YouTube, whose community is ironically stereotyped as oversharers, has business transparency issues. This transparency problem doesn't come just from Google, it also manifests within the YouTube community's top-earners and across the third-party businesses that have sprung up to leverage the giant video-sharing site. It's hard to say who is worse, YouTube, or the video industry emerging on the site - known as "YouTube Networks."  

The YouTube industry, often compared to the Wild West due to its few rules and regulations and seemingly endless profits for the lucky few, has a controversial mantra: "Join a YouTube Network! That's how you know you've made it!"

YouTube Networks Will Change Your Life, For Better Or Worse

To non-insiders, YouTube networks can be one or all of the following: an ad sales team, a promotional marketing service, a production studio, a talent management agency, and/or a laison between YouTube partners and the notoriously hard-to-get-ahold-of YouTube reps. Think of a third-party YouTube network as a type of Web video business incubator with millions in funding (depending on the network) and all the right (presumably) connections to make you a big Web star. In return for all these wonderful things, the YouTube network takes a cut of your profits. Sometimes that cut can be more than half of what you earn.  

There are roughly 200 networks operating on YouTube right now, Steve Raymond, the CEO of Big Frame, told me in an interview last month. Big Frame is one of the newest - and in my opinion one of the cleanest - YouTube networks now operating.

If the existence of 200 networks on YouTube surprises you, think of it this way: YouTube has been pushing towards the network model for a while, given 72 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. YouTube's small staff simply can't handle every YouTuber's needs the way they did in the good old days of 2006 - before the company was purchased by Google.    

Alas, tales of young rising YouTubers being taken advantage of because they didn't hire a lawyer when negotiating with a YouTube network has become all too common. Horror stories of people signing for life because they don't read the fine print, or end up giving away complete ownership of their content, abound. 

Educate Yourself! YouTube Partnership vs. Network

In a prior interview about networks taking advantage of unsuspecting video stars, The Fine Brothers - the YouTube duo known for their hit show "Kids React" - told me they were dismayed by the number of YouTubers who don't realize they are giving up their YouTube Partnership when they join a network. If anything, this should be the first thing made clear to Partners. (Some Partners like not having to worry about this financial aspect, but others, like the Fine Brothers, worry it leads to abuse.)

Forfeiting control of your Partnership - the contract you sign with YouTube that allows you to collect ad revenue from the Google-owned company - is standard in the YouTube network world.

Ray William Johnson, the top YouTuber and first video star to become a millionaire from his earnings (in April 2011), doesn't think this should be the case, and said so in a recent interview with NewMediaRockStar founder Benny Luo. (ReadWrite readers and YouTube insiders might remember the last time I wrote about Johnson,  notoriously media-shy for a Web celebrity, when he left the YouTube network Maker Studios after contract disputes.) 

In the interview, Johnson admits he is no expert on YouTube networks, but believes “there’s no good reason to ever sign your YouTube Adsense account over to a third party. Ever." Any service offered by a YouTube-based network, he said, "they can accomplish without seizing control of your Adsense account.”

Where's The Data?

YouTube's transparency problems are not just about the forfeiting of one's YouTube Partnership, or the lack of education about networks - it's also about YouTube's preferential treatment of networks when it comes to analytics. Networks get access to YouTube data relevant to the creator's account that YouTube doesn't share with the creator. In other words, there are better numbers for analyzing viewership and performance, and only networks get to see them.

Creators get only "estimated data," said Benny Fine of The Fine Brothers. "The actual final numbers, only networks get that." Many partners end up using other contractors and services to track their own data. It's a level of secrecy that doesn't make sense, Fine said, and certainly fosters at least the perception of abuse.

The Fine Brothers don't think all networks are bad - they signed with network Revision 3 after a year of researching their options. They recommend YouTubers demand their network contracts provide simultaneous access to YouTube performance data.

Johnson, on the other hand, seems to have eschewed networks all together, and appears to be happy being the master of his own YouTube fate by opening up his own production studio called Runaway Planet.

How Much Do YouTubers Make?

YouTubers, by their Partner contracts, are forbidden from revealing their earnings. But in OpenSlate's infographic published last month, the average monthly revenue for the top 1,000 channels comes out to $26,000. This amounts to an average annual payout of $276,000. That's serious money - that no one is permitted to talk about.

Philip DeFranco, a leading YouTuber known for his news and pop culture commentary on "The Philip DeFranco Show," admitted in a Reddit AMA that he pays himself roughly $100,000 a year and invests the rest (a monthly six-figures) back into his companies. A top executive at the YouTube network Revision 3 (where DeFranco is signed) mostly confirmed the salary in a phone chat at the time, saying DeFranco gets a six-figure check each month from the company. Not a check for six figures a year from Revision3 - a six figure check each month. DeFranco, of course, is a YouTube anomaly - a geniune Web celebrity and Internet video entrepeneur.

YouTube's Trickle-Down Effect?

It is actually not uncommon for leading YouTubers to invest in the Web-video industry that fostered them by opening studios, agencies, networks or high-production-value Web shows. The YouTube community generally cheers these investments.  The belief is that bonafide YouTubers know the space, will prevent it from being appropriated by corporate outsiders, stamp out industry abuses like predatory contracts, and make the industry more transparent.

It is this sense of a "digital family" that made Johnson's acrimonious split with Maker Studios so tragic to some in the YouTube community: after all, top YouTubers created Maker Studios. "How could they mistreat their own?" the community wondered. In fact, it seems Johnson's experience with Maker Studios turned him off networks forever. When asked if he would start his own network, Johnson's answer was an absolute, “No.”

Image courtesy of @RayWJ.

Web video is finally growing up. The family behind the wildly viral "Charlie Bit My Finger" YouTube video is getting its own professional Web series, according to PaidContent. The 2007 video spawned parody clips, fan sites, mobile apps, and $500,000 in revenue - for starters.

The ferment around infant Charlie's mandibular prowess (and his brother Harry's misfortune) captured the attention of Viral Spiral and Rightster, who are teaming up to produce professional-grade Web videos based on what is now the most widely-viewed amateur video in the history of YouTube. 

Whether or not a funny viral video can be transformed into a successful series remains to be seen, but it's an experiment worth undertaking to those looking to monetize Web video. Hopes are high that Charlie's winning performance will translate well into a more formal production. But it may prove tricky. After all, the original video exploded after Howard Davies-Carr, the boys' father, uploaded it to share with relatives. That this authentic, adorable moment between two brothers accidentally captured the attention of millions of Web viewers may have simply been a byproduct of the video's spontaneous nature. That success may or may not be something that can be replicated under professional lighting in front of real cameras.  

It's not the first time a Web content phenomenon has resulted in a foray into more professionally-produced mass media. Few can forget lonelygirl15, the YouTube-based "video blogger" who was outed as an actress and went on to star in a scripted Web series. Over the years, popular Tumblr blogs have been turned into books and the Shit My Dad Says Twitter account landed on CBS as a sitcom in 2010. The next year, that show was canceled, demonstrating that the transition from new media sensation to old media hit doesn't always go smoothly. 

The Web's Premium Video Push

News of the Charlie Bit My Finger video series comes at a pivotal time in online video. YouTube itself has been investing heavily in original, TV-quality content, announcing just this morning plans to add 50 new channels to its original line-up. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon have been making similar moves toward content that rivals television in quality and, they hope, value to advertisers. Hulu kicked off 2012 by investing $200 million in original programming. In Februrary, the online TV service premiered "Battleground," its first scripted, original TV series just as Netflix launched a Web-only drama called "Lilyhammer." Since then, the list of forthcoming original programs from the likes of Hulu, Netflix and YouTube has grown on what feels like a monthly basis. Next year, the model will face an interesting test when the beloved "Arrested Development" returns for a long-awaited new season, not on Fox where it originally aired, but exclusively on Netflix. 

