Brightcove, the Cambridge, MA-based Internet video publisher founded in 2004 by Boston-area serial entrepreneur Jeremy Allaire, today introduced a thoroughly overhauled version of its video hosting platform. The company says the new service, called Brightcove 3, is designed to help big media companies get more creative about the way they deploy video on their websites, while also helping smaller Web publishers get into the video publishing business in the first place.
Previous versions of Brightcove’s platform—which is used on the websites of large media organizations such as Boston.com and Marketwatch—were complicated affairs. Customers who wanted to create customized video players to showcase their content, for example, had to hire experienced Flash designers to write the needed code. But at the core of Brightcove 3 is a new customizable player that can be modified using simple modules of HTML or third-party plugins.
Just as important for broad-based adoption, Brightcove has lowered the price of admission to its software-as-a-service platform. The lowest tier of its new three-tier pricing system will cost a typical customer less than $10,000 per year, according to Allaire.
“What we’re trying to do with Brightcove 3 is adapt it for educational institutions, marketing departments, and other mainstream users, whose needs are often different from a media company’s needs, and price it in a way that fits those needs,” says Allaire.
[Update 10/15/08: We’ve now published an extensive interview with Allaire, conducted earlier this month as the company was busy preparing for the Brightcove 3 launch.]
