• CNNMoney.com, Thursday, May 10, 2007 10:15 AM

Lost in the multitudes? That's always a possibility if you're an ad-supported online video startup. And while many of today's Web TV startups may find themselves also-rans one day, Babelgum, the latest in a long line of copycats, has a few things going for it, says Paul R. La Monica of CNNMoney: a billionaire investor and a somewhat unique video platform.

Babelgum is 100 percent backed by Fastweb founder Silvio Scaglia, a self-made Italian billionaire who seems committed to seeing the company turn into one of online video's major players. Similar to Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom's Joost, Babelgum is going after a high-quality, professionally produced video platform that can focus on attracting content and advertisers without having to worry about answering to venture capitalists or other investors. The company's first significant deal is with filmmaker Spike Lee as the exclusive online provider of his documentary "Jesus Children of America." Babelgum also has partnerships with the Associated Press and Reuters for news clips and is building a library of sports videos, documentaries, animated shorts and black-and-white films.

What, besides some nice content deals, makes Babelgum stand out in the overcrowding world of online TV? Similar to the file-stealing sensation BitTorrent, Babelgum's video platform employs peer-to-peer file-sharing technology. This enables video to stream faster and at a higher quality than you'd see on YouTube, which hosts grainy video and is subject to buffering slowdowns.

Read the whole story at CNNMoney.com »