| 4 paragraphs: 1a) i dont know, but I'm sure some of these other points aren't right 1b) true, in the official product offering, but scaffolding was there 2a) false and true (thanks to burn rate and earlier assertion being false) 2b) true (price required plan not supported after purchase) and true 3a) false (multibitrate Windows Media was fantastic with a great video and audio codec, while Flash was plain bad till H.264), and in the years you say there wasn't demand, we built a similar business that routinely helped customers reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of viewers at a profit for them and a profit for us. 4a) YouTube (non-essential/comedy/ugc content being perfect for a ubiquitous animation player supporting a crappy codec via pseudostreaming) isn't Hulu, and isn't Broadcast.com. Hulu secured content users want to pay for. Yahoo needs users' attention. |
Windows Media was horrible from a end-user UX perspective (not well integrated into browsers, differences across OSes/browsers, version/codec issues) and required special server software.
RTMP streaming over Flash Communication Server was great on end-user UX but still required special server software.
Real Video/QuickTime sucked on both sides.
There's a world of difference between something being technically possible and being good enough to cause widespread adoption.
There were many streaming businesses that saw small scale success (like Broadcast.com) before Flash 7 was released. Just like there were some fairly successful business built selling Java games on flip phones.