months, R Blank and Arjun Nayyar had put together a prototype while working in their apartments. Meanwhile, Jonathan honed the business plan and sounded out investors. The company added New York Times Interactive producer and editor Colby Devitt as Wildform's company president and chief operating officer in January. Devitt brought a fat new-media Rolodex and experience dealing with a big news organization.
Blank expects the company to grow to more than 30 employees within a year, up from the current four. Wildform is now entertaining venture-capital offers from multiple suitors and expects to get funded very shortly. That's no surprise, considering that RealNetworks has a market capitalization north of $7 billion despite failing to turn a profit.
Wildform is far from a slam-dunk. Microsoft and RealNetworks will likely respond forcefully to this upstart. True, these rivals have proprietary formats for their software, while Wildform doesn't because of its reliance on Flash. Macromedia, which owns Flash, allows software developers to use Flash's programming code to develop custom applications. But that opens the door to someone replicating Wildform's technology. "The downside of using a generic platform like Flash is that it doesn't provide you with a technology buffer to keep others out of the market," explains Enderle.
OUT OF THE GARAGE.
Still, Wildform has filed for a slew of patents. Blank is confident that the technology is original and worthy of patent awards. But no one knows yet whether those applications will be approved.
Could this be the next technology coming out of the garage to upset the apple cart? Celeb Street's Getches thinks Wildform should be cause for worry at Real and Microsoft. In fact, Getches claims companies in Europe and China negotiating with Celeb Street have made the use of Wildform's technology a cornerstone of any agreement. Blanks says he has a half-dozen big companies that want to use Wildform and a waiting list of hundreds of Flash software developers begging for a preview of Wildform. With lots more converts like The New York Times, Wildform could become a wildfire.
Copyright 2000 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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