The Prime Time for Niche Video Site is Coming

The prime time for "out-of-the-mainstream" video/movie sites is coming. With the help of broadband technologies, the pent-up demand on "the long tail" for alternative video products are matched with the supply from avid independent movie and documentary makers--not all of them love to hang out on YouTube.

A bunch of more targeted video/movie websites are emerging these days. One of them is Jaman. It has partnered with New York's Tribeca Film Festival and won good words from the BusinessWeek writer. Jaman has a big alternative movie database and offers better than average visual quality. It also incorporated some social networking features ( every site should dress up to meet web 2.0 audience today) , for example, having a pop up window telling you what other people thinks about the movie while you are watching--might not be good for everyone, but good for many belonging to the web 2.0 generation and growing up multitasking.

The Next New Networks, an internet TV start-up, views its mission as "creating micro-television networks over the internet for targeted communities, bringing together elements of tv programming and internet philosophy to allow viewers to contribute, share and distribute content." Specifically, it has categorized user generated videos into
different channels and create communities on top of them, with blog posts and other social features combined to the video content.

Another site to watch is Babelgum, whose goal is to" blend the lean-back experience of traditional TV with the interactive and social power of the Internet." Like other social networking featured video sites, this one has view-sharing and user-generating as well, what makes it sounds more interesting is that it aims to get even more niche and tailored-- by "creating your own TV channels with niche-to-mainstream content from around the world tailored to your interest", and "as you use it, your TV learns what you like and just gets better." Sounds exciting. But it will take time to see how that works out.

Above all, the idea of getting the right stuff to the right people, or helping people find what they want, is always the key values of such websites. After all, even on the bottom of the long tail, we don't want to do laborious works to find out what we need to entertain ourselves.