Common Craft Blog
A Strange Conversation with LimeLight Networks
By leelefever on July 02, 2007 - 6:19pm
If nothing else, our videos have increased the number of phone conversations we have with seemingly random people. We recently had a rather bizarre conversation with Limelight Networks that still makes me chuckle.
First, a bit about Limelight. They own a network that enables them to handle/distribute huge amounts of information on the Internet - videos, audio, rich media, etc. They provide a backbone for delivering media on the Web.
They contacted us because we're making videos. Our rep "Carl" was friendly and well-spoken, but didn't seem to realize our position, or the position of thousands of publishers like us.
Example: In order to give me a quote, he asked about our monthly bandwidth usage. I said it was negligible, which surprised him. I explained that we don't host our own videos - we use sites like Blip.tv and YouTube.
We then proceeded to calculate, for some unknown reason, how much of Blip.tv's bandwidth we're using a month. It was about 80 gigs a month for June. I had no idea.
According to our new friend Carl, we could use Limelight instead of Blip for only about $1000/month. That's right - $1000 per month vs. a free Blip.tv account. Hmm. What to do?
Thanks for the call and the quote Carl, but I think we're on the right track for a while. I suppose this goes to show how young this industry is.
This article by Jon Udell cleared up some of the unanswered questions I had about bandwidth usage.
Hertz Donut
Sounds like you just gave Limelight and all their competitors a Hertz Donut...
"Hey Limelight. All your current and potential customers can now get for free what you want to sell them for thousands of dollars... Hurts, don't it?"
Actually it doesn't hurt
Actually it doesn't hurt since YouTube uses Limelight for its content distribution. Whether you use Limelight directly or use YouTube, Limelight's getting those "thousands of dollars".
So what it comes down to is this: What looks better, for a company to seemingly host their own content, or to use obviously use a third-party free alternative?
There's no such thing as free content distribution. Someone always has to pay.
True
I almost included that point in the entry. Limelight does handle a lot of the video traffic on the web. What amazes me is how expensive bandwidth is for sites like Blip that don't have a lot of income, at least that I know of.
I don't see how the indy sites can afford to serve so many videos without going into major debt. Google saved YouTube, who was in that position just before the buy out. I heard they had bandwidth costs over 1 million dollars a month at the time.
How do you know for certain
How do you know for certain that Limelight services YouTube?
Have you read this bit of sleuthing?
http://www.yottapixel.com/2007/03/05/are-youtubes-videos-still-served-by...
Same deal
We had a similar experience when my husband and I own a video production company in Utah www.copperrain.com
He was voted as Businessweek top 25 entrepreneurs under the age of 25 for 2006 and same thing-got a call from Limelight and it was "Carl" How fun is that!
We told him that our clients have been fine with hosting their own video and he proceeded to tell us all the benefits of putting a package price together so that we could tell our clients we will host it and then send it through Limelight.
Problem was, it was going to be expensive as you explained above and our clients just wouldn't understand why they would want to pay us more money to host something they could do themselves.
Got to give it to them though, they do stay up-to-date on who is who in the industry! Good luck to you guys!