Video competition

At Yahoo's analyst day, Jeff Weiner - head of Yahoo's search initiatives - said the search giant would have some new product/service launches in a couple weeks. While he didn't say that a user-generated video upload service would be one of those services, that type of product seems to fit right in with Yahoo's other offerings. My guess is that it's coming soon. The challenge for Yahoo is to making it different from what's already out there.

I recently was alerted to 88Slide.com. It's a site - or should I say channel - that airs one-minute video trivias. Founder Noah Bonnett told me he was inspired by Rocketboom, a daily 3-minute news show.  Bonnett hopes to give advertisers consistent short-form content to sponsor. Bonnett - who shoots the video himself - has already attracted some sponsors. It doesn't surprise me. Advertisers are seeking short-form content that's predictable and reliable.

There is also Purevideo, backed by angel investor Ron Conway. Purevideo owns stupidvideos.com and is in the process of creating other video channels. Vmix is yet another video site hoping to build Internet channels. Booyah Networks (not affiliated with CNBC host James Cramer) is one of the more interesting private-label video services because of its auction-based advertising model. Essentially, Booyah has technology to automate the bidding process for pre-roll or post-roll ads. Think - AdWords for video. Among the other emerging video channels or video aggregators I've come across besides Google Video, YouTube, Grouper, MySpace videos and Akimbo, are Current.tv, Pixsy.com, Dailymotion.com, Metacafe.com, Vidilife.com, Guba.com, and eBaumsworld.com. There's also Ourmedia.org, Veoh.com, Podzinger.com, Break.com, Tagworld.com, Gorillamask.net, Fireant.tv, Dailysixer.com, iFilm.com, Sloopy.com, Atom Film (and AddictingClips), Extremefunnyhumor.com, Dinkytv.com, Stupidvideos.com, GrindTV.com, Comegetyousome.com, Ripetv.com and Livedigital.com.

Who will be the stars of this online video medium? I'm sure they'll arise in no time.  After all, the infrastructure for viewing video online is practically in place. Sadly, I'm sure some of these budding channels won't survive.