Questions 32 public, 8 deleted

1. 

   Posted by:

   Stronger03 (+4)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:52:00 GMT

   What is your BIN?

2. 

   Posted by:

   Buddhalab (+6)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:42:22 GMT

   What is BIN?

3. 

   Posted by:

   pvakr (-9)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:56:50 GMT

   BIN?

4. 

   Posted by:

   Buddhalab (+6)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:08:47 GMT

   Do the comments keep repeating everytime someone plays the video? What if there are millions of comments? How do they all get shown during a video?

5. 

   Posted by:

   Jalek (+4)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:49:14 GMT

   It'll probably need an account system like the Japanese version as well to have some sort of control over users.

6. 

   Posted by:

   bamzuku (+3)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:12:11 GMT

   Below link to nico nico douga alexa ratings. Currently #105 on Alexa worldwide but it is only available in Japanese -there is no english version. The difficulties in replicating have been in creating the real time commenting technology that exists @ nicovideo.jp (and BamZuku.com).

   http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/nicovideo.jp

7. 

   Posted by:

   bamzuku (+3)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:20:54 GMT

   @ Jalek - The japanese version is different in 3 ways -

   #1 - They require everyone to register prior to commenting. (Bamzuku currently is setup to not require registration but is configurable)
   #2 - The player is not embeddable on other websites (this allows users on other websites to comment to each other in real time).

   (what the above means is that if a bamzuku video is embedded on 5 different myspace profiles, emailed to 600 people, and posted on 15 different blogs,
   any comment posted by a user into the player from any of the above 620 locations will be visible instantly to all of the users at all 620 locations.)

   #3 - It is not compatible with YouTube. (BamZuku is 100% compatible with the YouTube APIs)

   Requiring users to register is a good way to stop spam but slows down the viral growth. The code for a registration system exists but has been turned off to promote rapid early growth. A spam system is also in place that leverages Flash Cookies (much more difficult to get around then browser cookies), allowing a sysadmin to delete large amounts of messages from a single provider at any one time.

8. 

   Posted by:

   pokerdave (+5)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:57:51 GMT

   What payment methods are you accepting?

9. 

   Posted by:

   stanto (+5)

   Date:

   Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:14:37 GMT

   Hello,
   Interesting work and auction.

   My first question is why did you mention "proprietary" in the title?

   Do you have a patent for it? Does the japanese company have a patent ?

   Please expand a bit on the above as he technology is the only thing of value here (no natural traffic or history) so it has to be protected somehow.
   If indeed it catches up as mentioned in the western culture - nothing can stop YouTube (= google) to remove a tiny stack of the millions, pay their smart developers for a month and replicate, only more improved and much better.

   Good work though !

   Thanks
   -S

10. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:27:24 GMT

    @poker dave - bank/wire transfer

11. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:33:26 GMT

    @stanto -

    I have not filed for a patent & the japanese company does not have a patent in the US. Patenting the technology was part of the plan prior to the site going live on the internet but the recent need to sell will require the purchaser to explore potential patent options.

    The technology to overlay text/pictures on videos is not new - what makes Bamzuku's video viewing experience proprietary is the fact that the comments are stored in a central server and distributed out to all users regardless of where the video is embedded on the web. This doesn't exist anywhere (not even at the japanese site - their videos are not embeddable).

12. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:16:21 GMT

    ****DEMO****

    In order to see how the comments are viewable wherever the video is played go to this video on Bamzuku:

    http://www.bamzuku.com/video.php?movieid=Vdix-2XaZFY

    Post a few comments, then go to this MySpace Profile

    http://www.myspace.com/tornadoslims

    And play the video to see the distributed comment technology in action.

13. 

    Posted by:

    Graham97 (+4)

    Date:

    Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:54:44 GMT

    The site is great. However at the BIN there is way too much risk that youtube could pull the plug on you for little or no reason. The japanese site is not using youtube, so the only problem they have to worry about will be copywrite infringements.

    I'm also not 100% sure that you're not breaking their terms and conditions.

14. 

    Posted by:

    Graham97 (+4)

    Date:

    Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:38:10 GMT

    Also, I take it ownership of the scripts is included and that no other copies have been or will be sold, either as stand alones or under other urls.

15. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:12:57 GMT

    @Graham -

    Re: Access to YouTube -

    First regarding terms and conditions - the publically available YouTube chromeless API is being used to render the video in the BamZuku player. (http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/chromeless_player_reference.html) All access is done through the API and there are no terms and conditions issues (http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/terms.html).

    YouTube has created this chromeless api SPECIFICALLY to allow people to create their own video players. BamZuku is using the API for the exact reason YouTube created it. Other companies currently using the same APIs to create their own video players are Slide, Gaia, and Friendser. (http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/casestudies/index.html)

    Finally - the value of the BamZuku system is not directly in the rendering of the video. The technology is modular and can be plugged into any video player that allows access to timestamp information. It would require the changing of 75 lines of code to plug the system into the existing flash video player or an open source player like FlowPlayer. YouTube is being used not for the video playing technology but because it is cheaper to allow them to stream the videos.

    -----------

    Re: the source code - The source for all aspects of the PHP and Flash and all rights regarding it are for sale. The buyer owns it and it would be illegal for me to distribute it elsewhere.

16. 

    Posted by:

    semadvance (+3)

    Date:

    Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:15:42 GMT

    Hi

    Great site.

    Is it possible to limit the ability to add comments live (7 second delay or such) to stop spam / porn / and earn extra revenues charging access?

17. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:00:29 GMT

    @semadvance - yes it is possible/configurable.

