Issue 168  29th June 2018

Blockchain-based video startup TaTaTu claims to have raised $575M in initial coin offering

Blockchain video platforms are popping up faster than moles in an arcade these days — and with good reason.

Blockchain video offers the tantalising prospect of extracting a monetary return on your own view-time investment. The thinking behind it being that platform users' spare compute resources can be leveraged to store, encode and encrypt video content, all managed in a distributed peer-to-peer blockchain.

This week SiliconANGLE reports that blockchain video start up TaTaTu Enterprises Ltd. claim to have raised $575 million via an initial coin offering — making it the third largest ICO in history.

At its base, it appears to be a combination of YouTube and Netflix in that it offers a platform for professional and amateur video content and sharing. But that’s where things start to seriously differ. The company is promoting itself as a place where users are finally “rewarded for their social entertainment activity in an open and decentralized way – earning tokens to watch movies and other content for free, and receive additional tokens from the movies and the content consumed by their friends.”

Blockchain video is an ambitious business model promising a return to creators, advertisers and consumers. Reaching that payday promised-land whilst also sustaining a viable business will be the challenge.

A most beautiful game - The World Cup gets advertising right

We're in the midst of World Cup fever, and this article by Google Ventures partner M.G. Siegler offers a great perspective on one of the reasons behind the growth of soccer in the U.S. While the practice of not interrupting a game with advertisements is commonplace across the rest of the world, for a U.S. sports audience it's actually a breath of fresh air. To watch 45 minutes of a game uninterrupted is, in Siegler's words, "simply a great product".

"The World Cup offers a glimpse into what the correct compromise should be. A delicate balance of gameplay and sponsorship. An actually captive audience able to be targeted with two things at once. And a happy audience whose time isn’t being wasted by superfluous “TV time outs” for commercial ad breaks."

Nat Geo tests Instagram's new long-form video hub

The big question on IGTV's success or failure is that of content. Who's going to be leading the way and attracting viewers? From their launch event, they're clearly investing in creators. But big brands, like National Geographic, are going to be key in attracting more users to start consuming content on the new app.

Fortunately, that's already happening.

Thrillist eyes weekend getaways to build its events business

Thrillist is an online publisher for people who love to eat, drink, and travel. They've been running events for a good few years now, and they're putting more focus into it going forward, specifically getting into travel. It says that 85% of its readers already take action and make purchases based on its recommendations. We think it makes a lot of sense. It helps them develop a deeper connection with their audience and a healthier, diversified revenue stream that's less reliant on ads.

“Our audience comes to us because they want advice,” said Ocean MacAdams, Thrillist’s president. “We see it [events] as a big chunk of revenue going forward.”