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Our Work with Pana

Pana Television  (http://panatelevision.com)

Issue:
Online video makes up one third of consumer Internet traffic today, with a further half of traffic coming from file sharing. By 2013, online video is forecast to grow more than ten times, and with two to three times growth forecast in file sharing, video will comprise 90%+ consumer traffic.*

The global growth of the online video segment attracts new companies to the market. Pana Television is one of those companies. Softjourn recently assisted Pana Television by developing a video platform targeting African viewers all over the world.

Pana had already signed contracts with several  content providers and were looking for a development partner, experienced in the  online video domain, to help develop an Internet-based ad-supported video platform for storing and streaming more than a 1000 videos. Softjourn was chosen by Pana, for their experience, after conducting a RFP process.
Solution:

It was critical to choose the right platform for building the product as well as integrate it with social media resources to help promote the product after launching.

Our team researched various video platforms including Brightcove (http://www.brightcove.com/en/) and Ooyala (http://www.ooyala.com/) online video platforms. Eventually we suggested to go with Brightcove, as its API allowed more functionality and flexibility.
Softjourn developed both front-end and back-end parts of the PanaTV website, making sure the website was optimized for social sharing. Users can log in using their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Registered users can invite their Facebook friends and Gmail contacts to join the website and watch their favorite videos on PanaTV.
Result:
“It was a great team, communication was excellent, the frequency of communication was good as well as how fast the team responded to my questions and changes!", Daniel Ogbonna, Founder at Pana Television Inc.
 
The result is a fast and easy to navigate video website which has the basic functionality for streaming videos and necessary social media integration. Thanks to close communication and frequen t deliveries, the final product met our client’s expectations, and is ready to go live soon.
 
Phase II of the project, which started right after Phase I, added more functionality to enhance the experience of PanaTV users. Functionality added included:  
 
  • Premium membership, which required integration with PayPal’s payment system.
  • Playlist feature let’s users create and save different playlists and watch multiple videos in a row;
  • The ad optimization task involved integrating PanaTV with the OpenX ad platform. Now, panatelevision.com has more sources for advertising content: via Brighcove video hosting service, OpenX ad platform, as well as a few ad blocks managed via the site's admin panel.
  • News aggregation: PanaTV has been integrated with more than 100 news resources, making it not only a place to watch videos, but also a comprehensive news portal.
Social sharing implemented during Phase I has been further improved. Now the system admins for panatelevision.com can track who sent invitations, to how many people those invitations were sent, how many invites were accepted, etc. The functionality helped generate more than 21k likes for the PanaTV Facebook page. A great result!

 
Technologies:
Coding language: PHP
Framework: Zend
DB: MySQL
API: Brightcove API

*Source: Cisco Visual Networking Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2008-2013