Confused by all these video sharing sites?
Editor's Note: The Video Site Cheat Sheet has been updated several times since this post was first published on June 27. The most recent version (and all future versions) can be found right here: http://www.lightreading.com/videoshare.
1:30 PM -- Confused about all the sites out there offering video sharing services? Me too.
I don't pretend to know the subtle business model difference between YouTube and Metacafe, if there is one. Adding to my confusion is the fact that the same five "viral videos" seem to show up as the most viewed on every single video sharing site. How does anyone make a dime serving up the same video that everyone else is serving?
Sites like blip.tv are generally exceptions to the viral video thing, since they specialize in original content, but you have to wonder how quickly they'll need to forge relationships with real TV providers before they offer the kind of distribution required to make real money.
For consumers, though, the real question: What does each site offer and what does it cost? To help, I've made an attempt to put all these video sharing sites into some kind of digestible format. I would have baked the info into a cake -- that's even more digestible -- but who has the time?
Of course, the chart that follows doesn’t have everything. Sites like Motionbox and Xolo aren't fully functioning yet. And I wasn't sure how to classify VideoEgg or ClickTV, because they seem to be video utilities/platforms rather than destination sites. And vpod.tv is a total mystery, unless the product the company is making is actually just a ream of press clippings about its founders, in which case, I'd say the whole project is a roaring success.
Anyway, here's the chart:
Table 1: The Philter's Video Site Cheat Sheet
Web Site | Does the service offer video editing capability? | What's the file size limit? | How much does it cost? | Can I keep a video private? | Does it require a software download? |
Atom Films (AddictingClips.com) | No | 100 Mbytes. Clips must be under 10 minutes in length. | Free | Yes | No |
No | There's no enforced limit. But the service "strongly recommends" files smaller than 100 Mbytes "for performance purposes." | Free | No | No | |
No | 100 Mbytes | Free | No | No | |
Yes | Max one-time upload limit is seven 50-Mbyte videos | Free | No | No | |
No | None. From the company's user guidelines: "You can upload as many videos to Google Video as you like, without any size or length limitations." WOW! | Free | No | No | |
Yes | None. This is a P2P video sharing application so there's a short preview for each movie, then users can download what they want. | Free (for now) | Yes | Yes | |
Yes | None | Free (share up to 5 hours of video online per month) | Yes | Yes | |
No | 100 Mbytes | Free | No | No | |
Yes | 50 Mbytes | Free | Yes | No | |
No | 100 Mbytes | Free | No | No | |
No | Under 5 minutes in length or less than 1 Gbyte in size | $6.95/mo. for unlimited storage | Yes | Yes | |
No | 25 Mbytes | Free | No | No | |
No | 100 Mbytes | Free | No | Yes | |
No | 100 Mbytes | Free (up to 1 Gbyte of storage) | Yes | No | |
No | None. This is a P2P sharing platform where a short clip of up to 3 minutes is shown from Veoh.com and users decide from that whether to download the rest of the whole video. | Free | Yes | Yes | |
No | 30 Mbytes a week | Free | No | No | |
Yes (For slideshows only) | 200 Mbytes | Free | Yes | No | |
No | 100 Mbytes | Free | No | No | |
No | 100 Mbytes | Free | No | No | |
No | None. From the site's FAQ: "Most videos on YouTube are under five minutes long. There is no specific length limit, but longer videos require more compression to fit in the 100MB size limit, and the quality will go down as the length of the video goes up." | Free | Yes | No |
— Phil Harvey, Video Editor, Light Reading
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