The very cool video capture service VideoEgg is announcing today that they have entered into agreements to provide their easy video creation tool to a wide range of social networking sites including Bebo, Dogster, Tagged, Hi5, Current.tv and AOL. The VideoEgg client captures and transcodes video from almost any device you can find and makes posting it to the web really easy. VideoEgg is to video like Odeo is to podcasts, except lots of people want to make short videos and VideoEgg may be even easier to use.
We’ve written about the company a number of times in the past because they’ve got a great technology and are clearly making important connections. They launched one year today at DEMO Fall in Huntington Beach. They’ve received funding from August Capital and First Round Capital. David Hornik from August is on their board.
These partnerships all make a lot of sense, as there’s no reason for social networking sites to lose their users to video uploading sites if it’s a service they can offer themselves by partnering with someone like VideoEgg. Watch for all of the above social networks to take a real leap in media richness once a large number of their users are adding video quickly into their content streams.
Grouper offers a similar functionality and was recently acquired by Sony for $65 million. Recording directly through the browser, making it simple, clean and easy - is obviously the kind of technology that’s increasingly in demand as the world of user generated multimedia content heats up.
This definitely is one of its kind service. I don’t think any other video uploading sites provides such a function to directly capture, edit, encode and post the video online. Good job.
Will this video capability be fully integrated into those sites or provided as a plug-in; i.e. cut-n-paste like YouTube for MySpace?
These networks will provide their users video capture on site.
This isn’t completely “one of its kind”. There were plenty of Video Sharing web sites back in 1999-2001 (Web1.0) that had client side software to do video capturing, encode, and upload to a cobranded website for subsequent sharing/embedding.
Again, it amazing how Web2.0 companies/enthusiasts think that these concepts have never been done before.
“There were plenty of Video Sharing web sites back in 1999-2001 (Web1.0) that had client side software to do video capturing, encode, and upload to a cobranded website for subsequent sharing/embedding.”
..and who would they be, Chris? Nonetheless, I believe videoegg’s plugin is far advanced and simpler to use than the web1.0 counterparts, if any.
@Startups: Off the top of my head: VideoShare, PopCast, iClips, SpotLife. There’s probably a couple more I’ve forgotten. All of these closed doors by 2002 (same problem as current video sharing sites: expensive operations, nebulous revenue opportunities) but you could probably find archived copies of their corporate pages on Google.
VideoShare’s used the same ActiveX plugin architecture as VideoEgg so that it would appear in co-branded partner web pages, such as Lycos, Excite, Blue Mountain Arts (Video Greeting cards), and People2People (online dating). PopCast/SpotLife was more a client side .EXE as I recall. Can’t remember how iClips was developed.
I do admit that VideoEgg has done a nice job and it’s very cleanly developed with a crisp, simple UI. Along with Grouper, these people seem to know what they are doing from a design/engineering standpoint.
While it’s all good, it’s just not original, that’s all. If Web2.0 companies don’t research and learn from what’s come before them, they are likely to make the same mistakes.
Marshall,
This isn’t a criticism of you, but more of the nature of PR: how many of these deals are actually new? Bebo has used VideoEgg for as long as I can remember, and the AOL deal seems to stretch back to May or even earlier. Only Dogster is a relatively new addition. I seem to spend half my time these days going through emails from PR folks, only to realize they’re announcing stuff that launched months (and sometimes years!) ago. End PR rant.
Ah! Thanks for clarifying, Chris. Also, couldn’t agree more on what you said about web2.0 counterparts learning from web1.0 experiences.
The race is on to produce the best web video. When companies compete consumer benefit. iTV will have a lot of competition.
ok i’ve got a question - does anybody else forsee the tapering of “user driven content” as more big media players come in and introduce real video productions (aka, shows, movies, etc.) or is it just me? it just seems the natural progression, of course, but i doubt big players are going to let go of a potential revenue opportunity either (not to mention that i for one find user driven content kind of dirty and annoying, save for a few good clips here and there). Overall, drunk girls singing/kissing/etc. and dogs on skateboards are like a 2 second novelty for me but I’ll watch a professional show or clip fairly easily.
Not to say a solution like this isn’t going to do well (i’m sure it will as user driven content will always have a place) but still. The video “explosion” feels a little narrow. With IMS and convergence coming into the picture, I don’t know - i’m not convinced this is the end of web 2.0 disruption.
And, yes, I do see a huge amount of recycling of ideas from the last time around, too
it’s funny but seven years ago I didn’t buy into “anytime, anywhere productivity” and I kinda don’t buy into the “everything to your mobile device” that I keep hearing everybody talk about now.
Consumer produced video is fun and kind of works for the web. If your liek me you loath the compulsory 15 to 30 sec preroll ads before a clip - and you can bet that these will accretively be pushed down our throats. I’m looking forward to seeing more brands develop content for themselves. Well thought out content with serious investment behind it. Well produced content that we ‘pull’ not get ‘pushed’ on.
Advertising agencies are beginning to explore navigable video - interactive video that allows web users to explore a brands site through interactive video entertainment. Get ready for this explosion in the next few years (i am) and it’s gonna be huge!
I guess the mention of Dogster doesn’t require a disclaimer? So as long as the article is targeted specifically at them you can put them in there as a prominent mention (above AOL, etc)?
I’ll tell you what, they have a clever tagline. I dig it.
Wow, The Saint are you kidding? That’d be hot! We created a little direct to video production company following one of my projects. Good to know about that with advertisers!
Just to tell you, VideoEgg have already been doing this for a good while on Bebo.
Note to ‘The Saint’& Patricia. Check out Coull - http://www.coull.biz, (recently covered in TechCrunch UK by Sam Sethi). Coull have a video capture, create and upload tool called Coull-Vlogger, but even better check out Coull-Interact a neat Interactive Video editing solution. Easily tag objects, items, people etc within any video, make them interactive, encode, upload and stream on line inside a branded media player or html page.
iClips was a client side plug-in. More importantly, they had a co-branded video sharing service up AND running in Yahoo profiles in 2001 and 2002. Basically, for about a year, you could create and share streaming video files by uploading them to your Yahoo Profiles page, all using iclips client side tools. And all this was done from WITHIN Yahoo.
http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release834.html
Guys,
i came across new indian centric video site called http://www.connectfilms.com
looks very clean and cool. better than any other existing sites. looks like a brand new one. it looks Indian and international.
the most important thing is it introduces indian films and indian videos to international users as oppose to the other sites in the market.
people keep talking about bollywood is going international. believe me i lived and worked in Europe for 6 yrs. people in the west definitely heard of bollywood but no one bothers or interested to see them. i think in that sense connectfilms.com is good site to introduce bollywood to the west.
Hey Friends !!
Heard about http://www.aapkavideo.com ? Well this is the site you guys have to really crack on . Its a user friendly site which offers you a free registration in a few simple steps and then you are logged onto the world of bollywood. This site captures the most latest and oldest movie clips. Name the movie and you get the clip right there in front of your eyes by using the search video option. The various categories on this site helps one to save time while browsing.Another unique feature about this site is ; A user can upload and share multiple vidoes with friends or relatives in a few simple steps. They feature something called specials. On clicking the same you get relative videos only.
Guys what are you waiting for ??? Get Exploring!!!
I find one new video resource http://www.axishow.com
Hi,
Thats a nice site. But have found a better desi video sharing site it has a large desi video songs collection, lyrics most important is it has no popup ads. Check this out http://www.bollywoodtube.com
Kishore