This premium Web TV movement aims to slowly build itself into a counterweight to the traditional pay TV business model of cable and satellite, which has been slow to unravel under the weight of pressure from the rise of Internet-fueled cord cutting. Web-first TV is still a relatively young trend, with tech companies only beginning to funnel cash into original content initiatives. It may be sometime before we know whether the new model has legs, but Internet companies are betting big on the prospect that things will work out. Charlie, for one, is banking on it. 

Updated 5/1/2013.

YouTube has come to define the era of online video, so let's take a look at its most popular videos of all time. Our latest update has Psy's Gangnam Style at number 1 with the first video to reach a billion views. Falling to second place is Justin Bieber's Baby, which was the first video to earn a half a billion views!

We first did this list in August 2007, at which point Evolution of Dance by comedian Judson Laipply was number 1 with nearly 56 million views. The next update was September 2008, when Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend pop music video was number 1 with 103 million views. In January 2010, Charlie bit my finger - again ! was number 1, with 148 million views. By the beginning of January 2011, Justin Bieber was at number 1 with over 400 million views for Baby.

Here are the top 10, as of Febuary 2013:

1. PSY - GANGNAM STYLE; 1,491,867,496 views

2. Justin Bieber - Baby ft. Ludacris; 845,312,696 views

More Video Hits From the ReadWrite Archives
Bieber's 'Baby' Will Hit 500m Views Today; It's Also The Most Hated Video on YouTube (For Now)

3. Jennifer Lopez - On The Floor ft. Pitbull; 661,002,113 views

More Video Hits From the ReadWrite Archives
Gettin' Down on Friday: Bieber's Baby No Longer Most Disliked Video on YouTube

4. Eminem - Love The Way You Lie ft. Rihanna; 551,380,582 views

5. LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem ft. Lauren Bennett, GoonRock; 531,116,118 views

More Video Hits From the ReadWrite Archives
Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time (2007)

6. Charlie bit my finger - again !; 519,814,575 views

7. Shakira - Waka Waka(This Time for Africa); 515,795,317 views

More Video Hits From the ReadWrite Archives
Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time, 2008

8. Lady Gaga - Bad Romance; 514,458,291 views

9. Michel Telo - Ai Se Eu Te Pego - Oficial (Assim voce me mata); 491,987,017 views

10. Don Omar - Danza Kuduro ft. Lucenzo; 435,911,231 views

This post is regularly updated by Deane Rimerman

Continuing our review of the first half of 2012, we look at an emerging product type that became popular this year: social video apps. The two leading contenders are Socialcam and Viddy, each vying to be the breakout app. But at least one of those apps is using dubious seeding tactics to get ahead...

After image sharing network Instagram was acquired by Facebook in April, attention turned to the same type of app - but for video. Essentially social video apps have the following characteristics:

• Mobile-based, just like Instagram. These are smartphone apps that enable you to shoot short videos and share them.
• You're encouraged to apply image and sound filters to your video (again, like Instagram).
• Videos are shared liberally on Facebook.
• Unlike Instagram, both Socialcam and Viddy have websites that highlight content.

Who's Winning?

While we recommended Viddy in May, the differences between it and Socialcam are minimal. We chose Viddy because it was simpler and its 15-second limit on video clips encourages users to be creative using Twitter-like brevity. As The White Stripes showed in the last decade of popular music, constraints can help a lot with creativity.

However, Socialcam appears to be the most popular of the two apps right now. It has been accused of gaming Facebook, which we'll examine shortly. But first here are the current user numbers, according to Facebook tracking site AppData:

As you can see, AppData statistics show that Socialcam is currently nearly 5 times more popular than Viddy in terms of Monthly Active Users (MAU). Indeed, Socialcam is more than twice as popular as the second-placed app listed: Yahoo! Social Bar. These statistics seem too good to be true... which turns out to be the case.

Seedy Socialcam

At the beginning of May, Viddy was actually more popular than Socialcam. However in just two weeks Socialcam added an extraordinary 40 million MAU. As AppData's sister site InsideFacebook explained, Socialcam's rapid rise was largely attributable to Facebook’s still experimental Open Graph. In particular, both Socialcam and Viddy utilized the Facebook auto-sharing feature to drum up new users.

Socialcam went further than that, by engaging in some trickery. Socialcam seeded its website with popular YouTube videos - that is, videos not shot with the Socialcam app. When you click to watch one of those YouTube videos, Socialcam pops up an "Add to Facebook" request.

That makes it seem like you have to approve the request in order to view the video. But in fact, clicking "Cancel" gives you access to watch the video. If you do approve the "Add to Facebook" request, you are giving Socialcam permission to automatically share any video you watch onto Facebook. Judging by the number of Socialcam links I now see in my Facebook News Feed, this seedy tactic is working. Which of course makes those videos even more viral, because they're all over Facebook, which leads to even more users.

Socialcam did clean up some of its early trickiness. But sadly, this is a common thing on the Social Web: get big fast by sneaky tactics, then go legit later.

Where To Next For Social Video Apps?

The jury is still out on whether sharing short, smartphone-created videos is going to become mega-popular. Frankly, the AppData statistics can't be trusted at this point (not AppData's fault, it's due to the experimental nature of Facebook sharing). So we can discount the 80+ million figure attached to Socialcam.

Almost all of my Facebook friends upload and share photos, but not many of them do the same with videos. Regardless, I remain bullish on the trend, because smartphone technology will continue to improve when it comes to video. This may lead the next generation of Facebook users to utilize social video content much more than us.

Also the odds are pretty good that Facebook will buy one of Socialcam or Viddy within a year, before the market gets too heated. So this is a trend to watch... just be careful which Facebook permission boxes you click!

One in every ten tablet users views video content almost daily on their device, according to a new report by comScore. The study also found that tablet users are nearly three times more likely to watch video on their device compared to smartphone users.

Nearly one in four smartphone owners now owns a tablet, according to comScore. That's an increase of 13.9 percentage points since a year ago.

comScore's statistics are reflective of the rapid growth in the tablet market, since the iPad was launched two years ago. In her presentation on Internet trends this month, Kleiner Perkins analyst Mary Meeker showed that growth in iPad sales per quarter has been three times that of iPhones. While that's partly due to Apple's dominance in the tablet market, it's also an indication that tablets have been adopted by consumers much faster than smartphones. The iPhone was released in 2007, but it took mobile apps and mobile websites at least a few years to mature. Tablet apps on the other hand, and in particular iPad apps, have matured much faster.

Another telling statistic from Meeker's presentation is the growth of tablet and eReader ownership. 29% of US adults now own one of those devices, up from 2% just three years ago.

The lesson in all of this? Video apps for tablets are an area of tremendous potential. It explains why there is such interest from Facebook in social video apps like Viddy and Socialcam. Facebook knows video is going to be crucial in the coming years, which is why it is sniffing around Viddy - a potential Instagram for video.

The biggest video site on the planet, YouTube, is already adapting to the fast-emerging tablet market for content. Over the coming months on ReadWriteWeb, we'll be profiling other growth stories in tablet video. Stay tuned!

Friday, June 8, is one of those days that rolls around every two years on which productivity throughout much of the world is going to take a gigantic hit. That's because the Euro 2012 tournament gets under way, and it'll capture the attention of every serious soccer/football fan around the planet. And we do mean "planet" - this competition among 16 European nations is second in quality and importance only to the World Cup, and even non-European fans will be tracking it avidly. Many will be watching it online - and here's how.

Let's face it: You can't take the entire next month off to watch all these games. (If you can? We want your job.) So online viewing of some sort is going to be indispensable for seeing the action while somehow simultaneously fending off your boss and getting your work done. And not everyone will be able to rely on the most legal methods to pull it off. Whether you're patched into a legal network or looking for an illicit stream, it's not that hard to find the games you want online or on your mobile device.

