Bittorrent has just announced a new video store (coming up in the next few hours).
Absolutely normal way to go for the BitTorrent team after raising $30m in venture capital:
* either become a pure tech play, and into the technology license business (as DIVx has done for a long while, but I hear they are changing their strategy into a media play)
* become a service play, and offer a solid platform to all enabling media plays (wouldn't be a bad idea, as theri P2P technology brings in real benefits)
* become a media play and compete with the big guys. What the BT has for themselves is a very strong brand among the tech community (everyone known bittorrent, although not really for the service), and a rather large installed based of clients. Nevertheless they are competing here with many a deep pocket. I'm not sure it's the right way to go, but hey... I'm only giving them a few minutes of thought. As a parallel thought, Google relies on a very smart internal piece of software to manage their infrastrucutre on hundred of thousands of servers. No one knows what it looks like, hence can't be copied. BT has made the algorithm public... Hence doesn't benefit from the same market protection mechanism.
In this context it's amusing to read my post on the company back in November 2004. I've always thought they would be big, but have probably a better chance as a service play.
