How the Sourcebook Shaped the History of the Online Video Industry
14 years, 14 Streaming Media Industry Sourcebooks. Wow. Do you remember what this industry looked like 14 years ago? One thing is for sure: When we took over Streaming Media in 2003, the industry was a mess. You couldn’t tell who had real product and who didn’t. There was lots and lots of talk of “we are going to change the world,” and I suppose that’s what you get when you’re charting unknown territory. Things have settled down some, but it’s still really the Wild West. Our first order of business in 2003 was to make some sense of the industry, and that’s where the Sourcebook came in. And we still see it as a way to press the reset button on the industry and who’s in it, every year.
When you look at all the companies who are supporting this Sourcebook—whether with ads, case studies, or sponsored content—you’ll see some familiar names and some new ones. So first things first: We can’t do it without them. Thank you Sourcebook sponsors, for helping us create the world’s most valuable resource for everything online video. Please, if you are looking for products and services, look to them first—they deserve your attention as much as the editorial content you’ll find invaluable here. This year, I’d also like to thank our digital issue sponsors, Sonic Foundry and Elemental Technologies, an Amazon Web Services company, for helping us expand the publication’s reach further by offering it as a PDF download. We just can’t keep up with the requests we get for the Sourcebook; we run out of hard copies every year, and the PDF version means that we’ll be able to fulfill all the requests.
So, welcome to this chock-full-of-information, must-read industry bible called the Sourcebook. It’s influenced the brightest and best who’ve built this video industry—over the years we’ve seen the proof of that. I hope you enjoy it.
This article appears in the March 2017 issue of Streaming Media magazine.
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