All Aboveboard

If you're tapped into one of the broadcast networks in a major country that has the Euro 2012 rights, you should be in good shape for seeing these games on your computer, tablet or phone. In the United States, that means ESPN, which is the sole rights-holder for the tourney. And you couldn't be in better hands for getting online access, given ESPN's continuing push to become ubiquitous on every device you might own, short of an original Kindle. ESPN3.com is your computer's portal to all of the Euro 2012 games, and you won't need to be at home and patched into your cable box to get it, either.

If you're away from that, ESPN3 will simply ask you to log in with your cable provider account first; once you've done that, you should be good to watch. The navigation is easy enough: Links for all of these games are likely to be on the home page, but you can also click the "Soccer" drop-down tab and choose the appropriate tab (Live Now, Upcoming or Replay).

Your phone should be just as simple to use for watching the tournament, now that ESPN has gradually extended access to its WatchESPN app for iOS and Android, originally available only to Time Warner customers, to those on Verizon, BrightHouse and Comcast. Comcast users with Android devices haven't yet gotten the updated app for streaming, but Comcast iPhone users and everyone else can fire up WatchESPN and find a game in real time with relative ease. AT&T U-verse subscribers can access games by using their mobile U-verse app and choosing ESPN Mobile TV. For replays, using any of the methods to access ESPN3 (which is one of the WatchESPN channels) is your ticket to entire game rebroadcasts - and if you have an Xbox Gold subscription, you can do that on your TV, too.

The situations are fairly similar in other countries where rights holders have websites and apps available. In the United Kingdom, the BBC and ITV have split the broadcast rights, and each network will be streaming matches online and through phone apps. (ITV just upgraded its iOS app Wednesday to allow for live streaming on phones, just in time for Euro 2012.) Australians can see all of the matches via Setanta Sports's Setanta-i online stream, with SBS picking up selected games for free broadcast. English-speaking Canadians will have to pay to see the games on TSN.ca, but TSN Mobile TV is free for Bell Mobility or Virgin Mobile subscribers on iOS, Android and Blackberry; Francophones have options through RDS. Wikipedia's comprehensive list of international rights holders should help you figure out what your options are in other countries.

A Little Bit Sketchier

But let's say that you can't get to a legal source for the tournament; maybe you don't have the right package, or you're one of those people who's chosen to bag cable and go entirely wireless with your life. Can you see these games at all?

Answer: Of course you can. A host of websites tap illicitly into satellite streams of worldwide soccer matches, often with several different links to feeds, and bring them to your computer. Every hardcore soccer fan ends up dealing with these sooner or later; even if you're paying for a cable or satellite package that brings you Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV in the U.S., those channels don't carry every single game you'll ever want to see. How else were you going to watch New Caledonia clinch a stunning 2-0 upset of New Zealand in the Oceania region World Cup qualifiers?

So, people turn to one of the many streaming sites. Understand, though, that - pretty much as with any illegal music/movies download site or other below-the-lines website - you're entering a sketchy world that can include popup pages, overlay ads, NSFW images and, yes, even viruses or other malware. Go into this with your eyes open, and try to follow these rules:

• Have your antivirus software on at all times.
• Use a popup blocker; it'll improve the experience dramatically.
• Don't install any software; these sites mostly are running Flash video, so you don't need the iLivid Download Manager (a ubiquitous choice) or any of the other offerings with which you'll be confronted.
• Don't pay any money. These sites will be happy to grab your credit card number in exchange for "HD video" that may or may not exist. Don't go there; if you want an HD experience, you should be using one of the legal methods, anyway.
• If you get one of those helpful "Malware Detected!" warnings, close your window or tab immediately and try the next site.
• If things go really haywire, be ready to force-quit your browser (Force Quit under the Apple menu on a Mac after you Command-Tab out of the application; Ctrl-Alt-Delete on a PC to kill the process on a PC).
• Click carefully. You'll be getting ads overlaid on the embedded video, and accidentally clicking on one can have 40 tabs opened on your browser before you know what's hit you. Make sure you actually hit the X or Close tab.
• And when you actually make it to your game video, try to run as few applications or other browser pages as you can. Your stream is bouncing around the globe before it gets to you, so you want to smooth out the experience as much as possible.

That said, it's entirely possible to find a video stream of a Euro 2012 game without suffering any mishaps. A Google search of "streaming football online" will bring up a plethora of choices. (Yes, "football"; don't forget that your stream is coming from countries that couldn't care less about the NFL.) I tested a few of the top results, FreeFootball.org, First Row Sports and 12thPlayer.com, and was able to watch game video with fairly minimal effort or problems at all three sites. 12th Player has the advantage of a clean interface without ad or popup clutter, and although FreeFootball does have those issues, that site has always been reliable in the past. Take your pick.

One caveat: Don't expect a great experience trying this on your phone, if you can watch at all. The iPhone will yell at you about Flash video, and that's if you even make it to a video - popups were a huge problem in my tests of the iPhone. The iPad is also going to hit you with the Flash issue. Android phone and tablet users may have a slightly easier time of it, but for the most part, you're better off using these sites on a computer.

Unlike ESPN3, these sites aren't likely to offer you replays on games. But it's still possible to see those if you're willing to download torrented game captures. Open services such as The Pirate Bay or membership boards like Demonoid are good bets to have captured game videos, in formats ranging from AVI to full HD-quality .ts MPEG Transport Stream rips (playable with the cross-platform VLC video player). With the popularity of this tournament worldwide, finding well-seeded torrents shouldn't be too tough within a day of any given game. And Usenet users might have some luck with the alt.binaries.multimedia.sports group.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Sportscenter image courtesy of ESPN.

Statistics show that we are watching fewer videos on YouTube. However, we are watching longer videos and subsequently spending more time on the site. YouTube is changing. But it's also looking over its shoulder at Facebook, which looms as a big threat should it acquire Viddy or Socialcam.

To celebrate its seventh birthday, YouTube boasts that 72 hours of video is being uploaded to the site every minute. That figure was 48 hours one year ago, meaning YouTube is experiencing strong growth in video uploads. This growth in uploads may indicate that emerging competition from social video apps like Viddy and Socialcam isn't yet cause for concern at YouTube. But if Facebook buys either Viddy or Socialcam, then suddenly YouTube would have a problem - because then there would be a large competitor offering easy video sharing.

Another concern for YouTube is that its video views have decreased every month this year. After a record traffic year in 2011 and an all-time peak of 21.8 billion video views served in January, monthly views started to go backwards. In February, it was 18.5 billion views, March 16.5 billion and April 15.6 billion.

The good news is that engagement on YouTube is up. The amount of minutes users spend watching YouTube has grown 57% year-over-year, to more than 61 billion minutes in March 2012 according to comScore (although that too has declined since peaking in January 2012). Over the same time period, the average length of a video view grew one minute, to now average four minutes. That's almost certainly a result of more professional content on YouTube, helped by its new channels strategy and a big redesign in December. By comparison, YouTube's main competition in the professional content market, network-TV platform Hulu, has an average of 8.5 minutes per view.

The upshot: People are watching fewer videos on YouTube, but they are watching longer videos and spending more time on the site.

That's a net positive to YouTube - especially since advertising dollars are attracted to professional videos.

What's Happening with Amateur Content?

There's no question that Viddy and Socialcam are a threat to YouTube for amateur content. In particular if Facebook buys either one of them; although it's also possible that either Viddy or Socialcam could dramatically grow and become a YouTube-like sensation on its own terms. YouTube will be keeping a wary eye on developments there.

Despite the threat of Instagram-like video apps, YouTube is doubling down on content creation as a core feature of its site. It is doing this across the whole spectrum of content creation: from amateur to professional, with a lot of gray in-between. At the pro end of the spectrum, YouTube is busy making deals with big content creators such as professional sports leagues and Disney. It is also investing in new kinds of content creators, including the gaming network Machinima.

