The first example of a disruptive technology that comes to my mind is one that almost everyone you know has - the fastest growing consumer electronics item in history - the DVD. Think of what that technology and device did to change your personal viewing habits. This is the 'fish pond' example. With this shiny new disc and player, you were introduced to a plethora of new things which you may not have thought about directly. DVDs enabled a great many new features for the consumer like alternate movie scenes, director commentary, multiple language tracks and more. It created a major shift in the way movies were distributed and their cost structure. For better or worse, it challenged rental providers like Blockbuster to innovate and change their business dramatically (remember the 'no late fees' mantra?), and it put many others out of business eventually. You were later able to purchase a movie at Wal-Mart for $9.99 - the same title that would have cost you $99 to replace at Blockbuster, had you lost the VHS tape a few years earlier. The advent of the DVD was clearly a disruptive ripple in the fabric of technology and viewing habits.
The world of online video has had its share of disruptive events too. Format wars between Real Networks and Microsoft were in and of themselves disruptive and innovative. The dawn of Flash video was clearly disruptive. H.264 codec adoption and licensing has been a change agent in the industry as well.
I submit to you that we are on the cusp of another wave as we speak.
The move to HTTP as a transport and delivery methodology for video has been around for many years. In fact, your grandfather's progressive download that we all used 'back in the day' to watch clips and movie trailers in QuickTime (circa 1996) used much of the same framework as the shiny new technologies of today. But the new mode of chunking content and offering multiple segmented bitrates in parallel for the user to consume - up to and including HD resolution - is where we find the ripple. Using these new delivery mechanisms - Smooth Streaming from Microsoft, HTTP adaptive from Apple for the iPhone, and backbones like the Akamai HD Network, content creators can deliver amazing experiences for users. Some have argued that these HD experiences would never be possible online, saying that the Internet couldn't handle the scale. Can anyone say 7mm simultaneous streams? It happened. That's the definition of scale.
If you haven't seen these experiences in your hand or on your desktop, you really owe it to yourself to check them out. HD resolution, DVR features and multiple camera angles - all there for you to utilize and make choices with - this is where the standard has been raised. I almost typed 'this is the future of online video consumption' there - but we are there now. Moreover, these changes represent the new 'now' - a world where broadcasters are realizing that they cannot simply repurpose the same transmission they use for broadcast in the online world. The viewer/user demands more - more interactivity, more social features, more camera angles, more programming options, more control. The ripple can also be seen in reverse - witness Verizon's FIOs service adding interactive widgets from Facebook and others to its service.
I won't wade into the cost savings, architecture and other considerations. But those are valid discussions for another time. For now, spot the wave swelling on the near horizon, grab your long board and prepare to ride.
