Is a Video sharing site a business opportunity ?

Is Video becoming more prevalent in a corporate environment ? Or, should we ask the question where are there opportunities for specialist video sharing sites and can this technology assist corporations and their respective clients.

Certainly, the proliferation of Youtube type clones has started. Some offer some great additional features, for example – tagging at specific points. The latter, is great for eLearning but also helpful for skimming!

The list of sites below shows you how many different (think longtail!) types of specialisms/niches there are:

• Social Network for Collectible Game Players
• African Friend, Pen pals & School Friends
• MyModeltalk.com Castings and Auditions
• Social Network for Models and Actors
• MC Hammer’s (Remember those trousers!) – Dance site
• UKskate.com
• The place for the albanians to meet
• Asian Space
• Motorcycle Syndicate
• Art Calendar Forums
• Supporter.com
• Specialist music sites
• Connect and share with football fans.
• Medical Students Community
• 24 Hour Streaming Hip Hop
• Disabled World Community
• TeenSkate.com
• Grandparents Network
• Sports Community
• RadioHead Space
• Social Network Community for Radiohead Fans
• Plastic surgery friends
• Cancer sufferer support sites
• Be my Own Publisher
• A place for Writers and Readers
• jobnex.us
• Zowned – Games Showcase
• Animation Showcase
• Jazzmatrix.com

The value of these sites is that members can engage without the noise of everything else. They offer more than standard membership systems as they can incorporate mass mailing and the benefits of RSS.
Interestingly, I remember YouTube before the Google takeover. At the time suprisingly many corporations never considered placing a multimedia advertisement, for example, client testimonials there.

The central issue about the niches listed is the old adage from the Jerry Mcguire movie, i.e:Show me the money’, i.e: To run these sites can be costly in terms of set-up, stability, features, security and bandwidth charges. How can owners recoup their costs.

There is also the question of how far can these sites be customised. A good place to experiment is Ning. We use Ning it on an invitation only basis for the development of eLearning modules. We consider video sharing business opportunities from two main perspectives:

1. Mash-up opportunities within a context of specialism

2. Support for learners, for example: eInduction and

3. a way of introducing greater interactivity and efficiency when of sharing ideas, especially when collaborating on a project.

It is also worth viewing the following to understand user behaviour with on line video:

I look forward to 2008′s summaries to see if Video is really becoming more prevalent, especially with the advent of more mobile devices and associated mobile blogging – the latter promised back in 2003 but now more of a realty with excellent applications such as Twitpic and Qik.

Popularity: unranked [?]