Review: I am in love. Just discovered this amazing Web 2.0 site called Animoto. The Japanese sounding name is, I believe, a mashup of "animation" and "photo." The site lets you upload your photos (or others from the Web -- raising obvious copyright issues there) and then synch in songs provided by Animoto (or your own songs -- again raising obvious copyright issues).
The process is simple. Step 1, you upload whatever photos you want. Step 2, you choose from a menu of songs (many of which are pretty cool) or upload your own song. Step 3, you hit "finalize" and the about 15 minutes later you get a randomly generated music video with very cool effects. NOTE: you have to pay $3 for one video or $30 per year, unless you go with the standard, free 30 second video. If you don't mind being limited to 30 seconds, you pay nothing. I loved this product so much, I paid the $30! Below is my vid:
News: Hulu.com -- the joint project between FOX and NBC -- officially launches on Wednesday, March 12. This project has been in beta testing for some time, although I've been very impressed with it from the start. The whole premise of hulu is that it is the "professional" or "premium" content site, the anti-YouTube or the so-called YouTube-killer. USA Today reports that Warner Bros., Lionsgate, the NBA, and NHL have all agreed to deals with hulu, which means that hulu will now have 100 movies.
Review: People know that I am a big fan of YouTube. But I am also a big fan of Hulu. It's a sleek, tremendously user-friendly website. The videos are embeddable and even customizable. Videos are offered as both short clips and the entire TV show, such as The Office, The Simpsons, and others, all of which can be embedded on your blog or elsewhere. Although many of the videos (if not all of them) have pre-roll ads, I have to say that I really have gotten used to them. And, the best part of all, the video quality is fantastic. Blows away YouTube on that front.
Heroes clip I customized
Victoria's Secret ad
Simpsons mashup
So what does this mean for YouTube?: Game on. YouTube offers something that Hulu does not: amateur, user-generated content that appeals to the masses. Today, YouTube dominates in terms of eyeballs in the video sharing market, but it has yet to really do so with the advertising money. Hulu is just an infant in this space, with far fewer viewers, but it does provide the kind of "controlled space" that traditional advertisers like. Whether people will flock to Hulu is hard to say. It's basically like an Internet version of Tivo or the TV. If FOX threw in American Idol on Hulu, now that would be a guarantee of getting millions of eyeballs. Until then, there's always Welcome Back Kotter.