The channels strategy is an indication that YouTube sees 'bottom-up' content creation as key to its future. As if to remind people that it is still top dog in amateur content, YouTube's seventh birthday video highlights baby videos and its usage in the Arab Spring.

Evolving Into a TV-Style Network, Web-Style...

Right now YouTube is in a transition period, moving from the amateur era of online video to the professional era. But YouTube isn't just copying TV networks, instead it is banking on a new kind of professional content. To do that, YouTube is supporting and encouraging amateur content creators, giving them the opportunity to turn semi-pro or even full-on professional. The Creator Hub on YouTube entices "creators" (deliberately left undefined, so that it can mean everyone and anyone) to become a "partner" of YouTube.

A lot is riding on this new form of professional content on YouTube. Its success depends on two things:

1. How well YouTube transitions its amateur content creators into the professional era; and
2. Whether it can pioneer new forms of professional content to make money from.

Those two things are closely interlinked, the success of Machinima being a good early example. Machinima's mix of video game reviews (many done by amateur/semi-pro creators) and Web native original programming (further up the professional spectrum) are an early blueprint for success. Machinima is an original - TV style content built on and for the Web - and couldn't have happened without the YouTube platform. YouTube needs to find many other success stories like Machinima.

While the decline in video views and the threat of Viddy/Socialcam is cause for some concern, overall I think YouTube is focusing on the right things: pushing content creation across the whole spectrum and focusing on engagement levels over views.

Sometimes less is more. At least, that's how this social video app works. The key to this is in its limited ability to choose. Think about going to the grocery store: When there are 12 types of ketchup to choose from, everything can quickly become overwhelming and bizarre. Now reimagine that scene with only four types of ketchup. Much better, right? It's what ReadWriteWeb recommends.

Social video app Viddy has reportedly just passed the 15 million user mark, so it must be doing something right. Zuckerberg and Snoop are both onboard. (I know that because I am busy following both of them.)

On Viddy, much like Twitter, users decide to follow others, and others follow them. It takes time to gather a steady base of followers and people you want to follow, but much like any social media platform, if you invest time in it you will end up having a positive experience. Whereas on Twitter you tweet text, on Viddy you share video clips that can be up to 15 seconds long.

The next step is to attach a filter - Snoop Dogg, for example, prefers the vintage one. There are only four types of filters to choose from: none, vintage, black and white or the color-popping crystal. Select your audience - followers only or everyone - and then post the Viddy to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr too, if you'd like. 

Viddy is short with users - real short. It requires users to record and submit videos that are 15 seconds or less. In fact, even a 10 second video on this site would do the trick. There are no tunes or themes; much like Instagram, it is only about the filter "magic." In this sense, it seems most likely to be acquired by Facebook in the same way that Instagram was.

Viddy's filter options are a bit of a snoozer, but the "vintage" one does the trick in the same way that every Instagram filter that came before it does. For a more classic look, go with "black & white" or the uber-saturated "crystal" filter. There are more filters available for a price. But with only 15 seconds to shoot, it might be better to go nude.

Not only has Viddy created a new form of video - the 15-second-long "viddy" is certainly not the same as a YouTube clip or Vimeo video - it limits your options. That is not something that competitors Socialcam or Klip can do.

When it comes to content, Socialcam is a mixed bag. Its videos don't have a time limit, it encourages the use of various filters and it offers mostly cheesy music overlays that may not always make sense with the selected imagery. This social video app does offer a lot more premade options for creativity, but it also relies too heavily on filters and audio.

Klip is another competitor. It does not offer filters or a time limit on videos. What Klip does offer in terms of privacy, however, is something that neither Viddy nor Socialcam has down pat. On Klip, users can create their own Circles in much the same function as Google+ Circles but with a more Path-like functionality.

"You can define your private circle," says Klip CEO Alain Rossmann. "It is a simple but powerful concept, and allows you to have a subset of followers who might be your family, classmates and these growing user types for people who want to communicate but do not want everyone else to see what they are saying."

Do users care enough to actually take the time to create personalized and ever-changing circles? Probably not. In that sense, Viddy comes out as the quickest, most easy-to-use social video app. Will it get snatched up by Facebook in the near term?

Video content is one of the fastest growing categories online. Television networks are scrambling to keep up, because the success stories so far have been smaller entities creating highly targeted and Web native content. The most successful video content producer right now is a company called Machinima, currently in the middle of an investment round that will include money from YouTube parent company Google. Machinima (its name is a combination of the words 'machine' and 'cinema') is a "video entertainment network for video gamers," specifically targeted at the 18 – 34 year old male demographic.

This is the first in a series of posts we're calling 'What's Next in TV.'

Machinima's main distribution point is its YouTube channel, where it has 109 million subscribers and gets more than a billion views a month. In fact, Machinima is now the number one non-music channel on YouTube. As YouTube looks to compete with the big television networks, like CBS and NBC, it needs successful content producers like Machinima. 

While exact comparisons are difficult, you can think of Machinima as a specialist video network in the same way that MTV was a music-focused TV network in the 1980s. That's precisely how Machinima co-founder and CEO Allen Debevoise describes his company: "MTV was born in the notion of a video format that related to music. In the same way, Machinima is a video format that relates to core gaming."

According to comScore's March 2012 U.S. Online Video Rankings, Machinima is the third biggest YouTube partner site - after music video providers VEVO and Warner Music. But Machinima has the highest engagement, at 69 minutes per viewer per month. That's an increase of 5 minutes from December. Engagement, meaning that users keep coming back to the site and spend time there, is the golden metric these days. Just ask the biggest beneficiary of user engagement on the Web: Facebook.

YouTube is by far Machinima's main "distribution platform," but its tentacles are spread elsewhere too. It's on Facebook (via a series of 'Pages' such as this one for gameplay), Twitter (with four Twitter accounts), mobile devices (apps for iPhone, iPad, Android phones and Windows Phone 7) and Internet TV devices (Boxee, Roku and Samsung).

Machinima has various types of video content. One is news and reviews, an example of which is a daily gaming news show called IGDaily. It's a fast-moving 6-7 minute roundup of news of the day in the gaming world, hosted by two wise-cracking, chuckling male gamers. The highlight today was a new Star Wars game starring Boba Fett.

Another type of Machinima video content is original programming, similar to the shows you'd find on CBS (or maybe on the Disney Channel). The latest is a drama series called Bite Me. Every Friday, a new 10-15 minute episode is released. The premise of the show is three gamers "in the midst of a real life zombie outbreak." There is an interactive component to Bite Me, in the form of clickable pop-ups.

The opening episode of Season 2 of Bite Me, in March of this year, has been watched nearly 1.5 million times so far. That's less than half the 3.5 million viewers who tuned in to episode 1 of Mad Men series 5 on TV, also in March. But remember that Machinima has a narrower target audience: males 18-34. 1.5 million views in that context is very valuable to advertisers who want to reach that demographic. Plus, Machinima has proven that it can get the big numbers: its most successful original series so far has been Mortal Kombat: Legacy, which finished last year and attracted 4-6 million views per episode.

Machinima also features a variety of resource type content, such as short "gameplay" videos with gaming tips and tricks. Much of this comes from around 4,200 partners, amateurs and semi-professionals who produce videos for Machinima.

However, there has been controversy about the restrictive contracts offered to producers of semi-professional content. Just today, a Reddit thread about an unhappy video producer attracted unwanted attention (and many YouTube dislikes).

Problems with partner contracts can - and should - be easily fixed by Machinima. Regardless, it has built an incredible success story on the back of YouTube. Television networks will be watching closely, because this is probably what the future of TV resembles. Interactive videos, on demand. Shorter, more narrowly targeted content.

