Babelgum was a free-to-view

Internet television Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as films and television show, television series, Streaming media, streamed over the Internet. Standing in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by Broadc ...

platform supported by

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

. The project was set up in 2005 by Italian media and telecommunications entrepreneur

Silvio Scaglia Silvio Scaglia (born 14 October 1958) is a Swiss-born media and technological entrepreneur. Scaglia is the founder of Fastweb (telecommunications company), Fastweb, an Italian telecommunications company. Scaglia is the co-owner of Freedom Holdin ...

(one of the founders of Italian TelCo Fastweb) and scientist Erik Lumer, with the aim of developing interactive software for distributing TV shows and other forms of video over the Internet.Babelgum profile
Babelgum uses

streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

TV technology to provide free, on-demand TV content to end users. The company aims to combine the “immersive viewing experience” and visual quality of traditional television with the features made possible by the internet. The beta version of the service was presented on 7 March 2007. On September 1, 2007, Babelgum launched the Babelgum Online Film Festival, the first global online film festival dedicated to independent film. Viewers voted for the shortlists while a professional jury, chaired by Spike Lee, selected the winners.Babelgum's Contrarian Approach to Web TV
In October 2008, the company launched the Babelgum Music Video Awards, another online competition with audience voting, focusing solely on

music video A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to ...

s from unsigned artists. The contest was run in partnership with Music Nation, and the jury included French director

Michel Gondry Michel Gondry (; born 8 May 1963) is a French filmmaker and producer noted for his inventive visual style and distinctive manipulation of mise en scène. Along with Charlie Kaufman, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as one o ...

. In December 2008, the company launched Babelgum Mobile, a new mobile application bringing "web-tailored video content" to

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s such as the iPhone via 3G and

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

. In September 2009, the company launched the Babelgum Metropolis Art Prize, an online prize for the best Art videos. The winning videos were shown on jumbo monitors in

Times Square Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and Neighborhoods in New York City, neighborhood in the Midtown Manhattan section of New York City. It is formed by the junction of Broadway (Manhattan), ...

, NY on Dec 17th, 2009. The jury was chaired by actor/artist Isabella

Rossellini Rossellini is a common Italian surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Roberto Rossellini, Italian film director ** Renzo Rossellini, producer, son of Roberto ** Isabella Rossellini, actress, daughter of Roberto *** Elettra Rossellini ...

and included Howard Halle, art critic at

Time Out NY ''Time Out'' is a global magazine published by Time Out Group. ''Time Out'' started as a London-only publication in 1968 and has expanded its editorial recommendations to 333 cities in 59 countries worldwide. In 2012, the London edition becam ...

, Cedar Lewisohn, curator at the

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

and Lee Wells from PAM and Scope Art Fair. In November 2009, it was reported that Babelgum was downsizing by closing its Nice office and Dublin HQ, and consolidating its operations across the remaining offices in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

and

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

Name

According to the company's website, Babelgum's goal is "to act as an international 'social glue'", bringing a vast range of content to a global audience of different nationalities, like a "modern-day

Tower of Babel The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis (chapter 11) meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shin ...

". The company's green bubble-shaped logo is therefore a

visual pun A visual pun is a pun involving an image or images (in addition to or instead of language), often based on a rebus. Visual puns in which the image is at odds with the inscription are common in cartoons such as '' Lost Consonants'' or '' The Fa ...

on the name as well as a reference to Babelgum's interest in ecological issues.

Content

Babelgum only airs professionally produced content, focusing on indie film and music, comedy, urban culture, nature and the environment, presented through the five channels Film, Music, Comedy, Metropolis and Our Earth. In addition to mainstream TV content, Babelgum offers niche programming such as independent and short films, aiming to "serve

the Long Tail In statistics and business, a long tail of some distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having many occurrences far from the "head" or central part of the distribution. The distribution could involve popularities, random n ...

of viewers' interests".Introducing Babelgum (Joost isn’t the only game in town) , last100
/ref> The platform also features branded channels set up through licensing agreements with content providers such as

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

, 3DD,

Shine Limited Shine TV is a British media production company and part of Banijay Entertainment with offices in London and Manchester. Shine was founded in March 2001 by Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch. The company was 80 ...

IMG img or IMG is an abbreviation for image. img or IMG may also refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics *IMG (file format), file that stores a complete and uncompressed copy of the contents of a storage device * IMG, a prefix for camera ima ...

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

Sony BMG Sony BMG Music Entertainment was an American record company owned as a 50–50 joint venture between Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann. The venture's successor, the revived Sony Music, is wholly owned by Sony, following their buyout o ...

Funny or Die Funny or Die, Inc. is a comedy video website and production company owned by Henry R. Muñoz III that was founded by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Mark Kvamme, and Chris Henchy in 2007. The website contained exclusive material from a regular staf ...

, Off The Fence,

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

, and

Lonely Planet Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books. History 20th century Lonely Planet was founded by married couple Maureen Wheeler, Maureen and Tony Wheeler. In 19 ...

. Babelgum also has partnerships with international film festivals such as the

Seattle International Film Festival The Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) is a film festival held annually in Seattle, Washington, United States, since 1976. It usually takes place in late May and/or early June. It is one of the largest festivals in the world, and feature ...

, DC Independent, Encounters and Rushes Soho Shorts. Users can rate the programmes they watch and log their favorites in the system. Content owners can upload single videos or entire content libraries through the Babelgum Video Publisher.

Social aspect

Users can embed and rate videos, post links on

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

MySpace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

Digg Digg (stylized in lowercase as digg) is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select articles specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral phenomenon, viral Internet iss ...

and other

social news A social news website is a website that features user-posted stories. Such stories are ranked based on popularity, as voted on by other users of the site or by website administrators. Users typically comment online on the news posts and these com ...

websites, and create playlists of favourite clips if logged in.

Babelgum Mobile

Babelgum Mobile is the company's mobile video application for smartphones (iPhone, Google Android, and some Nokia models). It operates via 3G and

networks and aims to offer "web-tailored programming" for smartphones, i.e. content edited into formats suitable for mobile viewing. Babelgum's CEO claims this makes it the “first independent online television company to cross over into full mobile internet”.

Technology

Babelgum had originally developed its own proprietary technology based on secure peer-to-peer streaming, along with a system for video compression using H.264 codec, and a video player to show the content. In March 2009, the company abandoned P2P in favour of Flash technology, so the videos now play directly within the browser window. Minimum requirements are Adobe Flash 9.0.115 or higher and bandwidth of at least 450 kbit/s.Babelgum

Financing and business model

Babelgum is an independent, privately-held company that is wholly owned and funded by

. The company has so far invested 50 million euros (of Scaglia's personal fortune) and is expected to invest between 35 and 60 million euros per annum in the period 2008–2010.

References

{{reflist

External links

Babelgum
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