The idea was 'live video over the web'. The people that made huge amounts of money of it went with niches that I did not care for: 1 to 1 ('videophone'), gaming, porn.
I have to date not been able to find a way to make the niche that I picked (one-to-many everybody is a broadcaster, think 'youtube', but live) into a mass market product (possibly because there is no mass market). Still, the idea lives on and periodically companies try to revive it in some way or other and some of those then find other successful niches.
I've been reading your comments for years and I have a ton of respect for your intellect and communication ability. But 'live video over the web' is not a great idea. It's not clear and compelling, it isn't centered around a long term vision, it doesn't change the rules of an existing process in an unexpected way. There have to be dozens if not hundreds of people who had the same idea around the same time, many of them before you first articulated it.
"Improve compression technology X so that live video is technically feasible sooner than expected"...now that's a great idea. Likewise, "Use marketing technique Y to create an insatiable demand for personal web cams", also a great idea. Someone starting a company in a given space that think will take off doesn't really constitute a groundbreaking innovation, though it is a smart business move.
Many if not most people who say "I have great ideas all the time" are overvaluing the quality of their own thoughts. Plenty of people have good ideas every day. But truly great ideas, by definition, are rare. Not 1 in 100 rare. More like 1 in 1,000,000 rare. And it can be really hard to tell the difference between the two, especially when evaluating one's own ideas.
> "Improve compression technology X so that live video is technically feasible sooner than expected"...now that's a great idea.
That's exactly what I did. But technology by itself does not make money, it needs packaging and marketing.
So such an idea is deceptively simple and it is the packaging of that idea in some concept that makes it valuable. Think of it as everybody in the world saying 'x' is impossible, and then you prove 'x' is indeed possible, and once that's proven there are many ways of capturing the value of that idea. Giving people the opportunity to be broadcasters was my way of trying to capture that value.
Great ideas and good ideas differ usually only by hindsight.
I have to date not been able to find a way to make the niche that I picked (one-to-many everybody is a broadcaster, think 'youtube', but live) into a mass market product (possibly because there is no mass market). Still, the idea lives on and periodically companies try to revive it in some way or other and some of those then find other successful niches.