There will of course still be a place for the Mad Mens of the TV world, but the type of content that Machinima is producing will be the next big area of opportunity for TV networks... and YouTube, which wants to be one.

The latest trend in smartphone apps is social video. That's because ever since Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 Billion, attention has focused on video sharing apps and whether one of them will win the next Zuckerberg lottery. The two leading contenders are Socialcam and Viddy. ReadWriteWeb's Alicia Eler profiled those two apps, along with a third called Klip, in a post yesterday.

In the interests of research, I signed up to and played with both Socialcam and Viddy. I uploaded my own amateur video, via my iPhone. I then applied the requisite filters, added some music and - Boom! - I became part of the social video craze. I also had a nosey around the communities of each service, to see if either one can indeed claim to be The Next Instagram. Here's what I discovered...

To create and upload a video is an easy process with both Socialcam and Viddy. You capture a video on your smartphone (or use one from your library) and upload it. And yes, it did remind me of the ease of use in taking and uploading photos in Instagram. Note that Socialcam has both an iPhone and Android app, whereas Viddy is iOS only at this point.

The video is only half of the equation. The other half is socializing it. I gave permission for both Socialcam and Viddy to upload my home video to my Facebook Timeline. I could've shared it elsewhere too, such as to Twitter, YouTube or Tumblr.

Each service allows you to apply special effects to your video. Both have a selection of Instagram-like filters, such as "Vintage" and "1970's". There are some differences in features between the apps. The main one is that Viddy has a 15-second time limit, whereas Socialcam videos have no time limit. Other differences are minor. For example on Socialcam, I couldn't apply a filter to a video I'd already shot prior to opening the app; but with Viddy I could. Overall though, the two apps have far more in common than not.

Both services are polished and nicely designed apps. But forget the filters and cheesy music, the real value will be in how many users each can get - and how active those users become. It's too early to tell which has the upper hand on that front. Both are heading towards the user numbers that Instagram had when it sold (about 35 million). Viddy reportedly has 16 million users at this time, while Socialcam claims 20 million. Viddy may be a bit behind, but it can brag about having Mark Zuckerberg as a user. The Facebook CEO has uploaded one video so far to Viddy, starring his puppy dog. Of course, Instagram could implement video functionality too and save Facebook from having to acquire Viddy or Socialcam. That is certainly a risk for the two startups.

The Verdict

Overall, I'm bullish on social video as The New Thing - regardless of who 'wins'. I can easily see how a 15-second video of a holiday in Venice (as I found on Socialcam) or a family ice-biking in China (as I discovered on Viddy) can become a great social component in Facebook, Twitter or any other mainstream social media service.

High quality video cameras are now as much a part of the modern smartphone as cameras are. While amateur video isn't yet as commonplace as amateur photos (YouTube videos of babies and skateboarding stunts notwithstanding), over time I'm betting it will become more widely used. For example, I have a couple of cousins who are touring the world right now and uploading Instagram photos from France, Switzerland and other exotic places. Why not make myself and the rest of my family even more jealous by uploading short, 15-second videos of their visits to Venice and other holiday destinations? That seems like a compelling use case for the likes of Socialcam and Viddy.

No wonder Zuckerberg is sniffing around!

Socializing is Big on Socialcam

The Socialcam video itself resembles a clean, clear Vimeo video. There is no time limit on the videos shot with this app. And with each video, the user can decide if they want to make it public to the Socialcam community (and anyone else who picks up the link), viewable for the user's followers only or completely private. In terms of sharing functionality, Socialcam allows users to share the video on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, email, SMS, Posterous, Tumblr or Dropbox. 

One thing to watch out for - which is true of most apps these days - is the Facebook social sharing feature. Sharing to Facebook is a pretty common move, especially since this app integrates with Facebook directly. On Timeline, the app's video cover image appears on my Timeline along with a link to watch the video on Socialcam.com. You can tag friends in the video itself, but not on Facebook directly. This quietly keeps users connected to Socialcam itself.  Sharing the same link out to Twitter is much simpler, and the result is to lead users back to the video on Socialcam. It's possible to use Socialcam on the Web, but it feels most useful on mobile - after all, these are not videos that you should think much about or edit. 

The SocialCam popular section presents everything from a boy playing a violin to a 10-second video titled "Toilet Technology" and a man named Mistah F.A.B.'s one-minute, 12-second video called "Daily motivation #6," which is him delivering words of wisdom to his followers and other users of the app. Facebook users are sharing Socialcam videos to the site; today's Facebook news feed video du jour is called "Giant Snake Eats Security Guard." It is a YouTube video that the user uploaded to Socialcam. 

Users can browse videos and leave comments or big red heart "likes" or "loves," depending on how you interpret the meaning of a red cartoon heart. If you're not careful, watching that toilet video on the app will "post on your behalf, including videos you watched, videos you shared and more" to Facebook - just like a Facebook Social Reader. Now everyone knows I've watched the terrible toilet video. Oh well, I'll suck it up - and then make sure to change the settings. 

Viddy: The Clean-Cut Video Sharing App

Viddy feels like the more conservative version of Socialcam - and we do not mean that in the political sense of the word. Based in Venice Beach (Socialcam is in San Francisco, to be sure), Viddy lets users capture, edit and share 15-second videos. Mark Zuckerberg has already joined and taken a little video of his pup, Baby Beast.

Shooting your first Viddy is a different experience than your first video on Socialcam or Klip. It is your first "viddy," not your first video. One thing that qualifies it as a "viddy" is the 15-second limit - users are forced to craft what they are going to say exactly into that short snippet of time. Choose your subject wisely, like Zuck did. You've only got 15 seconds to say something, and the message is the medium. 

The Viddy user interface on the Web version of this app feels cold and design-like in its simplicity. Users can click about, exploring the popular, trending and newest videos on the app. The mobile version presents a single flowing stream of endless videos. Sharing sends videos out to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, SMS or email. Want to know what's trending? Hint: There is a cat involved, and there are also some stairs. This morning, I was cruising through my Facebook news feed and discovered a 15-second video from Snoop Dogg titled "NYC." He uses the vintage filter, adding an ever-so-slight hip tinge to this otherwise banal video of him talking. The rap star has already accumulated nearly 140,000 followers.

Klip It, And Share It With Only a Few

If Socialcam and Viddy are in a race for the top, Klip is the quiet kid who's hanging back and observing, waiting for his moment to pounce. This app isn't clean like Viddy or busy like Socialcam; it's just practical. Trends are simple, including popular, latest, week all-time. Videos are staggered on the screen like Facebook Timeline. The Search function is simple, and allows users to look for klips, people or just topics. There is no time limit for the videos that users shoot. Klip also offers a few filters, like Zenith, Voodoo, Toon, HDR, Gotham, Fisheye and Cinema, or users can go with nothing at all. 

Klip hosts a variety of performance videos, including some of singers, musicians and artistic videos. Some videos are as long as three minutes, and many have testimonials and comments from fellow users. These adorable videos capture a little girl who dreams of becoming a "fashionista." They are public, and have received quite a few comments. Some are absolutely positive, while others are rude, racially insensitive remarks. 

"At the core, if you remove everything else, we were usually the day to day - how you live your life in the app is the most important," Klip founder Alain Rossmann says. "We are the only guys that allow you to see a preview of every video. And we have a lot of intellectual property around that."

Klip has been called "Twitter for videos," which implies a sort of quietness that the more YouTube-esque Socialcam and Facebook-ified Viddy do not.  

"We are taking the high road, the high-class road," Rossman says. "We want to be much more sustainable over time. You can easily become ChatRoulette of video apps."

The Future of Social Video Apps

Like Instagram images, all of these videos apps capture on-the-fly snapshots of the world as seen through your eyes. With Facebook's acquisition of Instagram, Instagrams will start to supplant Facebook photos, imbuing them with an odd sense of permanence that was not there before. They are the stuff of future memories, like the Polaroids of years past. 

