IBM Watson Media (formerly Ustream and IBM Cloud Video) is an American virtual events platform company which is a division of IBM. Prior to IBM acquisition, it had more than 180 employees across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Budapest offices. Ustream had received $11.1 million in Series A funding for new product development from Doll Capital Management (DCM) and investors Labrador Ventures and Band of Angels. Since 2016, it has been a division of IBM. On April 1, 2018, two years after its purchase, Ustream changed its name to IBM Cloud Video to reflect its new ownership, but rapidly changed that name to IBM Watson Media to reflect the embedded artificial intelligence capabilities of IBM's Watson.

Origin

History

Ustream was born when the founders (John Ham,

Brad Hunstable Fred Bradley Hunstable (born 1978) is an American businessman and the co-founder and CEO of the electric motor company Linear Labs. Linear Labs was founded by Hunstable in 2014 with his father, Fred Hunstable. Brad is also the co-founder and fo ...

and Gyula Fehér) wanted a way for their friends in the US Army, who were deployed overseas in the

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, to be able to communicate with their families. A product like Ustream would provide them with a way to talk to all of their relatives at once when free time in the war zone was limited. WebWare
Merry Christmas, Mom: Ustream links soldiers with home
, December 14, 2007 Ustream was used by politicians such as

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

John Edwards Johnny Reid Edwards (born June 10, 1953) is an American lawyer and former politician who served as a U.S. senator from North Carolina. He was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2004 alongside John Kerry, losing to incumbents George ...

, to video game streamers, to artists such as

Kanye West Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer. Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...

Tori Amos Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. Having already begun composing instrumental pieces on piano, Amos won a full ...

and the

Plain White T's Plain White T's are an American rock band from Lombard, Illinois, formed in 1997 by high school friends Tom Higgenson, Dave Tirio, and Ken Fletcher, and joined a short time later by Steve Mast. The group had a mostly underground following in Ch ...

. Lifecasters such as

iJustine Justine Ezarik ( ; born March 20, 1984) is an American YouTuber. She is best known as iJustine, with over one billion views on her YouTube channel. She gained attention as a lifecaster who communicated directly with her millions of viewers on ...

and E-TARD The LifeCaster have also used Ustream. The technology community has also adopted Ustream to include Robert Scoble,

Leo Laporte Leo Laporte (; born November 29, 1956) is the host of ''The Tech Guy'' weekly radio show and a host on TWiT.tv, an Internet podcast network focusing on technology. He is also a former TechTV technology host (1998–2008) and a technology author. O ...

and

Chris Pirillo Chris Pirillo is an American entrepreneur and former television personality. He is the founder and former CEO of LockerGnome, Inc., a now-defunct network of blogs, web forums, mailing lists, and online communities which are now closed. He is b ...

Acquisition

Early investors included

DCM Ventures DCM (also known as DCM Ventures) is a venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley, Tokyo and Beijing. It has approximately $4.2 billion under management. DCM was the first Silicon Valley firm to invest in the early-stage technology sector in C ...

and

Softbank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the Vi ...

, the latter of which invested $20 million in 2010 with an option to invest additional capital. On January 21, 2016, IBM acquired Ustream for up to US$150 million. It was combined with Aspera, Clearleap, and

Cleversafe IBM Cloud Object Storage is a service offered by IBM for storing and accessing unstructured data. The object storage service can be deployed on-premise, as part of IBM Cloud Platform offerings, or in hybrid form. The offering can store any typ ...

to form IBM's Cloud Video BM Watson Mediaunit. IBM envisioned the use of its technology as part of an enterprise video offering.

Automatic content blocking

IBM Watson Media uses a copyright enforcement service provided by Vobile, which uses a proprietary

fingerprinting A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfac ...

system to automatically detect copyrighted content. This system has been known to generate false positives, blocking content that should fall under

fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...

, or which has been specifically licensed by the stream originator. In one such incident, the official livecast of the 2012

Hugo Award The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier ...

ceremony was terminated because it incorporated authorized clips of nominated television shows and movies, causing "a flood of livid Twitter messages". The following day, Ustream apologized for the incident and temporarily disabled automatic blocking while they adjusted the system to "better balance the needs of broadcasters, viewers, and copyright holders".

References

External links

* {{Internet streaming services 2016 mergers and acquisitions Android (operating system) software IBM acquisitions IBM cloud services Internet properties established in 2007 IOS software Live streaming services Video hosting Video software