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Comcast announced this week that it's hooking up with News Corp. and NBC Universal to form the so-called "YouTube killer". It's Comcast's latest move in the "Web 2.0" space after the acquisition of Fandango, and the simultaneous announcement that it will launch Fancast, a video site focused on film and TV. We speculated that the move would put Comcast in competition with NewsTube, but now we know that Fancast is actually a distribution point for that venture, in addition to Comcast.net.
As well as distribution, Comcast is providing content for NewsTube from E!, G4 and Versus. Of the partners that have signed up so far, we're told, Comcast is the only distributor that's also a contributor. We received a separate announcement that the broadband video application service provider thePlatform will provide the backend distribution technology for the service. thePlatform is a subsidiary of Comcast.