Say Goodbye to SplashCast as We Know It

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SplashCast was a Great Service I have Recommended it to Many of My Clients and Others Over the Years

SplashCast It’s too bad they are throwing in the towel. As for us the early adopters of their services, we can’t help but feel abandoned. I signed up for their services shortly after launch and have been touting their easy-to-use video services for websites and blogs ever since.
Post from Search Engine Optimizician.
This morning I received this email from them.

Dear BrianC73,

SplashCast will be discontinuing its free service for publishers effective 12:00 AM June 1, 2009.

We’ve made this decision given our focus on developing our “Social TV” product and expanding our TV application network.

Three months ago, we asked you (our publishing community), whether you would be willing to pay for the service. The vast majority answered “no.” Furthermore, among those willing to pay, the average amount was extremely low. We discussed this in more detail in an earlier blog post.

Additionally, advertising is not a realistic option. We’ve explored several approaches. While we love your content, advertisers aren’t willing to pay a reasonable price to sponsor it [As an aside, this is the issue that YouTube faces on a monumental scale.]

Beyond subscription fees and advertising, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about other, more creative, approaches. The unfortunate conclusion is that continuing our free service does not make business sense (we even considered a public broadcasting-like pledge drive).

We’ve listened. We’ve thought creatively. We’ve weighed the alternatives. We’ve slept on it.

In terms of alternatives, you might check out a service called Embedr. Here is a recent review on the ReadWriteWeb blog. If you know of other services, please let us know.

Thanks for being a part of the SplashCast community. This is a tough (and sad) decision for us. We hope that you can understand that, as a startup, we have to focus.

Sincerely,
The SplashCast Team

No I am not BrianC73. This must be an email sent in bulk by an email client rather than a database service that will actually personalize the email by placing the individual’s name in the “Dear” section. (see Constant Contact for a solution.)

SplashCast’s “Social TV” product is advertised as Never watch your favorite TV shows alone..
It allows you to “watch your favorite TV shows where you already spend your time online: in Facebook and MySpace.”

Vimeo I have switched to Vimeo for my video hosting services. Vimeo is a high quality host that appears to have longevity. In any case I am hitching my wagon to them and have full intentions of using them for the rest of my digital life.