Cutting the Cord: OwnZones aggregates world of content
- Launched in November%2C OwnZones has more than 50 content channels
- Content includes text-based news stories%2C photos%2C video%2C audio and e-magazines
- Olympics news comes from Agence France-Presse%3B World Cup soccer coverage set for this summer
Streaming content doesn't just mean music and movies.
You can get news via non-traditional methods, too. For instance, I learned that U.S. snowboarding star Shaun White failed to medal in the Winter Olympics not on NBCOlympics.com — or Facebook, Twitter or a news site — but on a new niche content streaming site called OwnZones.
In operation just a few months, OwnZones secured Olympic news and photos from Agence France-Presse (AFP) and is making them available free to all who register on the site. For Olympics junkies, it's certainly worth making a visit to OwnZones. Registration also gets you a free seven-day trial of the subscription service so that you can explore the other news, videos and material the service offers. After that, you pay 99 cents to $2.99 for channels monthly.
You're unlikely to find a collection of material like OwnZones anywhere else on the Net. While the Olympic news maybe the most compelling coverage currently on OwnZones, there's probably something else for everybody among its other content.
Newshounds can devour stories from the Christian Science Monitor and international news from U.K. outlets The Guardian and Financial Times, as well as from AFP. Also available: business news stories from Inc., and domestic and international news from Newsy (Filed under Spotlight: World News).
Beyond news, there's a wide scope of offerings. Among the several e-magazines available are Basketball Times, Cookbook Digest and Rubber Stamp Madness.
And then there's learning videos about taking better photos and doing yoga. Travelistas can check out future destinations from Virginia Beach, Va., to Greece and Italy on Globetrotter TV. Aviation channel AeroCinema has segments about the history of planes and spacecraft. And a channel from Christian music label Save the City Records has videos and songs from its artists. There's even stand-up comedy videos from Comedy Time and Dog TV for your pooch.
I'm sure I barely scratched the surface of what OwnZones has available, and there's more content on the way, including 21 channels of Reuters news stories and videos, and the Nautical Channel.
Plus, OwnZones plans to provide similar coverage of the upcoming World Cup soccer tournament this summer, too.
I spent most of my time exploring OwnZones on my computer, but it translates to browsers on mobile devices, smart TVs and set-top boxes. The company is looking at more devices, including Google's Chromecast, says chief marketing officer Jonathan Tavss.
"The original idea was to create one location where somebody could put one credit card, one password and one username and then access all this content. So, it effectively is a digital marketplace," Tavss says. "We get to really bring a bunch of content that people might have a hard time finding elsewhere and are bubbling it up to our users so they are able to discover things more easily."
While OwnZones did break some Olympic news for me, I can't say that I'll immediately rely on it to replace my news outlets. For starters, if I actually was charged for the two dozen channels I collected during my trial, my monthly bill would probably cost more than $24.
And the site needs a bit more polish. AFP's big Olympic photos couldn't be fully seen in the Sochi gallery, and its stories were short. And few of the videos throughout the service are of HD-quality.
But I could certainly see where some might find value in the site's business model of advertising-free subscriptions. And I'll keep an eye on its evolution, as it could be a glimpse into the future of aggregated content.
"Cutting the Cord" is a new regular column covering Net TV and ways to get it. If you have suggestions or questions, contact Mike Snider via e-mail. And follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.