Joshua Kinberg, the founder and CEO of FireAnt, was at the Video on the Net conference showing off their latest upgrade. He talked to Ed about that and the differences between FireAnt and their competitors.
Full Transcript:
Joshua Kinberg: My name is Joshua Kinberg. And I am the Founder, CEO of
FireAnt. We are about to release our new FireAnt MediaPlayer and Aggregator,
which you see here for windows. We have a windows of Mac version. We also just
launched our new website, which is a sort of TV guide for internet TV
channels. We now have almost 20,000 channels listed over a million episodes
aggregated, and we provide search and discovery interface for finding what you
want to subscribe to from these channels that are syndicated from all over the
web. That website, that guide is also inside a FireAnt. So it’s like our
itunes store sorts. And you can browse and discover channels. You can
subscribe to them, and you can download and play, just on any video format. We
support windows media, Quick time, flash, Real Player other codecs as well.
You can download and play, you can watch full screen. You can also view the
RSS information that goes with that video cast, and you can also go back to
the website within FireAnt, so we have an integrated web browser as well. So
here I am watching the make podcasts, and I can go right back to the make
site. So little different than itunes is that we actually drive traffic back
to your site from your podcasts. In addition to that we can take any video
format, and we can transcode it and sink to different portable devices. So
today we support AR Codes, PSP, ipods, various mobile phones. So I am going to
queue up rocket boom here, that I have sink to my mobile.
Ed Kohler: T-Mobile dash
Joshua Kinberg: Right, on my T-mobile Dash. I can watch rocket boom or
whatever channels I enjoy from internet TV.
Ed Kohler: So, content creators rather than having to create all the different
encodings. If they are pushing their stuff to FireAnt really just promoting
FireAnt, people will create their own PSP or itunes version if that’s the way
they want.
Joshua Kinberg: Right. Exactly. Sort of like itunes where if you — for
itunes you have to create the ipod compatible format, and then people can
subscribe an itunes sink to an ipod, with FireAnt you can do that except they
can sink to just about any device out there, where constantly adding more
devices, and working with different hardware manufacturers. So that’s
basically FireAnt in nutshell. Then we were doing business wise as we are
actually taking our whole platform and offering it as a white label service.
So if you are a media company for corporate communications, you can basically
get your own media player similar to itunes, but it’s your own media player.
With your own branding, your own corporate identity, your channels can be
administered through online web based interface. You can control what channels
are pre-loaded, and what categories they are in. And you can sink to various
portable devices. We can also include interstitial ads or banner ads. So you
can have your player sponsored and promoted through different advertising
programs, and gig rate usage stats, know who is watching the video and when
and how they are using this software.
Ed Kohler: So for example if I was in charge of communications internally like
Earnst and Young like some large company like that, I can create the custom
version of FireAnt. Communicate internally and you check how many people are
actually watching the videos will be putting out as well then, could be like
Earnst and Young TV access.
Joshua Kinberg: You can use on your corporate intranet. We can also do various
customization so that for instance if you wanted this for your corporate
communications, only this content can only plan this player. So it’s more
privatized in that way or private viewing experience. So there are
various custom ad ons we have on top of our core platform, and that’s fine.
Ed Kohler: Ok. So there are other video aggregaters out there. Probably the
biggest one today is still probably itunes, and to differentiate yourself with
them. Why would some one run both. I mean for the music they probably still
didn’t have itunes on there, so why should they use you for video?
Joshua Kinberg: Well, itunes is definitely a great application. I use it too
and it’s great if you have an ipod, but there are some key differences here.
