

Ask HN: what's the catch with opentok? - mewmewmew

opentok.com, formerly tokbox.com, has raised another $12m in late 2010 to allow anyone create video apps with 'unlimited' number of viewers for free.<p>what I cannot find, is that, what's the catch?<p>it seems their business logic is to throw lots of money to encourage people to create many many video apps, with the hope that one of them would be a killer vidapp, like chatroulette.<p>now the question is, then what? would they claim that the app belongs to them?
======
iansmall
No catch.

Our goal is to enable developers to build great apps that help make two-way
and group video a part of the fabric of the web. Our focus for right now is on
continuous improvement of the service that makes that possible.

We believe that there are reasonable ways for us to incorporate monetization
in our overall product offering - while still keeping today's basic OpenTok
service free. When it's time for us to introduce some of those enhancements,
you'll know which ones those are.

Regardless, we fully expect that what's free today will stay free. No tricks.
No catch.

~~~
mewmewmew
thanks for the prompt answer! could you explain the following from your terms
(<http://www.tokbox.com/legal/termsofservice>):

1\. tokbox reserves the right to put ads within the videos:

"TokBox retains the exclusive right to include and to sell advertising,
promotions and sponsorships in the Service that is displayed on Your Websites"

2\. also, if I create an opentok app, andd put ads in my website, I have to
share the ad revenue with tokox:

"For example, you may sell sponsorships or branding in areas around the live
video streams, provided that you and Tokbox agree in advance on appropriate
compensation to be paid to TokBox."

in summary, in return for the free media service, tokbox can put ads in my
app, and I have to share an unknown portion of the app revenue with tokbox, is
this correct?

~~~
iansmall
Yes. And no.

1) is pretty straightforward, and I think you understand it correctly.

Obviously, we're not currently serving ads, and it's not even on the "to do"
list at the moment. Should we decide to put it on the list, there's about 79
different ways we could do it; it would presumably be in our interest to
choose an approach that works well for our developer partners.

With respect to (2), your description is incomplete; perhaps you missed the
key phrase that demonstrates our real intent. That phrase, at the beginning of
the term you're referencing, says "In cases where the (video chat service) is
the primary basis of the advertising sale..."; only in those cases are we
interested in compensation.

You summarized this as "I have to share an unknown portion of the app revenue
with tokbox". That is untrue. We make no claim whatsoever to "app revenues"
(which could presumably include things like premium service subscription fees,
membership fees, usage fees, etc.).

With respect to ad revenues, we are _only_ interested in ads where the video
chat is the primary basis of the sale.

For instance, if you build a dating site, or a gaming site, or a recruiting
site that includes video chat as a face-to-face communication channel that
augments the underlying activity, and the underlying activity is the basis for
the advertising, we're not interested.

But at the other extreme, if you take OpenTok, slap a logo and 18 lines of
JavaScript around the service in order to build a vanilla video chat service,
and then sell advertising on top of that, then yes, we may want to talk about
that.

Bottom line: we're not in the business of trying to trap you or trick you.
Frankly, it's not a business model that scales, and it never has been.

We're doing our best to make something pretty cool available to you, at a
pretty darned aggressive price point (ie. free), in the hopes that you will
build pretty cool apps and together we can change the web.

We're interested in seeing as many cool apps out there as we possibly can. And
yes, we're also protecting ourselves from being someone's patsy. You would
too, were you in our shoes.

~~~
mewmewmew
thanks a lot for the detailed clarifications, I have a much better view on
opentok now.

