I’ve been following Animoto – an automated music video creation company  – ever since they first launched on Facebook in March 2008, and although they are tight-lipped about their success, I feel they have a smart, expandable business model for online video.  The company reached out recently to let us know about their upcoming 2nd Annual Valentine’s Day Video, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to look at their existing services, business models and share a bit of opinion about their current offerings.
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Facebook users might not even remember that prior to Facebook (commonly referred to as the “Before Facebook Era” (BFB)) there used to be a free service called MySpace. Yes, the same MySpace that allowed users to customize their themes, listen to music, chat with friends, and other such niceties. MySpace was declared dead some 6 or 7 months ago – and its hard for us to remember what it used to be like. Fortunately, SuperNews has created a video which brings back memories.
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As an amateur video maker who works in social games, I find it extremely surprising that Social Games, once derided as having no possible profit potential, are able to generate powerful revenues. Because in the video world, ‘monetizing content’ is still a far-away dream.
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When it comes to live streaming on the web, the trend has seen its ups and downs. But with big brands and small brands alike turning to social web to grow their audience for live streaming video, the trend is picking up steam once again. Mainly because social networking platforms have offered better ways in which to involve viewers, live streaming video on the social web is more beneficial for all parties involved. The end result will be an interesting marketplace that will arise from the new sharing and viewing capabilities. Here are some ways in which live streaming on the social web can currently be leveraged, broken down into two categories: Sharing and Engaging.
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After shutting down its own video upload service and recommending Motionbox as an alternative, AOL has managed to find a way to actually partner with the company it suggested for video uploading and sharing. Motionbox has a new partnership with AOL’s recently acquired social network Bebo, to provide video storage, publishing and sharing services to its users.

If you’re a Bebo user, you may have noticed the transition messages via email and on Bebo’s website for the past month or so. Those that choose to use the new Motionbox-powered video services will be able to access basic membership features, enabling them to use online editing tools, secure storage and sharing options.
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Animoto, the service that lets you turn your images into a professional video, is launching a new feature that will get you into the holiday spirit (as if you needed help in that department!). Taking the concept of the e card, Animoto is taking things to the next level by offering holiday-themed greeting cards from your Animoto videos.

The whole holiday theme option is in fact incorporated into Animoto’s music library as well, with its own holiday genre. What’s great about the new holiday Animoto themes is that they’re very crisp and are well designed. Customized with your own images and music selection, you may like the new Animoto holiday themes enough to replace those Walgreens-printed cards you send out year after year.
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Last night MySpace announced a new video partnership with Auditude, to “enable advertising opportunities within audience-uploaded videos across MySpace.” One of the key technologies being leveraged is one that enables MySpace and Auditude to fingerprint copyrighted material and attribute owners of that content.

That means that even if individuals attempt to post copyrighted material from Saturday Night Live, NBC will receive an attribution ad which helps to promote the show. Additionally all revenue from advertisements on that video will flow to NBC and not the user who uploaded the video. This also means that users that take the time to create quality video content can be rewarded as well.

This technology sounds pretty significant in that rather than trying to chase after those that are infringing on copyrights by uploading certain videos, content owners can now benefit from the viral distribution of their content by other individuals. Whether you want to watch your content on Hulu, MySpace, or YouTube, it really doesn’t matter.

You can watch that video and the creators of that content will be rewarded. MTV Networks was also included on this announcement. This is a pretty big announcement considering that Viacom, parent company of MTV Networks, was previously one of the most aggressive pursuers of web-based copyright infringers. This new model is a huge shift from the previous model which reprimanded audiences from sharing favorite content.

Soon enough we will once again see the likes of Family Guy and other copyrighted viral video content, distributed by audiences while the owners of that content receive attribution for that content. I have a feeling that we are going to see many other video platforms follow a similar model when it comes to audience-uploaded content.

Yesterday afternoon, I was calling my friend Jesse Thomas when his girlfriend picked up and invited me to an online video chatroom called TokBox. I had used the service earlier on with Peter Corbett but now there were four of us chatting randomly about pretty much nothing. I decided to tweet out to my friends to come join the party and see how many people we could get to come join. Within 10 minutes we had close to 20 people chatting simultaneously in a TokBox conference room.

The conference became some sort of post-modern art display with people saying random things and pointing in random directions reminding me of the introduction to the Brady Bunch television show. While a 20 person conference call is not extremely useful for productivity purposes it was a pretty cool display of a new and unique technology. Unfortunately, I had to get on a business call during the TokBox session and while I thought my microphone had been turned down, it hadn’t!

Regardless, of my inability to properly manage the hardware attachments to my computer, my first TokBox experience was a pretty good one. TokBox provides a simple solution for those that are looking to engage in video conferencing for free. The only thing lacking currently lacking is a group chat feature within the conference area but I would expect that to be added relatively soon. Additionally, there were a number of people that had technical issues with TokBox. I was not one of them.

Image courtesy of Peter Corbett