Microsoft Silverlights the Olympic Torch
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Microsoft's NBC deal for the 2008 Olympics online coverage is bigger than the summer games. The deal will drive Silverlight adoption and foreshadows the technology's broader broadcast role. |
Silverlight, even when called Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere, was labeled by some folks as a Flash killer. That's a cute moniker, but it's meaningless without content or developer support. Any new technology confronts a chicken-and-egg scenario of third-party support versus customer adoption.
Problem is this: A technology like Silverlight needs developer and content provider support to succeed. But third parties typically won't support something new until the technology reaches a certain critical mass of adoption. But customer adoption won't come without supporting applications, or in the case of Silverlight, content.
Microsoft has been working to drive Silverlight adoption through its own Web properties. But that's not enough. The 2008 Olympics is the big content kahuna for Silverlight. To view Microsoft's Olympic coverage, end users will need to download Silverlight. Increased Silverlight adoption can help Microsoft woo more content providers to the technology.
But the 2008 Olympics' benefits are much bigger than Silverlight adoption. Microsoft can use its MSN Olympics site as a showcase for Silverlight capabilities and what other content providers could do with the content. Already, Microsoft plans to offer on-demand programming and in essence mashups of different sporting events. The Olympics showcase could have much broader influence than even end user Silverlight adoption.
Make no mistake, Silverlight is all about broadcast video across multiple delivery channels. In March 2006, SMPTE (Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers) ratified the VC-1 specification, which comes from the Windows Media Video 9 codec. VC-1 essentially is a broadcast version of Windows Media Video.
Silverlight depends on WMV, including VC-1, for video content delivery. Microsoft makes it remarkably easy for developers to take WMV formats into Silverlight. Microsoft can go to content producers and suggest that they create video in a single format, VC-1, for any kind of broadcast content medium, whether television, Web or portable devices like cell phones. Microsoft provides a standards-approved format and the tools to make good use of it across many delivery platforms, including Windows.
As recently as four years ago, many Web sites supported one of two video formats—or both: Real Video and Windows Media Video. Flash Video essentially ended the format war, usurping WMV. Silverlight marks WMV's return, but for delivery across more places than just the Web.
MSN's Live Earth concert site is the model for Microsoft's Olympic 2008 Web site. Both are live events for which people would want to access content in real time and on-demand and mashed up to their interests. NBC typically doesn't offer 24/7 Olympic coverage, instead broadcasting popular events during U.S. prime time. The question: Will Microsoft make Olympic events available as they happen?
The Olympic Web site will be an opportunity for Microsoft to showcase its advertising technologies and to which to sell banner ads or contextual search keywords. So, the Olympic showcase will be much broader than Silverlight.
Something to watch for: The Olympics would be an enormous opportunity for Microsoft to extend Windows Live. There are some things people really want to share, and sporting events fall into the category. Microsoft should offer Live integration—Messenger and Spaces, at the least—from the Olympics coverage Web site. Even better: Offer Windows Live Mobile Olympic video coverage and mobile text-message alerts about events.
Related Posts:
- Bill Gates Last Day at Microsoft, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 7, 2008
- Windows Vista's 100 Million, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 6, 2008
- Gates and the New User Face, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 6, 2008
- Who's the Jackass?, Microsoft Watch, Dec. 14, 2007
- Novell Turns on the Silverlight, Microsoft Watch, Sept. 5, 2007
- Windows Live Earth, Microsoft Watch, July 9, 2007
- Which Comes First, Software or Services?, Microsoft Watch, July 9, 2007
- One Redmond Way | Razorfish, Microsoft Watch, May 21, 2007
- When Is 'Open' More Open for Microsoft?, Microsoft Watch, May 17, 2007
- Microsoft MIXes It Up, Microsoft Watch, April 30, 2007
- Silverlight: What's In a Name?, Microsoft Watch, April 16, 2007
Comments (7)
These are not coincidences
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_V/threadview?m=tm&bn=33693&tid=1366&mid=1397&tof=3&rt=1&frt=1&off=1
Posted by P-diddy | January 7, 2008 1:09 PM
@chips:
As you mentioned in a post to a previous article, yes, Silverlight is available on Linux/Ubuntu. Sort-of, anyway, as Moonlight on Mono with Swiftweasel and a whole lot of tweaking and fiddling and such.
But Microsoft's efforts to use its monopoly to ram its Silverlight down the throats of anyone who wants to see the Olympics streams on their PCs may just bring the Moonlight+Mono combination to a much smoother and more easily installed and configured state. Necessity being the mother of invention and all that.
Posted by Brian | January 7, 2008 5:26 PM
AOL talking about AIR at CES...
... and Microsoft talking yada yada yada.
Why isn't Microsoft showing off Silverlight applications? Oh. I remember now. Because Silverlight 1.0 is only a video player. It can't build applications. But Adobe Apollo can... even while it's in Beta form.
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS105884+07-Jan-2008+BW20080107
AOL Accelerates Consumer Adoption of Personal Media Products with Enhancements to...
Mon Jan 7, 2008 8:00am EST
AOL Accelerates Consumer Adoption of Personal Media Products with Enhancements to BlueString and New Series of Embedded Applications Enable BlueString Functionality Across the Internet
Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR (Apollo) Implemented to Deliver Web-Enabled Applications on the Desktop
Both are being built with Adobe(r) Flex(tm) and Adobe AIR(tm), Adobe's rich Internet application (RIA) technologies (www.adobe.com/go/ria), which combine the reach of the Web with the richness and ease of use of desktop applications into AOL's Web-based products.
Posted by I-Man | January 7, 2008 11:07 PM
I can't stand Flash because of the jumping, swirling, hopping twirling animated ads.
Now, we have Silverlight. Jumping, swirling, gaudy animations. And oh, yes, buried somewhere within that visual chaos is the video I wanted to watch.
Silverlight is nothing more than a irritating banner ad for Microsoft's weakly implemented "Live" products.
And you tech reporters out there...where are your insults that should be tossed at this bow-wow? Did you use them all up for Vista, or have you just lost your edge?
Yuk!
Posted by mgo | January 8, 2008 11:14 AM
with this kind of news, I'm amazed is not monday. oh, wait... the news IS from monday. well, that explains. but, on the other hand, as long as it plays on any *cough*microsoft*cough* OS and *cough*microsoft*cough* browser, is ok... </sarcasm>.
Posted by ranjix | January 9, 2008 11:20 AM
This is news?
Of course NBC is going to adopt Silverlight; they have an existing collaborative relationship with Redmond — M$NBC. This is not news; this is free(?) publicity.
Posted by Herman I May | January 10, 2008 3:48 PM
There's going to be an uproar if any of that Olympic content isn't cross-platform.
Posted by Kev Orng | January 17, 2008 9:47 PM