brightcove and media evolution

Brightcove has built the start of an online video platform, supporting video content producers, distributors, and destinations.  They just closed a $59.5 million round to bring their total funding north of $80 million.  Bambi Francisco posts that Brightcove's valuation is now about $220 million. 

What is behind this 9 digit valuation?  A huge part of the future of media.  The future of media is a vast topic, but the best high-level thoughts that I've read are Fred Wilson's future of media blog posts - search his blog as he writes about it often, but I believe this post is one of the first ones that he wrote, and it is a nice quick read.  Brightcove can fit into Fred's syndicate and monetize categories quite nicely...if they focus on those areas and execute.

Brightcove is also potentially a value-add aggregation layer for online video.  Value-add aggregation layer is a mouthful, and I'm sure there is a better way to describe it, but here are examples:

• In yesterday's world, our cable TV or Satellite providers filled that role for TV and video (although I'd argue the value-add part is minimal and decreasing); newspapers and magazines filled that role for written content; radio stations filled that role for music. 
• Currently, portals such as Yahoo! do this for online content; Google does it for online advertising; Amazon does it for books and increasingly in other areas.

Brightcove may help fill that role for online video, and online video will not be limited to our PCs.  From TVs to mobile devices, we'll consume online video content everywhere.  So, this is a HUGE space.  And actually that is a danger for Brightcove as well.  They still appear to be trying to fill multiple roles in the space.  Meanwhile, there are many formidable competitors emerging, and some of them are more hyper-focused on specific aspects of building the future of online video.