But like with anything else, for every story of failure there is an equal story of success.

Take the web site ExpoTV.com for example.  They feature user-generated video.  But they do it with a twist.  All of their user-generated videos are product reviews…everything from washing machines, to books, to cameras, to juicers and beyond.

The site was launched in 2005 and only had around 2,500 user-generated videos in the first year.  Today they have over 300,000 video reviews (and 17 employees).

There are also making money…and plenty of it…by placing product linked ads in their videos, as well as other targeted on-site advertising.  And all through video content that other people generate for them.

It’s a good testament as to what can happen when you couple the power of video, with the power of other people’s opinions.

Here’s a link to ExpoTV’s site.  And below is one of their typical user-generated video product reviews:

How did they do it?

They made their videos shorter.  For example, instead of offering long video interviews with celebrities or musicians, they chopped those interviews into multiple, bite-sized segments.  And viewership skyrocketed.

Why? Because people prefer short videos on the web.  Or as MTV news VP Ben Wagner put it, “users live in a search and social universe…it’s about more, shorter and faster.”

MTV news also used a similar technique text stories.  Rather than running 1,000 word articles, they used provocative headlines and only the most interesting paragraph from an article.  The result?  Readership of articles increased 40% in the same time period.

And unlike most plugins from Red Giant Software, Magic Bullet Mojo happens to work inside Sony Vegas too. How does it perform? Well, I demonstrate Magic Bullet Mojo inside Sony Vegas in the video below.

Just click on the image to watch it now (if you’re a Firefox user, you’ll need to be using Firefox 3.0 or above to watch this video):

You can download a free trial version of Magic Bullet Mojo (for Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere, Avid, Final Cut or After Effects) by clicking here.

While Google didn’t reveal too many details, what is known is they will be offering multi-person video chats as part of the lineup.  Currently, you can only have one-on-one video chats.  All of the new features will also be integrated seamlessly within Gmail and the other apps, instead of as a new application.

Google seems to be targeting business users specifically, where 2 million organizations account for 20 million Google Apps users.

And with numbers like those, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google had plans to eventually roll out a complete video-conferencing solution in Google Apps…even offering a free service comparable to those offered by sites such as GoTo Meeting.  After all, in 2007 they aquired video conferencing software from the Swedish company Marratech.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out though…as well as how their new offerings will affect businesses already in the marketplace.

Of course the question is, how exactly do you develop an iPhone app for your market? Well, a number of new web sites are answering that question for you. In fact, they will develop custom iPhone apps for you. And they make it dead-simple.

Most of these sites are template driven. You go to the site and follow the step by step templates to create the specifications of your app. Then real developers go to work building your app and submit it to Apple for approval. Once approved, your app will appear in the app store and will be available to millions of iPhone users.

The cost of these services vary, from a single yearly fee to month-to-month fees. But they are all affordable…none of them are near the cost you’d normally pay a professional programmer for application development (i.e. $2,000 and up).

So where can you find these affordable iPhone app development sites? I’ve listed the links to the most popular sites below:

app breeder
My App Builder
Swebapps
eBook App Maker
GameSalad

You’re welcome.

But newcomer VoxOx has now raised the bar.

VoxOx can do everything that Skype and Google Voice can do, however, it’s seamlessly integrated into social media applications like FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter too.

With VoxOx, from a single interface, you can simultaneously communicate with people on the phone, through Twitter, email, text messaging, social networking sites and more.  The key phrase here is single interface.  You don’t need multiple apps open to do this…just one; VoxOx.

And even better, it’s 100% free.

To learn more, sign-up and get started instantly, click here to visit VoxOx’s site.  You can also see a video demonstrating how VoxOx works below:

ScreenFlow had long been the screen recording tool of choice for Mac users, until August 2009, when TechSmith released Camtasia for Mac, which raised the bar for Mac screen recording software (and offered many features not found in ScreenFlow).  You can see my video review of Camtasia for Mac here.

But ScreenFlow has answered back with version 2.0.  Essentially, they have added almost every feature available in Camtasia for Mac and a little extra.  And they’ve done so elegantly, without changing the user interface.  Some of the new features include:

• Publish directly to YouTube
• 2D and 3D transitions
• The ability to speed up, slow down or add freeze frames to video
• The ability to pause while you are recording (a very welcomed feature)
• Audio ducking (background music will raise or lower when a voice is in the video too)
• The ability to detach the audio from video recordings, creating separate tracks

The upgrade cost for existing ScreenFlow users is $29 and I highly recommended it.  You can learn more about ScreenFlow 2.0 by clicking here (a free demo is also available to new users)

It also seems that whenever a do a blog post about Sony Vegas, it stirs up debate over what the “best” video editing software is.  Of course “best” is always a matter of personal opinion, but Sony Vegas still gets scoffed at by many pro’s.

Well score one for Sony Vegas.  It’s the video editing software used to create a $50 million dollar Hollywood movie.  That movie is Paranormal Activity, which I previously did a post about here.

As of October 24, 2009, Paranormal Activity has an estimated domestic gross of $50 million dollars.  And you can expect that number to grow substantially as the movie gets world-wide distribution and eventually goes to DVD.

Of course Sony Vegas isn’t the reason for the movies success.   All video editing software does the same thing…it takes video off a camera, allows you to chop it up and enhance it, then produce that video in different media formats.

However, it is proof that you can use $500 software to achieve the same thing Hollywood studios do.  You just have to know how to use it.  And people will never know the difference.

Hulu has been a bit of a Cinderella story, originally launched to help combat video piracy by offering premium television content for free…and typically ranking behind only YouTube in video traffic.

But unlike YouTube, the owners of Hulu (NBC, ABC and Fox) want to start getting paid.  That means no more free.   There’s no word yet on how they plan to do this, but subscription based models seem most likely.

And if they are successful with it, you can bet on one thing;  a steady flow of other video related sites will follow their lead.  Good-bye free.

A case in point is a startup called BizVision.  They provide affordable online training videos (less than $5 each to free) to individuals and small businesses.  They offer a few thousand videos in 90 categories…from career development, to accounting, to sales and marketing, to safety, to quality improvement and beyond.

Their web site isn’t the most attractive you’ll find.  And the production quality of their videos varies greatly.  But it’s the quality of the content that people are after.

In fact, people in the business world are after it so much that BizVision projects 7 figure revenues in their first year of existence.  Yes, this from a dull yet easy-to-navigate site that offers cheap, instant gratification on topics that businesses are used to paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for.

So let me repeat the lesson once again.  People will pay to watch your web videos.  But you’ve got to offer them quality content.  Do that and you will find success.