Open Video Infrastructure for Democratizing Media: Miro and our Social Programs

Short Synopsis

As TV becomes online video, there is an opportunity to put control in the hands of the creators.  The large media companies are trying to repeat massive centralization with gatekeepers.  We make democratic media infrastructure called Miro, an open source HD video player, with over 7 million downloads globally.

With this new phase of our project, we want to directly address the needs of communities in developing countries by making video sharable in low bandwidth conditions, rich with subtitles, and synchronized with any low cost mobile device. 

Description/Treatment

To democratize the media landscape, we need democratic media infrastructure.  With Miro, we have a chance to overturn what has happened with broadcast TV -- limited channels owned and coordinated by just a handful of companies.  Miro is open, public-interest infrastructure for democratizing the online video space and popularizing independent media and civic discourse.  

Miro works to change the video space by putting users at the center -- video creators can host their work on any site and users have a unified experience for finding, watching, and sharing videos served from anywhere in the world. The project serves public media directly by building an audience and putting control in the hands of independent creators, as different from commercial video services like YouTube or iTunes. Miro is a powerful combination of social mission and successful consumer product. Since 2005, major philanthropic foundations and individual donors have given PCF large general support and project grants for the early stages of our work and now we are raising funds to reach out to many more, less-resourced areas and communities around the world. 

Our Next Project

The Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF) engages with the realities of developing countries, making video distribution affordable, efficient and easy.  Our software, Miro, is translated in dozens of languages for our global audience -- only 25% of our users are in the US.  For video creators and organizations, distribution and hosting costs are near to zero.

For countries with low bandwidth, relying on streaming as a primary distribution mode can create barriers.  Miro is suitable for low bandwidth because videos can be downloaded in advance, which can work at any speed. Our next project is to make Miro more practical in developing countries with low bandwidth issues, and for people who are separated from online video because of income or language differences.

Open Subtitling Services

We want to create a healthy ecosystem for subtitling videos from all over the world, leveraging the work of open subtitling communities and the millions of language-rich media pieces already in existence.  This system will make foreign-language media instantly and effortlessly accessible to millions of people around the world.  Many of the building blocks for such a system are in place or are well understood-- what is needed is a unifying approach to the problem and popular implementations, both of which we are in a position to develop.

Users will have at their fingertips the world's repository of subtitles and will be able to watch videos with subtitles in their language with just a click.  Miro, or your preferred video player, will automatically search many different subtitle repositories and find subtitles for everything from individual YouTube videos to episodes of Democracy Now!

Miro Device Hub

Some of the more expensive mobile phones are virtually non-existent in poorer markets. iPods in poorer countries are almost irrelevant to portable mp3 markets dominated by cheap players and cellphones. We will add support for a wide range of mobile phones and cheap portable players that, because of their low-cost, are ubiquitous in developing countries. 

Low Bandwidth Accessibility

Low bandwidth issues in different countries have their own "solution cycle" and may take years to be addressed by economic development or governmental approval.  The good news is, Miro can help connect people to video by adding a few features to make video much more accessible in low bandwidth environments.

Because Miro generally downloads rather than streams content, it is well suited to low-bandwidth environments.  However, like a typical download client, Miro is not smart about network dynamics and can produce sub-optimal results.  

We would like to fully develop our Low Bandwidth Accessibility System , which would make Miro aware of network conditions, able to favor downloads from clients on local networks, and able to automatically choose appropriate file formats.  These features would open up much more media access in low income countries where very low bandwidth connections are typical.

User Growth and Revenue Growth

Social investment in Miro has high impact.  Miro has a strong and active user community that is able to greatly multiply the work of paid staff (volunteers work as translators, testers, coders, and tech support).  Like Firefox, if Miro achieves scale it will be able to self-fund indefinitely through various earned-income sources (see below).  This is an opportunity to put a mission-based open-source project at the center of the video world.

Miro is growing with each release.  It was downloaded roughly 1.5 million times in 2007 and 4 million times in 2008.  The largest update so far, Miro 2.0, was released in February 2009 and we now have 1.1 million active new users every month. Miro has a global audience, with just 25% of users based in the United States.

To succeed, Miro needs to grow.  The team is very lean, with just 4.5 coders, and the competition is intense-- features like a remote-control fullscreen interface are necessary to the product's future, but are time-consuming. 

As Miro grows, the organization has begun experimenting with various revenue opportunities, including sponsorships, advertising, custom players, and bundling.  In 2008, roughly 7% of the budget was generated with earned income.  That number has grown to 10% in the first two months of 2009 and is expected to reach 20% by the middle of the year. 

Most of the revenue opportunities scale directly with Miro's user growth and because Miro does not host video content, costs do not grow along with the user base.  If Miro can continue to grow quickly, it can become self-funded within the next few years.