According to a report released earlier today, Verizon is allegedly in “advanced discussions” to purchase video startup Vessel, the company founded by former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and launched in March 2015. The reason behind Verizon’s interest in the video platform is due to the carrier’s new focus on digital media, specifically video.
For those wondering what it is Vessel actually does, the company is essentially a YouTube competitor, but one that allows content creators to earn more money than with YouTube and, just like the video platform, Vessel’s main source of revenue for the platform is advertisement, but the company also has a premium $3-a-month subscription that allows users to view new content for a minimum of three days before the rest of the public is allowed to see the video. Vessel has also raised extra cash through two funding rounds, which raised a combined total of over $132.5 million, with investors including Comcast Ventures and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Being a worthy Youtube competitor isn’t their only goal, though, with the company actively developing a new Snapchat and Instagram Stories competitor, which should hopefully bring in new customers and revenue sources. If Verizon’s deal with Vessel becomes official, it would be the latest of a number acquisitions by the carrier over the past few months and years.
Verizon only recently confirmed plans to acquire Internet of Things startup Sensity Systems, as well as the majority of Yahoo’s business for $4.83 billion – though the latter only confirmed today that a data breach took place in 2014 and could have affected as many as 500 million customers, something Verizon is surely not happy about. Back to the positives, though, as Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo helped back up the carrier’s buyout of AOL one year prior for a further $4.4 billion, which was considered the company’s first major investment into its digital services. Now, although Verizon is yet to hit mainstream success with the likes of its Go90 video service, the company has proven time and time again that it is prepared to sink billions of dollars into its online and video services in order to produce as much advertising revenue from them as possible, in order to eventually become the digital empire it hopes to be.