NewCo: Nuts and Bolts from an Insider

Yesterday came the announcement NBC Universal and News Corps are teaming up on online video in an effort to rival YouTube, recruiting Google’s top competitors as distribution partners.

Upon hearing early details, we were initially impressed by how open the group seemed to making content widely and easily accessible. Since then, we were able to round up an executive closely involved with the (frustratingly as-yet unnamed) project to tell us more about whose technology is going to be used, expanding on official details released in a joint call Thursday.

The executive, who declined to be named, said the technology used for the project would be a combination of internal assets and outside partners, much of which has already been nailed down.

Video syndication will be an extension of efforts at NBBC (many from that group will be working on “NewSite” for the next couple months), social networking components will be from Fox Interactive Media’s “social networking in a box” tools, and the ad-serving platform will come from a partner that has already been signed and will soon be announced.

Intellectual property protection technology is not part of the package, he said; distribution partners are required to choose their own vendors for filtering and such.

All of the ad and content serving, across the distribution network will be from the new site’s servers. And NewCo will have a destination site, contrary to some accounts.

We continue to be hopeful about the project, despite what our tech industry DNA may trigger concerning big media behemoths trying to adjust to the times. The summer does seem a long way off, though!