Lycos as a VOD player? Who Knew?

Remember Lycos? Of course you do. Remember when you last used the site? Of course you don't. Perhaps that's exactly why the company's taking the site in a new direction: video on demand (VOD) rentals.

Started as a Carnegie Mellon University research project in 1994, Lycos was one of the first web search engines. By 1999 it was one of the most visited sites in the world. Then Yahoo and Google happened. While it still maintains respectable traffic worldwide, Lycos, now owned by Daum Communications, the second largest portal in Korea, is hardly more than an after-thought in the "Web 2.0" world.

In 2005 the company decided to shift its strategy away from search to online communities and broadband entertainment. This transition is continuing with the launch of Lycos Cinema.

An online video on demand service, Lycos offers both free and premium content. The free content is ad-supported, while the premium content takes a new approach: fees based on the number of "seats," that is how many people you want to watch the film with. Here is a sample clip from the "Little Shop of Horrors..."





That's the key component Lycos Cinema feels will set itself apart from the competition: social interaction. When you load up a movie, a chat room appears on the left hand side. Here, you can invite and interact with friends about the content you're all watching. It's a cute idea, at least in theory.

In reality there are problems:

First, the content is awful. It's not that I haven't heard of all of the films (only most of them), it's that there's no way I would pay to watch most of them.

Second, Lycos Cinema faces some stiff competition. In the growing field of VOD you have Apple's iTunes movie rentals, Amazon's Unbox rentals and Netflix's Watch-It-Now, among others. All of them offer much better content at similar prices with a much better experience. Even the free stuff on Lycos can't begin to compare with what the NBC and Fox-backed online video site Hulu offers.

The third problem, unfortunately, is that the site throws errors left and right. About half of the time most pages didn't load at all and instead spat out error code. Even if you wanted to rent a movie, you might not be able to -- it's a total crap shoot.

If you are able to get to the featured rentals promo page, you'll notice a top section that looks quite a bit like iTunes movie rentals' CoverFlow view. It's really kind of pathetic.

Lycos sold to Spain's Terra Networks in 2000 for $5.4 billion. It was resold in 2004 to the aforementioned Daum Communications Corp. for $95.4 million. At that rate it's due for another sale this year, priced down even more. Webcast anyone?

Cybercast credit: Lycos Video

Akimbo's Latest Internet VOD Solution

Akimbo, a Silicon Valley company that was first in Internet video delivery is back, this time with a complete Internet Video On Demand (VOD) solution for content providers’ own websites.



Akimbo supports multiple business models including ad-supported, transactional, subscription, download-to-own, download-to-burn, pay-per-minute, gift cards, account credits and more.

According to Thomas Frank its president, “One of the most important pieces missing in the stampede to the Internet video market has been an easy solution for content owners to control the marketing and sale of their own video assets, Until now, content owners have been forced to use incomplete solutions or rely entirely on distribution deals to publish professional content. We have engineered a solution that allows content owners to take control of their own destiny without incurring costly infrastructure expenses or unreasonable revenue splits with third parties.”

The first company to utilize Akimbo's solution is MavTV, a multi-platform programming venture targeting male viewers. Check it out and tell me what you think. Or upload your own video. They are always looking for video clips filled with humor and craziness, or even those that are just plain hard-core. (Their definition.)

Submitting your video (or videos) is super easy and fast. Simply follow the step-by-step instructions you'll be rolling like a video superstar. Keep in mind, they only accept the following file formats: .wmv, .asf, .asx, .mpg, .mpeg, .mov, .divx, and don’t send files larger than 5 MB.