Alan Saperstein

Alan Saperstein (born February 1, 1959) is an American Internet entrepreneur working specifically in the video and digital media field. He is recognized for his accomplishments in the streaming media field as the first person to broadcast video on the Internet in a commercial application with a product called Hotelview in 1993. Saperstein is the Co-Founder of Visual Data Corporation, now called Onstream Media Corporation.

Biography

Alan Saperstein was born 1 February 1959 in Englewood, New Jersey, United States. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1981 with a degree in Cinematography and went to work for NFL Films as Director of the Entertainment Division, employing the off season American football cameramen to cover large multi-camera arena rock performances by artists such as Journey, Billy Squier, Cyndi Lauper, and Bruce Springsteen for major record labels and MTV. In 1992, Saperstein co-founded Visual Data corporation with partner and financier Randy Selman. Visual Data Corporation was the first company to feature streaming video on the Internet in June 1993 with HotelView, a travel library of 2 minute videos featuring thousands of hotel properties worldwide. By 1998 they created an online webcasting software as a service (SAS) product called VisualWebcaster that is responsible for over 150 thousand webcasts to date, and is used by many major public companies to broadcast their earnings calls every quarter. In 1999, Saperstein and Selman, seeing the coming of both internet video media services and user generated video, developed tools to help non-IT staff manage and stream digital video for their websites. Several companies were purchased with various technologies and the company hired government contractor SAIC to help build and integrate the core infrastructure of a Digital Media Services Platform. The Company was renamed Onstream Media in 2004.

External links

• Hotelview
• Markeemag article
• Onstream Media Business Week