Why? Because in the future, everything will be seen through rose-colored filters; or, rather, vintage-tinted, electronica-inducing filters overlaid with club music. The imagery of our generation will not be defined with a single filter - it will overlay multiple sounds and images, an overstimulating mishmash of audio and visual.

After one conversation with Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel, it seems like the future of social video isn't in selling your company to Facebook - it's in the niche communities that populate this tiny app. They are the true owners of this bustling social video community. 

Spun off from Justin.tv and launched little more than a year ago, Socialcam is a social video app that gives users a ridiculously easy way to shoot a video, upload it to the app's niche-focused community and then share it to other social sites if they'd like. As of today, Socialcam has surpassed Viddy as the #1 photo and video app in the Apple App Store. Instagram has since been bumped to #3.

It also grabbed additional funding from some "A-Listers" like Yuri Milner of Startfund and Tim Draper of Draper and Associates, making for a total of nearly 40-some-odd investors. Like the app itself, it's nice to look at. But that's not where Siebel's head was today, when we talked.

Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel sees the potential mainstreamification of social videos as a way not only to share one's life story, but also to create community around the moving image. Interestingly, however, Siebel ended up as the CEO of Socialcam not through his love of telling stories or the image. Rather, he saw it as an opportunity that he just couldn't pass up. He studied political science at Yale University and thought he would end up in DC. That's not quite what happened, however.

From Politics in DC to the All-Video World of Justin.tv

In 2007, Seibel cofounded Justin.tv with his friend Justin Kan, Emmett Shear and Kyle Vogt. Justin.tv allowed anyone to broadcast video online through "channels." The original channel just included Justin broadcasting his life 24/7. But Seibel did not start out with a particular passion or interest in the tech world, or the video world. 

"I think basically it was a level of stubbornness," says Seibel. "I got into startups because of Justin. I wanted to do politics with my life but was convinced that I needed to do it in a very particular way, which included working on a campaign when I was young, having a family, a mortgage and other such basic experiences."

After working for a year in DC as the finance director for Kweisi Mfume's U.S. Senate campaign, eventually moving up to the position of Finance Director, Justin approached Seibel.

"Justin gave me the opportunity to work and be a cofounder of Justin.tv, and even though I thought it was crazy, I also thought to myself 'when would I have another opportunity to start a business with my best friend?'" 

Seibel grew up in Brooklyn, and describes himself as a guy who's always been comfortable around computers. 

"My dad was a programmer," he says. "And I was excited about that world, but it seemed so far away."

After he joined teams with Justin Kan, he left his East Coast digs for San Francisco, and jumped right into the video world.

"It was a rough road, I gotta tell you," he says. "Everyone was a Deputy Downer for video companies, and we were a video company. We had to work really hard to survive. But during the process, I really started to fall in love with video."

For Seibel, half the passion came from what he describes as a chip on his shoulder, a response to the people who said he wasn't going to make video work. The other half of it came from a desire to get more people to use video to share their life and experiences.

Why Live Video Didn't Make Sense, But an All-Video App Did

Seibel recounts a story about getting interviewed by reporters in massive vans.

"It was hilarious because we were filming them live using our 25-pound video equipment, and they were standing up on their vans trying to film us live," he recounts, jokingly.  

Much like its image-oriented cousin Instagram, Socialcam gives users the opportunity to add a variety of filters to the video itself. A short, "au natural" video can suddenly become newsy, "classic," "casual," or like an MTV music video. Music accompanies these videos too, if the user so wishes to add it - get some "street" music into the video, or perhaps some "happy"-sounding tunes or just plain tropical breezy. Socialcam gives users the opportunity to transform their otherwise possibly boring moments into mini productions, starring their friends and family, or maybe just a plain old fire hydrant.

When Socialcam launched in April 2011, it was immediately available on both iPhone and Android. There was no iPhone-exclusivity like Instagram. And there was also more than a focus on the filters themselves.

"Socialcam users are using more than just filters - it's the filters, themes and soundtracks all together," says Siebel. "Why? I think it goes back to the core vision of the company. We want to make video creation mainstream."

To take video into the space that photography currently occupies, however, is not an easy task. 

"How many people do you know who have taken a photo class? A videography class?" asks Seibel. "Photography is a much more widely distributed skill, and it's something that everyday people feel more comfortable with. We want to take video outside of the black box, breaking down that barrier between the professional and the everyday person, and we want to provide people with simple tools to do that."

And according to Seibel, this will happen with the rise of the smartphone - because anyone with a smartphone has a video camera.

"Instagram didn't have to popularize photo-taking," Seibel says. "They were able to take the fact that people loved photos, and help them take even more photos. So for us, we're kind of doing double duty - we want to make you feel comfortable taking a video and being in a video, while also making sure it's fun and easy, and something you can be proud of."

Socialcam does not put a limit on the length of a video. According to Seibel, this would actually hinder the amount of videos published. The shorter you make the video, the longer a user has to think about how to say what they want in a specific period of time. If the video is good and the sound quality is high, chances are people will stick around and watch it.

Communication Gone Visual: The Moving Image Is Moving Forward

Socialcam is host to a huge variety of videos, from aspiring rap stars to sweet violin-playing musicians who mix their music with the tunes offered. And there's always a bit of toilet humor and inspirational talks to go alongside those more creative endeavors. 

"We have a hugely diverse userbase," says Seibel. "Socialcam is a global network. We've got this amazing community of deaf kids in France who use Socialcam. They use it like a phone call - they use video to communicate with one another. I love to see that this stuff can just happen." 

Aside from the popular trending types of videos and the niche communities on Socialcam, there are four categories that Seibel sees growing the fastest. The first one is family. 

"Young parents take videos of their kids, and then send them to the grandparents who consume them," he says. "One of the most basic use cases is videos of my kids."

The second most popular use case is community - people use Socialcam to interact with each other within the community. The third is "what we like to call informally 'Jackass,' or stuff my friends are doing that's stupid or funny," Seibel says. "Before you would tell a story, and now you just take a video of your friend doing that." 

The last biggest use case is a category that Seibel refers to as "traditional." It includes the type of Timeline-esque life events that you would expect, including graduation, Christmas and other holidays, birthdays, special events, vacations and weekend trips. 

"I think that in the next two years, we're going to take a huge bite out of the number of people who take videos once a week," Seibel says. "When you're going back through the content you've taken, there will be a lot more videos, and it will be easier to browse and remember." 

Now that Showyou has made the remote control obsolete, it has set its sights on the other place we watch video: the desktop. Today, its magical video grid is available on Showyou.com. If you spend any time browsing and watching videos on YouTube.com, your habits are about to change.

The Features

Showyou has YouTube. It also gets videos from Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Vodpod, which is parent company Remixation’s own video-sharing network. You can also follow other Showyou users. When you connect your social networks to Showyou, it starts indexing all the videos from your feeds and presenting them to you in a personalized feed for your surfing pleasure. You can also save videos to watch later, and the list will show up wherever you use Showyou.

It also has fast and accurate search by topic or hashtag. Since it has data about the habits and preferences of avid Web video viewers, as well as social data from a variety of networks, it’s much better at finding relevant videos than any one video site’s search engine.

But the key is in that interface. The magical grid is the most effortless way to discover something new to watch. Forget YouTube's spam-ridden related videos menu. Forget painful navigation on your TV. Just swipe, scroll, or click and drag in any direction, and Showyou will populate your screen with more videos. When you pick one, it pops up in a full-sized player.

The Showyou Web grid is responsive, so it resizes to fit your browser window. That also means you can use Showyou on any device, even if the native app isn’t supported. “This sets us up nicely to offer HTML5-based experiences on other mobile and tablet platforms,” says Remixation CEO Mark Hall.

