2008 Olympics: The Watershed for Online Video?

Technology history is being made at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and Keynote has played a role in making it happen. With the unprecedented use of streaming video to inform the US and the world in real time, this year’s games are receiving coverage like never before, and those Web sites that invested upfront in load testing and monitoring are performing extraordinarily well given their aggressive complexity, and the extreme popularity of the Web 2.0 enabled sites.

NBC Olympics Site: 2200 Hours of Online Coverage

The Web-based Olympic coverage is expected to be a watershed for online content. NBC is covering the Olympics for the US market like never before. Earlier this year, NBC announced it would be using Microsoft’s Silverlight to provide complementary web coverage for its broadcast of the event. In all, the ambitious NBCOlympics.com site plans to deliver over the 17 days of the Olympics, 2,200 hours of live event video coverage and more than 3,000 hours of on-demand video content including full-event replays, highlights, features, interviews and encore packages. At peak times there may be more that 20 simultaneous live video streams. It goes without saying that all this content will continue to be available long after the Olympics closing ceremony is broadcast around the world.

The Convenience of the Web for Packaging News Content

NBC is not the only entity using the Web to provide streaming video focused on the Olympics. The NewsMarket is providing video clips, prepared by Olympics sponsors and organizations such as Adidas, Visa, Samsung, Volkswagen, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), free to news organizations throughout the world. The organization launched a Beijing 2008 channel in April and has supplied material for more than 350 news organizations as of July. Both content and demand were expected to grow exponentially as the Olympics approached, and then as it played out.

In an article by Bill Greenwood datelined July 24 on streamingmedia.com, he quotes NewsMarket president, CEO, and co-founder Shoba Purushothaman as saying, “There’s a lot riding in the video world around these Olympics,” she said. “The power of video, I think, is really going to come into its own after this Olympics. As a business model, I think we will be taking one giant step forward.”

Worldwide Coverage Available for the First time

In addition to the United States and other major markets, as reported on the Official Olympic Website, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has an agreement with YouTube to broadcast a selection of clips from the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in 77 regions across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The Video on Demand clips will be accessible via the YouTube channel only where digital VOD rights have not been sold or have been acquired on a non-exclusive basis.

This is the first time that digital media coverage has been freely available across the world, provided either by rights-holding broadcasters or via the IOC’s Channel.

Web-enabled Paradigm Shift

Web-based streaming media has enabled Olympics coverage that is a far cry from that of only a few years ago when coverage was limited to an hour or so of edited replays of US athletes during evening Prime Time. With the ambitious NBC Olympics site, US audiences are enjoying beginning-to-end coverage of their favorite sports competitions, not just the finals. In fact, NBC is providing online video of 25 sports that will not even be included in broadcast coverage.

For an entirely new Olympics experience, NBC is utilizing Web 2.0 technology to create a streaming video fest that includes viewing multiple video streams simultaneously, pausing events, and sharing streams with friends.

This massive undertaking is the result of more than 18 months of planning, and an intensive push with Microsoft that began in early 2008. Rich Internet content that takes advantage of Web 2.0 technology is providing high quality streaming video and interactive features that have never before been available.

Testing and Monitoring for Success

It goes without saying that performance testing and monitoring have played significant roles in getting NBCOlympics.com ready for prime time – and in keeping it performing at peak capacity as the site has been bombarded by avid Olympics fans. Microsoft, a partner in the NBCOlympics.com site, has been using LoadPro and Keynote’s massive infrastructure to test the specialty site to ensure its readiness for the Olympic-sized load. During the games, Microsoft will use Streaming Perspective to monitor the delivered quality of the streaming video content. Overall, Keynote’s worldwide monitoring capability has been called into play and, during the Olympics; we are monitoring Web performance and/or streaming quality at 15 global Web sites, 46 European Web sites, 5 US Mobile sites and 13 US Web sites, measuring both Performance (Average download time in seconds) and Availability (Average availability).

Medalists in Olympic Web Performance Monitoring

To accurately reflect the digital video rights set by the IOC, Keynote is monitoring US Olympic sites from our US agents, and monitoring international Web sites from our global infrastructure.

The statistical averages are:

Keynote generally expects to see availability at the 99.5% level, and the availability for these sites is more likely explained by the popularity of the event with slight variation for unforeseen technology issues.

As of Aug. 12, the top Web sites covering the Olympics were:

There are several sites that are implementing only a few of the available new technologies, and have express timing. Other rich internet sites like ESPN and FOX Sports have a history with rich interactive sites, and are ready for the onslaught with excellent performance. However, the Beijing games have generated highly aggressive specialty Web sites, based on streaming video and other Web 2.0 components. The most aggressive web sites for Olympics coverage fared as follows:

NBC is definitely seeing the impact of large users going online to download the streaming videos, get updates, check schedules, etc. They are doing very well but during peak hours, the performance does slow a bit. The same is true for the main Beijing 2008 Olympics site, from the global perspective. Generally speaking, most of the sites planned ahead and are performing well; however, as you can see through the averages, aggregated from 8/7/2008 to last night, some have not. Keynote will continue to monitor the Olympic sites past the Closing Ceremonies, and will be covering trends and providing analysis in the next issue of the Keynote Connection.

Mossberg Says Web is Becoming a Video Medium

Walt Mossberg, technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, made it clear that he saw an evolution of the Web from merely a print competitor (i.e. newspapers and magazines) into a video delivery medium. Speaking at Beet.TV’s first executive summit, which was held at the Embassy of Finland in Washington, DC, earlier this year, Mossberg foresaw the day when the hit “TV show” would be Web-based. The Olympics coverage this year dramatically blurred the lines between TV and Web, and the world is not ever likely to be the same.

Sizzle and the Bottom Line: How Do You Know You Have What It Takes?

If a Web site doesn’t deliver what the end user needs when he or she needs it, there’s a dozen – or a hundred – more queued up to provide a similar service. Today’s Internet user is looking to make a purchase, conduct business, and get information now, not five seconds from now and certainly not ten. Performance is a critical Web site success driver with real bottom-line ramifications. An accurate, ongoing perspective on site performance is key to creating an experience that will satisfy users. Keynote provides insight into creating a high-performance process to monitor web performance.

EMA Impact Analysis calls KITE Catalyst for QoE Unified Frame of Reference

EMA calls Keynote’s Keynote Internet Testing Environment (KITE) 2.0 “a unique capability that truly takes QoE-related testing and triage into geographically global terrain. . . . Given the variety of roles and tests it can support, KITE can also serve as a catalyst for more effective communication in managing the lifecycle requirements of advanced Web applications by providing common points of reference to support distinctive functional experts.”

Web 2.0 and the Mobile Juggernaut

ITPro’s Asavin Wattanajantra interviewed Keynote chief executive Umang Gupta in July and got his take on the most important trends in the Internet world – Web 2.0 and the mobile juggernaut.

Keynote Highlights KITE at Web 2.0 Expo NYC: Get a Free Expo Pass

Sept: 16-19, Web 2.0 Expo, New York, NY. This is the inaugural Web 2.0 Expo in New York and Keynote will be highlighting KITE 2.0! Web 2.0 Expo is for the builders of the next generation web: designers, developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, business strategists, and venture capitalists, people who have experiences to share and a passion for learning – the hot new thing, lessons from failures, innovations and inspirations, and the practical applications of all of the above. See Keynote in booth 1317. Use the code webny08com when you register and get $100 off the conference or a free expo pass.