[jfc]

Nothing to do with an approach to diversity. Just another startup that didn't get traction in its desired vertical.

Look at Viki, a really popular VOD site, acquired by Rakuten for $200 million or so. Focuses heavily on South Korean, Chinese, and Japanese dramas. Segregation? More like making it easy for people who want to watch the shows to find and follow them regularly. Successful? Yep. This sort of media consumption is here now.

AfroStream did the same thing as Viki but instead of Asian countries used the African diaspora. Didn't follow them so don't know what the business reasons are for their failure, but relating it to diversity and segregation seems unwarranted.

It's more like they were targeting the long tail of media consumption, even if unsuccessfully.

[gumbo]

As an african from the diaspora I couldn't agree more. I think that one reason they did not succeed is that the people really sensible to the shows they had actually live in Africa instead of in the Diaspora. I know a lot of people in my country that do not watch anymore any movies from the US or from Bollywood. While my friends that are in the diaspora enjoy mainly watching popular shows or movies. The majority of people that did not go to school or cannot read or understand english don't relate to your typical american movie. It is just too far from their reality. We are all citizen of the world, but it is very difficult for the vast majority of africans to relate to movies about american's daily life or politics. Their reality is simply very different.

IMO Afrostream targeted the wrong audience. Now, one can argue that it would be a very hard sell $12 subscription to the audience that would have consumed it. That's just too much money for a lot of people.