18. 

    Posted by:

    q-vi (+1)

    Date:

    Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:50:28 GMT

    Not bad, your site!

    BUT:
    No doubt that YouTube will add the same live comment funtions to their site if bamzuku.com would gain popularity!

    So it would be very high risk and not worth to spend any money to buy bamzuku.com, don´t you think so?

19. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:22:01 GMT

    @g-vi:

    Hi - I respectfully disagree, and here is why:

    YouTube serves content to over 100+ Million users per month. Their user base is distributed over 30 distinct countries. It is one of the golden gems in Google's war chest.

    Their product roadmap is set over 12 months in advance, and currently is focused primarily on driving video adoption over mobile (especially the android platform). These are strategic decisions that are made at very high levels in the organization and driven by the potential for long term revenue growth.

    YouTube is not going to make a change in their strategic product roadmap based on the viral adoption of a website that is making anything less then $25 Million a year in revenue. Any change to the YouTube platform affects over 100 Million people, these decisions are not made without looking at the long term economic impact. It is impossible to change a single pixel on the YouTube.com domain name without having a meeting with at least 10 stakeholders.

    If I believed that BamZuku could grow large enough in the next year or two to force YouTube to make strategic changes to their platform I would turn down the capital investment in my other project that is forcing me to sell. I definitely would not be selling it on sitepoint.com.

    That being said, there is a significant amount of money to be made long before the site is even a blip on YouTube's radar. If the buyer of BamZuku is able to generate enough revenue (25M + )to make YouTube consider making changes to their product roadmap then I made a huge mistake in selling this thing.

20. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:18:38 GMT

    About the comments:

    The system is configurable. What you are seeing now is as follows -

    Everytime anyone posts a comment to a video (whether it be on bamzuku.com or on any site that has embedded that particular video), the comment is given a timestamp and will be shown at that exact timestamp every time the video plays.

    It is configurable to allow comments to age out. As a video becomes more popular, the system can automatically determine that there are too many comments and start removing them. For a highly popular video, for example, comments can be set to only last for one minute after they are posted.

    Thanks!

21. 

    Posted by:

    kenting (+6)

    Date:

    Sun, 05 Oct 2008 06:51:17 GMT

    Sorry I sent you a few questions but missed this important one. From this article it looks like your closest western competitor would be www.viddler.com and Google/ youtube already kinda has the technology to embed text on their videos although this must be done by the person that uploads the video rather then the person that comments. see:

    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/before_youtube_annotations_nico_nico_douga.php

    Can your software do something similar for the person that uploads the video and can it select specific locations on the screen to put text boxes like the youtube version?

22. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Sun, 05 Oct 2008 20:08:55 GMT

    I couple good questions from someone that I thought I would post for everyone -

    I am interested in bidding but have a few questions:

    1) From the sounds of things and your flow diagram all the videos on the site are not sitting on your server and are embedded. Is this correct?

    Correct. None of the videos are hosted on BamZuku.com The point of this is to reduce month over month operating costs.

    2) Will the technology work on videos that are actually being hosted without any tweaking?

    The technology would require a couple smalls tweaks to work on videos that are hosted. Nothing too difficult.

    3) Will you sign a non-compete for 3 years preventing you starting a business in the tube space.

    I'll sign a non-compete for 3 years preventing me from starting a video business with real time embedded video commenting technology. If I have another completely unrelated idea that involves videos a year from now I don't want to be limited.

    4) Apart from text on the flash player is it possible to have graphics running across the screen? eg: [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuNWPgiBozg[/url]

    This is not currently possible but the system is very extensible so it could be added with a couple lines of actionscript.

    5) Where are your developers located would the main developer be interested in on going consulting?

    Developers in Los Angeles - main developer could stay on for about 3 months consulting.

    6) You said that you were going to go away. Will you be contactable after the one month of free support?

    I'll be available for a month to help the winner with any questions.

    7) Is the domain name Bamzuku.com included in the sale. Maybe it was an oversight but this was not in the list of items that form part of this sale.

    Yes it is included - this was an oversite.

    8) How much are hosting fees each month, how much bandwidth and which company is your host.

    right now its about $50 - one server.

    9) There are a few ads on your site. How much to you roughly make a day from those ads.

    The site went live on the internet a few weeks ago and I haven't done any marketing at all. Traffic is still low so I'm not making a lot of money yet but the placements are working great - my effective CPM is approaching $1.

23. 

    Posted by:

    KoveN (+4)

    Date:

    Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:11:37 GMT

    According to this information :
    http://youtube.com/t/annotations_about
    It seems to be obvious that Youtube will code soon their own system of annotations with the possibility for the viewer to cut off these annotations (to read the video normally)even if at this moment it's only the uploader who can do it.
    It will be nothing to add for them.
    But in my point of view this is not so bad and could even bring value of your site if YouTube&Co begin to allow their users to post real time comments if your site can do two important things :
    1)still search a proper video (i mean without comments hoping Youtube wont block this)
    2)search and allow comments from all the main videos sites like Youtube of course but also DailyMotion, Metacafé etc ...

    Your answers ?

24. 

    Posted by:

    bamzuku (+3)

    Date:

    Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:57:57 GMT

    Hi KoveN -

    #1 - The video search is robust - it searches BamZuku videos first and then falls back on the public YouTube Search API. It currently doesn't search comments, although this could be added relatively easily.

    #2 - All the bamzuku commenting technology needs is a video player with an Actionscript API. Most open source video players on the web support this. Currently Dailymotion and Metacafe do not support an actionscript api, however.