There may yet be a smart business strategy behind Yahoo’s rumored purchase of web video company Maven Networks. I’m finding it hard to understand much of anything Yahoo is doing these days, even as I try to root for them. But the Maven deal depresses me a bit. We began using Maven as a video hosting tool in the months before I left the Mercury News (you can see one of the video players on the home page). Try as I might, I just couldn’t come around to liking the service. Having used Brightcove for many months, I kept feeling disappointed in the clunky Maven interface or with the smart little things I could do in Brightcove, but not Maven. Brightcove, for example, has a published API and a relatively robust developer community around it. Maven, to my knowledge, does not. To me, Brightcove, while not perfect, was (and is) a clear leader in this space. If these are the kinds of companies that Yahoo is buying to help swing itself in the other direction, that’s worrisome.

UPDATE:Clearly, I dashed off this post too quickly. The play here for Yahoo seems pretty obvious. Yahoo wants (needs) to extend its ad sales into video, and Maven offers an opportunity to do that, having partnered with several established media companies. But I’d still argue that Brightcove is the better platform and the better buy for Yahoo. Obviously, Yahoo didn’t see it that way.