NBC paid almost $1 billion to have the exclusive rights for television and video coverage of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games in the U.S. But it seems that it is still losing the battle for viewers with Yahoo.

NBC spent the run-up to the Olympics in China talking up its extensive coverage of the Games.

And with over 2,200 hours of footage being made available online, it certainly had a right to brag.

Technical Issues Galore

Unfortunately, there have been technical limitations and issues surrounding the online coverage. This means viewers not only need to have Vista to watch any footage, but also have no firewall installed on their PC.

Broadcast delays to stop any loss of viewers and advertising from traditional TV have also affected Web viewer numbers, with many finding alternative (and often illegal) methods of watching their favourite event.

Even when viewers do get the chance to watch coverage of the Games on NBC’s site, they are often faced with footage without any kind of commentary, poor quality video, or even an event location but no action taking place.

The politicians fighting to replace George W. Bush in the White House have embraced the Web, new technology, social networking, and Web video completely in an effort to prove they are with it.

However, Bush himself clearly hasn’t been with it.

However, now that he’s on his way of the White House door, hopefully to be replaced by Barack Obama, he’s decided to embrace the medium and this week gave his first video interview intended purely for the Web.

Yahoo! currently seems to be on a mission to take over the world of online video, despite facing the immediate threat of a hostile takeover bid by industry giant Microsoft. They say all good things come in threes, and Yahoo! seem intent on proving that at the moment.

Last week saw the unveiling of Y! Live, a lifecasting site to compete with the likes of uStream, Mogulus and Operator11. As those sites do, Y! Live enables ordinary members of the public to become broadcasters in their own bedroom, setting up a video channel, and showing whatever footage reels off from their webcams.

Then a few days ago, we saw Yahoo! acquire Maven, an online video platform which could see the company up the ante on the advertising and monetisation side on web television.

Yahoo! may be going through a rough patch at the moment (read understatement of the year), with Microsoft launching a hostile takeover bid worth $45 billion, and staff being culled left, right, and centre, but that hasn’t stopped it from carrying on business as normal.

Today, they have formally announced the acquisition of Maven Networks, an online video platform which offers video hosting and distribution services, as well as a targeted video advertising system.

The deal, which has been rumoured around the blogosphere for the last fortnight, right before Microsoft threw a spanner in the works with its bid, is worth an estimated $160 million, about $10 million higher than was first thought.

Tom Huntington, a spokesperson for DivX has announced that DivX, a growing video compression software company, has signed a two year deal with Yahoo! that replaces a previous agreement that DixX had with Google.

As the terms of the contract state, DivX software will now be offered with a co-branded Yahoo Toolbar and a version of IE7 pre-configured with Yahoo tools. Yahoo!, in exchange, will now provide links to DivX and its online video service, Stage6, within the Yahoo toolbar.

Could Yahoo! possibly be a better partner for DivX than Google?

Yahoo! has just unveiled plans to cement its online video credentials with a service aimed at tackling the likes of the ubiquitous YouTube.

Yahoo’s general manager for video, Mike Folgner, has stated that music videos, movie trailers, television shows and sports highlights are among the features that will be available on the new site.

One of our strategies is to put video everywhere you are on the Internet. We’re going to build a much better destination for you to access all this different content.

comScore, one of the world’s leading digital entertainment surveyors, has revealed its latest Video Metrix report for May 2007, which showed that nearly 75% of all Americans watch video online during said month.

Not surprisingly, YouTube, the undisputed king of video content on the web, topped the list of places to watch, with 35 percent of users tuning in to 1.8 billion streams during the four-week period. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 8.1 percent (680 million streams), while Yahoo! Sites earned bronze with a 4.6 percent share and 387 million streams.