For now, you need an invitation to get into the Web view, but if you download the app, you have one. Android users can get Showyou from the Amazon Appstore, but it’s a Kindle Fire-sized version. For those who can’t get into the Web version themselves, any other user can invite you.

Why Move to the Web?

The mobile Showyou app changes the living room. Especially for Apple TV users, the ability to browse videos on Showyou and play them on the TV is enough to make you cancel your cable. (Well, maybe.)

But people still spend an insane amount of time watching videos on YouTube, and that browsing experience is not very good. If you use Showyou on the Web instead, you not only get a better browsing experience that syncs with your mobile devices, but you get videos from across different networks as well.

The social part of the service is one of Showyou’s main reasons for expanding to the Web. “We want to allow all of the people who have our app now to connect with their friends,” says Hall. “Not all of them have an iPad or iPhone. The Web provides a way for people who have the app to connect with their friends, and share videos with them.”

Showyou is doing this to grow the service, but it’s also a win for existing users. There’s now one app for viewing and sharing videos across devices, and you can still get in early and snag a good user name. For an example of what you’ll get, check out my grid: showyou.com/jonm.

It works on all modern browsers (IE 9 support will be finished in coming weeks), but it’s a wee bit slow on Firefox right now. The team is working on it as we speak.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nation's specialized agency for information and communication technologies, created the first digital video standard in 1984, known as H.120. Resolutions maxed out at 175x144 pixels. H.120 eventually led researchers to find a way to compress bitrates, which later led to the ability to stream video.

Compression came in 1988, again from the ITU. H.261 was the real catalyst into the era we know today. Resolution came in at 352x288 and streamed between 40Kbits per second and 2Mbits per second. Three years later came AVI (audio video interleave) from Microsoft as a video container for Windows. Anybody that dealt with AVI in the early 1990s can tell you it was perhaps one of the biggest pains ever to deal with. But it was innovation.

Big leaps would come throughout the 1990s. MPEG-4 and high-definition standards would emerge, making it possible to move from video cassette to DVDS, and later deliver streaming the way we know it today.

The infographic below from Real Networks (itself a pioneer in the era of digital video) shows the evolution of digital video from the early 1980s to modern day. Moving pictures have come a long way since Edison and Black Maria.

San Francisco-based TourWrist showed off its iPhone and iPad app that can take 360-degree panoramic photos. In mid-May, the company plans to add features to stitch multiple panoramas together, similar to Google Street View. In addition, people can link their panoramas to Facebook profiles.

The panoramas can also be linked to brands, which is how founder and Chief Executive Charles Armstrong hopes to build a profitable business, with the free iPhone and iPad app driving buzz. Panoramic views of hotels, real estate and tourist attractions are only a few of the possible commercial applications.

"I find Charles' products to be visually stunning," Bill Gurley, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, said on an investor panel after a string of demonstrations, including TourWrist. "Especially if you get to hold it and play with it, where you're just like blown away. He's accomplished something truly remarkable."

Despite the impressive technology, TourWrist requires some work to learn, which could make widespread adoption a struggle. The company also has to transition from a free-app maker to one that sells its technology to businesses.

Charlottesville, Virginia-based Arqball adapts that panoramic approach from photos to interactive video. The company's free app can create a 360-degree interactive video, using a a slow-moving ArqSpin spinner accessory - sold by Arqball. The user places an object on the spinner and takes a video of the object using an iPhone or iPad. Arqball hopes to get traction with consumers, and eventually sell the software to businesses for use in online retail. A new labeling feature should be attractive to retailers.

But Arqball, too, may not be easy enough to use to attract a lot of consumers. On the business side, the company must find a way to stand out among competitors. "The type of stuff that Arqball is doing will no doubt increase convergence on commerce," Jason Krikorian, general partner at DCM, said. "The question is really on how to make money."

While Arqball focused on futuristic interactives, San Francisco-based Daemonic Labs went old-school, demonstrating its Dabble application for creating digital postcards with the iPhone camera. After taking a picture, users create a card, add text and then pin the image on a map that can be shared with other Dabble users. In essence, the app lets people create and share photo journals.

While the app seemed to work well enough, observers questioned whether the features were enough to make Dabble stand out. "I find this notion about (saving) memories a little blurry," said panelist Claire Lee, head of the emerging business team at Microsoft. "There are a lot of people trying to do it."

As one would expect from Vimeo, the interface features a clean, effective design. The iconography on the navigation will look familiar to existing users, but this is not a mindless port of the desktop website onto a tablet. They've optimized the experience for the form factor, as one should. Naturally, that means that the UI is stripped down considerably, but the same cannot quite be said for the functionality, which remains robust.

Much of what Vimeo is capable of on the desktop is included here. Yes, that means browsing and watching videos made by amateurs and professionals alike. Interactive features such as liking videos, sharing them on social networks and commenting on them are all built into the app, much as you'd expect in this day and age.

On top of all the standard fare, the service makes analytics available for video publishers from within the iPad app. That's a feature they could have left out of this application, and few would have complained. They still would have seen massive usage. After all, the tablet is a natural home for video content, and numerous studies of consumer behavior have demonstrated that. In addition to reading and gaming, consuming video content is one of things people do the most on their tablets.

Analytics isn't the only publisher-centric feature here. Far from it. In fact, the Vimeo iPad app is as much about content creation as it is about consumption. Alongside Vimeo's huge library of video content sits basic video-editing features. They're not much less sophisticated than what's available in stand-alone editing apps like Avid Studio for iPad. And while the feature may not be quite as capable as desktop video editing software, it's more than YouTube's iPad app has going for it.

If there's a complaint to be made about the app, it's that the editing features are even more stripped-down than they need to be. For example, when adding a text title to a video, you have five colors to choose from and what appears to be only one font. The positioning and size of the text is more customizable, but not by much.

In addition to adding text, you can do all the basic video-editing tasks you'd expect: loading and trimming clips, adding transitions and zooms and adjusting the audio. At this point in personal computing history, people who are serious about creating professional-grade quality videos are still going to do it on a desktop or laptop. In the meantime, tablets continue to mature into devices that are capable of creating and publishing content.

Based in Los Angeles, the site launched in its current iteration one month ago. It has received more than 500,000 unique visitors in the first month. Every day, users share 4,000 videos on the site. But should Chill really be called "the Pinterest of video"?

"It's not an unfair comparison given we both utilize the masonry user interface and emphasize the sharing of interesting content," says Founder Brian Norgard. It's true: A picture (on Pinterest) may be worth 1,000 words. But in a video, you'll be able to hear and understand all 1,000 words.

"As we see it, video has many tributaries: short form, television, motion pictures, UGC, etc.," says Norgard. "In order to build world class experiences for customers, video needs a dedicated platform."

Using Chill is quite simple. Login with Facebook, find a video that you enjoy and repost it to your account. Then choose a type of smiley face emoticon that expresses how you feel about the video. You can also leave a comment, and see who else viewed the video. Lastly, share the video out to Facebook or Twitter.

Doesn't video already have a home on the Web? Yes, it does. In fact, it has two: YouTube and Vimeo. Both of those sites are great for hosting videos. But when it comes to fast user-to-user sharing, those are not the places to be.

And what about Facebook? As of December 2011, Facebook was one of the top destinations for online video watching after Google Sites, VEVO, Yahoo! Sites and Viacom Digital. This particular report took into account the total unique viewers and number of videos, but it did not look at the number of videos shared.

Last week, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie debuted on Facebook a full two weeks before hitting theaters. Fans paid $10 to watch it on the social network, which is cheaper than in some cinemas.

All that said, Norgard is not concerned about competing with Facebook. In fact, he sees Chill as complimenting it. After users sign into Chill with Facebook Connect, Chill has access to the open graph, which helps the site deliver relevant videos to the user.

