Microsoft’s YouTube style site came out into public beta this week. It is called Soapbox.
It is not terribly distinctive but it helps round out MSN’s set of blogging and other personal expression tools. It is expected to be a crucial part of Microsoft's new Live.com initiative, although the site is currently under the MSN domain.
By the way, Microsoft is not using Windows Media but Flash.
The MTV of the would-be filmmakers
Hundreds of would-be filmmakers post their videos online, hopping to catch the eye of a television exec. An independent production shop called Blac20.com receives huge traffic. The founders, two ex-NBC young, created this start up, now with six employees.
“We are a team of young writers and producers dedicated to creating broadband content that you might actually want to watch”. They say the want to emulate “the way MTV was hip and cool in the 80s””
Customizable results page when searching video
An upstart video search site called ClipRoller has invented a very customizable results page. Say there are six topics you are interested in. You can set up search-term channels, and bookmark the page. Every time you wish, you can get a picture of what’s new across multiple video sites.
It is like a Netvibes, but with all the widgets dedicated to the latest videos from any search query. The company behind is a New York City-based consulting shop originated with a YouTube-like project that won a business plan competition at NYU’s Stern Business School a year ago.
Vdc.com, the Cable of the Internet
There is a paid web service that allows you to watch television online called Virtual Digital Cable (VDC). But they have a problem: their lineup of contents includes stuff like ShoppingNBC, FashionTv and The Soundtrack Channel.
Time Warner, Viacom and Comcast, among others, are refusing to allow the purchase the rights for popular channels. So they decided to complain to the FCC, even if people at the industry say that federal authorities won’t hear them. The cable cartels are too powerful.
The open source Internet TV GetDemocracy celebrates its first year
One year after its release, GetDemocracy.com player is getting an update. Democracy is a free open source, multi-platform desktop application for watching Internet TV. Wired called it in 2006 “the future of net video”, but it has got little attention.
The new version of GetDemocracy supports playback of Flash videos right off of YouTube (but we found many errors). Over the last 12 months, Democracy has seen almost 1 million downloads. The founders of this project seek to democratize television. They set up a nonprofit structured after the model of Mozilla Foundation to be free from the pressure of a startup.
This is how they explain their idea: “You've probably watched hundreds of tiny videos on websites. It's tedious. Democracy Player makes video on the internet way less frustrating and way more enjoyable. You can subscribe to channels of internet video, download videos, and watch them full screen, one after the other, all in one application. Internet video becomes internet TV. It's free and open for everyone to watch and to broadcast.”
There are more than 600 channels in the channel guide that is built-in. Get Democracy has released also software for publishing channels (RSS feeds) of video that supports BitTorrent, and creates a browsable gallery.
Summarizing the video industry
With so many companies vying to be the next YouTube, it’s easy to lose track of them all. Two Silicon Valley guys have started to compile a list of the main players in the online video space.
They have summarized the industry index in these categories: Video Sharing, Intermediaries, Video Search, Video eCommerce, Video Editing & Creation, Rich Media Advertising, P2P (Peer To Peer), Video Streaming, and Vlogosphere.
