Comparing the Flickrs of Video

Techcrunch has an interesting analysis this morning, comparing all the copy-cats of a potential Flickr for video. It starts like this:

“ I’ve been tracking a number of sites that offer flickr-like services for video.

I’ve taken a look at as many of these services that I could find. The most well known is YouTube, which we profiled in August and which recently raised venture money from Sequoia.

But there are at least eight others worth looking at as well. In addition to YouTube, these are CastPost, ClipShack, DailyMotion, Grouper, OurMedia, Revver, Vimeo and vSocial.”

He goes on to summarily compare them in this chart:

His summary: “ Which product is best for you depends on what types of features are most important to you. ”

My summary is that too much choice kills choice and dilutes the value proposition. Until you get a clear product/service that clearly brings value to the customer, that has a clear competitive advantage, all these services will compete on a new feature every week. And, except for Revver, business models are not adressed here: the company that will generate the most cash-flow and use it to grow its subscriber base will probably win in the end. Nevertheless, with $5m in the bank, Youtube is ahead in the game already.

Comments

[David Pooxi]

I strongly believe that Grouper is also ahead of the game:
- Grouper's Founders Dave Samuel and Josh Felser raised $3.5 million to date from angel investors, the founders, and venture capital firm Duff, Ackerman & Goodrich.
- He and his partner sold an Internet Radio (spinner.com) to AOL for $320 million in 1999
- they released a program to facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing of media files and claimed that a million people have downloaded the program so far.

The game is going to be tough ;)

[Frederic]

My 6 year old boy show strong evidence that he will be very soon an active video blogger... it gives some months for the market to consolidate a little, and for cool, easy to use, intuitive features to emerge... (don't forget that my kid speaks very little english, though it doesnt prevent him to know every corner of lego.com...). Rodrigo, if you need kids in your focus groups !!

Pooxi > "P2P sharing of media files"... what it is all about ... ??

[David Pooxi]

Bonjour Mr Humbert,

P2P sharing of media files => logiciel/technologie peer2peer pour échanger des fichiers vidéos (des gros fichiers en fait)...

Ex : bittorrent
http://www.bittorrent.com/

Avantage pour les utilisateurs :
- obtenir les fichiers plus rapidement

Avantage pour l'hébergeur / éditeur :
- diminution drastique du coût de la bande passante

Aujourd'hui, les logiciels P2P type bittorrent sont encore réservés à une élite de geeks car :
1/ leurs utilisations sont complexes.
2/ il faut souvent ouvrir des ports sur les firewalls pour qu'ils fonctionnent correctement... Pas simple...

Hope tha helps ;)

[Frederic]

Mr Pooxi > mon commentaire était une litote !
Mes bookmarks sont remplis de services très cools (et pas toujours légaux...) pour échanger, partager, RSSiser etc (FireAnt & co...)
Tout ce qui notre quotidien dans 5 ans, quoi !

[brough]

Isn't Google Video potentially the most significant brand in this space? What am I missing?

[Mark Sigal]

Well articulated post, Rodrigo.

I would strongly encourage checking out vSocial. While we are very strong on the lowest common denominator features for a great video clip sharing site (i.e., it just works, has all the bells and whistles and is simple and quick thanks to our AJAX UI), a core part of our differentiation is in enabling users to actually "do something" with video; namely to tell stories, start conversations and extend blogs.

Three features that you can quickly check out yourself:

1. Share favorite videos via clipmails (a type of formatted email)

2. Create short videos via our "video roll" builder tools

3. Embed BOTH favorite clips and video rolls in a web site

Should you be interested in delving deeper, I have written a post that articulates a vision for the space called, "Short attention, short conversations and video clips." Here is the URL: http://thenetworkgarden.blogs.com/weblog/2005/10/vsocial_video_c.html

vSocial is, of course, available at http://www.vsocial.com.

p.s. click the About box at vSocial to get a quickie example of a video roll. :-)

Cheers,

Mark

[Fanny]

Hello Rodrigo, le tableau a été remis à jour sur http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/06/the-flickrs-of-video/