"Video needs a dedicated platform," says Norgard. "From video search to collections, there's so many aspects of the video experience that Facebook isn't focusing on today because of its massive scale."

Chill is only one month in, but things are looking good. It has curated a few popular video collections, including The Ultimate Steve Jobs Collection and The Shit People Say Definitive Collection.

So sorry, Ryan Gosling: It looks like you'll have to hang out on Pinterest. Shit X Says to Y meme, we'll see you on Chill.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

But, based on a test of Rawporter's iOS app Tuesday, the future of journalism is going to have to wait. And the test also provides a case study in why rushing an app out the door may not be the best business strategy: I'm frustrated after using it for a couple of hours as a correspondent. But think about how the news outlet that tried to contact me last night to purchase my footage and couldn't get it in time for their evening broadcast feels.

Rawporter is built on the idea that almost anyone can become a local news cameraman or camerawoman. Instead of dispatching a camera crew to a fire during rush hour and risk their not getting there until after the flame is out, a television news producer can create an assignment from Rawporter's Web interface and send it to anyone with the app who may be in the area of the fire.

How Rawporter Is Supposed To Work

When I first heard about Rawporter at Columbia University's Social Media Weekend last month, I left the room wondering "Why didn't I think of that?" It was one of those ideas that was so simple, yet so brilliant:

1. People like me download the app, which I previously described as looking and feeling a lot like Instagram, only with an emphasis on video instead of photos.
2. I load my contact info into a profile and begin shooting video, which is uploaded to the Rawporter Web site and can be browsed by news outlets.
3. In addition to purchasing footage I shoot on my own, news outlets can send assignments via push notifications to people with the app, based on their GPS coordinates: "We're getting reports of a fire near where Rawporter says you are. Do you have time to run by and shoot two minites of footage? We'll pay up to $25."
4. I get to retain the rights to my footage, meaning I can tweet it out, resell it or post it on my own site.
5. The news station avoids the expense of sending out a crew and gets to bring viewers more footage of more events.

How Rawporter Actually Worked When I Tried It Out

The app looks good but, in use, it was clunky, not all that intuitive and, when I tried to use it to cover a march against hate at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts, it simply didn't work. To be fair, Rawporter is brand new, and an update to their iOS app is waiting for final approval so it can be sold on iTunes.

And they also get points for trying to offer potential fixes via Twitter as soon as I started tweeting about my frustration using the app.

Tuesday's event was to show support for a student who was allegedly attacked on campus after writing an opinion piece supporting gay marriage in the college newspaper, of which I am the adviser. I attended the rally, which my students were covering, and decided I'd use Rawporter to shoot some video of the event, which drew widespread, regional media coverage.

I shot video of the six minute speech by the university's president to open the rally and the nine-minute speech by the victim's father, who is also a professor at the school, at the end of the rally. Rawporter told me the six-minute clip was saved successfully, but when I checked on the Web site the only thing that got uploaded was a one-second test clip (with the description I had written for the longer clip).

And the nine-minute clip? It was completely eaten. I later found it in the standard video camera of my iPhone, but I could not find any way to move it back into Rawporter so it would be available for viewing.

But that's only where the frustrations started. Other major flaws:

• When I started to realize I was having trouble, I tried to update my Rawporter profile with my phone number so if any news outlets did want footage, they may be able to contact me. Every time I tried, however, I got an error message when I saved it. I was able to update the profile when I got online, but, 16 hours later, those changes still aren't showing up when I access my profile through the app.
• At 4:30 or so yesterday afternoon I got a push notification saying a news outlet - I still don't know who - was willing to pay me $25 for the speech I shot. But when I logged into the app, and then the Web site, there was no record of the new outlet making such an offer and no way of responding.

Rawporter is a brilliant idea, and you can see companion apps popping up for writers and professional photographers looking to sell work and field assignments. But it's a poorly-executed idea. The company has an uphill battle, convincing clients that using the service is worth the effort of finding ways around the tight union contracts for camera crews that are in place at many broadcast news outlets. A poorly-designed app that frustrates even the most technically-inclined potential user is not going to make that sales pitch any easier.

Showyou 3.0 launches today, and if you watch videos on an iPad, a Kindle Fire, an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you need to try it. If you have an Apple TV, so much the better. Showyou brings in all the videos from your various social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and more. It displays them for you in a glorious, sweeping grid organized by magic. The new version makes browsing a little more down-to-earth, too (in a good way), adding category channels, browsable lists for individual users, and an easier navigation tray.

We've compared Showyou's previous versions to Flipboard and Instapaper, which is pretty esteemed company for an iOS app. As a set of features, those comparisons are apt. But the interface takes it a step further. The app takes full advantage of the touchscreen. It's a better interface than TV has ever had. And you don't just watch on your device; you can AirPlay it to your Apple TV and just use Showyou as the remote. Whatever it was about TV that Steve Jobs said he "finally cracked," it was probably something like this.

Showyou has this figured out in so many ways. No other app has this grid interface, for one thing. The main screen of all your videos flows under your fingers like Microsoft's Surface or something out of Minority Report, except this is something you can have right now.

When you go further in to the app, whether you're browsing a category or a friend's videos, the interface is reined in a little, going to a simpler, scrolling column. The new navigation drawer helps you get reoriented quickly and easily.

The sources of the videos in Showyou are your friends and the people you follow. It connects to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Tumblr, Vimeo and Vodpod, which is a video curation site by Remixation, the company that makes Showyou. There are also some publisher channels, like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, TED and more. The main grid shows videos from all the sources you're following, and you can narrow down by source, by topic or hashtag, or by the person sharing. It even has pretty fast search using all that social metadata, with an index of nearly 30 million videos so far.

Showyou is free, and it will become ad-supported as it grows. It's also considering a subscription service for certain shows or publishers. The big question is whether Showyou will get licenses for major TV shows or movies. "Not yet," its people say. "Maybe soon." But YouTube viewing is eclipsing TV, anyway. For iPad or Kindle Fire owners, or even for iPhone and iPod Touch, Showyou should be in your living room.

Rawporter, an iPhone app that will soon be rolled out for Android, turns almost anyone into a local news cameraman or camerawoman. Instead of dispatching a camera crew to a fire during rush hour and risk they won't get there until after the flame is out, a television news reporter can create an assignment from Rawporter's Web interface and send it to anyone with the app who may be in the area of the fire.

The service already has a semi-endorsement from Janis Krums, the Staten Island ferry passenger who became a celebrated citizen journalist for taking his iconic "Miracle on the Hudson" photo. In a promotional video, Krums says if a service like Rawporter had existed in 2009, he may have gotten fairly compensated for his photo.

Speaking at Columbia University's social media weekend in New York on Saturday, Rawporter co-founder Rob Gaige said the assignment feature allows producers to tell photographers how much they'll be paid. Photo and video journalists retain rights to the work they create using the app and can share it with their followers on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

"Our job is to make your job easier," Gaige told conference attendees, most of whom were journalists, and many of whom were not buying assertions that Rawporter would not threaten their already tenuous job security.

Even an instructional video on Rawporter's Web site notes that traditional news crews are "too costly and too slow for today's news market" and that viewers don't want to see "a reporter talking about the aftermath" when they can watch an event as it unfolds.

The app itself is relatively straightforward to use.It feels a lot like Instagram, except it also offers push notifications from news outlets looking for content. I've been using it since Saturday and, so far, no assignments have been tossed my way but, then again, as far as I know I have not been in the vicinity of any newsworthy events.

For producers looking to fill a sudden news hole, there's not a lot of user-generated content to choose from just yet (aside from videos shot at the conference where Gaige was speakinbg, the most recent video is from a Jan. 23 vigil following the death of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno).

Rawporter just launched in November, so it may take awhile for accidental journalists to discover the site, and for producers to figure out if they're breaking union contracts by outsourcing camera work for $10 or $25 a clip.