By Paige MacGregor
Babelgum, launched in June 2007, is a P2P IPTV company that offers on demand near-TV resolution video programming via a downloadable client (similar to music sharing programs like Napster and Kazaa). At first glance Babelgum may appear to be just one more of many new on demand online video platforms, but its claim to fame lies in its programming, which offers users exclusive access to independent and short films from festivals around the world otherwise available only to those individuals lucky enough to attend these events. In addition to hundreds of hours of premium content created exclusively for Babelgum by independent production and distribution companies like Off the Fence, Babelgum’s current programming partners include the Giffoni Film Festival, the first film festival to present its material exclusively online while it is being simultaneously screened at the festival; GONG, a new cutting-edge Japanese animation network available in Europe and North America; and the Rushes Soho Shorts Festival, an annual festival of short films and music videos held in London.
With its indie and film festival content, Babelgum has the potential to become a powerful tool for college and university students around the world studying subjects like film studies, communications, media and film production. The program, currently offered in a beta testing format free of charge and open for download to a certain number of users per day, will give these students and their instructors access to the most cutting edge aspects of the film and video industry from any location at any time. Babelgum’s content is organized into themed channels, including those centered around news, music, sports, documentary, and animation, among others (for a complete list visit www.babelgum.com). The platform’s channels are designed to “learn” user preferences over time in order to provide a more individualized online experience meant to emulate and eventually replace in-home television viewing.
Similarly to its main competitor, Joost, founded and amply funded by the creators of Skype and Kazaa, Babelgum was founded in part by Telecom mogul Silvio Scaglia, who has already poured $17.8 million of his own personal fortune into the company. Over the next few years Scaglia, joined by recently appointed CEO and former Vodafone Global Director of Networks and Service Platforms Valerio Zingarelli, plans to spend another $130 million of his own money working to get the company up and running. Babelgum currently offers content aimed at English-speaking audiences, but according to Scaglia the company plans content expansion into other languages, the first of which will be Chinese and Spanish.
