YouTube — the Flickr of Video?

August 14, 2005 | Matt Marshall

Check out YouTube, the Palo Alto start-up that launched earlier this year.

Slashdot pointed us to it. YouTube is the latest “folksonomy” website, similar to Flickr, except that it is for sharing and hosting short video clips instead of photos. We liked this clip, “Matt Dances”, of an ex-programmer who dances around the world with an irresistible jig — our favorite was about 3/4 the way through, when a giraffe in Kenya decides to bolt from the craziness. (Thanks to TechCrunch for pointing it out).

Here’s Slashdot on YouTube: Like Flickr, its core functionality is implemented in Flash. Videos can be tagged, searched, discussed, etc through a social network. YouTube has developer APIs, RSS feeds, and the ability to embed videos directly into other web pages. The website was recently profiled on TechCrunch as an up-and-coming Web 2.0 application.

See the bottom of the TechCrunch item for more postings about YouTube. As Rubel notes, there are other sites in this area, including OpenMedia and Our Media Network. And Slashdot’s comments lists many more similar, and different, video sites: PutFile, Vidiac, Vobbo and BroadCast Machine. Not to mention video services of big boys Google and Yahoo, and what they plan to do in the future.

So we have no idea how YouTube plans to make money off this.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.