The Video Sharing Software Explosion

By: Jeff Foster at WebBizIdeas

Submitted on Sun, May 25th, 2008 7:42 am

Methods

The natural evolution on the Internet from text and pictures is to video. Video quality and video website design on the Internet has improved by leaps and bounds as underlying technologies like operating systems, browsers and browser plug-ins have evolved. Fundamentally, video delivery on the ‘net involves streaming the content live or storing it as files for later playback. While stored video files that can be downloaded and played later have been around for a while, improvements in bandwidth have made streaming video sharing software a well-established technology.

Technologies

Video is stored in a file format based on the video sharing software that a publisher supports. Typical formats in use are MPEG, Audio Video Interleave (AVI), Digital Video File (DV), and Intel Video Format (IVF) among hundreds of others. Publishers who create most of these formats also create one or more browser plug-ins that support the format. As a result, web browsers have become the delivery mechanism for most shared video content.

Uses

Research indicates that the most significant use of video sharing software is in the social networking software industry, which provides economic support for a majority of video sharing websites. Notable uses are in remote diagnosis in medicine, web conference visual aids and research. Video sharing software is making inroads into distance learning and testing as well.

As technology improves, video conferencing and video telephones are expected to become popular communication technologies.

Current Environment

Video sharing is a doorway for imaginative and gifted people to put their ideas on display with the help of their video cameras or video enabled digital cameras. Web Video or online video sharing, as its commonly known, has become so popular these days that any information (be it personal or otherwise, pertaining to music videos, travel, science experiments, comedy, TV shows, film clips, sports clips, blogs, etc.) can be shared with Internet users by uploading the files to free or paid services. Surveys indicate that reading traditional media, such as newspapers and books, is significantly down due to the proliferation of video sharing software on the Internet. Who knew that video sharing would become even more popular than reading!

At times, video information is too big to be e-mailed or put into personal website, which is where video sharing websites come into play. Sites like Youtube.com allow a member to upload the video which can be redirected to online video sharing page marked with certain keywords for easy search, for example, “movies”, “science”, “baseball”, and this is all for free as the site earns its money through advertising. USA Today reports that this truly signifies as “the beginning of the age of personal media”.

Bane Of Web Video

Primary complaints about shared video content on the net are the quality of delivery and the surface size of the image. Most of these problems arise from bandwidth availability limitations of the user’s connection. The Internet was designed to be a packet-based communication medium rather than stream-based, and when real time video is streaming the software must assemble the video on the user’s computer for continuous viewing.

Quality delivery systems adjust the display frame rate, image size and audio quality based on the connection speed of the user. This kind of adjustment provides generally acceptable quality to a majority of users.

In summary, online video sharing is a treat for your customers and will result in more users being drawn to your website, resulting in an increase in traffic. More visitors on your site leads to more chances to advertise your products and services to them, which equals more revenue. You should also keep in mind that advertisers love sites that have lots of traffic and use the latest technology.

About the Author

Jeff Foster
WebBizIdeas

I am a website designer & internet marketer for WebBizIdeas.com. I have been building & marketing internet businesses since 2000. I enjoy working on Web 2.0 projects. Social Networking, Search Engine Friendly Designs, and Content Management Solutions are among my favorite sites to build. I greatly enjoy Search Engine Optimization. More recently I have been studying the effects of Social Media websites; such as YouTube.com. Social Marketing will be HUGE (already is) and I enjoy helping my clients benefit on this trend now...before the big rush.