Today, we are announcing that we have been named the exclusive content delivery partner for VReel.net – a new user-generated content portal that is implementing the very popular DivX video codec.

VReel makes thousands of user-created videos available online, organizing them into 18 distinct channels. The portal offers high-definition streaming using the DivX codec, a 1GB filesize limit, and no time, dimension, or bitrate restrictions. VReel is streaming using the LimelightDELIVER service, and will store the videos within the Limelight Network CDN. This means that the majority of videos will be delivered directly from our media-grade optical platform to one of the over 850 last-mile networks we are directly connected to. Since those videos will never travel over the public Internet, we can eliminate almost all buffing and stuttering, helping the viewer to have a great HD-watching experience.

VReel CEO Eoghan Hayes says that he plans on “making VReel the greatest show on earth,” and will soon implement features such as user rewards, content competitions, and mobile connectivity.

“Right now, our open beta is about getting the functionality at 100%. We have already seen thousands of members sign up, and thousands of videos being submitted to the portal, but are planning on new functionality and a full face-lift to debut over the summer,” says Hayes.

“One of the unique differentiators is our use of the DivX codec and webplayer. This highly-regarded product produces video quality that we believe is unmatched, and throughout our beta we’ve had numerous testers comment on the superb picture quality. We are very pleased that DivX gave us the go-ahead to use their product,” adds Hayes.

Here’s an example - VReel content, DivX codec, delivered over the Limelight Networks CDN (Note that if you don’t have the DivX codec installed you will have to do so by clicking here):

(Content unavailable. Please visit www.vreel.net)

Originally, VReel planned to manage analytics and reporting internally, but the company’s rapid traffic growth during the beta test caused them to rethink their options.

“It’s a funny story, actually, how we came to use LimelightEXCHANGE Premium.  We had originally turned on statistic monitoring tools on our own servers, but after about 12 hours, we received so many unique visits that our mysql database almost locked up. In order to keep speeds high for the end user, we disabled our analytics tools and instead opted for the ones offered by Limelight,” explains Hayes.

Here are some initial stats on VReel:

Members signed up: 8200+
Videos online: 5700+
Total data transferred 22nd - 28th June: 764.31 TB
Peak speed: 20Gbps

We congratulate VReel on their launch, and look forward to helping them deliver brilliant experiences to their growing user base. If you would like to join the community, click here .

With many U.S. schools letting students out for summer break, there’s a lot of Internet-savvy teens and tweens with time to occupy. This summer, we’re seeing many of our customers targeting this audience with multi-platform programming, making content available through both off-line and broadband channels.

This week, the Walt Disney Internet Group (WDIG) did just this with Camp Rock, a Disney Channel Original Movie, and the results were very impressive.

Over the weekend of June 21-22nd, the television debut of Camp Rock delivered an impressive 24.5 million total televisions viewers across the U.S. and Canada and reached 6.0 million Kids 6-11 and more than 6.1 million Tweens 9-14, ranking as the week’s #1 TV program in those youth demographics. Disney Channel’s debut of “Camp Rock” ranks as cable TV’s #1 entertainment telecast of the 2007-08 season (8.9 million Total Viewers). On ABC-TV, the movie was the #1 summer Saturday entertainment telecast on any broadcast network in almost six years, and is ABC Family’s #1 movie broadcast ever among Kids 6-11 and Tweens 9-14.

On Monday, June 25th, Camp Rock was made available at Disney.com. The online experience includes unique interactive content so fans can chat and play games while watching the movie. Fans can also watch in a full screen experience featuring “Camp Rock” trivia and an interactive map of the camp.

The key performance stats:

• Camp Rock video plays totaled more than 863,000
• Traffic to Disney.com increased by 37 percent on Monday, June 23 (vs. 6/22/08)
• Camp Rock Web sites (video player and supersite) scored 1.9 million visitors and 10 million page views during the entire event (6/23-24)
• Unique visitor traffic overall to Disney.com XD (DXD) on Monday, June 23 was more than twice the previous one-day record (953,592 vs. 465,421)
• The Camp Rock Channel in DXD, which hosted the video player, had more page views in one day (6/23) than any other DXD Channel has ever recorded in a full week.

“This is one of those inflection points for online entertainment at Disney.com and really shows the power of marrying great content with a great online experience,” stated Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director, Disney Online. “Disney Channel has created another sensation with ‘Camp Rock’ and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to feature it again on Disney.com.”

For Limelight Networks, Camp Rock marked a milestone as well: The project was the first under a recently expanded relationship between our company and WDIG. Through this relationship, Limelight Networks will provide a variety of content delivery services, including live event services, on-demand delivery, website acceleration, and professional services across many WDIG properties, including Disney Online, abc.com, ESPN.com, and Club Penguin.

The Walt Disney Internet Group has one of the broadest, most-well known content libraries in the world – from new favorites like Camp Rock to countless timeless classics. Their audience expects each of those properties to have the same fidelity when viewed online as they do when viewed in traditional formats like TV or movie theaters.We’re pleased to have expanded our relationship with WDIG for content delivery services, which dates back to 2006, so that together we can help them deliver great online experiences.

Contentinople has a great Q+A interview with Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro, in case you missed it.

So the key to the viewer is giving them what they want, which is a better way of finding it, a better way of watching it, a better way of interacting around it, and that’s what we do… Which is, we wrap a layer of intelligence around that content to help users find it and wrap a layer of intelligence to help advertisers target and wrap a layer of intelligence to help content providers find their audience.

