Thoughts on Maven Networks

It's exciting to finally see Maven Networks launch.  Here are a few thoughts on what Maven is about and why it's important stuff.

Last year I had a chance to spend a little time with Maven founders Hilmi Ozguc, Bill Wittenberg, and Nathan Abrhamson, where we exchanged views of where broadband was taking us, and the opportunities for video-centric applications that were emerging because of it.  I was struck by how smart the team was, but had little idea of what they were actually building (it was very steath, and I was still at Macromedia).

In February when I joined General Catalyst, I was excited by the prospect of working with the Maven team on what was surely an interesting project to exploit video and broadband.  By way of background, and full disclosure, Maven is a venture investment of ours (General Catalyst), and I'm involved at a board and advisory level with the company. 

Maven Networks' product is a timely, contemporary fusion of technology and ideas from Hilmi and Bill's prior startups:  Narrative Communications Corp. and Art Technology Group (ATG), where they helped pioneer rich media marketing and advertising on the one hand, and dynamic, personalized, measured content and applications on the other.  But Maven delivers this with a deep focus on full-screen, DVD-quality video experiences delivered over the Net.

I don't want to review Maven's technology and feature set here (you can do that on their website), but instead just give a few highlights of what's unique and interesting about Maven:

• Video-centric UI.  Maven has inversed our current experience of video on the Internet -- rather than a postage stamp in a webpage, it's a video screen with web element overlays.  Video has deep, immersive value and emotional impact, and until now, it's been difficult to experience that online. 
• Desktop Distribution.  Maven accomplishes this high-quality video expereince in a very simple way -- their desktop client plays back downloaded, DVD-quality video files.  A download model for video is the only way to get the quality that people desire.  Behind the scenes, the Maven Media Server provides tools for content producers to schedule, provision and deliver their programs intelligently to subscriber's clients.
• Content Delivery Intelligence.  The Maven client/server combo takes advantage of advanced networking technologies to achieve very low cost download, distribution and re-distribution of programs through intelligent download management, multi-cast networking, and peer-to-peer networking.  The important thing here is that video providers can distribute higher-quality video at something like up to a 10th of the cost of streaming.
• Content Management.  The metaphor here is one of consumers who receive opt-in programming, and producers who create video-centric programs for delivery to those consumers.  Behind all of this is a reasonable content management system focused on video channels and assets.
• Open Standards and Formats.  The environment is really just an end-to-end application built on top of broadly adopted technologies.  The client is a desktop-container for IE/DHTML, Flash and Windows/Real Media, with built-in download management, a JavaScript-based API.  The server and services are J2EE and Web Services based.

Creating a "Maven Channel" is really just building a micro-website/application that contains Flash, JavaScript, and Windows/Real Video, and is packaged and delivered out to viewers intelligently, with secure controls and detailed metrics and analytics.

While there is an initial focus for Maven on media companies with video products (e.g. hollywood, TV/cable channels) and consumer companies who market using video (e.g. TV advertisers), the product has been designed as a general purpose application for anyone who has a video-centric product and who want to take advantage of the mass of broadband, always-on multimedia PCs. 

I predict that once users experience regular, delivered DVD-quality video on their Internet PC, they'll never go back to the limited experience provided by streaming.  It should be fun to see what people come up with!