Nielsen Top 10 U.S. Online Video Brands, Home & Work

Rank	Brand	Total Streams (000)	Unique Viewers (000)
1	YouTube	4,672,376	96,075
2	Hulu	707,547	12,196
3	Yahoo!	244,422	30,469
4	MSN/WindowsLive/Bing	170,034	14,828
5	Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network	149,950	5,938
6	CBS Entertainment Network	144,085	6,665
7	Turner Sports and Entertainment Digital Network	141,917	5,588
8	CNN Digital Network	129,721	10,992
9	Blinkx	107,190	419
10	Facebook	104,097	23,339

From Nielsen


Comment: So Blinkx is in the Top 10 US video brands according to Nielsen: and yet the company has a market cap of c£40m, a share price around 14p - less than a third of the IPO price 3 years ago - and roughly zero interest from the markets, journalists, large institutional investors etc (evidenced by the fact that Autonomy, who underwrote the last share placing, ended up with more than 50% of the shares. Did they actually want those shares? Well we don't know, do we?)...

Something isn't right. Either the markets are all asleep to the undoubted progress that has been made at Blinkx (the ELO and Mobica deals most recently), or there's something about the company the markets just don't like. Could be Blinkx's determined 'under the radar' approach (why release the Mobica news the Thursday before a bank holiday weekend when it's guaranteed to pass most people by? Why not the following Tuesday when it might actually be noticed?); could be that the markets are unconvinced by management's presentation/communication style (or distinct lack thereof); could be that with AUT/Mike Lynch owning such a large stake in Blinkx the markets (probably rightly) don't see any potential for a takeover of Blinkx; or it could be that everyone is waiting for the company to break into profit (should come no later than YE 2010 - and many shareholders are hoping for sooner). Or it could be some combination of some or all of the above.

One thing's for sure - it's frustrating as hell for shareholders (and don't forget - never forget - that Chandratillake has never to date bought a single share in his own company in the open market). There seems to be a real recovery in the tech sector (Apple share price doubled over the past year, Google, Yahoo and others all posting great results) which so far has passed Blinxk by completely.

I've long thought - and I still think - that the picture for shareholders would be completely different if Blinxk had a new CEO. But I guess while Chandratillake has Lynch's confidence there's about as much chance of that happening as of shareholders seeing the share price move significantly north any time soon...