Read the rest here .

Earlier this week, comScore reported that U.S. Internet users viewed 11 billion online videos during April 2008. That’s an impressive number that shows just how quickly the market for rich media over broadband is growing.

What’s equally as interesting are the comments by MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman at yesterday’s BM Capital Market’s eMergine Media Forum. When asked about the number of online streams for the U.S Open, Bowman told Contentinople, “The reported results were 600,000 concurrent streams. That’s a great number. But 600,000 streams in the TV world is something you wouldn’t talk about.” He went on to say that the industry needs to get to 10 million streams on a regular basis, but noted there’s a lot of work left to do. “We’re getting there, but we still have a long way to go,” Bowman said.

We agree. Online video delivery should be robust and reliable as what we have come to expect from offline video. But to get there on a scale as large as “10 million streams on a regular basis” requires not only infrastructure build-out, but the right content and the right monetization strategy for that content. And all three of those elements are dependent upon each other to drive the cycle of expansion in the digital media industry.

Looking at comScore’s rankings of Top 10 U.S. video properties for April, we think any one listed has a great chance to regularly attract 10 million online video viewers. Limelight Networks delivers video for 7 of the 10 content producers listed, and we hold regular planning sessions with them (and our other customers) to understand their roadmap and traffic monetization strategies, so we can support them with the appropriate infrastructure and technology investments.

Because in our business, it’s not just about delivering 10 million streams for one content producer at a time. It’s about delivering 10 million streams for every one of our customers concurrently – while ensuring a robust, reliable experience for each viewer watching those streams.

In the competitive field of TV advertising, each passing second means the difference between an effective or failed ad. One of the first hurdles an effective advertisement faces is flawless playback. If the commercial freezes, or stutters, or is not in its best fidelity, the chances are pretty good that the viewer is not going to stick around and watch.

Online, video advertisers face the same challenge – if your ad doesn’t play flawlessly, your potential audience is a mouse-click away from something more engaging. With every second a chance to win or lose the attention of your audience, content delivery matters – big time.

Today, we’ve announced that Smart AdServer, a large European provider of adserving and digital marketing services to media agencies, ad networks and publishers, has turned to Limelight Networks to help ensure the quality of their ad delivery service for their growing European and international business. Using the LimelightDELIVER service, we are also helping them manage peaks of online demand while decreasing the cost of bandwidth.

Since its founding in 2001, Smart Adserver has quickly become a key player in France and is growing its business rapidly throughout Europe. Serving international brands like XBOX, FedEx, Coca Cola and Lexus, Smart AdServer now has more than 110 clients and 1000 Web sites on four continents.

The Managing Director at Smart AdServer, Cyrille Geffray, notes, “Equipping our customers with better management tools means we’re able to help our customers gain a clear competitive advantage.”

Here’s a link to today’s press release.

We’re proud to be delivering live and on demand streams for UEFA Euro 2008 with our partner, Geißendörfer & Leschinsky GmbH (G&L). G&L holds the online broadcast rights for Germany, and through our partnership we are making available live online streams of every football match (or soccer, for you Americans) aired on the German TV channel, ‘Das Erste.’

G&L shared with us some of their most recent numbers: For the 9 June matches between Rumania and France and the Netherlands and Italy, 33,000 viewers watched them online. This is a very significant number in Germany, and it comes even with the TV broadcast getting over 50% market share for the same contests.

“This is an extraordinary live stream rating,”said Alexander Leschinsky, manager of the responsible system house at G&L.

For G&L, Limelight Networks is providing live streams in both Windows Media and Flash formats in three different quality settings. Using our optical network, we are bypassing the congestion of the Internet cloud within Germany, and delivering those streams directly to the last-mile networks we connect with in the country. This means the video bits almost never hit the public Internet.

We encourage you to check out these broadcasts by visiting G&L’s site, the ‘ARD,’ at http://sport.ard.de. There’s even an on-demand archive called mediathek that will serve up replays of the past games.

See you at the finals on 29 June!

Online media is growing at an incredible pace. Depending on which report you read, in 2008 alone the content delivery (CDN) industry will grow anywhere between 30% and 50%. It’s an exciting time to be producing content, and even more exciting to be a delivery network bringing all of this great content to online audiences around the world.

Limelight Networks has a front row seat to the explosive innovation and growth happening in the content delivery industry:

We work with some of the biggest names in online video: Disney, XBOX, Sony Playstation, MySpace, EA Sports, Facebook, Netflix, Viacom, Citadel, and Amazon, just to name a few. We’ve delivered some of the largest online events to hundreds of thousands of users — For example, Oprah’s Bookclub, Indy Car Racing, and this summer, the 2008 Beijing Olympics. We also operate one of the largest media-grade optical networks on the planet — with enough egress capacity to simultaneously deliver over a terabyte of data to almost anywhere.

And we don’t just do entertainment. Companies like Salesforce.com, Microsoft Windows Update, Nissan, and Sun Microsystems rely on our network to accelerate their web applications or reliably deliver software downloads to their customers. We also work with many emerging companies, with promising business models and innovative uses of rich media.

This blog begins today as a way to get a perspective on the content delivery industry from one of the companies driving the market forward. Visionary statements from our executives, tips from our engineering experts, thoughts from our partners and customers, stats from our network, and much, much more. In short, its a two-way dialog, about the ever-changing, ever growing market segment that Limelight Networks does business in, and how we face those challenges every day to deliver brilliance for our customers.

We hope you will enjoy and contribute to this discussion.