I looked at three video sites today. YouTube.com…the Goliath owned by Google. Blip.TV, the scrappy upstart with the seemingly most producer-friendly site. And Virb.com, which is more of an aggregator than a video site.
YouTube is great because of its reach. Millions of people view thousands of videos (or even millions of videos) every day. Its content has been aggressively ported to portable devices, including a huge focus in Apple’s iPhone, Nokia’s N800 tablet, and a number of other devices. I even found a Casio Exilim point-and-shoot camera that has a “YouTube” mode that shoots in a specific resolution and file format which is supposedly optimal for hosting on YouTube.
YouTube’s uploading tools are among the best around. Uploading a video is extremely easy, and they even give you the ability to capture directly to the site with your webcam. YouTube’s “Channels” are a good way to provide regular content of consistent quality, but to be honest they tend to get buried in the sheer volume of content. Only the most popular “channels” get much publicity. However, I’m sure it’s a safe bet that some of the more popular channels get massive amounts of traffic, which alone would put the other two video sites I explored to shame.
And then there are the advertisers. Paid content permeates YouTube like the massive media blackhole that it is. Unfortunately, a lot of the videos are simply attempts at starting viral marketing campaigns for various products. This seems to dilute the pool of valuable and genuinely interesting content…although it’s hard to call Joe Bob sitting in his dark bedroom in front of his Webcam mumbling a “video response” to some other schmoe’s “video response” compelling content.
Blip.TV is a significantly smaller site, although it is growing. I’m starting to see Blip.TV posts in more blogs. And it’s certainly polished. But there’s definitely more of a elitist air to it…a sense that those who post to it are posting high quality content, as opposed to the plebes on YouTube. Its interface is considerably more stark, but it has a nicely designed feel that projects a bit more professionalism. This may be why professionals tend to prefer it, even though its audience can not touch YouTub.e
The other reason professionals may prefer it are its upload tools. First and foremost, producers can access (and distribute) the original file format and resolution that was uploaded. This is a HUGE advantage over YouTube’s mediocre-quality Flash Video player. Users are granted “channels” by default. And they truly are channels. They can be accessed from a simple URL (username.blip.tv). They are given a choice of distribution rights (Creative Commons!) from which to select. They can even make money through advertising. But beyond that, the site just FEELS nicer…right down to the gorgeous progress bar for uploading, and the elegant flash player. Whereas YouTube gives you a cryptic spinning icon with an approximate time to upload, Blip.TV provides a proper “thermometer” gauge. Little things like this, as well as its minimalist design, make it a pleasure to use.
Virb.com’s focus is more on social networking and music. It allows you to aggregate a number of media within your account, which you can then share among the internet public or among your Virb.com “friends”. When I signed up, I was soon inundated by indie band accounts that wanted to add me as their friends, which gave it a slightly sleazy MySpace feel. Of course, the interface is WAY slicker than MySpace, and the site has some interesting tools. There’s a lot of AJAXy drag-and-drop functionality to move your media into albums, as well as to “pimp out your profile”. Virb’s flash player is of decent quality, but it has no controls other than play/pause. Not even a full window/full-screen mode. You can view the video with a darkened overlay behind the player to hide the site, but I’m not sure of the point.
Its a well designed and hip-looking site, and works well, but its content is so heavily focused on music that there’s hardly any non-music related video to explore. I haven’t gotten a sense of its growth, but it doesn’t seem like it’s very well known. This may change, but the odds are that it will be bought by a larger entity a lot sooner than it will hit a critical mass.
Blip.TV is certainly the most promising of the three sites, and has far-and-away the best Flash video quality and player. (Full screen viewing of identical files showed that Blip.TV completely blew YouTube out of the water.) But nothing can beat YouTube in terms of library. You can never get bored exploring YouTube. And you also have many more options of viewing their content on multiple devices. Virb.com’s focus on music gives it an edge in the ever-widening field of video sites, but that focus may also result in a smaller less-generalized library that may be needed to attract many viewers…and content providers. It’s likely that YouTube will remain the King of video for the foreseeable future.
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