Tuesday 3 June 2008

Veoh's got guts

...to show me this screen:


Apparently, Veoh has ended service in my country (and about 165+ others) due to a low concentration of users (!?). These users are now crying out - witness the 500+ posts on the Veoh forum thread.

Who gets blocked? Most of the world including populous places (Malaysia, Brazil), influential places (current holder of rotating EU presidency Slovenia) and rich places (Luxembourg, United Arab Emirates).

Users reported they received no advance warning and were unable to move their videos hosted at Veoh elsewhere.

Since Veoh seem to maintain official silence about the move beyond repeating the low concentration of users non-explanation we can only speculate. Are we talking bandwith problems? Copyright issues (non-US distribution of content Veoh has from CBS, Viacom's MTV Networks, FEARNet, Billboard, Ford Models, NCAA Football, US Weekly, TV Guide according to Wikipedia)? Something else?

Whatever it is it seems like a desperate move. Obviously it is going to hurt and anger many innocent users - including users from the "chosen" 33 countries traveling abroad and living abroad. This undoubtedly carries a cost in loyalty and the people who view and post videos on Veoh do have a choice when it comes to sharing videos.

I wouldn't be all that surprised to see Veoh go down completely if they are doing badly enough to mishandle this sensitive issue (via Newteevee).

2 comments:

lidija said...

Errrr.... I have never heard of Veoh till now. What do you go there for?

Unknown said...

It's a video sharing site, like YouTube. You can upload videos and also watch other people's (corporations') content.