One is well some technical differences. We support more formats in just quick
time, so just about any video format can play in FireAnt. We have an
integrated web browser, so it would actually drives traffic back to your
website, itunes actually doesn’t provide any link outs. So once your content
is in the itunes, your viewers are in the itunes, and they might be going in
to the itunes store, and downloading Lost, which is great, but you are losing
that brand engagement, that you would otherwise have with your own media
environment. And as I said we have the integrated browser, people can drive
back to your website. We support BitTorrent, so you can do BitTorrent
downloads and save on the economic, so the bandwidth costs distribute large HD
files or long format files. So there is some key differences with the itunes
also, transcoding and sinking to more than just the ipod. There is also other
devices. There is Sony PSPs, there is billions of mobile phones out there,
they can play video, there is orkut’s devices, there is creative zen devices
in Microsoft Zunes, and if you go to CES, there is 100s of portable video
devices. So locking at just to the ipod, that’s only one device. So those are
some of the key differences, additionally if you are a private label customer
of FireAnt, your own media player, your own branding, your own channels,
integrated ads, usage Sats. So it’s a really custom environment that keeps
viewers really engaged with your brand, and that’s something really important.
Ed Kohler: It seems like you started around the same time as Democracy player,
but you have taken your products in a certainly different direction. I think
they are more of an open source non-profit model. How would you explain
differences there?
Joshua Kinberg: We definitely know the guys of democracy pretty well. We did
start around the same time, actually we came up with our first version of
FireAnt on the Mac, they just on blog torrent, which was pretty cool way of
publishing torrents on your blog. So there are some similarities. There is
some technical differences because they are open source model, and there is
some business differences because they are non-profiting, we are a
corporation. So with just some different things that they can do, and some
different things that we can do, but we started with very similar concepts,
basically trying to create, distribute it internet TV. When we started these
projects pretty much in late 2004, when we started, came out the first version
January 2005. We were very embedded in the video blogging community, and it
really came through a grass roots effort, kind of working with our friends,
who are at the time, there were only 20 video bloggers in the world, that were
distributing with RSS. All 20 of them were in FireAnt. And therefore all our
buddies in New York, and a few other places. Though the spaces really growing
up since then, but I think we share some common philosophies with Democracy
essentially also that video on the net or video online video channels, and so
forth, they are going to exist all over the place. They are not just going to
be at YouTube, and they are not just going to be at Blip. They are going to be
all over the internet, and really FireAnt as an aggregator tool, can take
video from different places all around the internet, and put it together in
one place for one consistent viewing experience, no matter what format the
video is because even though there is a lot of Flash video now, there are
still a lot of other video formats out there.
So having something that plays anything, that connects to any device, we are
also working on connecting to set-top boxes, and X-box and Sony PS3, and other
devices. So really we see videos existing everywhere, and giving users of
choice to subscribe to what they want, and watch it on whatever environment
they want, whether it’s mobile, whether it’s on their set-top, whether it’s on
their PC.
Ed Kohler: So when you are not coding FireAnt, you actually have time to kick
back and watch some videos. How do you go about doing that? Do you watch on
your computer or you are connecting your computer on your flat screen TV like,
what’s your personal preference?
Joshua Kinberg: Personal preference. I actually watch when it comes to
internet video, I actually watch a lot of it on my PC on my laptop or my Mac,
I’m dual system. So, I do watch a lot of it online. I do because I am always
testing FireAnt, and I have all these different devices that I am working
with. So I am always doing compatibility testing with different devices, but
Yeah, I watch primarily on my computer I would say this time, but it’s really
nice to be able to take the cool stuff with me. The stuff I really like, I
want to show somebody and just flip out of PSP or an ipod or something I will
say, “Oh, this is a really cool video that I saw”.
Ed Kohler: Have you received any funding, how is the business, how far you are
working out?
Joshua Kinberg: We are still in early stage. We have six people. We are
located in San Francisco. Most of it’s been self-funded. We have had some
friends and family loans. We also had some additional bridge loans. We are
looking at raising an angel round, coming up very soon, increasing operations,
and expanding our business. We recently will be releasing very soon, our first
custom white label products with Dutch public television network called VPRO.
We are very excited about this. So VPRO will have their VPRO media player,
that has VPRO Dutch Public TV channels, and so forth and we are really excited
about that, and that will be launching very soon hopefully in April.
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