Three out of 250 might not seem like a lot but the fact that all of these sites are video-based in some way reinforces the feeling we have the .tv is an excellent way to brand a video-centric site. All three of them – and countless others who didn’t make this year’s AlwaysOn list – are doing fantastic things by combining an online video strategy and a domain that immediately says to anyone visiting that this site will have something to do with video.

Kudos to these members of the .tv community for showing how innovative online video and .tv can be.

Justin.tv Part of Fund Raising in the UK: UK personality Tim Shaw is live on Justin.tv closed up in a box. He refers to it as Man in Box and he’s in there for 30 days unless using Google maps and clues, Brits find him before that. There’s a prize if you find him, and funds raised will go to Help for Heros (a UK organization that raises money for wounded soldiers). An interesting cross between reality tv on the web, helping veterans and .tv. Thanks Justin.tv!

Watch live video from Man In Box on Justin.tv
Cisco’s Predictions on Mobile Video: Cisco recently released one of their reports that tries to predict traffic into the future. They had a number of things about video that I thought were interesting:

• Almost 66 percent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2014.
• Mobile video will grow at a CAGR of 131 percent between 2009 and 2014.
• Mobile video has the highest growth rate of any application category measured within the Cisco VNI Forecast at this time.
• Video will be responsible for the majority of the traffic growth between 2009 and 2014.
• Overall mobile data traffic is expected to grow to 3.6 exabytes per month by 2014, and over 2.3 of those are due to mobile video traffic.

ComScore Shows There’s Lots of Room for Video Sites: Yes, YouTube gets the majority of the traffic at 26% of time spent, but the next 24 spots only add an additional 22% according to a recent report from ComScore. That leaves over half of all time spent — 52% is in the tail. If you use videos watched as the metric, the second company on that list is already into low single digits (Hulu at 3%); and by the time you get to the 9th position on that list, you’re below single digits (CBS Interactive at .9%). So this story of video on the web is just beginning with lots of changes and growth to come. Great for .tv. Stay tuned.

Half of NetFlix’s Customers Stream to their TV: The Diffusion Group issued a press release on a report they recently did which says 1/2 – yes that’s 50% – of their large base is using the “Watch Instantly” option on their TVs. No, this isn’t the lone college student streaming to their laptop (though they do have that demographic too). This refers to someone who bothered to buy a box to make it easy, or hack a way to get the stream from the Internet onto a TV (full disclosure, I’m one of the box variety). What does this say for the over the top option for video on the web in the near future?

There was a good buzz at Streaming Media West this year. With the surge of activity in/around web video, web-enabled television, video sharing on social network, etc., I think Stream Media represented some of the best up & coming hot companies in this space.

Here’s the short list of companies that I believe are gaining traction in the market.

Adap.tv: Watch the market trends around video monetization in 2010, because Adap.TV is well positioned to capture a big chunk of the momentum. IAB just provided their online ad measurement certification in November to OneSource (their platform)–and they claim, they are the first to receive this certification. Adap.tv has a robust offering, is integrated, and a growing base of publishers (over 350) using their platform. Impressive small team.

Kaltura: Open source, self hosted video platform — and appears they are building momentum, claiming over 35,000 publishers using their platform. In terms of breadth of offering, they’re up there among Brightcove/Ooyala. They’ve demonstrated their ability to scale, manage premium/ugc video, and provide  a host of tools, including analytics/monetization. Appears to be a strong leadership team–good rep in the industry.

Kick Apps: According to VP Biz Dev, KickApps had a very strong year this year — and are accelerating. I like this company a lot, and have been tracking them for a year. A social networking/widget “house”, these guys have their act together, and are really making a difference providing tools/services for a huge number of content companies–over 90K. Another cool feature is providing access to info-about who is using these widgets–allowing key info for brand/ad/and site marketing strategies.

Kyte: I spent 30 minutes at the Kyte booth exploring what these guys have developed, and its much more than I originally understood. Kyte’s focus is about Live video content, more mobile consumption—and the creation of community building, e.g, social web, analytics, monetization, etc. For publishers, you make a decision based on how much content you plan to publish–basically, scale-based fee model. They also have a quite an impressive cast of investors, including strong European representation.

LiveStream: LiveStream, is an web-enabled video platform company that provides clients dedicated video channels for their live video capture and distribution. For entities, organizations, and/or producers serious about getting their video message out with a professional look & feel of a quality produced production (tools for real-time image manipulation, text and graphic overlays, etc.), LiveStream is a company you want to be working with. With over 700,000 channels launched — they understand the needs of producers–better than most in this business. Free (ad supported) and premium-based fee structures.